Belief is a dirty word

Question 1:

The fact of believing is the greatest barrier in the progress of science. In three hundred years science has done much in spite of all the religions, their superstitions, their beliefs. In these three hundred years, there would have been at least a hundred times more progress if religions had not come in the way at each step. Science has been struggling inch by inch.

If people stop believing in the old religions there will be a tremendous explosion of wisdom, creativity, affluence. All the things that religions have been promising people in paradise are now possible here on this earth.

We have the know-how, we have high technology to do it - but there are two barriers. One is our religious beliefs; the second is our political divisions.

Religions and nations: these are the two barriers.

It has to be understood that politics gives direction to scientific research to be more destructive. The politician is in the service of death. He does not want this earth to become a paradise, for the simple reason that if people are utterly contented, fulfilled, blessed, then who is going to bother about wars, nations, ideologies? These are things you think about when you are miserable, suffering.

The second great barrier, far bigger even, is our attachment to the dead past and its religions.

I am reminded of Galileo. He was almost on his deathbed - old, tired, spent. He was dragged to the court of the Christian pope because in his book, which he was completing, he had written that the sun does not go around the earth, but the earth goes around the sun.

This is against biblical faith. The Bible says just what you see - you see the sunrise in the morning, sunset in the evening, and again next day. To our perception the sun is going around the earth, but this is not the fact. The Bible simply states the common layman's viewpoint. It is not science.

Galileo was told that he had to change the statement because it goes against the Bible. He said, "There is no problem. I am a dying man, and if I don't change it, you are going to burn it, ban it. I will change it, but one thing you must remember: that my changing the statement does not change the fact. The earth will still go around the sun. My statement has nothing to do with the earth going around the sun or the sun going around the earth. I am simply stating a fact."

But the pope said, "You will have to change it. Don't you worry about the sun and the earth - God takes care of it."

Galileo finally asked, "I have a question. Why is a single statement creating so much disturbance in you, hostility in you?"

And what the pope said is significant. He said, "The question is not your one statement. The question is, if the Bible is wrong about one thing, then what is the guarantee about other things?"

The Bible has to be true as a whole. A single statement going against the Bible will destroy people's belief. And if the belief is gone, the religion is gone.

Religion - whether Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Buddhist - any religion is based on your ignorance, is a cover-up. You don't know, but the belief gives you a certain knowledge which helps you to feel knowledgeable. It does not make you wiser; on the contrary, it keeps you stupid, unintelligent.

Ignorance has to be accepted, not covered. You have a wound - it has to be accepted, its cause has to be found. The medicine has to be searched for, to remove the cause; only then will the wound heal. But that is a long process which needs intelligence.

The simple way is just to cover up the wound and believe that there is no wound at all. But doing such a thing means you will remain retarded, and the wound will go on growing bigger and bigger.

And as the wound goes on getting bigger and bigger, you will have to stretch your belief bigger and bigger, to the point where it becomes absolutely absurd.

All the religions of the world have kept humanity in ignorance. Only an ignorant person can believe.

Nobody asks you, "Do you believe in the sun, in the moon? Do you believe that you have eyes, that you are alive?" Nobody asks these questions because you know. You are alive; you cannot deny it.

Even the denial will prove your existence: who is denying it?

There is a story in Mulla Nasruddin's life. He was sitting in the coffeehouse with his friends, bragging about his generosity. But the friends said, "You talk always about great things - generosity, humbleness, hospitality - but you have never even asked us to come to your home for a cup of tea."

Mulla got agitated and he said, "You are all invited for dinner. Come with me!"

In his excitement he forgot that his wife was there in the house. As they started coming closer to the house he started becoming worried, because in the morning his wife had sent him to purchase some vegetables, other foods. And the whole day he had wasted, playing cards, drinking coffee, meeting friends.... He had completely forgotten all about why he had gone to the city.

But now he was in a dilemma: twenty friends with him, one wife - and one wife is far stronger than twenty friends! He started trembling. The friends asked, "What is the matter? Have you got a fever?"

He said, "You don't understand; this is a far bigger disease. If you are really my friends, do a small, kind act."

They said, "We are always ready. What is the problem?"

He said, "I have not informed my wife that I am bringing twenty friends for dinner. Seeing you all, she may get mad. You just remain outside. First I will go and persuade her, and then I will call you in."

He went in the house, closed the door, and told his wife, "Twenty idiots are following me, because by mistake I used the word 'generosity.' And you know me, that I am a bragging type of man. So they have come for dinner. Now only you can save me!"

The wife said, "What can I do? - because there is no food in the house. You had gone to purchase vegetables... the whole day I have been waiting. And now you turn up - without vegetables - with twenty friends for dinner?"

"No," Mulla said, "that is not a problem. You simply go, open the door, and ask the people, 'Why are you standing here?' And they will say, 'Mulla has invited us for dinner.' You simply say, 'Mulla is not in the house. I have not seen his face since this morning.'"

The wife said, "But this seems to be very illogical. You have brought them; you have left them in front of the house, you have entered the house in front of them. And now you are trying to dump the whole problem on me."

Mulla said, "Don't be worried, I will manage. You just do what I say."

The wife had to concede because there was no other way. She went; she asked, "What is the matter? What are you doing here?"

The friends said, "Your husband has asked us to come to your house for dinner."

The woman said, "But I have not seen him since this morning. He is not in the house."

Those twenty friends laughed. They said, "This is too much! He has brought us here, and we know that he is in the house because he has entered the house before our eyes - twenty eyewitnesses."

And they started arguing, "If he is not in the house, let us come in, and we will find him. He must be hiding."

The wife said, "He is not there."

They started arguing. Mulla opened a window and said to the people, "You seem to be just barbarous! You are arguing with my wife? Twenty men arguing with one simple woman! Can't you understand a simple thing? Mulla may have come with you, but he has gone from the back door. So now get lost!"

Those twenty people could not believe this, that Mulla himself was saying that he must have gone out from the back door!

You cannot deny yourself.

Your very denial will be the proof. You cannot say, "I have gone out from the back door" - because then who are you? Who is making this statement?

All the religions have been befooling humanity.

One thing they all know: man is born innocent, knowing nothing. Soon he is going to question.

That's an intrinsic quality of human intelligence. No animal questions anything. No tree questions or believes. No mountain has a philosophy, an explanation of the world.

It is man's prerogative, his privilege. The question mark is your dignity. You are the only one on the earth who can ask a question.

The parents are afraid. The priests are afraid. The politicians are afraid. All the vested interests are afraid because they don't know the answer either.

But the parents have to pretend before the child. It is against their ego... they cannot say, "We do not know. You will have to inquire. We have been inquiring, we have not found any answer yet. If, by the way, you can find the answer first, please inform us. Or if we find it first, we will inform you. But right now, we are both in the same boat."

But no parent has proved so loving, so compassionate. The child asks, "Who has created the world?" Nobody knows, but the parents cannot accept ignorance. That will be a kind of humiliation.

They say with certainty, "God created the world." They even give the date, the time, the year, when God created the world, how he created the world.

The child is innocent, a tabula rasa, a slate; you can write anything on him. And he trusts you, he loves you. Love cannot distrust.

These are the complexities of life. Love cannot distrust, and you are the most intimate, the most close. You are bringing up the child. He depends on you. The human child is the most helpless child in the whole of existence. You should understand that.

In my garden... I used to think there were one hundred peacocks. Now Mukta has informed me, "You are continuously making a wrong statement. There are three hundred peacocks."

Six small kids have lost track of their mothers. And, of course, in peacocks you cannot find a Mother Teresa. Peacocks don't care about Nobel Prizes. So those six orphans hang out with each other.

And they are growing! They have not bothered about the fact that the mother is lost, although it would have been easier for them to grow in the protection of the mother.

But the human child is so helpless, so weak, he cannot survive without the mother and the father.

This helplessness has been exploited. It hurts that parents are doing it to their own children. Perhaps they don't know what they are doing. Their intentions are not suspect, but their actions are stupid.

They think they are giving the child the right answer. And by the time the child is grown up enough, he is full of garbage: the Bible, the Koran, the Gita, Krishna, Buddha, Christ. And for a long time he has been conditioned and programmed. This is the ugliest crime against an innocent, helpless child. You have killed him. You have destroyed his curiosity, you have murdered his inquiry. Now he will live with all this garbage his whole life. And he will believe that this is knowledge.

Religion is based on belief. Belief is a dirty word - four-letter or not, it is a dirty word. Belief simply means your ignorance has been covered - but that which has been covered is still there, it has not been removed.

It is like a doctor who covers your cancer and tells you, "You are perfectly healthy - no need to worry about the cancer. There is no cancer." The cancer is not listening to the doctor. The cancer cells will go on multiplying, and you will remain ignorant of your own death that is growing within you. The doctor was not a friend. In fact, he was more dangerous than the cancer that you have. There is a cure for your cancer, but there is no cure for that doctor.

Every child is born innocent and every child is being exploited. The parents do exactly the same to the child as was done to them by their parents.

Your parents are not to be condemned - the same has happened to them. You can go as far back as possible - to Adam and Eve, the original human beings on the earth - and in their story you will find the same story that is yours. God, the father in that story, tells Adam and Eve, his children, that they are not to eat from two trees: one is the tree of knowledge and the other is the tree of eternal life.

This story is not history, but it is certainly psychology. It is about every father. It is the very essence of all that has happened to humanity. I think of this story as being of tremendous importance.

Can a father prevent his child from becoming wise? Can a father prevent his child knowing the eternal flame of life? And if a father can do this, then what is left to destroy in the child. He has destroyed everything.

And still you go on saying, "God the father." He should be hanged! If you can get hold of him, kill him immediately! He is the worst criminal. But your priest will say just the opposite. They say it was the serpent - who was nothing but the devil taking the form of a serpent - who persuaded Eve to disobey God.

This story has many implications. Why did he try first on the woman and not on the man? That can explain why there are so many women and so few men here. The man is argumentative; he functions through his head. The woman has a loving heart; she functions from there.

Eve accepted the advice of the serpent. It was absolutely clear: "Why should you live in ignorance?

Eat the fruit of the tree and be wise. Wisdom is not sin." But that's what your religions are telling you: wisdom is sin. Then to be an idiot is virtue. And in your churches, in your synagogues, in your temples you will find all the idiots. You cannot find a single wise man there.

To me, the serpent is the first rebel, the first assertion of human intelligence. God was simply behaving in a dictatorial way, preventing Adam and Eve from knowing.

The word 'science' means knowing. If the Bible has to be written in contemporary languages, the tree was the tree of science. And the second tree was the tree of eternal life. Knowing opens the door for eternal life, for the second step.

Adam and Eve could not reach the second tree, because God became afraid. They had already eaten from the tree of knowledge; now it was only a question of a little time and they would reach the other tree. He drove them out of the Garden of Eden, closed the doors, and condemned them as sinners because they had disobeyed the father.

This God seems to be even less intelligent than Sigmund Freud. It is simple psychology that if you prohibit somebody from something, you are creating an urge, a desire to get exactly that same thing.

In my childhood it was an everyday problem. I saw somebody smoking, I loved the way he was making rings of the smoke. I went to my father and I said, "I need some money to purchase cigarettes."

He said, "I know children sometimes smoke, but not like you - asking your own father. They hide, they lie - and you are asking me for money!"

I said, "Certainly, because I don't want to hide anything, and I don't want to feel guilty. And the desire has arisen; it is better to have a taste. If it is not worthwhile, it is finished forever. And if it is worthwhile, then you have to supply me." He knew me perfectly well....

I said, "You remember, that if you don't give me the money, I will steal, and for that stealing you will be responsible. I could have stolen money, there was no problem. I have not done that. I always go through the proper channels."

He looked at me, and he said, "Okay." He sent a servant to bring a packet of cigarettes, and he said, "You smoke."

Certainly the experience was not worthwhile. I started coughing. And it looked silly - taking the smoke in and out when you can have fresh air, dirtying, polluting the air with the smoke. And for that you have to pay money too!

I said to my father, "Now, you rest assured; this is my first and last cigarette. But if you had prohibited me, things would have been different. Your prohibition would have given me a challenge; I would have stolen money. You would be responsible for my being a thief. I would be smoking, hiding behind the house. For that kind of secrecy you would have been responsible.

"I want to remain an open book. I don't want anything secretive, it is always a burden. And you would have made me guilty because I have disobeyed you. I love you and I trust you, I don't want to disobey you. So you would have been responsible for all that.

"And one thing more: when one takes a challenge, then it is very difficult to get out of it. Your prohibition would be there; I would have argued with myself, 'Perhaps one has to learn how to smoke, perhaps one has to learn the taste of the tobacco. Perhaps it will take a little time for me to get accustomed.' And if I had turned into a smoker, the whole responsibility would have been yours.

You did well - I am grateful to you."

He used to go to the temple, and he would ask me to come. I said, "The day I feel like coming, I will ask you to take me with you. But I don't see anything in that temple. In fact, the statue in that temple is neither a work of art nor what you believe it is - God's statue. And you go on touching the feet of the statue and praying to God to help you, and I know he cannot."

He said, "How do you know that he cannot?"

I said, "He cannot help himself. I have seen a mouse pissing on the statue, and he could not do anything. I cannot believe that he can do anything for you. At least he would have thrown the mouse out! But he remained sitting there, and the mouse enjoyed sitting on his head. I cannot touch the feet of this statue. The mouse seems to be more powerful.

"And I feel ashamed that you go on praying to a dead stone. I am finished," I told him. "The moment I saw what the mouse was doing to your god, the doors of your temple were closed for me. I really like the mouse - he has much more courage than you! At least he was not praying, he was pissing, he gave a good bath to your god."

Every child feels that what you are saying does not seem to be right, because you have not seen God. Somebody has told you - and that somebody has not seen God, somebody else has told him.

I used to ask my father, "Please find out the first man who saw God." There is nobody in the whole history of humanity who has seen God. And almost the whole humanity believes in God. There must be some psychological reason in it.

The reason is: if there is no god, existence becomes a mystery. Life becomes meaningless. You become an accident. God has not created the world, he has not created man in his own image. In my birthplace there was a small church, because there were not many Christians - only two, three families - but I used to go every Sunday to create trouble for the priest. He was a nice man.

I used to ask him, "Have you seen your face in the mirror?"

He said, "Why? Why are you asking that question?"

I said, "Come with me and look at your face in the mirror."

He said, "Okay, if you want, I will come. But what is the point?"

I said, "The point will be soon clear to you. This morning in the sermon you said God created man in his own image. Just look at your face - so this is God?" And he was not a man you could call handsome, no. He was really ugly.

Standing before the mirror he said, "I have argued about the point with many people, but with you there is no question of argument. It is certain at least God did not create me in his own image! About others I cannot say."

I said to him, "Just the opposite is the case: man has created God in his own image. And the proof is everywhere available."

The Chinese god does not have the face of an Indian god, the Chinese god has the Chinese face.

The Chinese god has the Chinese beard - just a few hairs, you can count them. He cannot have a beard like me. He has high cheekbones - in China that is thought to be beautiful. Nowhere else in the world are those bones thought to be beautiful.

The Indian god has the shape of the Indians, even the color. Krishna is not black nor white, but in between. Indians cannot make their god white. They cannot make their god a negro - they cannot make their god's hair like the hair of a negro!

Around the world there are thousands of images of God. That simply shows that everywhere man has created God in his own image.

But from the very childhood, you go on reinforcing again and again continuously for years... they call it religious education. They are making you civilized, cultured. All that they are doing is crippling you, crippling your intelligence, destroying your immense capacity to inquire. And by all this, they are preventing you from knowing the truth!

If all these religions disappear from the earth you all will become inquirers. And there is so much to inquire - life is such a deep mystery, almost fathomless. And to enter into that exploration will make you for the first time a human being. It is a tremendous journey, the real pilgrimage, but it has to start with doubt.

These two words have to be remembered: 'belief' and 'doubt'.

All the religions are against doubt, obviously, because if they accept doubt all their beliefs will be found to be man-made. All the religions say that those who doubt will fall into hell; believe and you are saved. The helpless child does not want to fall into eternal darkness. He chooses to believe.

Science starts with doubt. It is just the polar opposite of religions - by religions I mean those that have existed up to now. Science starts with doubt. The most fundamental thing in the scientific approach is: doubt everything unless you come to a point which is indubitable, which cannot be doubted. Even if you want to doubt, you cannot doubt it, it is there.

Science is true religion because it leads you to truth.

Your religions are nothing but superstitions. They prevent you from reaching towards the truth, they don't allow you to inquire on your own. They fill your mind exactly the same way as a computer is filled - with information, scriptures, theologies. They don't leave even a small space. They are so afraid that if even a small space is left in you, your natural potentiality will assert itself as a question, as a doubt.

Let me say to you that beliefs are given to you by others; doubt is your nature. Nobody gives you doubt; you come with it, you are born with it. You can see every child asking embarrassing questions - embarrassing because you don't know the answer, embarrassing because you cannot say, "I don't know the answer."

By and by, the child also starts believing. He loves his mother, he loves his father, he respects his teacher; and because all these respect the priest, he starts believing in the priest. And fear is there:

"If you don't believe, you will suffer, and suffer badly." And just for believing, you will get the eternal joys of paradise - just for believing. Paradise is sold so cheap, who would not like to buy it?

So out of fear everybody has stopped asking, and out of greed everybody has started believing. The whole world is full of believers, but what is their contribution to human life? Religions have existed for at least ten thousand years - that is the minimum, perhaps they have existed longer than that. In ten thousand years what have religions given to you?

In three hundred years science has given you everything that you have. Just try to figure it out. Your clothes, your medicines, your glasses, your watches, your trains, your planes - all are contributions of science. And within three hundred years! And that too, fighting against traditions thousands of years old. If there had been no fight, in three hundred years we would have created paradise. And now we can do it very easily.

But religions don't want this earth to become a paradise; it is against their vested interest. They want this earth to remain poor, suffering, hungry, because only those people who are hungry, suffering, miserable, are their clients.

They cannot make me a client. They cannot make anybody who has a little intelligence their customer. It is a question of business....

When the first train in London moved, all the churches of London called their congregations and told them, "Don't sit in that railway train." The journey was not long, it was the first experiment - only eight miles. And the railway company was going to give free tickets, good food on the way.

Churches were telling their congregations, "Don't enter that train, because in the Bible there is no mention that God ever made a train. If God has not made the train, that simply means it is the devil's work. And we want you to be aware that the devil is very cunning: once you are in the train it is never going to stop!"

You will be surprised... there were thousands of people on the platform but nobody was ready to sit in the train. The Bible has to prove that God created trains.

If everything had to be found in the Bible, you would be still monkeys in the trees with your Bible of course.

You are a human being, and the whole dignity that you have attained is because of scientific inquiry.

You have asked, "If all these religions with all their nonsense disappear, what will be the state of science?"

There will be a tremendous explosion of joy, celebration, of health, longer life. You can imagine anything; all dreams can be fulfilled.

There are hundreds of discoveries which are not being used, because they go against established businesses. For example, if a scientist discovers that cars can move without petrol, just by atomic batteries-which is possible and very simple. If your watches can move with a small battery for the whole year, it is simple arithmetic that batteries with atomic energy can be created, and your car can move for one year continuously without bothering about petrol.

But the problem is, there are thousands of cars, factories, investments: what will happen to them?

They will go bankrupt. What will happen to the oil kings in Texas, in Saudi Arabia? Their petrol will be worthless. No, this kind of battery cannot be allowed to be made.

The politicians will force the scientist not to do such a thing. They are engaging the scientists, on the contrary, to make nuclear weapons. Strange world - millions of people are engaged around the earth in creating weapons to destroy humanity, life, everything. If all these people are allowed to serve life, not death....

If there is any heaven and if all your saints are there, they will start hankering to come back to the earth - because what can you get in heaven?. Not even the morning newspaper!

I don't think laughter is ever heard in heaven. Saints cannot laugh, of course. They have to keep their faces as British as possible. All saints are British - it does not matter where they are born - long faces with no smiles. And what are these saints doing there? - because they have to be there for eternity. They have to do something; otherwise it will be utter boredom. Even death is no solace, because in heaven nobody dies. You cannot commit suicide there, remember. Before you enter heaven, remember, you cannot get out!

Jean-Paul Sartre has written a small book, NO EXIT; it is about hell. But I say to you, it is about heaven. In hell, if there is no exit, the people who are there will make one because you will find there all the scientists who have doubted. Albert Einstein will be there, Galileo will be there, Copernicus will be there, Columbus will be there. Great mathematicians like Godel, Whitehead, Russell - they will be there. Over millions of years... all people of genius will be in hell. Do you think they cannot create an exit?

Jean-Paul Sartre's title is right, but whatever he is writing in the book is about heaven, not about hell. In heaven you will find all the idiots of the world, because a believer is an idiot. They will be sitting there almost dead, because there is no entertainment available. You cannot go to the movie, no such thing exists in heaven - at least, it is not mentioned in the Bible. You cannot go to a football match, because who will play football? Saints? Saint Augustine? Jesus Christ functioning as the referee? Who is going to play football there? And who is going to see it? The whole stadium will be empty. Olympics don't happen there, they are not mentioned in the Bible.

What happens there? Nothing! So what is the difference between life and death? A dead saint and a living saint - how are you going to differentiate? No love affair, no sickness, no hospitals... no roads, because you are not supposed to go anywhere else, you have reached the full stop. Now remain glued to the full stop forever and ever.

I don't think any intelligent man would like to go to heaven. At least, I am not going.

If there is a hell, then that is the place where I am going. It is going to be really juicy there! All the film actors, all the film actresses.... Everything that you wanted here will be available there - all the people who have some color, colorful people: dancers, singers, poets, painters, lovers. You will find hell full of genius.

But fortunately there is no heaven and no hell. All that we have got is this moment.

Religion promises, but never supplies the goods.

Science never promises, but always supplies the goods. Science cannot promise because it is an inquiry.

Science had never promised that there would be electricity. The man who created the first electric bulb was Thomas Alva Edison. Three years he was working to create an electric bulb. All his colleagues by and by left, thinking that he was a crackpot - nobody had ever heard of such a thing!

A few young students remained with him. But by and by, they were also getting bored, because every day the same experiment starts and every evening they find it has failed.

Finally they were also ready to leave. Before leaving, just out of gratitude to the old man, they said to Edison, "Forgive us. We cannot be so patient as you are in your old age, when death can happen any moment. You come every morning so excited: 'it is going to happen today!' Sometimes we think either we are mad, or you are mad."

The answer Edison gave is worth remembering. He said, "For three years we have experimented in hundreds of ways. To me, it means that we are coming every moment closer and closer to the right method, because wrong methods are being eliminated. We have knocked on hundreds of doors:

yes, we have not found anything, but the number of doors is less every day. One day we are going to knock on the right door. When everything is eliminated, what is left is truth. Doubt is the method of eliminating."

The night he discovered the first bulb, he was so enchanted.... It is understandable. An old man - his eyes becoming weak, death could take him before the experiment is over - ultimately found... at three o'clock in the morning, because he had been working the whole night.

Now even the students had left, so there was no need to close the lab at a certain time. Now he was alone, and he was so absorbed at three o'clock he saw the first bulb radiating with light.

His wife was getting upset and bored and angry, and she shouted from the other room, "Are you going to sleep tonight or not? Put that light off!"

Edison said, "This is not the old light! You just come in and see! Doubt has succeeded." The wife could not believe her eyes: a new light, with a new source of energy!

But religions go on insisting, telling people not to doubt.

Every scientist has to doubt his predecessors. You should see the difference: every religious man has to believe in the predecessor. The more ancient the book is, the more true - that is the religious attitude. So every religion tries to prove that their holy book is the most ancient.

When Christian missionaries reached India for the first time, they were very puzzled, because there they came across the Hindu scriptures, which - according to Hindus and with enough rationality to prove it - are ninety thousand years old. The RIGVEDA, the Hindu holy scripture, is ninety thousand years old.

The difficulty for the missionaries was that in RIGVEDA there is a description of a certain constellation of stars which happened, according to astronomers, exactly ninety thousand years ago. Since then that constellation has not happened. So one thing is certain: whoever was writing it was an astronomer, and what he was writing was present to him - the constellation, a certain state of stars which has not happened again.

The missionaries were in difficulty, because according to them, God created the world four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ, so only six thousand years ago.... Now what to do with the RIGVEDA? Then cities were discovered - Harappa, Mohanjo Daro, which are now in Pakistan - which have enough proof, solid proof according to science that those cities existed at least seven thousand years ago.

I have been to Harappa and Mohanjo Daro, both the places. And it is an experience to see those places, because in Harappa the roads are as big as in New York. They had a running water system, they had attached bathrooms. You will be surprised.... Just let me drift a little bit.

Just one hundred years ago in America there was a great controversy, because to have the toilet attached seemed very dirty. The toilet used to be an outhouse, far away from the house - a dirty place. And you are putting it inside the house!

In Harappa there were attached toilets, swimming pools. So that city was not only seven thousand years old; it must have been far older, because to attain to such civilization that even in the twentieth century.... In India an attached toilet is a luxury. Ninety percent of the houses don't have any toilet - attached or unattached. In the most holy Hindu place, Varanasi, the roads are so small that cars cannot be used.

The people who lived in Harappa and Mohanjo Daro were not just primitives: they must have attained to a high civilization - and to attain to that civilization needs time. Seven thousand years is a very orthodox estimate; perhaps those cities existed fifteen thousand or twenty thousand years before.

To have roads that big means they must have had vehicles; to have running water, they must have found some kind of plumbing system.

And you will be surprised... the missionaries became very puzzled, but they came up with a solution.

The solution was that God created the world exactly four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ - as it is written in the Old Testament. But how to account for the RIGVEDA? How to account for Harappa and Mohanjo Daro? Those missionaries came up with an amazing solution. They said, "God made the world" - and for God everything is possible if he can make the world."He made the ruins of Harappa and Mohanjo Daro also. He made the RIGVEDA also and described in it a constellation of stars which should have happened."

But why should God take such trouble? The missionaries still say that he took all this trouble to test your faith. Can you see the cunningness? He creates Harappa and Mohanjo Daro - their ruins, with all the facilities that are available in the twentieth century - to test your faith.

These people have dominated the whole world up to now with all kinds of stupid arguments. They are hindering in every way, millions of things that can become available to you immediately.

There is no need for any Ethiopia, one thousand people dying every day of hunger, thirst. Fifty percent of India is ready to become Ethiopia any day. And all this is because of your priests and your politicians. They are in a deep conspiracy against humanity.

The politicians don't want nations to disappear, because with the nations disappearing, politicians will disappear too. The world is one, the earth is one; it is divided nowhere. But America would like to remain America, and Russia would like to remain Russia at any cost - even if the whole earth is destroyed! Because if the boundaries of the nations - which exist only in the maps - disappear, there is no reason for war.

Seventy-five percent of the income of all the countries goes into creating destructive weapons, atomic plants, nuclear weapons. Seventy-five percent of human energy just to destroy! This seventy- five percent energy can be changed into the direction of creativity.

The same atomic energy can supply you light, can supply you fuel, can supply you all that is needed.

And all the scientists are employed by the governments, because science has come to a point where no scientist can work alone. It is such a big investment that only governments can manage. So it is really a great problem.

Three hundred years ago, every scientist had his own lab; Edison could work on the electric bulb in his own house. But you cannot make atomic energy in your own house. So much money is needed that no individual can afford it - only governments. Naturally, all the scientists have become slaves of certain political systems.

You must have heard about the Russian scientist, Sakharov. He was the director of the Academy of Sciences - the highest scientific post in the Soviet Union - and he is thought today to be the world's best physicist. But he accepted the Nobel Prize, and the Soviet government was against it; not bothering about the Soviet government, he accepted the Nobel Prize.

He was immediately removed from his directorship, and now that best mind in the world is rotting in Siberia. What a wastage! And he is not the only scientist there in Siberia, wasting. There are three other Nobel Prize winners; the same had happened with them.

So now scientists are almost in the hands of the politicians. Whatever the politicians want, they have to create. And whatever politicians don't want, of course, they cannot create because they don't have any means. Politicians are preventing them from being creative.

Just look at the stupidity of going to the moon, how much money is wasted. For what? The first man who stood there must have felt silly, because there is nothing - no water, no trees, no life. It is a dead planet. But a political race between the Soviet Union and America.... Both were wasting their energy, their scientists, their money to reach to the moon - nobody bothering to ask, "What are you going to do there? What is the point?"

We already know from here that there is no life and no possibility of life. Even if we want to make a colony there of human beings, it is an impossible job. Everybody will have to carry large equipment around their bodies to supply oxygen, to supply this, to supply that, because on the moon these things are not available. How much water do you have to carry every day with yourself? And everything has to be sent from the earth. What is the point?

You cannot grow anything there. You cannot even come out of your space suit. Even if you want to hug your wife, two space suit will be touching each other! Human touch is impossible. You cannot take your hand out of the spacesuit, because the hand also needs oxygen, it breathes. Your whole body breathes.

But they did that nonsense, and now they are doing another nonsense: piling up nuclear weapons.

Just the other day I saw the petition of fifty American scientists - the topmost - who are involved in making nuclear weapons. They have made a petition to the president: "Please stop." They are the founders of nuclear energy, and they are begging, "Please stop, because we have already seven hundred times more energy then is needed to destroy humanity. What is the point now?"

But the politician is in a political race with the Soviet Union; the Soviet Union cannot stop because America will go ahead. They are now completely balanced, and both are trying to be a little ahead of the other. But even if you are a little ahead, a nuclear war will be destructive of all - Americans, Russians, all the trees, all the birds, all the animals.

You want this earth to become a dead planet?

This earth is unique. In the whole solar system, this is the only place which is alive!

Not only alive, but this is the only place where man has reached to consciousness.

Not only that, a few men have reached to the ultimate peak of consciousness - which I call enlightenment.

If religions are removed and politicians can be persuaded... and if the scientists rather than being slaves of the politicians, make a world academy of sciences... I offer them our commune. We have enough land - one hundred and twenty-six square miles. They can have a world academy of scientists here. And if all the scientists of the world, the intelligent people of the world - artists, painters, poets, singers, dancers, actors - if they all support it, there is no need for any government support.

Science can make this earth perhaps the best place in the whole universe.

It is calculated by scientists that at least on fifty thousand planets some kind of life exists. They are far away, there is no possibility right now to reach to other solar systems.

In the night when you see the stars, they are not stars, they are suns. But they are so far away that they look to be small stars, twinkling stars. Your sun is a very mediocre person. It is very big in comparison to the earth - sixty thousand times bigger. But in comparison to other solar systems, other suns - and up to now they have discovered at least two million solar systems - this sun, our sun, the only begotten sun, is just mediocre. They are millions of times bigger than this sun, and they have their planets.

But no scientist has been able to work out whether consciousness exists anywhere in the whole universe. Life certainly - perhaps there are trees, perhaps some kind of animals, but there is no indication that consciousness exists. And certainly there is no indication that people like Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Bodhidharma exist - people who have attained to their self, who have realized their truth. Without consciousness this is not possible.

This earth is the richest in the whole universe, and the universe is not small, it is infinite. There is no boundary to it. Life has only come to such a beautiful space here, where there is consciousness.

And consciousness has discovered methods to reach to the peak, to the Everest of consciousness.

And these fools - popes and politicians and shankaracharyas and the Ayatollah khomeiniacs - these people are bent upon destroying the only place in the whole universe which has something of immense value.

This conspiracy between the politicians and the priests has to be stopped.

And I would like my sannyasins to wake people up, wherever you are.

Make people aware what religions have done and are doing, and what the politicians have done in the past and are still preparing to do.

Things have come to such a point that it is possible to awaken the whole humanity. And if people stop going to the churches, stop going to the synagogues, stop calling themselves Americans, Russians, Indians, burn their passports, visas, green cards - all over the world.... If they declare that the whole earth is one, and that the whole earth is going to provide the scientists with means to work for creating better life, more life, better consciousness, more consciousness, we can fill the whole world with such enlightened people that even flowers will not be so fragrant.

Man is capable of doing it, somebody just has to shake people, throw cold water in their eyes and tell them, "It is time to wake up, you have slept enough!"

And that is the work of my sannyasins.

I am giving you a tremendous challenge. Wherever you go, wherever you are, make every effort that the earth is one and that science should be given absolute freedom from politics.

No scientist is interested in destruction. A scientist is as much a creator as the poet, as the musician, as the dancer.

It has been estimated by biologists that man can very easily live three hundred years without becoming old. Just a little work of changing the program in his cells is needed. And the basic principles are available, but scientists are engaged in destroying life rather than prolonging it.

There are a few scientists who believe that death is an accident. It need not be, because man's body has a certain system of rejuvenating itself continuously. If it can rejuvenate itself for seventy years, why not seven hundred years? Why not seven million years? Death will be only if somebody wants to die. This is possible.

Your question is significant.

Science can create the paradise, but the priests will be of no value anymore. The politician will not be able to exploit.

The world has to be one, and it has to be governed by creative people, not by politicians. We have such beautiful musicians, such beautiful dancers, such beautiful scientists, who have contributed to making life more joyous. They should be the people to govern. They should be the people to manage the world.

Politics is the only profession in the world where no qualification is needed. Even if you want to become a clerk, they ask for qualifications. But if you want to become the president of America, no qualification is needed. You have to be just cunning enough - that is the only qualification - more cunning than other politicians, more stubborn than other politicians, more capable of cheating people than other politicians, more capable of promising things which you cannot manage.

Politicians should be part of history, a nightmare that we have suffered too long. And it has to be done fast, because we don't have much time - not more than fourteen or fifteen years. By the end of this century it is going to be decided this way or that. Either the earth will be freed from the priests and the politicians, or there will be no earth, no life.

It is up to you, up to everybody else who is living on the earth, to decide.

And I don't think anybody is going to decide for a global suicide.