Burning torches moving around the world

Question 1:

Maneesha, the rebels who are born out of violence prove, in the end, to be anti-rebellious. The moment they are in power their rebellion disappears. They become as ugly as the predecessors they have replaced, because through violence you cannot bring flowers of love. By sowing the seeds of poison you cannot hope that the flowers will be anything other than poison.

In the past, the great misery has been that those who were peaceful and loving, silent and ecstatic, were not rebels. They could not conceive that a rebellion is possible out of love, out of compassion, out of ecstasy. Their perspective was not that clear about the future possibilities. So people who were loving, people who were peaceful, people who were religious, prayerful, instead of becoming rebels simply became escapists; that was their substitute for rebellion. They escaped to the mountains, to the forests, to live a peaceful, silent and blissful life.

In a way they were certainly selfish. They never thought about those whom they were renouncing.

Their compassion was not great enough and their peace was not strong enough - it was afraid of being disturbed. Their love was not great enough - it was afraid of being burned in the fumes of rebellion.

And on the other hand, there were rebels but they were not peaceful and they were not silent and they had no idea of any ecstasy. They had never known anything of meditation. They had no contact with the heart. Their rebellion was only a reaction of the mind. They were angry, enraged by all the exploitation, oppression, by all the inhumanity that the establishment had been doing to other human beings. Out of their anger, out of their violence, out of their rage, they rebelled. So those who were not capable of rebellion rebelled, and those who were really capable of rebellion escaped.

Those people who were full of violence and rage succeeded. But while they were going through the rebellion they were becoming more and more accustomed to violence; and when the power came into their hands, it came into the hands of violent people. Naturally, they used that power for more violence. Now they had a great opportunity to destroy as many people as possible.

Sometimes their destruction became nonsensical. In the Soviet Union, Stalin killed at least one million people - but these one million people were not the rich people against whom he had rebelled, against whom the whole rebellion was planned. These were the poor people for whom the whole rebellion was a promise and a hope for a better future. And why were they killed? The reasons are absolutely idiotic.

Communism believes that there should be no private property. But when people are in power they become absolutely blind to human reality. For example, it is true that private property should not accumulate only in a few hands, and it should not make millions of people poor. To this extent communism is absolutely right. But to abolish private property completely is a very anti- psychological, unnatural idea.

It has to be understood... your private property gives you a certain individuality, a certain identity, a certain freedom. If all your private property is taken away and you are left absolutely naked, without any private property, you will be surprised to know that all your freedom is gone, all your individuality is gone, all your capacity to rebel is gone. In a certain way, you have been murdered. Not only has your private property been taken away, you have also been finished.

Marx had no psychological insight; he was absolutely blind about the psychological and spiritual experiences of man. His whole approach was purely economic. But man is not just money. Man is much more. Man is not just what he possesses, he is much more. But what he possesses has a certain value as far as his individuality is concerned.

According to me, the right communism should be that accumulation of private property in a few hands should be stopped, so that everybody can have private property. Nobody is super-rich and nobody is super-poor. The rich disappear, the poor disappear, the middle class becomes the only class, and people have almost equal private properties.

I am saying almost, because man should not be treated in mathematical terms. There should be some looseness. Somebody may have a little more and somebody may have a little less; it does not matter, it does not hurt. Somebody may need... a doctor may need a private car - it is part of his profession - so to take away the doctor's private car is to take away something very essential to his profession.

So the millions of poor people who did not have much - somebody had two cows, somebody had one horse, somebody had a few hens, somebody had a small piece of land. But the blind, mathematical and economic mind of the communists - which became even more blind when the whole power was in their hands - started taking everything away from people: a small piece of land, which was not enough to provide food for the owners, but it was all that they had. It was their inheritance, their forefathers had it. Without it they suddenly found themselves utterly nude, as if their clothes had been taken away.

Their houses were not much, they were not palaces; they were living in the same house where their cows and their horses were living - they were stables more than houses. But even those were taken away. Everything became the property of the state. And these poor people - for whom the revolution was made - could not understand... what kind of revolution is this? They were thinking that they would become richer, that their poverty would be gone. But on the contrary, whatever they had - even that was gone. Now they were just beggars.

Capitalism had become concentrated in the hands of the state, so the people who were in power had, for the first time, double powers - the power of politics and all the power of economics. Before, it had been divided: the economic power was in the hands of the rich people and the political power was in the hands of the politicians. There was a little division. Now the power was absolutely totalitarian. All the power became concentrated in the hands of the people who were the rulers.

The poor people, who were uneducated, could not understand - what kind of equality is this? Are they making everybody poor, equally poor? Is this the equality for which the revolution was fought?

And because they resisted giving their hens, their small pieces of land, their small houses, their horses or their cows... because they resisted, they were simply butchered.

Out of violence only more violence is born.

Those one million people were the lowest of the low. The revolution killed the poor people. It was a blind revolution, and it was bound to be - because the rebels had no idea of compassion, no love for humanity, no experience of spirituality. They were not coming from that beautiful space, they were not fighting for a better humanity. They were simply interested in destroying the establishment out of anger. In this anger there was jealousy, in this anger there was envy - all wrong things.

My effort is to bring a great synthesis between the rebel and the sannyasin. The sannyasin should not be escapist. He should grow his love, make his compassion strong enough, his ecstasy deep- rooted, centered and mature. And out of this loving space, he should rebel.

His rebellion will be basically not interested in destroying the establishment, but interested in creating a new world. His focus is to create a new world, a new man, a new humanity with new values. To create the new he has to demolish the old - but not out of anger, just out of necessity.

And he has to understand that just to impose mental ideas on people is dangerous. You have to understand people's psychology and your rebellion has to be molded accordingly, not vice versa - not that the people have to be molded according to your idea of rebellion.

Man should never be used for any ideology. All ideologies should be used for man. Looking into man's psychology, it is true that the vast disparity between people creates an ugly society.

Just a few days ago I was informed that in India there are only fifteen really rich people - in a country of nine hundred million people, only fifteen really rich people! So the whole wealth of nine hundred million people has been exploited; their labor, their whole life has been sucked by only fifteen families. This disparity is inhuman, because the producer is hungry and the parasite goes on collecting money which is useless to him. It is useful for those who are dying of hunger - and they are the producers.

These fifteen rich families don't work, don't produce; they are simply clever about how to suck blood.

They have spread like an octopus around millions of people, and they are sucking their blood. In a thousand and one ways all the money goes silently, without any noise, into their treasuries.

You will be surprised to know that just the city of Bombay has half the money of the whole country.

Strange... the whole country works - people are working in the fields, in the gardens, in the factories - but somehow there are strategies so that the money goes on moving towards Bombay. Half of the country's money in one city! This is intolerable. But one should not be angry about it. It is intolerable because it is inhuman and it destroys people's love, people's compassion, people's kindness. It creates all kinds of crime. Poverty is the mother of all crimes.

It is a very strange world. First, you make people poor and force them to become criminals, and then you have courts and the police and the judges to punish them. First they are exploited, and then they are punished for being criminals.

The real criminals are those fifteen families who have exploited the whole country's wealth. But they will never be punished because they can purchase all your judges, they can purchase all your politicians. They already have all the politicians in their hands - because where is the politician going to find millions of rupees for his election? Not from the poor people.

And the people who are going to give him millions of rupees are not going to give it as charity. If they give one million, they will take out of that politician at least fifty million, not less than that. When he comes into power then all the licenses will go to the man who has brought him into power.

These politicians are all slaves to one capitalist party or to another capitalist family. They go on promising the poor a better future, and they know perfectly well that a better future is not going to come because first they have to repay the money that has been given to them. They are themselves slaves.

This situation is ugly. The structure should certainly be changed. But it should be changed because you have a compassion, a love for all suffering human beings - not an anger, an envy, a jealousy against those few who have all the money, who have all the luxuries.

It is a question of focus: are you fighting for the poor or are you fighting because of your jealousy that you are not one of the fifteen families? Is it your jealousy, envy, anger, violence, that is prompting you to rebel against this structure? If that is the case then, when you are in power, you will be more dangerous because you will take as much revenge as you are capable of - with vengeance.

But if your revolution is because you have seen the suffering of humanity, you will create a structure which will give equal opportunity to everybody to grow. You will not impose the idea of equality, because equality simply does not exist - it is not psychological and it is not existential.

A Bertrand Russell is a Bertrand Russell, and if he has a little more comfortable life, he needs it; his contribution is so great that he should be provided with all the comforts possible.

An Albert Einstein is an Albert Einstein. He is not equal to anybody else in the world and nobody can claim to be equal to him. It will be simply stupid to force him to be equal - his work is different, his genius is different. In fact, he has not to be dragged down, he is not a shopkeeper and he is not a laborer. He should not be forced to be a shopkeeper - that would be a tremendous harm to the whole evolution of mankind - and he should not be forced to be a laborer, because nobody else can replace him.

Who is going to create the theory of relativity? Who is going to give us the tremendous power of atomic energy? It is unfortunate that the politicians have been using it in destroying man, but Albert Einstein is not responsible for it. The same energy could have been used for making man richer, healthier, for making the world more beautiful.

Men are not equal - that is my fundamental approach.

And secondly, it is my understanding that everybody should be allowed to have private property; just the differences should not be too great, they should be within human limits.

The whole country can be rich. The state need not become the only owner of everything; that is the most dangerous thing which can happen to any country, because the state is already powerful. It has all the military, it has all the courts, it has all the police, it has all the laws, all the judges in its favor... and it wants all the finances of the country also to be in its power? Then the whole country is left absolutely nude, in the same state as beggars - "Now we don't have anything." And the state has become such a monster that you cannot even fight with it.

The state has gathered all the powers possible into its own hands. In Russia, all the newspapers are published by the government. You cannot write an article criticizing any policy of the government because it will not be published anywhere. But if you write it, you will be behind bars. It will never be published, but you will go out of existence!

No book can be published, because only the government has the right to publish anything. And you can see the results - in the sixty years since the Russian revolution not a single Leo Tolstoy, or a Fyodor Dostoevsky, or a Turgenev, or a Chekhov, or a Gorky... these five names are pre-revolution names. These five became world-famous novelists. If you have to choose ten great novels of the world, five will be Russian. These five names have to be included, there is no other way, because they have created the best masterpieces.

Where has that genius disappeared? In sixty years, not a single novel of that quality has come. It cannot come, because individuality has been completely destroyed. Now government bureaucrats decide what novels should be published and what should not be published, and these stupid bureaucrats don't have any sensitivity. They are not poets, they are not novelists, they don't understand the subtle nuances of creativity. But they are now the decisive factors. So the best is not published, only the third rate - because they can understand only the third rate.

Just a few days ago one of my friends from Delhi informed me, "There is talk going on in the inner circles of the government that your books should first be censored, your tapes should first be censored, by the government. Only then can they be allowed to reach the masses."

I informed him, "Let them decide it, and they will have to face me in the Supreme Court!"

Who is the man - I would like to see his face - who is going to decide what is right in my book and what is wrong? I know all those ministers, I know most of the parliament members. They don't have the caliber or the intelligence. None of them has ever meditated; how can they decide whether what I am saying is right or wrong?

Tomorrow they may start telling scientists, "Before you publish your papers, government bureaucrats will see whether they are right or wrong." And the government bureaucrats have no idea of science, no idea of philosophy, no idea of poetry, no idea of music. If they had any idea of poetry and science and literature and philosophy in the first place, they would not have been bureaucrats! That is the ugliest thing in the world. To be a government bureaucrat means you have become part of an ugly machinery and you have lost your soul. You don't exist anymore as an independent thinker.

Rebellion out of love, rebellion out of creativity, rebellion out of meditativeness - that's my longing and that's my hope. And in that hope is the hope for the whole humanity.

We have to bring Gautam Buddhas to become rebellious. Only in their hands will power be unable to corrupt; on the contrary, they will be able to purify power. And only in their hands is man's individuality safe, because they understand man's inner and outer existence and they will be able to help humanity.

They will not impose equality, but they will give equal opportunity to everybody. Whatever one wants to become, he should be given an equal opportunity to do it. Then it is his potential, his talent, his genius... somebody will become a Bertrand Russell, somebody will become a Rabindranath Tagore, somebody will become a Picasso. And certainly, the people who will be enriching life and existence should be given a more comfortable life, because they are serving in a way nobody else can serve.

Their service is unique, and their uniqueness should be respected.

That does not mean that they are superior and higher, and you are smaller and lower. It simply means that we accept a fundamental fact about humanity: every man is just like himself, not like anybody else, and he will need certain private property, just as he needs his clothing.

In China, when Mao was in power, he even forced people to use only uniforms. These are the ways of destroying - in a very subtle way. Now the laborer is using the same uniform, the farmer is using the same, the philosopher is using the same, the mystic is using the same, the professor is using the same uniform. This is not right at all, because even your clothes show your individuality. You should have the freedom to choose your clothes - the government has not to decide. You are not part of an army, so that you have to be in uniforms. You are independent individuals.

If equality is stretched to its logical end, then everybody should have the same haircut. And perhaps, if some idiot gets into power... and idiots get into power more than intelligent people, because intelligent people don't want to go into the crowd and fight for power, it is not worth the whole struggle. But idiots have thick skins and hard skulls.

An idiot can even start thinking that people should have similar noses. A few people have beautiful faces, and a few people don't. This is not good for a society which is communist, which believes in equality. But now plastic surgery is possible... so make a model and let everybody go through plastic surgery. Every child, when he is born, can go through plastic surgery and you will see similar faces all around. Will that be a beautiful society? Is it right to harm humanity in such ugly ways?

I am against classes of poor people and rich people, but I am absolutely in favor of private property.

The differences should not be too great, but differences should be allowed. And the state should not be the owner of all the property, of the land. The politicians already have more power than they should have. To give them even more power - all the power in their hands - is to commit suicide.

My rebel is a meditator. He loves peace, he loves people, he loves their well-being and he will do everything for their natural growth. He will not impose any ideology, he will simply help everybody to be himself.

Such a rebellion has never happened. But it is time - the right time. If it does not happen, then you can lose all hope for any future possibility of human existence as such. The old society has become so rotten that it is going to die. Before it dies, let us create seeds for a new man.

My insistence for a rebellion is to create those seeds, so when the old dies - it is bound to die, it has created its own death - the new can take its place. The new can be made alert and aware, so that it does not repeat the old pattern again. It is easier to repeat the old pattern, but once you are alert you never commit the same mistake again. It is only the stupid who go on committing the same mistakes again.

I have met a man who married eight times, and he was complaining to me, "I have wasted my whole life. I have searched for the right person, but I have not been able to find her. Every woman turns out to be the same."

I said, "You will be an example to others."

He said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "I simply mean that you are an ideal idiot. One woman was enough, at the most two... not to leave any chances, at the very most three. But you went on and on, and every time it came to the same point. Eight or eighty, it will not make any difference, because you are the same. The differences in people are very superficial - they are like the differences in cars. Their bonnets are different, their headlights are different, but basically it is the same mechanism, the same engine; and if the driver remains the same, he is going to fall into ditches again and again. Eight times is too much! You should have stopped driving long ago. You don't know how to drive."

He said, "Maybe, but nobody told me this."

I said, "You should have understood yourself. People are struggling in their own ditches - who is going to care about you?"

A rebellion which is religious, which is spiritual, which is not born out of the flames of violence but which is born out of the fragrance of love and compassion, out of meditation, alertness and awareness, is the only possibility for a transformation of this beautiful planet into a paradise.

Yes, what you are saying, exactly that I am trying to do. You are saying, "You have been talking on your vision of the rebel lately, and yet the atmosphere I feel around us at the moment is particularly soft, loving, pliable. To me, this feels like part of your magic - that you are showing us, existentially, that the rebel will be born not out of the fumes of violence and unhappiness, but from the fragrance of love and ecstasy."

Exactly that is what I am living for.

Exactly that is what I am preparing you for.

Question 2:

Deva Vachana, everybody is born innocent, peaceful, loving... knowing nothing about the cutthroat competition in the world, knowing nothing about the nuclear weapons that are being prepared to welcome him, knowing nothing about the dirty politics that have been torturing humanity for millennia. But before his peace, his love, his trust can become a rebellious force, we start destroying all that is beautiful in him and replacing it with all that is ugly in us. That's what our parents have done to us, so we repeat the performance.

Generation after generation, the same disease goes on being transferred from one hand to another hand. With all the good intentions in the world the parents, the teachers, the leaders, the priests all go on forcing ideas of competition, comparison, ambition; preparing every child for the tough struggle that he is going to face in life - in other words, for violence, aggressiveness. They know that unless you are aggressive you will be left behind. You have to assert yourself - and assert forcibly - and you have to compete as if it were a question of life and death. All this is the framework of our educational system.

I used to come first in my class - not that I was studious, not that I attended the class regularly. I simply found that the courses they were teaching to students were not even worth two months' time, and we were wasting the whole year. So just for two months at the end, I gave my total attention, and the remaining time I was enjoying everything else except school. The teachers were amazed!

And when I used to come home after the results and I would tell my father that I had come first, he always said, "That means your class consists of fools."

I said, "This is strange. When other people come first, their parents feel happy; and you, it seems, feel sorry that I am studying with fools. That's why I have come first - otherwise, there is no hope for me."

But he never encouraged me, "You have done a good job, you should be rewarded" - he never rewarded me. His only expression always, consistently, was, "It is strange how you can always find a class of fools, so naturally you come first." But it is very rare. Parents give every incentive, "Be first and you will be rewarded." Be first - that is bringing honor to the parents, to the family.

Everybody is teaching you to be ahead of others, whatever the cost. Sooner or later the children become feverish, they start running faster. Even if they have to hurt somebody to get ahead, they will do it. Violence is bound to be a part of a competitive society.

In a competitive society you don't have any friends. Everybody pretends to be friendly, but everybody is your enemy because everybody is fighting to climb on the same ladder. Everybody is your enemy because he can succeed and force you to be a failure. And soon people start learning the art of how to pull on others' legs, how to use wrong means, because those wrong means give you a shortcut.

I used to know a student... I was a teacher in the university. On examination days, no teacher was ready to be in the hall where that student was given a place, because that student was almost murderous - at any moment he could murder somebody. What he used to do was this: he would come with a knife into the examination hall, and he would put his knife on the desk so everybody could see it there, and no professor would come close. He would bring notes with him and he would just manage to come first.

No professor wanted to be the observer in the examination hall where that student was. My vice- chancellor asked me.

I said, "There is no problem."

He said, "But nobody is ready..."

I said, "They don't understand."

I asked one of my friends - he was a Sikh. I asked him, "You give me your kripan." It was a big, special kind of sword, far more dangerous than any other sword. Just one hit and the head is off!

He asked, "What are you going to do with the sword?"

I said, "I am trying to teach him to be a Sikh."

He said, "That is good. Vah guruji ki fatah. Vah guruji ka khalsa."

That is the mantra of the Sikhs, "This is the way the victory of the master happens. This is the way the victory of the master's followers happens."

He gave me his kripan, and I went into the room. That boy was sitting with his small knife on the desk. I went near to his desk, and just by the side of his knife I forced my kripan into the wood. He looked at me and I said, "Throw away all the copies that you have brought with you. Just look at my kripan." And I took away his knife.

He asked, "What are you doing?"

I said, "If you speak another word - just one hit of the kripan, you will lose your head."

He said, "You seem to be insane. I have not done anything wrong and you are ready to kill me!"

I said, "It is not a question of right or wrong. It is a question of who has a bigger knife - I have a bigger one! And I have all the powers in this examination hall to throw you out." And I threw his knife out of the hall.

I said, "If you don't throw away all the copies that you have brought with you, your head will go from the same window." He gave me all his copies, and I threw them from the same window.

The vice-chancellor was watching from his room. "What is happening? - things are coming out.

First the knife came, then a few books came." He came running - "It seems there is some trouble."

I said, "You don't be worried. Only one thing more... if this boy is not going to behave, you will see one more thing coming out of the window."

He said, "What?"

I said, "His head!"

He took me out and he said, "I am sorry that I asked you to be the examiner here. Just forgive me, don't do such a thing!"

I said, "There is no other way to teach that idiot a lesson. Because all the professors you have been sending here were so afraid of his knife, now nobody is ready to come. What can he do? - at the most he can kill you, so I have brought a bigger kripan."

But this is what the society makes everybody learn sooner or later: you have to be more aggressive, otherwise you will be a failure. You have to fight your way, because everybody is trying to reach the same ambition.

The vice-chancellor told me, "You are relieved. Never again are you required to be the examiner."

I said, "That is really great. That is what I wanted. It is unnecessary, because I don't want to harass anybody. Life will harass all of them - why should I add more harassment to their lives? But I cannot allow anybody to harass me, either. It is very good of you to have relieved me forever."

He looked at me. He said, "Yes, I can come with the kripan into your room too."

I said, "It doesn't matter whose head the kripan cuts. The kripan makes no difference."

He said, "What do you mean?"

I said, "I am simply saying that that boy is going to be first every year because you are all chickens, unnecessarily afraid. He can simply show you the knife and that's all."

But this whole society is violent, and you have to be more violent if you want to be ambitious.

I want the non-ambitious, non-competitive man, a man who has no will for power, to be the rebel.

Every child can become such a rebel; all that he needs is not to be distracted from his innocence.

Your feeling is right that you have a rebel inside you. Everybody has a rebel - but the society is too powerful. It makes you cowardly, it makes you cunning. It does not make you your authentic self. It does not want anybody to be his authentic self, because then there will be rebels all over.

But remember that before becoming a rebel you have to fulfill a few conditions. I don't want old- fashioned rebels. My rebel is also going to be a totally fresh and new idea, a new realization.

Unless you have compassion enough, love enough, silences of the heart, deep inner meditations bringing you more light, more awareness, you have not fulfilled my conditions. Only with these conditions do I want you to be a rebel. Then you cannot do anything wrong. Then whatever you do is right. Out of love, everything is right. Love is the magic that transforms everything into right.

I want enlightened rebels. It is possible, because enlightenment has been possible, and there have been rebels. All that we need is a synthesis bringing them together. Rebelliousness and enlightenment - a Gautam Buddha with the rebelliousness of a Lenin - it will be the most beautiful phenomenon.

One friend from Japan sent me a statue of Gautam Buddha. It was a rare statue, I have never seen such a thing. In one of the hands of the statue there was a small earthen lamp with a flame. You had to put purified butter - ghee - inside the earthen lamp as fuel, so that the flame goes on burning.

My friend said, "This is a condition - I had been given this statue with the same condition - that the flame should be burning twenty-four hours a day without a break." In the other hand the statue had a naked sword. This is possible only in Japan, because Japan has made even swordsmanship a meditative art and archery a meditative art. Meditation is basic.

In India we cannot conceive of Gautam Buddha having a sword. But the beauty of the statue was that half of his face was so peaceful - where the light of the small flame was falling, so calm and quiet, utter serenity - and on the other side his face was like the sword, so sharp that it could be only that of a great warrior. The artist who created it must have done tremendous work. In the same face he has shown a great synthesis - a sword in the hands of peace.

This is my idea of rebellion, of the rebel. It should come out of your love for humanity; not out of anger against the past but from a creative compassion for the future. You are not just to destroy the old. Your ideal, your end, is to create the new; and because the new cannot be created without demolishing the old, you demolish it. But there is no anger in it. It is a simple process. You demolish an old building - there is no question of anger. You clean the place and make a new building in its place.

A sannyasin has to be both: the peace, the silence, the light, the qualities of his inner being, and a rebel against all injustice, against all inhumanity. But for a creative purpose, to materialize a dream of an authentic human society which will be able to give equal opportunity to all, freedom to all, education which is nonviolent, education which is not only informative but also transformative, an education that will make you more of an individual and bring the best in you to its flowering.

You are sitting with people who all have such dreams. And the people in the outside world also had once - when they were small children - the same qualities, which have been forced down, repressed. Their inhibitions can be removed.

My sannyasins have to become burning torches, moving around in the world to share their fire with anyone who is ready.

And you will be surprised, there are no people who have never dreamed of a beautiful future and who have never been in a state of innocence, who have never tasted something of peace, something of love, something of beauty. But all this has been destroyed, distorted, contaminated, poisoned by an ugly society. Its only power is in its ancientness.

But now that very power, that ancientness, is going to prove its greatest weakness. It just needs a little push. It is a dead society already. It has prepared its grave with its own hands and it is standing just on the corner of the grave. You just have to push, and you will suddenly find Ronald Reagan lying in his grave. And with Ronald Reagan goes the whole world of which he is the representative.

We have to start from scratch. Again Adam and Eve, again the garden of Eden... again the very beginning.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.