Chapter 16

[NOTE: This is a typed tape transcript and has not been edited or published, as of August 1992. It is for reference use only.]

Osho: So, I should address to Shree Pritish, that will be better.

THE FIRST QUESTION:

WHAT IN YOUR VIEW SHOULD BE INDIA'S EDUCATIONAL POLICY?

Osho: Vedant, the Indian educational system was created by the British empire to produce more clerks, more servile people. So the British remained aloof, and in between this educational system created a wall against the masses of India. So the first thing is that educational system as a whole should not be producing clerks and masters. Its aim should be to create painters, poets, sculptors. I am not saying that the whole system should be thrown out, because few clerks will be needed.

We have to sort out what creates a "servants" attitude. It is obedience. More obedient you are, more a slave. The whole system was created to produce more slaves, that was British empire's need. We have to change and the whole dimension from creating slaves to creating individuals, freedom, and a pride.

The second thing... Half of the education time should be given to crafts, because neither history has to do anything with your life, nor geography has anything to do. These should be optional subjects. We should create more craftsmen, more carpenters, more gardeners. In short, we will keep what is necessary to be a independent man, and obedience should be completely erased. From the very beginning a child should be supported in his individuality and his pride into being a human, which is the highest consciousness evolution has brought us.

This will reduce the problem of unemployment. In fact, nobody wants to be employed in a system where he is just dispensable. He is inside always in insecurity. A farmer, a gardener, a carpenter have their original being uninterfered by government or by religion or by old and rotten systems of thought.

And so much time has gone since freedom came to India, but it is a very poor freedom. It has not brought the light and the flame of freedom to the individual.

Individual is more important than the society. We cannot sacrifice the individual in the service of society.

That will bring a totally new atmosphere But our educational system is based underneath on obedience. They can become soldiers, they can become policemen, they can become clerks, they can become part of any system where they are just numbers.

When a soldier dies, on the board of the campus it is not declared who has died, number nine has died. It does not hurt us. But if the name is written... Because number nine has no wife, no children, no longing for to be independent; it is a dead thing. It is just a man-created phenomenon. If number is removed and the name is placed, many more soldiers will think twice whether to participate in this stupid struggle. "My wife is waiting, my mother will be getting old. My father needs me at this time. My children are growing and I have to look after them. And what I am doing here? Just following orders. Left, I turn left. Right, I turn right. And the man on the other side is doing the same. He has not harmed me, I have not harmed him. We are not even acquainted, and we are ready to kill each other."

So with the change of educational system, a great explosion of freedom will come.

People need to be needed. That is their greatest longing. If they are not needed and anybody can replace them, they are just a commodity. They are not a father, they are not a husband; they don't love anybody.

So all that is unnecessary to teach and waste time, should be optional. Or for what libraries exist? People should go -- if they have an interest in geography and history, they look in the library. But more basic things... And whenever you create something, when your rose bush brings beautiful roses, you have a certain happiness that destruction cannot have.

So education should be divided. A part we certainly need, but that too will not be a slave. But the major part should be made creative, he should not be dependent on anybody.

Students should be supported in making communes, not factories owned by one individual. The commune owns everything and the commune provides everybody's need. This is my conception of an authentic socialism.

VEDANT: SINCE YOU MENTION SOCIALISM, I HAVE A QUESTION. IS SOCIALISM VIABLE, AND IS SOCIALISM RELEVANT TO INDIA?

Osho: Only socialism is relevant to India, and it is viable. After seventy years of communist revolution in Russia, now they have come to their senses that they have created a prison. And what Gorbachev is doing is introducing socialism, not communism. The difference is that the people should enjoy life, love life, be free for movement into other countries -- no visa and no passport should be needed. This whole earth is ours, nobody is alien.

The richest man, who is in Japan, who has twenty-six billion dollars... What you are going to do with this twenty-six million dollars... billion dollars? Even America is ashamed, because its richest man has only four billion dollars.

Emphasis should be not on money. Emphasis should be health, love, creativity, a feeling of communion, destroying all discrimination between white and black, between rich and poor, between Hindu and the Christian.

Socialism is not a religion; it is a revolution in all our life patterns. A child is not born with a label that he is a Hindu. Twenty-one years should be left as you conceive that the child is now adult. If to vote you need at least twenty-one years, how can you make somebody a Hindu or Muslim or Christian? You are exploiting the very innocent people.

And religion should be searched by the individual himself. And in one commune all kinds of religious people are accepted. That is a private affair, it is not the business of any church to dominate.

Socialism will also look at the phenomenon that India, one of the poorest country, has the biggest military force. They are just sitting. They get everything, the best that you produce. The remaining people receive the leftover. And there is no need for such a vast army. And in a world where nuclear weapons are there, where suspicions are there that deathrays have been perfected, no bomb, just a deathray which you will not feel and you fall dead...

So all destructive structures -- army, navy, or air forces -- should be put in the service of the people. There is no need. The generations following will think that man has been mad -- only fighting. Life is not for fighting; it is to sing and dance and enjoy.

Socialism is a freedom from all chains -- religion, the culture. Whatever chains an individual into dependence, and calls obedience the highest quality, is an enemy of humanity.

Adam was expelled from heaven just because he disobeyed God, and that simple incidence contains the base of all religions.

Socialism is an unconditioning, a de-programming, and bringing forth the natural potentialities of the individual. That is exactly the meaning of education.

It is not to put borrowed knowledge and force it into the memory; it is to take out all borrowed knowledge so the individual can see his own potentiality. And nobody can be happy ever, unless he finds his potential and a great joy arises in him.

There is no need to kill people as communism has done. One million people have been killed. And strange... For these people the revolution was bringing the paradise. There is no need. Just remove the foundations. Everything is social and nobody can be possessive.

I accept equality in a different sense. People have been teaching equality in such a stupid way: that everybody should be equal. Somebody is tall, and somebody is small, so cut the head or cut the legs. This is not equality.

Equality means equal opportunity to bring your potential and contribute to life, to the world, and to yourself, a joy. And as nuclear weapons have come into existence, war has become out-of-date. It will be a suicide, global suicide.

So it is time to destroy all barriers and proclaim a brotherhood of the whole earth. And we will all share equal opportunity to do whatever we want to do. In short, socialism is equal opportunity -- not equal men -- equal opportunity to grow, to create, to love, without any bondage.

Marriage is a bondage. Two persons can love and live together, and the day they see they cannot, with gratitude towards each other for all those beautiful days that have passed, they will say goodbye. And children in a commune will belong, not to the father and mother; they will belong to the commune. So that is not a question. They will be living in commune hostels. They can meet their father and mother on holidays, or father and mother can meet them.

Things are so complicated. A boy comes in contact with a woman which is his mother, a girl comes biologically attracted towards the father. And this is not possible. Neither the father can become the husband of the girl, nor the mother can become the wife of the boy. But these impressions in the mind... They search whole life, if some woman similar -- maybe only partially similar to the mother -- the boy thinks he is falling in love. He is not falling in love; he is only falling in the shape of the nose, or the color of the eyes, or the hairdo. But how long it will... Within few days it is finished. Marriage ends with the honeymoon, then there is just a burden to be carried.

So no need for anybody to interfere into individual privacy. Up to now this has been difficult because of the children -- what to do with the children. But my conception of the commune is that all children go to the commune house and come in contact with many women teachers, with many male teachers, so their impact is vast. And only these people can love. They don't fall in love because of the hairdo, and they are not carrying the father-fixation.

I said that things are complicated, so interfering with every other thing. The father-figure destroys the man, and the father-figure creates the god. And god is a fiction. So he is miserable, always miserable.

Socialism can destroy this misery. There is no need of big cities, high-rise buildings; they are simply prisons. People should move into small communes where everybody is acquainted with everybody else, and come closer to the nature, save the ecology which those high-rising building were destroying. There is no need, because we are already committing suicide by destroying the ecology.

When India became independent it has thirty-three million trees. And now it has only eleven million trees, because unnecessary things... And with a scientific progress things can take a tremendous quantum leap. For example, television can be used in every school, college, university, to teach. And it is easy to remember when you see it than when you read it. Reading is just words on the paper, seeing is reality. And much more can be shown to them through television. Right now television is killing them.

Thirty-three million people in America are in hospitals. They had no disease.

Television is their disease. Seven and half hours average, American is watching TV. And the TV is in the hands of big corporations, so all that they do -- they propagate things with beautiful women, and continuous repetition every day that "this butter is the best".

Now in America they have made a potato association, because they don't want even to the effort to go to the kitchen, because by that time something will be missed on the television. So they simply phone their number and what they need, and from the hotel everything comes. They are eating and seeing. So these potatoes have numbers for servicing them for anything at their chair where they are making... They think that something great is happening. On the one side corporations possessing television is wrong, and on the other side, government possessing television and radio is even more wrong. Because government -- whichever party is in power -- will enforce ideas into people.

Television should be in the hands of the commune. And there is no need for television from six o'clock in the morning till twelve in the night. Three hours is enough. And universities can have their own television studio to teach students.

In fact, the teacher can become only the operator. How a painter paints -- and you can see Picasso painting. The best can be seen as if you are contemporary of Gautam Buddha.

This will bring a great revolution, otherwise all these television corporations are exploiting people. Or in a country like India, government is holding television, radio, everything. They are creating slavery. (End side A, Tape 1) VEDANT: WHAT SHOULD BE THE ROLE OF DOORDARSHAN WITH REGARD TO TELEVISION. AND COULD YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS?

Osho: Freedom of all media -- whether it is television, radio, or newspapers -- should not be in the hands which are running them to earn money. And they should not be in the hands of the government. And so many newspapers are unnecessary. And these newspapers are destroying the trees. Every day millions of trees are needed to produce paper. It is simply insane. A tree takes hundreds of years to grow, and a newspaper becomes useless within minutes.

So the newspapers should be limited -- not their freedom -- because they are all reporting the same. So every country can have a limited number, and the owner will not be any individual; the commune will be the owner. And not the rubbish that goes on filling people's mind... should be cut off. Only what is essential, and people must know -- that's enough.

There are hundreds of scientific inventions. The governments have given them their copyright and keeping them from the people, because many capitalists will be afraid.

I know a scientist who has worked for twenty years in Hiroshima. He comes here once, and then he becomes a sannyasin. And his experience is that in a certain amount, radiation can destroy all diseases, and man can remain happy. But that will mean it will affect people who are producing medicines, doctors who are curing. So thereforth (?) And they are the people who contribute to the parties for the elections. So finally it is government who is hiding. And we don't now how many inventions are lying in the government offices.

One Japanese scientist, who has also been here, has made petrol function four times more. But nobody is going to allow him. Because if petrol functions four times more, then the petrol owners who have become great just by petrol-control, their power and prestige will fall down.

In Japan they have invented a railway which can go four hundred miles per minute. Japan does not have that much land, it can have only two stations:

beginning and the end. And at that speed the train does not need rails, it rises four feet high, and you will be feeling just the same as you are in an airplane. But this railway, if the world is one, then only can be applicable. Right now, so much investment in railways by the governments, or by vast corporations, will be destroyed.

So the public and its interest is not in the eyes of the politicians. They don't think of humanity, they think only of their interest -- how to climb more and more and become powerful. And they can become more powerful only if the rich people go on contributing them. If the rich people begin to dissolve with new inventions, the party that was supported by them will fall out of power.These complications making the whole life of man a misery.

In Soviet Union they have found thirty years before, kirlian photography. But its vast potential has not been used -- not even Soviet Union -- in minor scale, because it can give you six months before what kind of disease is growing in you. You may not feel it. The photograph shows because we are containing a certain electricity, and that electricity makes an aura. The healthy man has a bigger aura, the sick man has a very small aura, the dying man's aura has disappeared. So if you are going to be sick in a certain part of the body, it will lose its aura. It may become known to you when the disease has already happened.

No country is using kirlian photography. Every hospital should use it, but the doctors are afraid. That means no sick people, no ill people will be coming to the hospitals. Only once in China, under the influence of a great man, Confucius, a strange idea was accepted, and that was, that the doctor should be paid for the health, not for curing, but for preventing.

And the government is for the people, should not be just a slogan. Government should pay that the man goes every month for checkup, and if any disease is coming six month afterwards, can be prevented right now. The man can live his whole life without any sickness. And if a man can live for hundred years without sickness, the calculation of the scientist is that the possibility becomes more.

Three hundred years is very easily possible, and he will remain young., he will not become old.

Even today, a part of Kashmir that Pakistan has occupied, people live one hundred, one hundred-twenty, without any problem. Poor people. And in Soviet Union, a part in Caucasus, people have been found working in the fields just like young people, and their age is one hundred-eighty. But nobody is interested to inquire their food, what they are eating, what kind of climate they are living.

And that can become universal. There is no need of so many hospitals and so many medicines. But the vested interests of millions of doctors around the world, medical colleges, will lose all its greatness.

VEDANT: WHAT IN YOUR VIEW, SHOULD BE GOVERNMENT'S FINANCIAL POLICY? WILL YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT PUBLIC VERSUS PRIVATE ENTERPRISE?

Osho: I will not support government enterprise, because that makes the government more powerful over people. And I will not support individual enterprise, because that creates few people very rich and millions of people very poor.

My suggestion is, everything should be a commune enterprise. They cannot exploit because whom they are going to exploit? Themselves? And that's what socialism is: a commune enterprise.

A simple fact, but neither the government is willing to give powers decentralized from the federal government, and of course individuals who are great owners...

It is a conspiracy, perhaps unknown. It seems that millions of starving people does not matter, only those ten people matter who are the richest. And they give to the government to take more licenses and to support the party.

Every power should be decentralized. The central government should be only a coordinator. The states in the government should have the real power, not the central government. But no federal government will be ripe... agree for it, because they lose everything.

Nobody is interested in the human bliss, human peace. Everybody is interested how much money you have gathered. And then it does not matter whether that money is gathered with a right means or wrong means. If you are supporting a party who is in party, then you can go on collecting money through wrong means.

The drug mafias have more money than anybody else. Every government is afraid of them, so they catch poor people who have become addicted to the drug.

But it is a vast gang around the world. They remain prestigious, high. They don't be blamed, because if you blame them their support for the government stops.

So it is not only complex, but very contradictory. The government catches hold of the addicts and forces them into jail, and the people who are real culprits are respected by the presidents and the prime ministers. So they take their money and they talk about destroying corruption. If corruption is destroyed, many so- called great leaders will fall down dead. And these are the leaders who are talking continuously against corruption, but they are living on corruption. The money that they are getting is black money.

I am not a politician, that's why I can see clearly the whole pattern. And it is very difficult to change the pattern, the pattern is so vast. It will be a miracle if people can start seeing that they are destroying themselves. But they will have to see, otherwise, as many planets, million of stars are without any life, this earth will also become dead. It is dying.

Nepal has sold its forests for thirty years to Soviet Union. Whatsoever they want in thirty year time they can cut. And that is creating floods in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is poor already. This time the flood was so big that seventy-five percent of Bangladesh was filled with the water, thousand of people died, thousands of houses disappeared. And you cannot blame Nepal either, because they are perhaps the poorest country in the world, and they have nothing to sell except trees. If they don't sell trees, they cannot remain alive.

So my proposition is, that unless a world government is there, and national governments become only members of the world government... every country's president becomes the member of the world government, and thinks not only in terms of his own limited area, but the whole complex, no problem can be solved.

VEDANT: WHAT WILL BE YOUR VIEW ABOUT CORRUPTION, BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE HAVING A CONTROVERSY ABOUT BOFORS GUN DEAL IN WHICH THE MIDDLE MAN TOOK AWAY LOT OF MONEY. SO THE QUESTION WAS, SHOULD THERE BE A MIDDLE MAN IN THE DEFENSE PURCHASES? AND WHAT SHOULD BE THE FOREIGN POLICY OF INDIA?

Osho: Looking at the whole complex, corruption cannot be stopped whether there is a middle man or not. If the world is one, war becomes impossible. With whom you are going to fight? And there is no need for defense departments, purchasing through middle men weapons or anything. A single solution is a world government. Corruption will disappear, because the world government will look at the whole area.

If people are paid just to survive, they cannot even laugh, then they cannot be stopped from taking bribery.

A more human attitude will be that those who are taking corruption they should be used, not condemned. But the governments go on talking about destroying about corruption, and they themselves are supported by the corrupted people. So they cannot do. Promises and promises... And no promise is ever fulfilled.

So I don't believe in nationalism, and I don't believe in any religion. I believe in the individual and his happiness.

There are sixty (?) million Catholics. And ordinarily a man coming to the highest post of being a pope, a direct line with God... It is a vast country -- sixty million people. And every church has to contribute money to the Vatican. Those who bring more money to the Vatican start rising up. They become, from priests, bishops; bishops become a higher post... this hierarchy. So the man by the time he reaches to be a pope... in these eighteen hundred years the pope has not survived more than two years; he dies. By the time he reaches eighty he has already...

Now this time it has become difficult. The pope is a Polack and he has forgotten to die. And he is selected by the bishops, so he has changed thousands of bishops. He has put his own men. And now the pope has also become a problem like a president or a prime minister. But he is preparing that if any conflict arises, his bishops are in majority, and his order is not his order, it is coming directly from God.

Corruption will continue if there is too much hierarchy and too much poverty.

And nobody can blame them. I have only compassion for them. A man wants to get his daughter to be married, he has to sell his land or his house for the dowry.

And the man who is accepting it, you cannot condemn him either, because he has sold his land, he has worked hard for his boy to grow and educated.

So it is so interlinked that you cannot solve one problem separately. All the problems has to be taken as a inter-net, and only a world government can change it. Once the world government is there, no army is needed, no navy is needed, no air force is needed for fighting purposes. They all become usable. And all this energy that is wasted in the army and armament... Even poorest countries are wasting their money -- seventy percent of their income -- into arms. They may not have bread, but they want atomic bomb and plants.

India itself is growing fast in population. The government cannot enforce birth control and hide its face. In the name of democracy, how you can enforce?

When the country became forty years before independent, it has only fifty million people. And now it is coming close to one billion -- almost doubled. And for the first time within ten years India will be the most populated country. Up to now, China had that post.

But you cannot support these people. The earth is poor. You have exploited the earth for thousands of years, and you have not nourished it, you have not put nourishment for earth -- manure, chemicals. And every source is limited.

My vision is not of a nationalism.

And I hate dictatorship, hiding behind any name. Sometimes it is "emergency", and I could not see what emergency was there. Sometimes... Now it is national defense. But who is...? And this creates problem -- anything that goes against your own constitution. In the constitution you are very beautiful and flowery.

But in practice, if you want totalitarian power, you can make an parliament act, a defense act which is not under the law of the land. A man can be forced into jail.

He cannot appeal, and he may not be even said why you are arrested.

Nations should disappear. With them almost ninety percent problems will disappear. And the ten percent can be managed to disappear, they will not be so big.

Humanity can live as beautifully as birds are living. No bird is rich and no bird is poor. Even birds have a classless society, and man cannot have it. It is simply idiotic.

(End side B, tape 1) VEDANT: I HAD ELEVEN QUESTIONS, I HAVE ALREADY ASKED SEVEN. IS IT OKAY? SHALL I CONTINUE FOR THE LAST...?

Osho: You continue.

VEDANT: THERE IS THIS ISSUE OF SECULARISM, AND THERE IS A GREAT CONTROVERSY GOING ON RIGHT NOW WITH REGARD TO WHAT THEY CALL "RAM GENERAL BUMI AND THE BABRI MASJID IN AYODHYA."

BOTH COMMUNITIES, HINDUS AND MOSLEMS, ARE CLAIMING THAT PLACE. HOW CAN THIS ISSUE BE DEFUSED?

Osho: There is no problem of...

These are politicians behind the problems. Otherwise both can worship the place, both can make it holy. It becomes double holy to Hindus and to Mohammedans.

What is the problem?

Israel is a holy land for the Christians because of Jesus was born there, crucified there. It is holy land for the Jew because Moses founded the country. It is holy for Mohammedans because when Mohammed went to heaven, riding on his horse, he stayed for rest on a rock in Israel. So that rock is a problem. And I don't see any problem. All can worship a rock. Rock will not say, "No, you cannot worship."

Just it has to be made clear to them that the whole earth is holy. And if you think this part is holy for you, you should be happy that this part is also holy for Hindus, for Mohammedans. You should invite Christians, Jainas, to make it more holy.

Sheer childishness to fight on these problems, but politicians have power only if there is some fight going on.

Now the government will be in difficulty. If the government sides with the Hindus, the whole Mohammedan community will go against in the elections. If they side with the Mohammedans, the whole Hindu community will go against.

So they just talk about it, in the parliament discuss about it and nothing happens, and nothing will happen.

My suggestion is very simple. A holy land is nobody's possession, anybody can worship. And more people worship it, more humanitarian it becomes.

VEDANT: WOMEN STILL FEEL SECOND-RATE CITIZENS. THEY FEEL INSECURE AND DISCRIMINATED. HOW SHOULD WOMEN COPE UP WITH THIS SITUATION? AND WHAT KIND OF LEGAL SYSTEM BE CREATED TO PROTECT THEIR INTERESTS?

Osho: Again, as I told you, all these problems are interlinked. Mohammed allowed four wives and created a trouble, because if a man marries four wives then three men will remain unmarried. That will bring prostitution.

Unless these superstitions dissolve, nothing can be done. The first thing is to understand the problem. The problem is interlinked with other problems.

Hindus had followed MANUSMRITI for five thousand years. Manusmriti does not give equality to women with men. She is a second-class citizen.

In China it went even further. A man can kill his wife, will not be punished because it is his wife -- possession. If you destroy your chair you cannot be punished for it.

And all religions, without any exception, have prevented women to be educated, prevented women to move in society, meet with other people. They have confined them in a corner in the house. No education... where they can go? What they can do? No skill...

The problem can be solved. Women should be allowed education, given priority to men. Women should be allowed in all the posts and businesses. They should be freed from the burden of children. And now birth control is possible.

Birth control is the great revolution, if understood it. Birth control will make women and men equal. The pill was a birth control measure, but sometimes the woman may forget the pill one day. And people always think it is not going to happen always, but sometimes it happens. But now they have come with a pill for the man. If the woman does not take the pill, no problem. The man can take the pill. And even more revolutionary pill has come which the woman can take after making love. No need to take it the whole month or three weeks, and no worry about it. She can take afterwards.

These pills and methods destroy the inequality. Otherwise, the women has been continuously burdened with pregnancy, Otherwise, how twelve and fifteen children can be born to one couple? Rabindranath was the twelfth child. His mother must have been continuously pregnant. A woman continuously pregnant cannot work, cannot go to the educations institutions, cannot do business.

So the first thing is, the woman should be freed, and birth control... Pope is against it because that brings orphans, that brings more Catholics.

Mother Teresa is rewarded everywhere, given a Nobel Prize. Even the Indian government has rewarded her. And what she has done? She is done only one thing. Poor people will leave their child by the side of the road in Calcutta, the most populated city in India, and they collect those children. They feed them not only food, but the Bible also. Because she brings so many Catholics, even pope comes to her place. The respect for her by the pope is understandable. But why the Indian government?

Indian government is giving her prestige to capture the votes of the Christians.

Birth control, free pills, should be provided to everyone who comes. One thing, that the population comes down. By the time of two thousand... twenty thousand... there will be more than five billion people. And it is a phenomenon that each year the population doubles. So nobody sees that the real problem where it is.

No child should be initiated into any religion until he is adult, and then too, he should not be forced of persuaded. He should be educated, supported. And to be independent he should learn some craft so he need not be a servant.

I don't see that these problems are real problems. And if these are the real problems, then they cannot be solved. These are created problems. It gives power to both.

When Ayatollah Khomeini ordered the murder of a novelist, Rushdie, who has done nothing... He is a Mohammedan, and what he has written is factual, but to bring Christ to a... any reference to Koran into a novel is degrading the Koran, it is holy. And nobody condemned Ayatollah Khomeini. On the contrary, everybody supported him except me. And when I condemned him on this issue, some Hindu wrote a letter to the government of India, that what Khomeini is doing with Rushdie, I have done thousand times more -- criticism of Krishna and Rama and Buddha -- the same should be the case: 'he should be murdered.'

This is not a human society. Civilization has not happened.

According to me, all problems are fabulous. Now this is stupid. You say heaven is above. For the argument's sake we accept that Mohammed went with his horse, but where Israel came in? Israel is not above earth, that he rested there...

Just fictions Our misery is that we believe in fictions, and if anybody points to the fictions he becomes target of the collective masses, which know nothing about... In the first place nobody can fly with the horse. In the second place, Israel does not come in the way. And these kinds of things in Hinduism, in Jainism, everywhere they are.

So no children should be converted into any religion by the parents if the parents really love the child. Whether the child is boy or girl, they should be given equal opportunity to grow, equal education, equal freedom to move and express. And they should not be forced to go against nature. There will be no problem. The problem arises when you go against nature.

Manu has made the caste system, which is a ugliest thing. One-fourth of Hindus are not even second-rate citizens, they are almost animal. And the woman will be free only if there is no marriage bondage and equal opportunity. She can love somebody, she can be with somebody, this is not against nature. And once your love is finished... That too is a fiction, that love is eternal, it never finishes. Once you have loved somebody -- if it is real love, that is the criterion -- that it will remain the same to the last breath. Nothing remains the same even the second after. Soon you become fed-up with each other. And because the man has all the money, all the education, all the power, naturally he represses the woman.

Woman has found her own ways to nag him, to throw pillows at him, but this does not make any change.

I have heard a story... In a neighborhood from every apartment -- because the walls are becoming thinner and thinner, you can hear everything that is going on in other flats. Everybody there constant fight, but there was a wonder. One Sardar also lived in the same building, but nothing was heard. Finally, all other husbands approached them and asked him, "What is the matter? We never see you sad or miserable, no fight, and the same is with your wife. You are a perfect couple. But we want to know what is the secret."

The Sardar laughed. He said, "It is better you should not ask. We both are happy.

I am happy when she throws a thing at me and I move, and the thing thrown at me does not hit me. I laugh. When she throws a thing it hurts me, she laughs."

So the neighborhood was worried that they both laugh. What kind of people these are? Only laughter is heard.

But this is going on all over the world.

To change the status of woman and bring her to the same as man, you will have to begin with the child. Don't teach him anything concerning religion, politics.

Teach him something beautiful -- painting, growing a rosebush. Don't talk about stupid things like brahmacharya, celibacy. There has never been a celibate in the world; it is unnatural. You are making him a hypocrite. Because of this celibacy man's hypocrisy can remain hidden, but the woman's menstrual period cannot remain hidden. On this point Mahavira decided that a woman can attain to enlightenment, but not from the body of a woman. First she will have to attain the body of man. Only man can go to moksha, because the woman cannot be celibate.

But recent search is that just as the woman has three or four days' menstrual period, man also has.

Celibacy is not possible. You can make it hide, but it is there.

The woman is certain an immense problem, because it is half of the humanity.

And if half of the humanity remains subdued, life becomes unbalanced, laughter disappears, a sadness, a burden, an anguish, anxiety -- that takes place of a joyful, laughing and dancing life. But it can be changed very easily.

I don't see any problem that cannot be changed. But the problems are such that the politicians are living on them. If those problems are solved, the politician is gone and all his power is gone. So he teaches and preaches, but his practice is different.

Simple things have become very complex, and we should take the responsibility.

And if intelligent and responsible people understand that we cannot go against nature, many problems will dissolve.

Because of celibacy, homosexuality is born. It is a great contribution of the religions to make monasteries and monks. One of the most ancient monastery and very prestigious -- Ethos -- has at least three thousand monks in it. A monk enters the monastery, then he cannot get out. He gets out when he is dead. A woman is not allowed -- not even six-month baby. No woman has entered in Ethos for one thousand years, naturally, homosexuality.

And homosexuality has created a great problem, AIDS. These are the contributions of religions. Now AIDS is the end of the road, there is no cure. No scientists thinks that there will be any cure. And it is spreading like wildfire and nobody is doing anything.

You will be surprised that twenty-one countries has passed laws that I should not be allowed in any case in their country. The reason? I have been expelled from Greece, I had only four weeks' visa, but the Catholic archpriest went on forcing the government that I should be thrown out, "otherwise he will destroy our religion, he will destroy our piousness. He is a most dangerous man." And the president who forced me -- because he cannot deport, I had not committed any crime -- to leave under threat by the priest, that "If you don't force him to leave, we will dynamite the house in which he is staying on the seashore with his twenty-five friends."

And just now, the president is hammered from every side because he has found a girlfriend. The wife is there and she is not divorced -- there is no question of divorce in Greek Orthodox Christianity. Thinking that he is a president, he even started coming to the parliament with his girlfriend. But he was wrong. The whole country is against now, he cannot be again selected. And this man forced me out without thinking for a moment that a religion which has existed for two thousand years cannot be destroyed by two weeks by a man. And if it can be destroyed by a man in two weeks, it is worth destroying.

VEDANT: I HAVE ONLY LAST TWO QUESTIONS, OSHO.

(LITTLE CONVERSATION BETWEEN VEDANT AND OSHO) IN VIEW OF THIS COMING ELECTIONS, WHAT IN YOUR VIEW SHOULD BE AN IDEAL CABINET? AND WHO, IN YOUR VIEW, IS THE IDEAL PRIME MINISTER? AND I WILL JUST ADD THE LAST QUESTION TO THIS.

FOUR YEARS AGO WHEN PRITISH NANDY HAD INTERVIEWED YOU BACK AT THE RANCH, YOU HAD SAID AT THAT TIME THAT RAJIV GANDHI SHOULD GO BACK AN BECOME A PILOT, AND THERE WAS A BIG UPROAR. NOW FOUR YEARS LATER, DO YOU THINK RAJIV GANDHI IS FIT ENOUGH TO RIDE A BICYCLE?

Osho: No. I will not say that he should go to ride a bicycle. He has lost every respectability. He has not done anything that he promised to the country. He has promised that the country he will lead into twenty-one century. And he is leading the country towards a suicide. He has not done anything to prevent the population. He has promised he will destroy corruption. He has not done anything to destroy or stop. All his promises have been false. Now I will not trust that he can be a pilot.

And as far as the cabinet ministers, I am not acquainted with any politicians, so I cannot say who can be the right prime minister. The difficulty is, a man without power is one thing. The same man with power is altogether different. So you know a man only when he has power. Without power everybody is a saint.

Okay...