Abandon hope all those who enter here

Question 1:

There has been a contemporary school of philosophy in Europe called existentialism. I have nothing to do with it. That is only a philosophy, a mind game. These people were talking about existence, but they knew nothing of what it means to be existential. I also use the word "existentialist" for myself, but the difference between Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers, Marcel, and me is vast, unbridgeable.

When I say I am an existentialist, I am not saying that I believe in the philosophy of existentialism.

Existence needs no philosophy. Birds don't need philosophy, flowers don't need philosophy, rivers and oceans don't need philosophy - but they are all existential; they exist, and they exist with totality and intensity.

I am not a philosopher. To be a philosopher is just to be a "foolosopher." It is a sheer waste of time.

Down the centuries philosophers have been struggling intellectually to find the truth. Not a single one of them has found it, for the simple reason that intellect and its way goes round and round, about and about, but it never penetrates to the center.

To love, you do not have to be a philosopher of love. Love needs no philosophy; love is an existential experience.

I call myself an existentialist. I call you existentialists. But it has nothing to do with those dodos in France. It is not a philosophy but a way of life - not according to any dogma, cult, doctrine, discipline, no! - just living without any idea of how to live. The moment the "how" enters, it opens the door for all the philosophies to come in, all the theologies to come in.

I want you to live like the trees, like the birds, like the clouds. Without man, do you think existence will disappear? Without man, after the third world war, do you think the sun will not rise? And the nights will not rejoice in millions of stars?

My insistence is: live spontaneously without any discipline. Live in freedom and live in totality, because one never knows the next moment. I may not be here, you may not be here. The next moment is meaningless. As far as existence is concerned, it knows only one tense, and that is the present tense. The past is no more, the future is not yet.

Only idiots bother about the past; they are gravediggers. And only idiots are concerned about the future, for the simple reason that they have lost contact with existence now. They are hoping perhaps tomorrow the miracle will happen, perhaps tomorrow the messiah, Jesus Christ, will come down and give you salvation, liberation, paradise.

I want you to know: that guy, Jesus Christ, is never going to come, for the simple reason that the way you behaved with him.... If he has any intelligence he is not coming back to this earth. And I know that you will do the same or even worse to him if he comes again. I think he is not that retarded.

And just think: what salvation did he bring when he was here? He could not save himself, and he was proposing to save the whole humanity.

But people who have missed life start hanging onto some hope. They know perfectly well they themselves are not capable, so they start projecting messiahs, prophets, incarnations of God. This is just to console themselves: "Let the tomorrow come; somebody is going to arrive. God is merciful, compassionate..." Seeing your misery he is bound to send a messenger or his only begotten son or a prophet. This gives you a certain kind of opium so you can tolerate the suffering through which you are passing.

One thing: there is no God. It is your hope - and what a hope! An absolutely hopeless hope. And God is not merciful; otherwise through what more misery does he want to show his mercy?

In the first world war people were waiting for the merciful God to do something. He never did anything. In the second world war when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were suffering the worst that humanity has ever suffered, the merciful God did nothing. He is just a lousy fellow - and not even real. It is your projection. You would like a god, a father figure who takes care of you. You would like prophets who have a direct communication line with God.

Do you know that the Mormons believe their leader has a private phone line direct to God, so whatever he says is God's word. There is no way to argue about it; you cannot argue with God.

Rather than hoping.... Have you not seen entering Rajneeshpuram? - the Christians have put up a beautiful sign: "Abandon hope all those who enter here." Those fools don't know that they are preaching my thing.

Yes, abandon hope all those who enter here, because we don't live through hope. We live in the present, and hope is always in the future. Abandon all future, and start living moment to moment rejoicing in the small things of life.

Remember, life is not made of great things; it is made of very small things. In the early morning, sipping a cup of tea, do it totally, as if this is the last cup of tea you will ever sip again. Take each moment and squeeze the whole juice of it.

I call this my existentialist approach. It has nothing to do with God, it has nothing to do with heaven and hell. It has nothing to do with religion and all kinds of stupid subtleties that theology has created.

My approach has nothing to do with philosophy. It has something to do with you. And it has something to do with now, because to me there is only one time, that is now; and only one space, that is here. Once you have learned the art, the knack of being herenow, you will be so fulfilled, so contented - you will not need any opium for yourself.

On the one hand, you will not need the opium which the religions of the world have been providing for people to keep them dreaming for centuries. On the other hand, you will not find what the so-called existentialists in Europe have found: meaninglessness, anguish, anxiety, despair.

Those people were finding meaninglessness because all other philosophers and theologians had proposed that life is very meaningful. But their meaning was derived from God, heaven, hell, the holy Bible, and all kinds of garbage. Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers and people like him were searching for the meaning. There is no need to search for the meaning. Life is neither meaningless nor meaningful.

Meaning is a mind thing. Life is a taste!

Do you ever think what meaning taste has? Eating spaghetti, do you ask what meaning the taste has? Having a beautiful shower, the freshness of it, have you ever asked what the meaning of freshness is? Looking at the sunset with so many colors spread all over the horizon, have you asked what meaning the sunset has?

Ask the wrong question and you will find the wrong answer. The existentialists of Europe accepted the questions of religions, which were wrong. Naturally, they found wrong answers. They are not existentialists, I am - because I don't see any question about meaning. Life is such a beautiful experience, who bothers whether that beautiful experience has any meaning or not? Love is such an ecstasy, who bothers whether love has any meaning or not?

To be silent and meditative is so ecstatic, you will forget all about your search for meaning, truth, God. And once you have dropped the wrong questions, the wrong answers disappear of their own accord. Then between you and existence there is no question, there is no answer, but there is a communion. Your heart slowly slowly starts beating in the same rhythm as the whole existence. You start feeling yourself part of this immense organic whole. You enjoy tremendously. How can there be anguish?

Those existentialists were feeling anxiety, anguish, despair, because death is there, and death will destroy everything. Life has no meaning, and facing them, there is just death closing in on them.

The darkness of death makes them feel lost. They start trembling deep inside their being. Their life has been empty, and now comes death. What kind of existence is this? - just despair.

It seems to be created not by God but by the devil. Perhaps the devil enjoys torturing people. He enjoys wars, he enjoys Ethiopias, he enjoys poverty, he enjoys all kinds of crimes. Courts go on increasing, and crimes are always far ahead of them. Governments go on becoming more and more dictatorial, anti-individual, because they think if the individual is left free, there will be havoc.

With all the armies and police forces and government agencies, still rape goes on happening, murder goes on happening, suicide goes on happening - and always on a larger scale! Looking at the world, the existentialists of Europe found nothing but despair.

But I am puzzled about one thing: why didn't they commit suicide? They talked about suicide, that suicide seems to be the only exit out of this mess, this madness, but none of them committed suicide. Somewhere deep down, they were still hoping that perhaps they were wrong. Perhaps the messiah is going to come, the misery has reached to its Everest peak, just a little more - a little more patience, a little more waiting, and God is going to save them. All this misery perhaps is only a test of your faith.

That's what religions have been telling you down the centuries - that misery, suffering, poverty, is just a test of your faith. God is watching you round the clock. Perhaps, deep in the unconscious of the existentialists the same conditioning still prevails. So on the conscious level they go on saying that this is worthless, this life is accidental, that it has no meaning, that all that it gives is anguish, despair, death, and the only way out is suicide. But none of them committed suicide, they all lived long lives. It is just a game with words.

I want you to remember that I am the only existentialist ever!

I have tasted from the cup of existence. There is no meaning. There is no meaninglessness either.

There is no hope. There is no hopelessness either.

These things are absolutely irrelevant. If you enter into existence... And the miracle is you cannot enter existence through the mind. Mind consists only of past and future - both are non-existential.

If you want to enter existence, you will have to shut up your mind completely. And in that small gap - when there are no past memories surrounding your consciousness, and no future imaginations or hopes present - in that small moment of pure silence you meet existence for the first time. And immediately all questions disappear. You are so abundantly fulfilled, so content, so whole, that who bothers about meanings?

Have you watched a simple thing? When you are sick, then you ask, "Why am I sick? What is the cause of it?" You go to the doctor to find out the cause so that some medicine can be given to you.

But when you are healthy, have you ever asked, "Why am I healthy?" Have you become worried that "I am healthy"? Have you gone to the doctor to say, "Please tell me the cause of my health?" No, when you are healthy and feeling a great well-being, you don't ask such questions. Health is natural; disease is a disturbance.

To be in tune with existence is the most healthy experience. There is nothing more than that, but it is so much you cannot exhaust it.

My existentialism simply means meditativeness. And Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers, Marcel, Kierkegaard, Heidegger - their existentialism is simply mumbo jumbo. They don't know what it is to be meditative.

The existentialism in Europe is an outcome of Christianity, Judaism. If you search for its roots, from where it has come with so much despair, you will find Christian and Judaic traditions behind it; it is a by-product. Because for centuries the Jewish religion... and the Christian religion is just a by- product of Judaism, because Jesus was born as a Jew, lived as a Jew, died as a Jew. He never heard that he was a Christian.

Christianity is only an offshoot of Judaism. Their basic theology is not different. They differ only on one point, that Jews will not accept Jesus as their prophet, as their messiah. Just that single point; otherwise there is no problem. You can see it: the Christian Bible consists of both - the Old Testament which is Jewish, and the New Testament, which contains the gospels of Jesus. But the Christian has not denied the Old Testament, it is still his holy book.

Look at the bible of the Jews; it has only the Old Testament, the New Testament is not there - cannot be there. They crucified the man as a criminal. They crucified Jesus as one who was against the whole tradition, convention; he was a heretic.

These two religions are not really two, and both these religions are the roots; existentialism is their ultimate fruit. For centuries they have been giving hope - there is bound to come a time when some intelligent person is going to ask, "How long do we have to wait for Godot?"

I used to think that Godot must be the German word for God. I asked Haridas, my German sannyasin, "Does Godot mean God?"

He said, "No!"

I asked, "Then what is equivalent to God in German?"

He said, "Gott!"

I said, "That is even worse that Godot! Godot sounds nearer than Gott!"

But people have been waiting and waiting for centuries; neither the messiah comes, nor does human misery disappear. On the contrary, it goes on increasing. We have made the world more educated, more cultured, without seeing the fact that if people are more intelligent they are going to ask questions which uneducated masses have never asked before. They are going to ask, "How long will it take for the fulfillment of our hopes?" And there is no answer.

They were asking the same question of Jesus two thousand years ago, and he said, "Don't be worried. Soon I will be coming." Now, two thousand years... isn't the "soon" finished?

If the "soon" takes two thousand years, then any intelligent person will have doubts. And what is the guarantee that he is coming in the future? Two thousand years can pass, ten thousand years can pass. His "soon" seems to be very elastic, you can do anything with it. You can go on stretching it out for thousands of years and man's suffering goes on becoming more and more.

Man has never suffered so much as he is suffering now, for the simple reason that man has never been so intelligent before. Buffalos don't suffer. Have you seen a buffalo sad, bored? Have you seen a donkey in very great despair?

Religions have tried hard to make sure that people should not become intelligent. Intelligence was their monopoly: the priest knows, and you should just have faith. The masses went on believing this up to this twentieth century, and it is not a coincidence that existentialism burst out in Europe - not in India, not in Ethiopia.

One would think it would have been more logical for existentialism to be born in Ethiopia, where people are dying in thousands every day; they know what despair is. But they are not intelligent enough. They accept it still as a test of God, perhaps the last test; and beyond that is all they have always wanted, available in paradise forever and forever.

I have watched it in poor countries - because I have been in India - the poor are the least discontented people. It is shocking. They cannot manage even one meal a day; sometimes they have just to drink water and go to sleep. I have asked them, "Why are you drinking so much water?"

And they have said, "Just so that the stomach feels full. Food is not available."

But I have not seen these people feeling despair - they should. They don't think life is meaningless - they should. They don't raise a question about God - they should. But poor people are not discontented. They have accepted poverty as fate, as something God-given. And crackpots like Jesus have been telling people, "Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the kingdom of God." So it is only a question of a few days more, or a few years. The kingdom of God is not far away.

And they have a certain joy imagining that they will be in paradise enjoying everything possible - beautiful women, rivers of wine - and the rich people will be suffering in hellfire. They will be able to look from above at what is happening to Henry Ford and Rockefeller and the Kennedys. They still believe this. In India, for five thousand years there has been no revolution. People have taken suffering as something natural, to be taken for granted.

Why did it happen on the continent of Europe that existentialism became the most important philosophical movement? For the simple reason that Europe was affluent, rich. And when you are rich, affluent, when you have all that you want, paradise means nothing to you. What can paradise give to you which Paris cannot give?

And when they had all that a man can desire, they suddenly became aware - even if all these things are given, something is still missing: the meaning. They have everything, but that black hole of anguish inside them is not diminished; it has really become more clear in contrast to all the riches and all the comforts and all the luxuries. Now they can see that nothing can help.

A tremendous helplessness - that is anguish. An ultimate hopelessness - that is despair.

But I don't think these people are really existentialist in my sense. They are just reacting against the whole past, which had great hope of great things. Now they have managed through science every great thing which for centuries man has been hoping, and it has not given them any contentment. It has not fulfilled them. They are poorer than the poor. The poor at least have hope; they don't even have hope.

My existentialism is not an "ism." It is unfortunate that I have to use the language that is available; otherwise I would not call it "ism." That word stinks.

The only way to existence is through meditation. Jean-Paul Sartre never heard what meditation is.

Kierkegaard had no idea what meditation is. Meditation is simply to be totally in the present, and to be in rhythm with the existence that surrounds you. Meditation is the only existentialist approach. It is not intellectual, it is total: your whole being is involved in it.

And if even for a moment you can taste the wine of existence, that transforms your whole life. You don't bother about meanings, you don't bother about gods, you don't bother about heaven and hell, you don't bother about messiahs and prophets. You have the whole existence in your hands, and it is tremendously beautiful. Remember, I am not saying it is tremendously meaningful, I am saying it is beautiful.

When you see a roseflower, and you say it is beautiful, some idiot can ask you, "What is the meaning of beauty? It has to be meaningful too." But existence knows nothing about your logic, your philosophy, your theology. They are your creations. Existentialism is simply the frustration from thousands of years of waiting, and Godot has not come. In fact, nobody has seen Godot. Nobody knows that Godot has promised to come - there is no appointment.

All the centuries of ignorance, darkness, exploitation by religions have come to an end, for the simple reason that science has released man's intelligence into a freedom. But that freedom can be misused, and it has been misused by the so-called existentialists. I am using that intelligence and that freedom for its right purpose and dimension.

Live abundantly here, now, and you will never have any despair. And remember you will not be a Christian, you will not be a Jew, you will not be a Hindu or a Mohammedan. Those are just different names of hopes. The opium is the same, only the labels differ.

I am against drugs, and all religions are supplying drugs to you. It is symbolic that Jesus turned water into alcohol. I don't do miracles; otherwise I would turn alcohol into water. All the religions have been turning water into alcohol and befooling you. It is strange; alcohol is a far worse drug to your health, to your life, than LSD or marijuana. But LSD and marijuana are prohibited, you will be punished. Alcohol, of course, is a religious drug.

If Jesus had done a little more turning, he could have turned ordinary grass into real 'grass'. Then it would have been a religious thing. But the poor fellow had not heard the name of LSD, he had no idea of marijuana.

The function of a government should be to keep people awake. But they are afraid of your awakening; hence, their hostility towards me. If I was also turning water into alcohol, your presidents and your premiers and your governors would have come to touch my feet. That's what they want:

that people should remain in a hazy, unintelligent state. Then they can be exploited, they can be enslaved, and any kind of nonsense can be poured into their heads - they won't resist.

And you can see - no child is born as a Christian, or a Jew, or a Hindu, but the parents and the society immediately start pouring all kinds of crap into the poor, innocent child's mind. By the time he can think, it is too late: he is full of garbage. And he has been told that it is not garbage; it is something holy, something very precious. He goes on clinging to it, and that keeps him mediocre.

Existentialism in Europe came after the second world war. The second world war struck the intelligent people: if the second world war was not enough for a messiah to come and God to do some miracle, then all those hopes were absurd, then they had been befooled for centuries. But they moved to the other extreme. Because for centuries they had been told life is meaningful, they started saying it is absolutely meaningless.

Because they were told God created man in his own image, they started saying it is all accidental.

Nobody has created man, it is just an accident. Some monkeys - must have been mischievous monkeys - jumped on the ground from the trees and started walking on two feet. Man is not a creation - because there is no proof that he is created in God's own image. This is the image of God! Adolf Hitler is the image of God, Winston Churchill with his cigar is the image of God.

The second world war was such a shock to the intelligent people of Europe that they revolted against the whole past. But when you react - it is a logical thing - you move to the very opposite extreme, and the truth is always somewhere in the middle. It is never at this extreme or that extreme. Truth is always somewhere in the middle, because at the extremes there is always tension, strain, fear. In the middle you can relax.

I teach you not to react to the past. They wasted their life on one extreme, now you should not waste your life reacting to them on another extreme. I show you the way which is exactly in the middle: no past, no future, no reaction, but a meditative space.

And once a man has tasted a meditative state, then there is no problem for him. He knows the secret key, he knows the alchemy of transformation. He can go on moving deeper and deeper into the present - it is infinite. You can never come to the borderline where it ends. And your joy goes on growing, your laughter goes on becoming more and more crystal clear and more and more innocent.

Now you are not laughing because somebody has told you a joke; there is no cause to your laughter, it is simply bubbling inside you, uncaused. Now you cannot resist singing.

All prayers are bogus, unless the song comes from your heart for no reason at all. Perhaps just as flowers blossom in the trees, songs blossom in the meditative man. Soon you will be dancing. And the crowd will think you certainly mad. But one who is entering an authentic paradise does not care what people think about him.

First, they will call you mad. But we have to go on growing these mad people around the world.

Looking at so many people mad, they will have to think, "One man can be mad, but so many people?

And they are intelligent people - they are doctors, they are professors, they are engineers, they are computer experts. And in their whole lives they are working so intelligently. They cannot be called mad."

We have just to spread our madness fast enough before the idiotic politicians destroy this whole beautiful earth. The time is short, but it is a beautiful challenge.

The more red people there are around the earth, the more people will start inquiring of you, "What is it that you are enjoying? What is it that you are singing for? Why is it that you are dancing?" And once they become curious, inquiring, they are already on the path. Take their hands in your hands and let them move also into singing, dancing, rejoicing.

I am giving you, for the first time, an authentic religion: a religion which has wings to fly, a religion which does not condemn you, but accepts you as the highest evolution of consciousness on earth, a religion which gives you freedom to laugh, to sing, to dance.

The pioneers are going to be in a little difficulty, because the sad people who are living in despair - who have never known a single moment of love, who have never known a single moment of silence or peace - seeing you enjoying, are going to become hostile to you. That's why the whole of Oregon is hostile to us. We are not hostile to them.

One journalist has asked me, "Cannot your commune and the Oregonians coexist?"

I said, "Never!"

We are going to change the whole of Oregon to red. Why should we coexist? Coexistence means we keep our hostility hidden, and we become hypocrites, and we say nice nothings to each other.

No.

I am for either or. Either they change us and make us sad and frustrated, or we are going to change them and make them dance and sing!

Question 2:

That first idea of yours about psychologists was childish. There is no poetry in psychology.

Psychology is the latest instrument to keep people oppressed. Because the priests have failed, new priests are needed. The psychologists are the new priests, and obviously they have come with a new jargon, but the basis is the same.

The politician has been conspiring against you with the priest for centuries. But now it seems the priest has lost hold of people. Churches are empty, so empty that my people have purchased a church in Holland and are turning it into a disco. In fact, that is a good beginning. I would like all beautiful cathedrals and churches to be turned into discos. Now nobody goes into them, they are cold and dismal and dead.

The politician is very cunning. He can see the priests have lost their hold - at least on the younger generation. He has to find a substitute. The psychologist has come in handy, because he speaks a different language than the priest. He pretends that his psychology is a science. That is absolutely wrong!

It is not science; how can it be science when Freud, Jung, Adler, Assagioli, are not agreeing on a single point? The four great psychologists - and not agreeing on a single point! Science always comes to an agreement. When the truth is known about anything, the scientist is humble enough to drop his prejudices and accept it. It does not matter who has discovered it, what matters is that it has been discovered!

But the psychologists are divided into so many schools - the same way as religion was divided into so many religions, so many subdivisions of religions, cults, creeds. The same is the situation now of psychology. But the psychologist does not bring God in, does not bring heaven and hell in. He has found different names for these entities. He does not talk about man in the old terms the priests have always used; hence, you got caught in their jargon.

The psychologists don't say that you have to become an ascetic, that you have to practice a certain discipline for years together - or perhaps for lives together - and then you will be liberated, no. They say psychoanalysis will do, just go on being psychoanalyzed.

I have never come across a single man whose psychoanalysis is complete. In fact, even Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, is an unpsychoanalyzed person. I have been trying to psychoanalyze him, and I am finding treasures. I would not have believed it if somebody had told me that Freud was so afraid of ghosts that even the word "ghost" was enough, and he would freak out.

Once he was talking to Jung, his most intimate follower at that time, who was very much interested in ghosts. Jung started talking about ghosts, and Sigmund Freud fainted. These are your founders of psychoanalysis. That was the point where Sigmund Freud and Jung parted. Jung could see, "This man, who cannot even listen to what I have to say about ghosts without fainting, is not going to be my master. " And Sigmund Freud also realized, "This man is not going to be my successor."

Sigmund Freud and Jung parted.

Listening to me, you may be thinking that Jung was very much more courageous than Sigmund Freud, because he was so interested in ghosts, but that is not true. He was interested in ghosts because he was very much afraid of death, and afraid of becoming a ghost!

Jung wanted to go to Egypt to see the ancient mummies of kings and queens preserved there.

Almost ten times he booked his trip, but at the last moment he would find some excuse and cancel the trip. On the tenth time, he even went to the airport; and the moment the departure of the plane was announced, he chickened out. After that, he never made any attempt to go to Egypt. He was very much afraid of a dead body. These people are certainly in need of much psychological help.

You say you were very much impressed. It was not that you had come across something very impressive, it was only because you were ignorant, impressionable - anything would have impressed you, you were just soft clay. Otherwise, to see poetry in psychology is insanity.

There may be some psychology in poetry, but in psychology... In psychology you will find your psychologists talking about masturbation, schizophrenia, nightmares, all kinds of madnesses. I don't think you can find any poetry in all this. Nobody has found poetry in a medical book, and the psychologist is dealing with far worse sicknesses than any medical book can.

But the politicians found that a substitute was urgently needed, and psychoanalysis has become a worldwide movement. It was bound to. Sigmund Freud was a Jew, and whenever a Jew starts a business, it is going to become a worldwide chain.

What did Jesus do? He was a Jew. And Jews have not forgiven him yet, for the simple reason that they are angry with themselves for losing the greatest business that Jesus had made available to them. Now Christianity is the biggest business firm in the world. Sigmund Freud also made a great business out of psychoanalysis. Jews know how to do business.

Seeing that psychoanalysis was spreading fast, and people were trying to find the meaning of life, some hope, trying to get rid of despair - it was simple for the politicians to use psychology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, in the service of the vested interests. That's what they have been doing.

Now you are a little more mature. Seeing what the psychologists are writing about cults, new movements - they are all against new movements, new religious beginnings - it is very simple to see that they are in the service of the past, not in the service of humanity's future. They have been purchased. They are the new priesthood! Beware of these people. Because they are new, they are more dangerous.

Now psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, are providing deprogramming. If somebody moves out of Christianity - bored with all its nonsense - and joins a new movement, the psychologists are offering their services to the parents, to the society, "Bring your boy or your girl and we will deprogram the person." And they do it. Of course, they charge enough money. And particularly in America they are very successful, for the simple reason that the American mind is always ready to change. It has not very deep roots in the past. Americans are the uprooted people.

It has been found that three years are enough for an American to be in a job. Three years is also the limit for an American to remain married to a woman. Three years are also enough to have a honeymoon with a new cult, a new creed. There is no need to deprogram them; within three years they will move themselves.

And this is not just about small children or young people. One old man - perhaps seventy years old - has been coming here throughout the whole year, almost every month. He is a billionaire - and you know perfectly well I am not averse to money.

Money is a perfectly beautiful method of exchanging things, one of the greatest inventions of man. It was so difficult before money came in. You had a camel to sell, but nobody was ready to purchase a camel. You had to find someone who wanted a camel and was willing to give his two cows in barter.

It must have been a very difficult world. Money has made it easier. You need not bother to find the purchaser, you can simply sell the camel and purchase the cows. It is one of the greatest inventions of man to make exchange easier. I am not averse to money. I want the whole world to become rich and luxurious.

I say to you, "Blessed are the rich and the luxurious. Even a camel can pass through the eye of a needle, but no poor man can enter the gates of heaven." For a simple reason; what is the poor man going to do there? He will simply feel silly with all that luxury in paradise. The poor man will lose his mind, because all these things were condemned on the earth, they were sins, and here saints are dancing with naked girls! And this is what the saints are doing - who knows what God is doing?

Perhaps having a sexual orgy.

The poor man will find hell perfectly suitable. He has always lived in hell, he is accustomed to it, he has experience of it. And of course, the experiencer should be sent to the place where his experience can be of some use.

Jesus' whole theology is absurd, sending the poor to paradise - they have never enjoyed anything, they have not rehearsed before they entered paradise. And whatever they have been practicing is perfectly suitable in hell.

I would like poverty to disappear from the world. I am all for richness in all dimensions. The poor cannot understand classical music. The poor cannot understand the beautiful poetries of great poets. The poor cannot understand the paintings of Van Gogh or Picasso. The poor will be absolutely at a loss to understand what is going on, if you play Mozart; he cannot figure out that this is something celestial.

This old man was a billionaire, but I don't believe in persuading anybody to become a sannyasin, and I don't allow my sannyasins to convert anybody. We are not missionaries. The word "missionary" is a four-letter word. The missionary is trying to interfere in your life against your will. We are here. If somebody finds the place beautiful, rejuvenating, it is up to him to decide.

His family became disturbed because one time was okay - he had come out of curiosity - but now he has been coming every month for one week at a time, and they are afraid that he may become a sannyasin. He is the head of the family and of all their international corporations: he has the authority over all the money the family has. Naturally, they are afraid.

But how to take a seventy-year-old man to a deprogrammer psychologist? They went alone, not taking him, to ask advice. The psychologist said, "It is really a difficult situation. Your people you can bring forcibly, but this old man you cannot bring forcibly. If you do, it is certain he will become a sannyasin. And I don't think that I can deprogram him either."

The simple reason is that no sannyasin can be deprogrammed, we have already deprogrammed him.

You don't have any programs, so what can they do? You are not being given a certain program. They can deprogram the Moonies, they can deprogram the Hare Krishna people. They can deprogram any cult: Jehovah's Witnesses, Jesus freaks....

I am surprised... Jesus himself was a freak. In fact, Jesus freaks are really doing the right thing; to follow Jesus you have to be a Jesus freak. Jesus was not a gentleman, not dressed in a gray business suit. You can think of him as a freak, as a hippie, or anything, but he was not part of the old conditioned mind. That's why he was rewarded by crucifixion.

At that time deprogrammer psychologists had not arrived; otherwise Jesus would have been saved from crucifixion. Just deprogramming would have been enough. He had just to be constantly hammered: "You are not the only son of God. Drop this nonsense. If you are the messiah for whom the whole Judaic tradition is waiting, let them recognize you. Why do you go o;n shouting that you are the awaited messiah?" It would have been very easy to deprogram that poor carpenter, but the psychologists were not around there.

In America they are doing great business, particularly in California. They are spreading in other countries also.

You have found now the right attitude about these people. They don't want any revolution in the world. They don't want any kind of religiousness in the world. They don't want the new man in the world. And they are against humanity, because only the new man can save it. Only the new man can throw these politicians with their nuclear weapons into the Pacific - pacific, certainly, so they can be at peace forever.

These deprogrammers are writing against cults, dogmas, and they don't know anything about them.

They don't come here. Not a single deprogrammer psychologist has appeared, because he knows he will be deprogrammed.

We have our own deprogrammers, who are certainly far more efficient, for the simple reason that they are not giving you any program. So their work is simple: they simply deprogram you and leave you alone to yourself. They do not REprogram you. They give you freedom. Deprogrammed, you are no longer a Christian, no longer a Hindu, no longer a Mohammedan. You are no longer an American, a Russian, a German. Completely deprogrammed, you are simply an innocent, reborn child.

My sannyasins are again reclaiming their childhoodness, their innocence, which has been disturbed by the priests, by the politicians, by the educationists. In every way you have been cut to a certain size, according to the dress that they have prepared for you. This is strange! The dress should be cut according to you, and for centuries they have been cutting you according to the dress. The dress is already available - the Christian dress, the Hindu dress, the Buddhist dress - and you have to fit into it. It is imprisonment.

It is good that you have understood that these psychologists are the new jailers. Beware of them.

If anybody needs deprogramming, these are the people who need it. So if you can catch hold of a deprogrammer, bring him here. We have to start deprogramming the new priesthood, because we want the whole humanity to be one. We don't want any priests, we don't want any religions and we don't want any nations. We want the world to be one, because only in one world is there no need for nuclear weapons, is there no need for war.

Right now, seventy-five percent of human energy, income, resources, is going in to creating more and more nuclear weapons. And these politicians who go on piling up nuclear weapons also go on shedding crocodile tears for Ethiopia.

Ethiopia, with all its wounds, can be immediately healed. Half of the population of India need not be existing below survival level. In America itself, thirty million people, are so poor that it is simply ugly and insane for the American president to go on pouring money into nuclear weapons.

And the amazing thing is, you have enough nuclear weapons to destroy humanity seven hundred times! Strange! I don't see the arithmetic. Have these politicians forgotten even the basic three r's? Russia and America both can destroy this planet seven hundred times. There is no need, one time is enough! You have already got weapons seven hundred times more than you need. Just an average mind can see the foolishness of it.

Stop nuclear weapons, stop this whole idea of war. But the politician knows if the priest disappears he will be in difficulty. He wants to substitute the priest with the psychologist - a more up-to-date version of the same priesthood. There is no difference.

It has to be stopped. So whenever you see a deprogrammer, catch hold of him and bring him here.

The way they are catching hold of people... what a strange world! - Parents are hijacking their own children and giving them into the hands of the psychologist, and he hammers them.

The method is very simple. He goes on hammering for two days, three days. The man had been a Christian, now he has become a Hare Krishna. The Hare Krishna ideology is only on the surface, very fragile, new; his Christianity is centuries old in his unconscious. It is very easy to deprogram him; his unconscious will be supporting you. You have just to scratch a little and his unconscious will start coming up.

You have to make him feel guilty: "You betrayed Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God; you betrayed your country, you betrayed your community." You have just to make him feel guilty-that is scratching - and soon his unconscious will come up.

But nobody can deprogram my sannyasins, because we already do it and we never give another program to people. We leave them completely free, individual. We give them the dignity of being and individual and not just a member of some religion. We give them the pride to be themselves and not to be an American or a Russian.

Nobody can deprogram my sannyasins.

In fact, if you find yourself in a situation where you are forced to be deprogrammed, don't be afraid.

Deprogram the deprogrammer! Don't miss the chance. And I know you can do it!