Science has to be religious

Question 1:

It has been one of the greatest misfortunes that science is not religious. It can be religious and it should be religious.

Science is only a method. It has no direction, no values; it is just a method. It can be used for destruction, it can be used for creativity, because in itself it is only a neutral methodology.

Science has not been religious up to now because religions will not allow it to be religious. It is a question of a large vested interest.

No religion would like science to be religious.

It will mean religions will have to commit suicide. They cannot go on exploiting people, giving them superstitions, beliefs - all that will have to stop, because science has no belief system, it does not create superstitions. If science knows something, it is knowledge. If it does not know something, it accepts the ignorance but takes the challenge, that "One day we will know it."

Science is very humble in comparison to your religions. They are arrogant. They are claiming things they don't know. They are fighting for things which nobody has ever seen - Mohammedans fighting Christians, Hindus fighting Mohammedans, about the attributes of God. Nobody has seen God ever, and they are fighting and killing thousands of people in such stupid inquiries: What are the attributes of God?

Theology is a contradiction in terms. Theo means God and logy means logic - logic about God.

There is no logic about God and if there is logic there is no God. They both can't exist together.

But the priest was having a good time. He was selling invisible commodities. They need not be produced, no work is involved, they don't exist at all; but he has proved himself to be the best salesman.

I have heard about a store which announced at Christmas time that they have finally invented invisible clips to keep your hair in place so nobody will see the clips and you can make any kind of hairdo. Immediately there was a great line and a queue of women, and they were selling invisible clips. Women were looking in the boxes; of course the clips were invisible, so there was no question of seeing them.

One woman, who had been waiting at then end of the queue, could not refrain from saying, "I don't see the invisible clips. I know because they are invisible I cannot see them, but at least I should be able to touch them. But I don't see them - the box is empty. I move it, but there is no noise."

The salesman laughed and he said, "Lady, we have been out of stock for three weeks! But because it is an invisible commodity we thought there is no problem. Even I cannot tell any difference between the empty box and the box full of invisible clips."

God, heaven, hell, angels - all the religions depend on these commodities. And they have immense power; for centuries they have been exploiting people. And from the side of the people it was almost inevitable to be exploited.

Each child is born in a family, and when he is small he thinks his father knows all, naturally. The father is so strong, can do so many things, and he is so small and cannot do anything. A psychology is created in him, a father figure is created in him, and because the society... most of the societies of the world are man-made, man is superior, the woman is inferior.

In China for centuries it has been thought that the woman has no soul. So if a husband kills his wife it is not a crime. It is just as if you want to destroy your chair, it is nobody else's business. The woman is a thing. Nobody in the whole history of China - which is the biggest nation in the world, one fourth the population of the world - never has a man been even punished for murdering his wife.

So naturally, societies which are ruled by man cannot accept God as a 'she'. He cannot be so inferior as to be a woman.

In the biblical story God created man first, which looks not very reasonable because man in himself cannot give birth. It would have been far more reasonable to create the woman first because she is capable of creating. She has the womb, she is going to be the mother. Man is secondary. His function in creation is nothing more than that of a syringe which is used for injections.

Man is a syringe!

Strange, God created the syringe first - but it is a story written by a man - and then he created the woman because man was feeling alone. The woman is just an entertainment to help the man not feel bored, not feel alone. That is her function.

God created man in a different way than he created the woman. He created the woman by taking a rib out of man's body. This is insulting, humiliating; the woman is nothing but a rib. Man is really the master - ribs cannot be masters.

In all the religions the woman is humiliated in different ways. In Jainism, no woman can attain to enlightenment. All that she can do is - if she is virtuous, disciplined, follows the creed, the ritual - all that she can attain is birth as a man in the next life. More than that she cannot achieve as a woman.

Yes, when she becomes a man, then she can attain to enlightenment.

Now poor Mahavira was not aware that soon there was going to be plastic surgery. A woman need not wait for another birth; she can become a man right now. And Jainism believes that Mahavira is omniscient - he knows everything, past, present, future - but he does not know about plastic surgery.

He is omnipresent - but for twenty-five centuries he has not been seen anywhere. He is omnipotent, he can do anything. All the qualities of God are attributed to Mahavira because Jainism does not believe in God.

It makes one thing clear: that there is some inner psychological need - if you remove God, then all the qualities of God are deputed to somebody else. And the reason is that man is born in a family where the father is the master.

Just the other night I was telling a journalist from Sweden that God is man's creation. All the religions say God created man in his own image. It is a lie! The truth is, man has created God in his own image. Of course, he could not make God a woman.

But there are a few small, primitive societies around the world where God is not he, God is a she.

And that seems to be more logical because 'she' includes 'he', but 'he' does not include 'she'. 'She' is vaster, bigger; it has a womb.

Those small primitive societies where God is thought of as a woman have not been able to achieve weapons, destructive methods. They have not been fighting; there have been no wars in a matriarchal society. The fact has to be considered. The man-made society has been doing only one thing, continuously fighting.

In those societies where God is a mother, the psychology is the same. It seems the child, because he is brought up by a mother and a father... whoever is more powerful becomes his idea of God.

In matriarchal societies the woman is powerful. She works, she creates, she goes to the farm, she goes to the garden. She does everything that you have been told the woman cannot do because she is weak, she is "the fair sex," she is delicate.

But in matriarchal societies just the opposite is the case. The man looks after the children and for centuries that has been his work, babysitting. Naturally he is smaller than the woman, his height is not that of the woman.

You will be surprised, in those matriarchal societies.... I have visited two. In India there are a few, just small tribes living in the deep forest. The woman has muscles, not the man. Muscles are not something natural and the birthright of somebody. Whoever works is bound to create muscles. A man like me, who is bone lazy, cannot have muscles!

And for centuries, if man has been just looking after children, cooking food... The woman has grown taller, stronger, because she is cutting wood, she is sowing the seeds, reaping the crop, doing everything that man is doing in our societies. Naturally, the child creates a mother figure.

One of the ancient scriptures in India MANUSMRITI has dominated Indians for five thousand years.

And by the way, you will be surprised that in the modern world only two men outside India were immensely impressed with Manu's ideas: one was Friedrich Nietzsche and the other was Adolf Hitler. Both are male chauvinists. They both praised Manu because Manu has given the whole moral code to Hindu society. He is still followed.

He must have been really macho, because he says every husband has a duty once in a while to beat the wife. Find any excuse and beat her to keep her in her place, to prove to the children that she is weaker and the father is the strong man. Five thousand years ago, Manu was creating a father figure in the child.

When the child grows up he starts suspecting and doubting that his father knows all. And he is right.

He starts finding that his father is not infallible, that he commits mistakes, that he is not the strongest person because there are many people that are far stronger than him.

Up to now he has trusted in the father and he was at ease. Now a great dis-ease arises in him.

He has become dependent on a father figure for protection. He needs a father who is all-powerful, present everywhere, who knows everything.

This is the root cause of the projection of God - whether as man or woman doesn't matter; whoever is powerful here the child will project one day. And the priest has been exploiting this situation. He becomes a mediator. He says God is far away, and to know God needs tremendous discipline, hard effort, continuous prayer, so only a very few people who can go through all those austerities come close to God. They have a direct communication line to God.

You will be surprised that here in America, in the twentieth century, there is a sect of Christians, the Mormons.... They believe - and they are educated, very efficient in every way, but they believe that their leader has a direct telephone line. God gives the message to the leader and the leader gives the message to the people; it cannot be disobeyed. And it is believed!

In Wasco county there were three judges who decided the legality and the incorporation of Rajneeshpuram as a city. Two were in favor, one was not in favor, but he was a minority; hence Rajneeshpuram became an incorporated city - legally, constitutionally.

But of those two judges one was a Mormon. As Rajneeshpuram became a legal city the leader of the Mormons received an immediate urgent call from God that this judge has to resign and go to Nigeria to spread the message of Christianity.

And you won't believe it - the man resigned! He is a judge, but if God orders and sends him to Nigeria - which is the worst place in the world to go... In Nigeria there are still cannibals. This poor fellow is sent to Nigeria to convert people to Christianity.

This is not God's message! And out of all the Mormons in America, this poor fellow is chosen. It is a message from the White House, not from God. It is politics, not religion.

But religions can exploit in this way because man has a weakness: dependence. As he becomes a young man, he finds that the people he was dependent upon are just as weak, as unintelligent, as anyone else. Now he feels a vacuum and that vacuum, frightens him. Up to now he was confident, he had a certain strength. Now all strength disappears, all confidence disappears. He is almost on the point of a nervous breakdown!

When he sees his father does not know everything, that his father is not all-powerful, when he sees that a neighbor has beaten him and he could not do anything... when he sees that not only the neighbor, but his mother in fact dominates the man - by throwing tantrums, throwing things, screaming, crying....

The child is very observant. He can see that the mother is wrong, but the father is asking to be forgiven, he is saying that he is sorry. The child can see that the mother is wrong, but she has created such insanity in the house that the father has to cool her down, even if he has to apologize.

He knows perfectly well that he is right, but without an apology neither he can sleep nor can the neighbors sleep; and everybody will come to know what is happening. He just wants things to cool down.

The child is watching: this father is not dependable; he is not so strong as he had supposed. He is not fulfilling his expectations. As he grows, he comes to know more and more - and a deep emptiness arises inside. The priest has exploited that emptiness. He has projected a father figure.

It is not a coincidence that you call God the father. You call the priest also father. Why?

In India, I have heard.... two children were playing on the street. One was a Hindu, another was a Christian. The Christian priest was on his daily round, going to Christian families, and the Christian boy saluted him and addressed him as "father."

The Hindu boy simply laughed when the father had left. He said, "This is strange - this man is celibate, he has no wife. In what way has he become a father?" Hindus cannot understand that this man is 'father'.

And the same is the situation of the Christian trinity - the father, the Holy Ghost, the son. Not a single woman is included in the trinity. Strange! How is God the father and how is Jesus Christ his son? Where is the mother? And what was the need of this Holy Ghost? A woman would have been perfectly logical, but the Holy Ghost is absolutely absurd!

He is also male, because the Holy Ghost made Jesus' mother, Mariam, pregnant. Strange - Holy Ghost? Then what do you mean when you say unholy ghost? If this is the Holy Ghost, making virgin girls pregnant, then what will the unholy ghost do? This trinity is a gay group.

But the woman was not to be accepted because all the priests were men, all the founders of religion were men.... Even a man like Gautam Buddha, who is certainly the most compassionate out of all the founders of religion, was not willing to initiate women into his commune.

For ten years continuously he denied thousands of women who had come to be initiated and wanted to be his disciples; he said no. All his compassion simply evaporated. It was only for men, not for women.

And what was the fear? The fear was that once the woman enters the commune, he could not trust his disciples to remain celibate. That was his fear. On the one hand he does not trust his disciples; on the other hand, deep down he knows celibacy is unnatural. If a woman is there, sooner or later the unnatural will be dropped. But a man of his intelligence could not see that his disciples could turn to homosexuality - they did.

Homosexuality is a religious disease - a sacred disease, I should say.

It started in the monasteries, in the ashrams, where no woman was allowed in. Man is intelligent enough - there is a limit to repression, then it becomes too heavy. His whole mind becomes a sexual orgy. The burden is too much - he would like to be relieved of it.

Just the other day, Sheela brought me a news item that a few scientists have found three monkeys in South Africa having the disease AIDS. And these scientists are propagating the idea that the disease AIDS has come from the monkeys. Man is very clever at dumping things, and the poor monkeys will not protest.

But I told Sheela that it is such a simple thing - and she was amazed because she had accepted the story. If scientists say that it is a disease created by the monkeys and transferred to man.... And it can be transferred without sexual contact - through the saliva of the monkey, through the tears of the monkey, through any liquid coming out of the body of the monkey. If somebody comes in contact with it, he will get the disease.

I told Sheela, "You have fallen into the same trap as all women have been falling into for centuries."

As far as I am concerned, those three monkeys must have been given AIDS by men. It is a known fact that in lonely forests, mountains, man has been known to make love to animals - and the monkey comes very close, he is a cousin. This seems to be a simple explanation, that a few men suffering from AIDS have made love to the monkeys.

And sodomy, making love to the animals, is not a new thing. It is as ancient as the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament there were two cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. 'Sodomy' comes from the name of the city, Sodom, because in Sodom people were making love to animals. God became so angry that he destroyed Sodom, and he destroyed Gomorrah, because Gomorrah was turning gay.

Now Christian priests are saying that AIDS is a punishment from God for those people who have not listened to religious teachers, doctrines - and people go on believing. In fact, God and his priests are responsible for homosexuality. They separated man and woman, with no possibility of contact; naturally the nuns became lesbians, the monks became homosexuals.

One journalist was saying to me that a very famous preacher of America who has a tremendous hold over American Christians, therefore has a great hold on the American parliament, because he controls a large number of voters. Even the president has to listen to him. That man is saying - his name is Falwell... it seems to be meaningful. He is saying it is God's punishment.

I asked the journalist, "If that is true, then what about lesbians? - because no lesbian suffers from AIDS. Is God in favor of lesbianism? You go and ask Mr. Falwell." Homosexuals are punished, but what is the difference between homosexuality and lesbianism? Lesbians should also be punished in the same way, but no lesbian has been found to have AIDS.

In fact, sometimes I think that if we want to save humanity, all women should turn into lesbians and leave the men and their God and their priests to die with AIDS! Now it is very dangerous to love a man, it is risky. He can be a carrier of ultimate death from a disease which knows no cure.

If the women are intelligent, this will be the step they should take. They should simply say, "We are finished with you!"

Yes, there are men who are not suffering from AIDS; their semen can be collected in banks, so when a woman wants to give birth to a child she can be injected. But the old-fashioned injection, the man, is out of date. That syringe is dangerous!

The religions have been exploiting man's psychology in every possible way. Man of course is weak, unprotected. In a vast world he is so tiny. Life is so short, diseases are millions, and even if he somehow manages to dodge cancer and tuberculosis and all the diseases, he cannot dodge death; that is going to come anyway.

Death, disease, weakness, the unknown universe create so much fear - and nobody to protect....

It was a simple step to give God the father as the protector. And man's inner space was in such a need, he accepted it. He was not capable of doubting it, because to doubt means to live almost on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

And with God comes the priest; he becomes the mediator. He becomes more powerful than politicians. In religious countries like India, politicians go and touch the feet of Hindu priests - of course, only before election time. Then for five years they don't bother about the priest, about the temples. But as the election comes near they start going on religious pilgrimages to temples far away in the Himalayas, touching the feet of any stupid priest, asking for blessings.

The priest holds more power; the politician's power is mundane. The priest's power has entered in the very spirit of man.

That's why religions did not allow science to move into their territory. First they did not allow science even to move into the objective world - the subjective world was out of the question. They did not want them even to explore the objective world, the material world.

Strange, because religions are not concerned with matter, and if somebody is exploring matter, why should they be disturbed? There was a reason: if the scientist succeeds in discovering the mysteries and the secrets of matter, his second step is bound to be to explore the subjectivity of man. It is better to cut it from the very roots, rather than to wait.

So for three hundred years religion has been fighting continuously against every invention, every discovery. But because science is based not on belief, but on doubt - it accepts something only when there is no doubt possible about it. And then too it accepts it only hypothetically. That has to be understood. That shows the humbleness of scientific effort.

Hypothetical acceptance means: "Tomorrow new facts may be discovered, and we may have to change the theory. So for the time being we accept. Remember, for the time being - not forever. All that we know up to now is in agreement with the discovery, but who knows about tomorrow? People may invent more subtle instruments, and tomorrow new facts may arise and the theory will not be able to stand those new facts. Hence, it is only hypothetical, for the time being."

This is true humbleness. They are not arrogant about things which are absolutely proved! Still they will not say that this is absolutely proved, because infinity is waiting.

So all scientific statements are relative, never absolute.

Religious statements are always absolute. It does not say, "Perhaps God exists."

Science, making every discovery, says, "It is hypothetical, perhaps tomorrow we will have to change it." And in three hundred years we had to change many times - that is enough proof.

What Newton has found, Albert Einstein has to discard, because he penetrated deeper. Naturally, he is grateful to Newton. Without Newton, Einstein would not have been able to penetrate deeper.

He is standing on the shoulders of Newton; that's why he can see a little far away, which Newton could not. But he is aware somebody someday will be standing on his shoulders and he will be able to look even farther. That's why he called his theory, the theory of relativity.

Now in science there will be no absolute statement. Everything will be relative to the knowledge, to the time, and we will remain open to change it if reality reveals new secrets, new facts.

Religion was afraid of two things: one, the basic method of science - doubt. Religion is against doubt, it is all for faith. And if doubt succeeds in revealing objective reality, then the day is not far away when somebody will start using the same methodology to explore consciousness. That's what we are doing here. Using the same methods which have proved solid in the objective world... now we have to take those methods to the subjective reality.

Religion tried in every possible way, but could not succeed - nobody can succeed against truth.

The religions had the whole world with them; the scientists were individuals, they had no power.

But truth gave them such immense power that millions of people who were in favor of religion could not prevent their truth. They could not prove that it was not true, they had to accept it - reluctantly, unwillingly.

Now a greater step has to be taken, which will be fought by all religions everywhere. If they fought about objective reality which is not their concern.... I am trying to enter their territory, challenging their territorial imperative.

I am trying to introduce scientific methods where religion has ruled for millennia.

I have been challenging religious leaders to open discussion. In the beginning, a few accepted because they had no idea what kind of man I am. But now nobody accepts my challenge. They cannot prove anything, because all that they think is true is only a belief, and I can expose the belief very easily. They cannot disprove me, because whatever I am saying is my experience. And I am not teaching a doctrine, a philosophy which can be argued about. I am teaching only a method.

Meditation is only a method.

And not a single man in the whole history has been able to prove that meditation does not lead you to the ultimate truth of your being.

Without exception, whoever has meditated has arrived at the same experience.

Science has to be religious. It will be a curse on the scientists if they don't invade the territory of religions. Enough exploitation has happened. It has to be stopped completely.

You will be surprised to know that trees, birds, animals - science has improved upon God very much.

There are so many beautiful dogs which God had not created in those six days. They have come through scientific breeding, crossbreeding.

In Soviet Russia there are fruits which were not available in the Garden of Eden, because Soviet scientists are continuously crossbreeding trees. When you crossbreed a mango with an apple, naturally something absolutely new is born which has never been there. It has more richness than both the mango and the apple. It has a new taste - something of the mango, something of the apple, and something absolutely new because of the mixture. In the Soviet Union, there are many fruits available which were not created by God.

In animals we know crossbreeding has brought stronger, better generations. For example, in India the bulls are imported from outside. I told Indira Gandhi, "This is strange. You can import bulls because Spanish bulls are of course the best. And to those bulls are given your cows, which you have worshipped for centuries as mothers. Have you ever thought," I asked her, "what is going on?

A Spanish bull making your mother pregnant!"

She said, "You always come with strange ideas, but you are right!"

I said, "If Spanish bulls can create better cows, better bulls, then why not do the same with man?

Why not find better men, better women to produce children? And it is a well-known, established fact that if a man and woman belong to very different races, their child is going to be healthier, will live longer, will be more resistant to diseases, will be more intelligent."

It is because of this fact that all the religions have prohibited marriage to your own sister, because that is the closest relationship. In fact, your sister would have been far more caring towards you, less of a pain in the neck. You have grown up together, you have already loved, played, been friends together. This should be the logical step, that you should marry your sister.

But it was felt - thousands of years ago - that if you marry your sister your children will be weak, will not have stamina, will not be intelligent. Most probably they will be crippled, blind. The closer the woman to the man, the poorer the child.

This will be perfectly good, to import men from faraway countries, women from faraway countries.

You can see the fact in European royal families. They create only idiots. Have you seen a picture of the prince of Wales? He looks so retarded. Have you ever thought about the queen of England?

We have hundreds of women better than the Queen of England. She is just an ugly duckling.

But the reason is because those royalties go on marrying amongst themselves. They don't allow anyone to move out of the royal families. Now royal families are limited - in the whole of Europe, there are perhaps twenty royal families. So they go on rotating, and they produce the prince of Wales, the queen of England. This is bound to happen, it is absolutely certain to happen.

The science of human engineering should come into existence. Up to now, man has been just accidental. If somebody is beautiful, it is just accidental. If somebody is intelligent, it is just accidental. That's why millions of people are below the mental age of fourteen. Their physical age may be eighty, but their mental age is somewhere between thirteen and fourteen.

It is a very strange situation. Your mind stopped when you became sexually mature, because biology needs no more intelligence. Biology needs you to reproduce children. Now you are capable - at fourteen years you are capable of producing children. Now what is the need of intelligence? Just find a woman and start reproducing. Intelligence is just superfluous, luxurious, unnecessary.

We can manage if we drop all stupid ideas about morality, sin... old ideologies. If we can create better cows, we can create better human beings.

The Indian cow does not give enough milk, even enough to purchase grass for her. The Indian cow is just a burden. The Jersey cow can feed many families, the whole neighborhood. It is such a simple fact, it needs no argumentation, that if we have succeeded in fruits, in animals, proving ourselves better than your God... and in fact, the poor God - just in six days, how much could he do? Whatever he did in six days is really too much.

I had a Christian tailor who used to make my clothes. I was going on a journey, and I told him, "You have to make my clothes just in one week's time."

He looked at me and he said, "I can do that, but then don't complain."

I said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "You can look at the world God created in six days: it is all in a mess! Your clothes will be all in a mess. I need time. Six days are not enough even to create a dress, and God created the whole universe."

Everything needs improvement, and everything can be improved. But religions come in the way, because if more intelligent people are born, people who never fall sick, people who are creative of wealth, art, who is going to the poor priest? His whole business will go bankrupt.

They are against me for the simple reason that I am making every effort that they should go bankrupt.

They will have to go bankrupt, it is only a question of time. They cannot postpone their bankruptcy for long, because man - howsoever unintelligent - can see simple facts.

Science has to become religious. And the scientists should start moving into the world of religion.

Don't bother about the churches and the synagogues - they will disappear on their own accord. You just do something better! And that which is not able to compete with you will have to disappear. And don't care about popes and Ayatollah Khomeiniacs. The days of these people are finished; they are living posthumous lives. But it is natural to cling to your vested interests as long as possible.

I am all for science.

The world needs a religion which is scientific, and we are creating it.

Nobody can have any dispute with my religion, for the simple reason that I don't give him any grounds to dispute.

There is no God, so we don't have to be worried about proving the existence of God. Nobody has been able to prove it. Thousands of theologians and philosophers wasted their life in proving the existence of God. Strange - even his existence is not proved, and you are searching for somebody whose existence has not been proved in thousands of years. You are praying to somebody who is not even a hypothesis.

We don't have any God. We don't have any heaven and hell. We don't have our sannyasins walking on water and.... So there is no way to have a dispute with us. We are simply inquirers going deeper into our silence, into our joy, into our blessings - which are our birthright.

Now, joy needs no proof. Or do you think it needs any proof? Your peacefulness needs no proof.

This silence, here... as if there is nobody... is a proof unto itself. It does not need any proof from outside.

I have condensed the whole religion into a single word: meditation.

And anybody who wants to dispute will have to go into meditation, because that is our religion. If he does not succeed, that is his failure. If he succeeds, we succeed. Both the sides are ours. If he succeeds in reaching to his innermost core, he will find that what we were saying is true. And I don't think that a man of meditation will lie. It is impossible.

Just the other day, Sheela brought a newspaper cutting from India....

I have never said anything about a certain man, Goenka, who teaches the ancient Buddhist meditation method of vipassana. I am absolutely certain about the method, its rightness. Many of my sannyasins have practiced vipassana. I have practiced vipassana. It leads to the ultimate core of your being.

Goenka has been teaching vipassana. I have never criticized him, I have never even mentioned anything about him. Even a few of my sannyasins asked me if they could go and have a seven-day or twenty-one-day session with Goenka.

I said, "Just go, because vipassana is a perfect method. There are one hundred and twelve methods, vipassana is one of them. You go. And it does not matter who gives you the method."

Many of his disciples have become my sannyasins, because vipassana is just one method. It is enough, but my attitude towards life is of abundance - if one method can give you so much, try some other method too, because they all move from different angles, pass through different sceneries, reach into different qualities.

Ultimately they reach to the center in the same way, but sometimes the way is even more beautiful than the goal. You can go through a desert; somebody else can go through beautiful gardens and reach the same spot. These one hundred and twelve methods are moving towards the same center, but they all have their beauties, their joys, their rejoicings.

So when people from Goenka came to me, they became aware that there are one hundred and twelve methods, so why be poor and just have one method? Why not be rich? I am all for richness in every dimension of life. Those sannyasins are still here.

In a newspaper Goenka has given an interview in which he talks about me, and says that I had gone to him to learn vipassana. I have not even seen his picture - and he says in the interview that he has taught me vipassana!

He must have thought that now that I have gone out of India, this small third-class weekly in which he is giving his interview is not going to reach me. Everything that is concerned with me is bound to reach me from all the countries, because everywhere my people are there, alert.

Now I feel sad that I allowed my sannyasins to go to this man. Perhaps he knows the method; he has been in Burma as a businessman, and in Burma vipassana is practiced just as in other religions people do prayer. It is a common thing, and the method is very simple. You need not do it, but you can be acquainted with the method.

Now it is absolutely clear that this man has never done what he has been teaching. A man who knows meditation will not lie so blatantly. I have never met him! In fact, before he came to India I was teaching meditation to people. My first book was published in 1960 when he was still in Burma, and nobody knew about him. And my first book is about vipassana!

I have not used the name vipassana because vipassana is a word from a dead language, Pali.

Nobody speaks it. It was used in Buddha's time, and when Buddhism disappeared from India, Pali - the language of the Buddhists - also disappeared.

Vipassana simply means witnessing. And that has been my whole life's effort: to teach you awareness, witnessing, alertness, consciousness. I am using contemporary words.

And now this man says that he is my master, he taught me vipassana. One thing is absolutely certain: this man knows only the method, but he has never practiced it. And I feel sad that I allowed my people to go to him. But sometimes it is possible... the man may not have gone into meditation himself, but if he knows the method accurately, you may enter into meditation. The disciple may arrive when the master has not even started the journey.

But it is absolutely impossible to lie! That's why I say when a person goes deep into meditation - and that's what I will tell pope the polack if he accepts my challenge....

We will give him every facility, we will make him as comfortable as he has never been. We will surround him with as many beautiful women as he may have been dreaming to have in paradise.

But he will have to go into meditation, and only then can he be in an argument with me.

If he does not succeed, then he is not qualified to argue with me. If he succeeds, I am already victorious because he will have to say humbly, "I was living in fictions," and he will be grateful for his whole life for the taste of reality.

Scientists perhaps may not dare to enter into the religious field, because there will be political pressure on them. All the scientists are employed by governments now, and all the governments depend on religious support - it is a very complicated game.

Now, the Indian government will not allow any scientist to trespass into the area which has always been that of priests, prophets, messiahs. And scientists are all government servants. Science has become so complex and so costly that no individual can afford to have a lab of his own. He needs immense support from governments: he is just a slave.

The politician is going to prevent him from entering into the arena of religion because the priest is there, and if the priest is not listened to by the politician, then in the next election the politician will be gone. So I don't expect that scientists will have guts enough now.

But we can do it; we are nobody's servants.

We are not interested in anybody's votes. We are not ambitious to become presidents or prime ministers.

We are so contented in ourselves, so utterly happy with ourselves that nobody can pressure us or dominate us. We can do anything that we want to do.

And the scientific methodology is simple. For objective exploration science needs billions of dollars, but for inner exploration you don't need even a single dollar. So there is no problem at all. Meditation is individual, and does not depend on anybody's support.

Doubt all the dogmas, because doubt is just like a sharp sword. Cut all the ideologies from the very roots. Use doubt for clearing the ground, and then use any method of meditation. You can choose from one hundred and twelve methods.

This is for the first time that anybody is making one hundred and twelve methods available to his disciples. Buddha had one method, Mahavira had one method, Lao Tzu had one method, Patanjali had one method.

I am not a man who is linear; I am multi-dimensional.

Those single methods were enough for self-realization, but if you move through different methods, you will come across different spaces, different wonders, different experiences, different flavors, fragrances.

But perhaps you may not be able to do all the methods. Then look into the methods and choose ones that you feel have a certain attraction for you. Even if you can manage ten methods, you will be ten times richer than Gautam Buddha!

I have tried all one hundred and twelve methods. Hence I can say I am both the poorest man on the earth, with not a single cent, and the richest man who has ever existed - because I have seen myself from every possible path. And each path had its own richness, its own music, its own poetry, its own colors.

I would like you to try as many methods as possible. But whenever you do a method, go to the very end. Don't start changing from one method to another unless you have reached to the very end.

And it is something to be remembered, that if you can manage to reach your inner self through one method, the other one hundred and eleven methods will become very easy to you, because now you know exactly where you are going. And now you can go with a deep trust - which was missing in the first method. Now you can avoid all the mistakes that you made in the first method. You can avoid all the pitfalls which prevented you, delayed you in reaching your own self.

Once you have done at least three methods, then you can move easily in all the remaining methods.

You will be surprised - no mistake, no pitfall, no disturbance, just... (HE SNAPS HIS FINGERS) like a click! Any method you start and you are at the end. You have passed through the whole scene with jet-speed.

Yes, science has to be religious.

If it is not going to be religious, then it is going to be in the service of politics, in the service of war, in the service of death.

If science becomes religious, then it will be in the service of life, in the service of love, in the service of rejoicings.