Intelligence is a luxury

Question 1:

Christianity is certainly one of the most perverted of all religions, but it is nothing compared with Hinduism. Hinduism is the oldest religion in the world, and it has caused in its own way many perversions. All those perversions that Christianity has created, Hinduism has been doing long before Christianity was born. In fact, there are many Hindu scholars who believe that Christ never existed; he is only another name for Krishna, the Hindu perfect incarnation of God.

Krishna in Bengali is called Christo. Then you can see it is not very difficult that the name Krishna can become Christ. If it can become Christo, then Christ is not very far. And whatever teachings are there in the name of Christ are all borrowed from Hinduism. Perhaps that is the reason why Jews never accepted Christianity: it was a foreign teaching.

For example, Jews have never believed in celibacy. Even their rabbis are married. Jesus advocated celibacy - which is basically a Hindu concept. And from Hinduism it has reached to Jainism, to Buddhism, and perhaps to Christianity too.

The Hindu monk, for ten thousand years at least, has been insistently trying to prove that celibacy is spiritual power, that it connects you with divine power, with God. This is simply absurd.

Celibacy has nothing to do with holiness.

And celibacy gives no power; on the contrary, it creates a conflict within you because you are trying to fight with your own energy. It weakens you. Your own power becomes divided; and a house divided against itself cannot be powerful. And it was because of celibacy that tantra was born in India - which is just a revolution, a rebellion against Hinduism.

Hinduism says celibacy is spiritual, and tantra made sex spiritual - and tantra is closer to biology, physiology, science, humanity. Tantra has never created any perversion; but tantra never became a religion, it remained an independent philosophical approach. Anybody can follow it. There is no question that you have to believe in God, that you have to believe in heaven and hell or anything.

Tantra is a tremendous meditation because sexual orgasm is your natural potentiality to feel, just for a moment, something of the beyond. Tantra uses orgasm and joins it with meditation, and what is only for a single moment can become your twenty-four hour state. And it makes it a scientific thing; that orgasm has nothing to do with the other person.

While you are making love you come to a peak of tension, and because that tension relaxes, you feel a tremendous silence descending on you, a great relaxation - for a few moments no thought, no time. Everything has disappeared; there is only pure isness.

Tantra says this is your natural gift, and it has been given to you so that you can find the way that it is possible for you to be without thoughts, relaxed, and the same orgasmic experience will follow. It has nothing to do with the other. And once you know how to relax, how to drop the thoughts, how to stop time, how to stop mind, you discover your pure isness.

To me tantra seems to be the only contribution that seekers after truth have given to the world. It has no perversion of any kind. It uses nature to experience something which is very simple, and then makes you aware that this simple experience can be experienced in your aloneness. And that very moment you transcend the dependence on the other, because certainly the other is always a trouble, a pain in the neck.

Jean-Paul Sartre says, "The other is hell." It does not matter whether the other is man or woman - "The other is hell" because you have to depend for your only meaningful experience in life on the other.

Tantra gives you tremendous freedom from the other, and a great gratitude for the other; it is because of the other that you have become able to attain freedom from all dependence.

Tantra arose in India as a rebellion against Hinduism - because Hinduism was doing the same, on a greater scale, with more sophistication and philosophy, as Christianity did later on in a very crude and primitive way. Hinduism was teaching celibacy, and celibacy is bound to lead to perversions, particularly homosexuality. And homosexuality has brought the ultimate flowering in AIDS.

But one thing should be remembered: just like the Christian trinity, Hindus also have a trinity - Brahma, the creator god; Vishnu, the god who maintains the world; and Shiva, who will destroy the world. This is a cycle. Then Brahma creates the world again, and for millions of years Vishnu maintains it; then one day Shiva destroys it. So you will be surprised to know that in the whole of India there is only one temple devoted to Brahma. Who cares for him? His work is finished - he created the world.

All the temples are of Vishnu, or incarnations of Vishnu. All the incarnations of Hindu gods - Rama, Krishna, they are all incarnations of Vishnu. Naturally, it is simple business that Vishnu maintains the world and he is in power.

And there are temples of Shiva too, but not so many as the temples of Krishna and Rama and other manifestations of Vishnu.

Shiva is worshipped out of fear because he is going to destroy the world. If you worship him he can be a little favorable to you. He may destroy you in some sophisticated way - an electric chair, not a crude, ugly cross like the one on which Jesus was crucified; or giving you a disease, AIDS, which is far cruder a cross than the one Jesus was carrying and dying on.

Vishnu has a wife; he is not celibate. Shiva has a wife; he is not celibate. But gods have to be given some privilege which is not allowed to the Hindu monk. Gods are a different category. But it is very strange that nobody in ten thousand years has asked that when Vishnu and Shiva can have wives, then what is the reason that the Hindu monk should renounce the wife, the children, leave them in poverty, misery, disease, and gain spiritual power by it?

In fact, he is committing a crime. And he will turn into a homosexual. I know hundreds of Hindu monks who are homosexual, because women will not be allowed in with them, alone; otherwise their whole purity, spirituality, will be immediately condemned. But men can remain with them. As far as I have known no Hindu monk is celibate, and there is no wonder in it because celibacy is an impossibility; and particularly for a Hindu monk.

It may be possible for a Jaina monk to be celibate because he eats only one time a day. He eats in his hands, making a cup of his hands, and whatever his two hands can have at one time, that's all that he has to eat. It cannot be much. He lives starving, hungry. There is no possibility for two things: one, he will not have any intelligence, because intelligence comes to you only when you have an overflow of physical energy. Intelligence is a luxury. All the animals are living without it; it is a human luxury. But luxury can exist only when you have more energy than is needed for your physical survival.

And secondly, he can be celibate because he has not enough energy to create male sperms. If you see a Jaina monk you will feel pity: he is just bones. His eyes don't show any intelligence. Whatever he says seems to be simply ordinary. But his celibacy is killing him - he is on a suicidal path. He may not be perverted in the ordinary sense of being a homosexual or a sodomist, but I call this too a perversion. He is destroying himself every day, he is dying! No Jaina monk needs AIDS: he creates it himself.

But Hindus and their monks are a different matter. You will find the Hindu monk eating very nourishing food, and eating too much; all the Hindu monks you will find overweight.

One of the great Hindu monks, Nityananda, the master of Swami Muktananda - Muktananda was very well known in America. Nityananda had only one unique quality: his belly. I don't think in the whole history of man anybody had such a big belly! When he lies down you can see a strange shape.

When I saw him I told him, "You don't have a belly, your belly has a head and legs, because that is your major part!" But he is worshipped, he is thought to be enlightened. And his belly is proof enough. And now this man cannot be celibate: he is eating so much that he will create sexual energy. What is he going to do with that energy? Anything that he will do will be a perversion; and the easiest way is always homosexuality, because if he is found with a woman, all his respectability and great sainthood will disappear. He has to be with a man, and then nobody suspects.

And these people have never asked about their god Vishnu, who has a beautiful lady, Laxmi, with him. Their god Shiva has an even more beautiful woman, Parvati. Let me drift a little....

Shiva was so infatuated with Parvati that, when she died, he would not let her body be burned, as is the Hindu custom; on the contrary, he took the dead body of Parvati on his shoulder, and moved all over the country: perhaps somewhere, some physician might revive her again. He could not live without Parvati.

It took twelve years for him to go around the country, to visit all the great physicians. And he was so deadly blind in his infatuation that he did not even notice that in twelve years the legs of the woman fell, the hands of the woman fell, the head of the woman fell - and he is still seeking a physician!

There are twelve most holy places in India where Parvati's limbs had fallen. But strange, this man is mad! And to make those places holy, and on the other hand to insist that celibacy is needed for man.... For gods there are different rules, for man there are different rules.

I talked only about two gods. One more incident will show you what kind of gods Hindus have. In fact all religions have pornography in their literature, but nobody can surpass Hindus.

It is said, one day Brahma and Vishnu argued about something and could not come to a settlement, so they said, "We should go to Shiva; perhaps he can help us come to a conclusion."

Shiva's son was sitting at the door, watching. He was told that nobody was to be allowed, but he had never thought that Vishnu, Brahma, were included, and he was at a loss: how to prevent these gods? That will be insulting. So he allowed them. Shiva was making love to Parvati. These two gentlemen came and stood there for six hours, and the love went on, and Shiva and Parvati did not take any note of the two gentlemen standing there.

Frustrated and angry they left and cursed Shiva, "You have insulted us badly, and we curse you that you will be remembered by your sex organs." That's why Shiva's statue is just a phallic symbol resting in Parvati's vagina. And all over India that statue is worshipped, and nobody bothers what they are worshipping! And they are great spiritual people worshipping genitalia, and that too, in a state of making love!

It is ugly. But religious people are blind, everywhere. No Hindu ever thinks, "What is this shivalinga?"

Even the name, shivalinga, means the genitalia of Shiva. They go on calling it shivalinga without understanding even the meaning of the word. There are no statues of Shiva, only these phallic symbols - because of the curse.

Only Brahma is without a wife - obviously, because he is the creator god. From where will he find a wife? But what he did is even worse. He created a woman and became so infatuated that he started running after the woman to catch hold of her and rape her! His own daughter! But gods are allowed every crime. And the woman, afraid that he would rape her, became a cow.

Brahma became a bull; you cannot deceive Brahma, the god, the creator - and that's how the whole creation has come into being. That's why there are so many species of animals, man, insects. The reason is: the woman goes on changing and Brahma goes on following, changing himself into the male. It is still continuing.

It is not just a short affair like the Christian God, who made the whole world in six days, and was so tired on the seventh that he rested; and since then he has been resting. Nothing has been heard about him. Monday never came again; he has never been back on the job. Just in six days he got spent, finished!

Brahma is still continuing, chasing the woman. He has not yet caught her because she goes on changing her form, he has to change his form; by the time he reaches closer she changes her form.

And the creation goes on and on in different species. This idea looks closer to evolution; otherwise, why so many species? What is the need? So many mosquitoes - what is the need? So many bedbugs - what is the need?

The Christian God cannot answer that he created bedbugs to suck the blood of Christians; and created mosquitoes, created snakes and scorpions - for poor Christians! But what can Brahma do?

The woman is certainly a mystery: she goes on becoming things which even Brahma may think is not right, but what can he do? - he is infatuated.

She becomes a scorpion so he has to become a scorpion. She becomes a bedbug; feeling that now Brahma will stop. But he is not going to stop - he becomes a bigger bedbug. And the story continues; the creation is continuous. But the reason for this continuity is that the father is trying to rape his own daughter.

What do you call it? - perversion or spirituality?

Hinduism has all the perversion that Christianity has, and much more.

One of the incarnations of God is Krishna. Hindus believe that there are going to be twenty-four incarnations of God. Twenty-three have happened; for the twenty-fourth they are waiting.

That, too, is a subtle psychology in every religion: some hope has to be left. Jesus Christ is coming back; the twenty-fourth incarnation of God is going to happen.... And they have been thinking this for thousands of years. It never happens, and it is not going to happen ever. It is just a hope, an opium, to keep people thinking of the future so they can forget their misery in the present. The twenty-fourth God will come and release you from your bondage, suffering, misery, pain - everything. He will open the door of paradise for you.

Krishna had sixteen thousand wives. These were not married to him; he had married only one woman, Rukmani - one out of sixteen thousand. These were other people's wives whom he had taken forcibly. Their children, their husbands were deprived. And what are you going to do with sixteen thousand wives?

Even one wife is enough to finish you. Sixteen thousand wives! Perhaps the strategy is that sixteen thousand wives will quarrel among themselves, and Krishna will be saved; nobody will bother about him. He may not even know their names, he may not know their faces; he may not have made love to many of those women.

He has done a great crime! Those women belong to somebody else - what is that man going to do? What are the children of those women going to do? They have lost their mother unnecessarily.

But no Hindu objects that such a thing is simply the worst crime you can commit. And of course Rukmani behaved just like any woman will behave: became very jealous that this man goes on bringing women.

I had a meditation camp in Gujarat, in India, in a very beautiful place, Tulsishyam. In the valley - it was a mountainous place - in the valley there is a temple of Krishna with one of his beloveds, Tulsi, who is not his wife. And on top of the hill there is a temple of Rukmani, but made in such a way that Krishna cannot see the temple, but Rukmani can go on watching from there what is happening there in Krishna's temple with Tulsi. I loved the idea! - the whole human psychology.

Rukmani is alone and angry. You can see her face: the despair, anger, hate, jealousy. And the temple is facing towards the valley. I have been in the temple and stood by the side of Rukmani's statue. You can see Krishna and Tulsi. They are nothing more than statues, but you can see from there both the fellows. Standing in Krishna's temple you cannot see Rukmani, nor her temple. It is hidden in bushes, high in the mountain. But whoever was the architect has made it plain that Rukmani must have been very jealous - just like any woman.

And Krishna was nothing but a playboy, and that too, not a nice one. I have no objection: if some woman loves him and he loves her, to me there is no problem, that is perfectly good. But he has forced those sixteen thousand women from their homes, and imprisoned them in his own palace.

This is not love! This is not even human. But he is considered to be the perfect incarnation of God.

The other twenty-three will be partial incarnations of God. What a perfection!

You ask me about Hinduism and its sexual perversion.... All the religions have their sexual perversion. They have created sex maniacs, they have created rapists, they have created homosexuals, they have created lesbians; and now the ultimate outcome of it all is AIDS. AIDS is the great contribution of all the religions together.

And idiotic politicians are making homosexuality illegal. They should make all these religions illegal, because they are the cause of all sexual perversions, and unless they are removed from the psychology of man, man can never be really natural. And that is one of the fundamentals for his growth.

You can only grow by being natural.

And nature has provided you everything, even a glimpse of meditation which will lead you to the ultimate goal of enlightenment.

But making homosexuality illegal is making the symptom illegal, not the cause. And nobody is taking care what is the cause, who are the people who have forced man to be sexually perverted?

Your saints, your founders of religions are the greatest criminals humanity has known. They have perverted you in every possible way. Their whole teaching is against nature.

Mohammedanism allows every Mohammedan four wives. Nature produces equal numbers of men and women. Now, if a man marries four wives then what are the other three men going to do? You are forcing them into some perversion. Either they will become homosexuals, or they will follow the path of sodomy and make love to animals.

And if homosexuality has brought AIDS, no one knows what will happen if sodomy spreads, because if you make homosexuality illegal, a crime, you are driving people towards sodomy. Sodomy is not a crime, so people will start making love to dogs, to cows, to deer. And if a man making love to another man has created this disease, you can conceive something even worse will happen out of sodomy.

The simple thing is: make celibacy a crime, anybody who remains celibate will be sent into jail for five years. Make all the monks marry the nuns. Of course the Polack pope will be in difficulty: no nun will like to be married to the Polack. Then Mother Teresa will be good.

But something has to be done to uproot the cause, the very cause; otherwise humanity cannot be saved.

Question 2:

Germany is still being followed by the shadow of Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler has contaminated the German mind to such depths that even the new generation, which has not known Adolf Hitler and what he did in Germany, in some way carries the impact.

Adolf Hitler has the unique distinction in the whole history of man of killing ten million people. There have been Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Napoleon Bonaparte, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah - but they have all proved pygmies in comparison to this madman, Adolf Hitler.

Adolf Hitler is in the air. The German mind is still the by-product of this man, so when German sannyasins come here, they find a totally different atmosphere. They feel respected, loved; they feel their dignity, and they start deep down relaxing. So when the question comes of them going back, they don't want to. They have tasted something better than Germany.

Just the other night one very beautiful and intelligent German journalist was asking me if I ever leave America where will I go. I said, "In the first place I am not going to leave America until I get my green card. Alive, I cannot leave America without the green card. I will fight up to the Supreme Court."

They have only six categories for obtaining the green card, and I have applied on five categories.

And if they want me to apply on the sixth I can do that too. The sixth is marriage, and I can marry as many women as they want, because the more women you marry, the more you become capable of obtaining the green card. I can defeat Krishna very easily. I can break all the records!

And on each category I am going to fight separately. Each category will take twenty years to be decided by the Supreme Court, by the time it reaches to the Supreme Court. If I get the green card, good; if I don't get, I will start the case in the second category. Five categories means one hundred years! All the Supreme Court judges will be dead, at least twenty presidents will be dead; all the INS officers and their two, three generations will be dead. I will be dead - but the fight will continue!

My people will be here, my grave will be here, and my grave will ask for the green card. And this is strange: living you won't allow me to be here, but if I die, you will allow my grave to be here. What kind of logic is there? Just be dead, and you get the green card. Is America a worshipper of death?

And for four years they have not been able to find a single argument against my applications. A whole department is continuously working, but I will tell them, "You will never find anything against me." Who can prove that I am not a religious man? And if I am not a religious man, then on what grounds are Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna, religious people? Who can prove that I am not a religious leader?

You all can stand as a witness. How many people do they want to witness? I have one million sannyasins around the world.

Jainism is a religion which has only three hundred thousand people, and you accept it, and you have accepted Jainas and given them green cards. In fact, you will have to tell me which number makes a man a religious leader? And what is the criterion? Even five people accepting me as their leader are enough. Even a single person accepting me as his leader.... You cannot destroy a single individual's right.

For four years they have been working. So I told the German journalist that if they give me the green card tomorrow, I will immediately move to Germany. He was shocked. He said, "Why Germany?"

I said, "Because Germany needs me. After Adolf Hitler somebody is needed to destroy the conditioning that he has left behind. And I would love to have a little taste of German politicians too.

I have seen the American politicians and their stupidity; I would like to see the German politicians, how they behave with me."

But I can understand the sannyasins who come here and don't want to go. They should find a way not to go. There are always ways. If you don't want to go - this whole earth belongs to us. All political boundaries are false. And nobody ever asks, "When Columbus landed in America, did he have any visa, any green card?

I am going to fight the case, and anybody who does not want to go is welcome. Fight! - because we want to destroy all these visas and green cards and passports. There is no need; the whole earth is ours, and movement is man's birthright.

If you want to live in Germany or in India, why should you be stopped? And every day foreigners are getting to your country and you don't think about it. When a child is born he is a foreigner, coming from outer space, and he is okay. And Germany is not that far away. And you don't ask the child, "Where is the visa?" and "Apply for the green card!"

And he is absolutely a foreigner. He is not coming from anywhere on the earth. He is coming from somewhere, from some other planet, and who knows...? He should show his passport. America should decide that each child born should bring his green card with him. Just make a law; otherwise the child is illegal.

This whole thing is so idiotically nonsensical.

Man is simply man - neither American nor German nor Indian nor African.

And each man should be respected just as a human being. His color does not matter, where he was born does not matter.

He was born on this earth, and the earth has no lines on it dividing it into nations.

The first man who walked on the moon, when he came back and was asked what was his first idea when he walked on the moon and looked at the earth, he said, "My first idea was, 'My beautiful earth!'" It looked so beautiful from there, because from there it is as lighted as the moon. But the way he said, "My beautiful earth!"... The Soviet Union was not excluded.

The earth is one whole, and sooner or later humanity has to accept it as one whole.

As my communes around the world become more consolidated, stronger, then Rajneeshpuram is going to be the capital of the whole world. And we are going to give you international visas, international passports. You need not have an American passport or Indian passport. It is so humiliating, insulting. You will have an international passport. We are going to issue international passports, and we will tell the whole world that those passports should be respected; otherwise our communes around the world will revolt. They will burn all their passports, and all their visas, and all their green cards.

And we would like to see one million people imprisoned for the single reason that they have committed the crime that they wanted the whole earth to be one. If you are imprisoned for such a cause it is something sacred.

Question 3:

First, the days of the moms are over. Nobody is a mom anymore. I was not even aware that there were moms! It must have been Sheela's idea. She was married to a Jew: "mom" is a Jewish word, and Jewish moms are the most dangerous in the world. For your own sake they will kill you!

But I am keeping the same people in their positions for the simple reason that they should not feel that remaining behind, revolting against Sheela's group, they have been punished. They should be rewarded, not punished. They are the people who are going to expose the whole series of crimes of Sheela and her group. To remove them from their positions is insulting to them. They will certainly take it as a punishment.

You should love them and respect them more than ever, because before you were respecting them out of fear; now respect them out of love because they decided to remain with you and not to go with Sheela, who was threatening them in every possible way. And they knew perfectly well that she has been trying to kill people; she has already killed one person. She was trying to poison my milk!

So these people of course are no longer moms, of course they don't have any fascist authority, so why unnecessarily be disrespectful to those who have remained with you? They have chosen you rather than Sheela.

And as far as those persons are concerned, I would like to say to them, "Forget that fascist nightmare, and behave with everybody just as a sannyasin." There is no hierarchy. While I am here there is no possibility of any hierarchy.

Hasya is just a sannyasin, no more than you. You may be working in the kitchen, she is working in the office. You may be a doctor, she is the president of the foundation. These are functions, so while she is in the office she is president; when she is out of the office she is just the same as you are.

The plumber and the professor are not different when they are dancing in the disco. You cannot say to anybody, "You are a plumber - I cannot dance with you, I am the vice-chancellor of the university."

There is no hierarchy, but functions have to be different. Everybody is needed. Sometimes we can do without the professor, but we cannot do without the plumber. Sometimes we can do without the president, but we cannot do without the kitchen people.

All functions which are needed by the commune to survive, and not only to survive but live abundantly, are equal; functions are equal. But when somebody is doing his function, you should behave with the person according to his function.

For example, if you go to the president.... I have given the prefix to all women sannyasins, "ma" - "Ma Prem Hasya." The men have been given names with "swami." So when somebody is functioning in an office, you have to be respectful, even though he may be your friend. You should address Hasya as "Ma," not "mom." You should address John as "Swami." But when they are out of their office you can address them as Hasya, as John; they are your friends.

Just a little alertness, awareness on everybody's part, and there is no difficulty in it. If we can leave our position, power, work, in the office, it will help you to be more human, more loving, more loved, more respected. And while I am here there is no problem.

This nightmare happened only because I was silent for three and a half years. When I said this to a journalist, he immediately responded, "That means you are responsible for it."

I said, "Certainly. I am responsible for Adolf Hitler, because why was I not born in Germany at that time? I am responsible for every criminal in the world because why was I not there to prevent him?

I was not silent to give an opportunity to Sheela to create a fascist regime. My reason to be silent was my own. But certainly it gave her an opportunity, and she forgot completely that she was only there to represent me."

She must have been thinking that I am going to be silent forever. The moment I started feeling that something was going wrong, I came back.

But this experience was immensely good. In my whole life I have never felt that anything bad happens. You have just to use it in a right way. And we will use it in a right way, we are using it in a right way. The commune is more clean, unburdened, fresh, more joyous, more aware.

And these three and a half years' silence were needed for me to get disconnected with all that I have said before. Now I am speaking on my own authority, on my own experience. That discontinuity was absolutely needed. And you will see the difference.

I have spoken on Jesus before; I am speaking on Jesus now too, but now I am saying exactly what I see, feel, experience. Then I was choosing from Jesus' sayings because I was trying to find my own people.

When you open a new shop you need customers! When I opened my shop I saw all my customers were accustomed to going to other shops. They were all divided: somebody was Hindu, somebody was Mohammedan, somebody was Christian. There was not a single person who was freely available to me. Then naturally I started speaking on Jesus, Krishna, Mahavira, Buddha, Sufis, Zen mystics - Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Milarepa, Marpa.... I covered the whole range, and got hold of many customers from other shops.

It was necessary. Now I have got my own customers, and I can say to you the truth. And you are able to hear it and to understand it. Before you would not have been able to understand it.

So it has been a good experience in every way and we will make much use of it. It was a great cleansing. And you are far stronger, because all those people had committed crimes: if they had remained here, the whole commune would have been condemned sooner or later as criminal.

You don't see the point: their leaving makes them criminals; otherwise, why have they left so suddenly? And the situation has changed completely. Now we will be supporting law, the courts, the government, against the criminals. Your whole commune is saved; otherwise your whole commune was going to be against the government because of those people.

It is really something to rejoice in that our commune has nothing to do with crime, the criminals have left; and we will support the government and the law against those criminals in every way.

This will bridge the gap that they had created between you and Oregon, between you and America.

By their going away, the gap has disappeared. Now we are Oregonians, authentic Oregonians, the latest Oregonians - fresh and new. Now we are Americans, and we will try in every way to save the Constitution of America against any crime that destroys the democratic values.

It has been tremendously important, beautiful. You will understand it only later on, looking backwards: they have done a great service to you, unknowing.

Okay?