Cut the roots of guilt

Question 1:

The religions of the world have done so much harm to human beings that it is incalculable.

The greatest wound they have created in the human spirit is schizophrenia. They have put man against himself. They have created a rift in you, a split.

Their conditioning is that you have to fight with yourself, you have to be victorious over yourself. And nobody has said that it is simply madness. You are one! Who is going to be victorious, who is going to be defeated? But the division has been done very cunningly, very cleverly.

Do you see these two hands, the right and the left? Religions have created such a division that right is always right - and left, of course, is wrong. And both the hands are so deeply together inside you.

You may not have imagined it, but your left hand is connected with your right mind, and your right hand is connected with your left mind.

Now, if the right hand is right, then your left mind is right - it is the extension of the left mind. But religions are condemning all leftist efforts. If your left hand is wrong, then your right mind is wrong; and all the religions are emphasizing the right mind. So the split is complicated - but anything is possible if it is repeated for thousands of years.

Nikos Kazantzakis represents you - each human being. He was a rare man, but a victim of the whole past. He was a very sensitive man - that's why the split became very clear; a very intelligent man, he could see he was divided. That created great inner torture for him.

To be divided against yourself is hell, fighting with yourself is continuous torture. You want to do something - that is one part of you - and the second part says, "No, you cannot do it. It is sin."

How can you be at peace with yourself? And one who is not at peace with himself cannot be at peace with society, with culture, and finally with existence. The individual is the very brick of the whole existence.

It is very significant to understand Nikos Kazantzakis. He was a Greek, and the Greeks have always been very much body-oriented. The whole history of Greece is full of love for your own body.

Do you know that the woman in Greece was not thought to be beautiful? Just as everywhere else men managed and dominated societies, Greece was also male chauvinist, but with a difference.

Women have been condemned everywhere, but not as much as in Greece. All Greek statues are of men. The whole sculpture is devoted to the beauty of the male body.

You are bound to be surprised that this caused even people like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle - the highest you can conceive in intelligence - to become homosexuals. If a man loves his body, naturally he will love another man's body. The woman is so condemned that she is almost treated as subhuman. In Athens perhaps democracy has flowered the best, but it was only for men; women had no votes.

Nikos Kazantzakis represents both the things. One is his Greek mind, which is self-loving, materialist. In the West only Greece has produced materialistic philosophies, and Epicurus is the peak. So his Greek mind is Zorba - that's why he calls his book ZORBA THE GREEK.

But Christianity contaminated the whole Greek mind. Jesus never knew the word 'Christ', never knew the word 'Christian'. These are Greek words and Jesus was not acquainted with Greek, not even with Hebrew. He spoke the language of the common masses. Hebrew was the language of the priests, rabbis - the common people spoke Aramaic, which is an unrefined form of Hebrew. He used the word 'messiah' which becomes 'Christ' in Greek, and the followers become "Christians."

Jesus influenced the Greek mind tremendously, for the simple reason that they were leaning too much toward the material - they were not balanced people. They thought themselves only bodies; the soul was just an invention. But man is not only body.

The Greeks had no religion, and Christianity filled the vacuum. The Greek personality became split.

The Greek is materialistic, Epicurean - loves the body, loves good food, good wine, beautiful women, beautiful men - and is not concerned at all what happens after death. According to Epicurus you die with your death, nothing happens afterwards. There is nothing after death, there is nothing before birth. You are an accident, without any planning - a small lifespan of seventy years. Don't waste it, enjoy.

Nikos is half Greek and half Christian. He cannot intelligently deny that there is something more to you than your physiology. He cannot deny his mind, he cannot deny even the witness of the mind - which are not physiological phenomena.

That was his continuous torture. He was one of the most tortured artists of contemporary life - one of the best, but that is the curse. When you have the best intelligence, you want to become one organic whole. The idiots don't get into self-torture - they don't think at all. Torture needs thinking.

Nikos is torn apart - his Greek heritage is materialist and his Christianity is anti-materialist. He cannot live as a materialist because his Christianity is continuously condemning him. He cannot live as a Christian because that is only an idea, his reality is his Greek heritage. He is pulled apart - that is his torture, continuously.

And the man who goes through self-torture automatically becomes guilty.

The greatest guilt Nikos feels is against his own life. Whatever he does is wrong. If he follow his materialist tendencies, the Christian is there to condemn him, to send him to hell. If he tries to be a Christian, his Greek heritage is against it. He cannot do anything, he is in a fix.

A sensitive man, an intelligent man is bound to feel guilty, that he is wasting his life fighting with himself. The man of guilt is of course obsessed with death - because he is not living and death is coming closer and closer every moment. Perhaps he may not be able to live - and death will finish him.

A man who is living totally never bothers about death.

His life is so full, death cannot even touch him.

Death will come only to the body, not to him.

He knows his inner organic consciousness.

That was impossible for Nikos to know. He was obsessed with death, continuously afraid of death.

He has not lived yet and death can come any moment.

And there is a logic, a logical corollary: self-torture, guilt, obsession with death, all three together create the ultimate obsession of man - religion. Somehow he has to keep himself together - he is falling apart. Religion gives him at least a certain kind of solace, religion gives him a certain integrity.

But the man of intelligence cannot be religious either. His sensitivity is so clear that he cannot believe in a god whom he has not known. He cannot believe in heaven and hell, which are mere words. He cannot see in society that the people who are committing evil acts are punished, or the people who are simple, innocent, good are rewarded. How can he believe that his good actions are going to be rewarded after life - why not now?

Why do the cause and effect have to be so separated? They cannot be separated. Any intellectual can see the point, that cause and effect are joined together - they are two sides of the same coin.

There is no reason at all why, if you commit evil here, you will be punished after death.

Religions had to invent this fiction because the question was significant. Everybody was asking, "If evil acts are punished... we don't see that happening."

All kinds of criminals become presidents, prime ministers, world-famous people; and the simple and the innocent and the good live as if they are not there - no recognition. They die poor, they die in indignity, they die as if they had never been here. No account is going to be kept of them.

You have your history about Genghis Khan, Nadirshah, Tamerlane, Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Ayatollah Khomeiniac - these are your great people!

The good, the silent, the people who have not done any harm to anybody, who have never interfered in anybody's life, are simply forgotten. Nobody will ever know their names. Whether they existed or not makes no difference to your history.

Any intelligent person can see the device of religions. Here we see that the people who are exploiting, sucking blood, are rich. And the people who are making beautiful skyscrapers are sleeping on the street.

Not only that, you will be surprised... Shahjehan, one of India's great emperors, made the Taj Mahal in the memory of his dead wife, Mumtaz Mahal. He brought craftsmen, artists, sculptors, from all over the known world. He paid them immensely. He wanted his wife's memorial to be unique and to be the best in the whole world.

He had many wives. Mumtaz was fortunate to die first. She was not the one and only one he loved; he had a whole harem, women like cattle. It was not really in memory of Mumtaz; it was his ego being projected through Mumtaz.

It took almost twenty years to make the Taj Mahal. Ten thousand workers worked for twenty years continuously. Those who had come had died; their sons were working. There were even a few who were the third generation because the old man who had come to work died, his son died, and his son's son was working.

By the time the Taj Mahal was completed, what was the reward of all those poor people who had put all their energy, all their art into it? And certainly they had created the most unique memorial that exists on the earth. Their reward was: their hands were cut off. Ten thousand people get the reward, for creating a unique memorial, that their hands are cut off.

Shahjehan's reason was clear. He said, "These people can create another Taj Mahal better than this, and that I am not going to allow. The only way to prevent these people is to cut off their hands."

This is the world that you experience, where the good are suffering, where the bad are on the top.

Religion had to find a device; otherwise religion cannot hold the idea that goodness is rewarded and evil is punished. This was the device: every reward and punishment is after death.

All the religions agree on that point. They had to!... because anybody who has eyes can see that good is not rewarded. We have not yet been able to create a society where good is rewarded. We have not created a civilization yet where evil is necessarily punished.

Nikos was a very troubled soul - whether to follow his materialist tendencies, which were natural to him, or to follow the ideology that Christianity preaches, which was just a superficial mind thing. He could not follow it; but he could not follow his natural instincts either. He was stuck. And death was approaching closer and closer. Naturally he became obsessed with religion. Religion became the shelter.

Religion has been the shelter of the sick, it has been the shelter of the schizophrenic, it has been the shelter of the perverted - it has been the shelter for all those who are suffering because of it!

This is a very strange thing.

First religion makes you feel guilty. That is the basic ground. Once you feel guilty... and how will you feel guilty? If you are split you will feel guilty. Whatever you do does not matter; you will feel guilty. If you follow the mind your whole nature will condemn you. If you follow nature your mind will condemn you. Whatever you do, one thing is certain - you will feel guilty. If you don't do anything then you will feel doubly guilty.

And once guilt is created in your psychology, religion offers you solace: "Blessed are those who mourn, because they shall be comforted." First create the mourning and then comfort.

I have heard of two brothers who had a business. They were partners in it, but their work was different. One brother would go into a city in the night and throw coal tar on people's doors, walls, glasses, windows; whatever he could manage, he would paint it with coal tar. And next day the other brother would come into the town, shouting loudly, "Does anybody want coal tar removed?" It was a good business! His partner had done the basic groundwork.

Everybody would rush to the man, "Come to our house. All our windows, all our doors are destroyed.

Who has done it we don't know, but that is not the point. Clean it off."

While he was cleaning in one city, the other brother was doing the basic work in another city. They were partners - whatever the brother got who was cleaning was divided half and half - and they were doing great business.

Religion first creates guilt.

That is absolutely necessary for the existence of religion. A person who is not guilty takes no note of religion.

A man like me has nothing to do with religion.

It cannot offer me anything.

I don't have any guilt, I have never repented for doing anything.

Whatsoever I have done I have done with my total being. I have not left a small corner in me which was condemning it while I was doing it, because that condemning part will become my guilt.

Christianity has used this more than any other religion; naturally, Christianity is the biggest religion in the world. It has functioned very scientifically. It does not allow you even to keep your guilt to yourself - particularly the Catholics, who are the original Christians. You have to confess to the priest, you should not keep your guilt to yourself.

Why this confession to the priest? The strategy is complex. They say if you confess it to the priest, you are relieved of it. Now it is the priest's responsibility to persuade God to forgive you. You are forgiven - but the other side of this is all bogus. The priest knows no God, knows no way to persuade him. But he becomes aware of everybody's crimes, sins - rape, theft, homosexuality, AIDS. He becomes aware of everything - that is his power over you. You cannot leave the Catholic religion.

You can leave Hinduism very easily; there is no problem because the Hindu priest knows nothing about you. But the Catholic priest has a whole file against you, he can expose you. He can inform the government, he can inform the authorities, he can inform the medical board that "This man has AIDS."

They have used guilt really well. Create guilt - that makes man tremble, that he will suffer in hell.

He is guilty, he is a sinner. In every sermon, in every church around the world, they are consistently condemning you, calling you sinners. You are born in sin. Whether you do any sin or not does not matter, because there are people who may not be doing sin and may not come to confess - and they may not feel guilty either, but they cannot be left alone. They are born in sin! It is not a question of your doing; Adam and Eve have already done for it you!

Fictions upon fictions, lies following lies....

Naturally Nikos was very much obsessed with religion.

The question is how he managed to create one of the greatest art works, ZORBA THE BUDDHA...

the greek. He could create it because it was one of his sides, which he had neglected, ignored, repressed.

ZORBA THE GREEK is Nikos repressed. He allows in the novel his repressed part to have full expression. And Zorba is so beautiful.... Expressiveness is always beautiful; repression is always ugly. Yes, Zorba is one of his basic parts. He had to give it a reality. He could not live it - but at least he could write it.

This is a common factor... if you read beautiful poetry about love, remember one thing: this man who has written this love poetry has not known love. It is his neglected, repressed part.

People who love don't have time for poetry.

Just the other day one beautiful woman was asking me, "How many girlfriends do you have?"

I said, "It is is a little bit difficult to count. I have girlfriends all around the world."

She was shocked, but she had to wait for a bigger shock. I said, "You can also be part. You can be my girlfriend - why bother about others?"

And I know she loved it! She smiled, her eyes became wide - she enjoyed even the idea. I must have gone into her dream last night! I told her, "You will not be coming into my sleep because I have said what I had to say, I have not repressed it. Nobody else would have told you this."

She was taking my interview for a magazine. Now, when somebody is taking your interview you are not supposed to say such things. You have to hide them, you have to go round about.

Politicians continuously answer something else, something that you have not asked. Or, if you are too persistent they say, "No comment." Of course, an individual has the right not to comment on anything if he does not want to comment. And those are the points which should be searched well, where he says, "No comment." That is his real personality.

What the politician answers is not his reality. When he is answering, he is taking note of the audience, the readers, the people who will come to know about the statement - what they will think about him. He is not answering the question, he is promoting himself.

But I told her, "One thing is certain, you cannot come into my dreams. I don't dream, because whatever I want to do, I do it! I don't care even if the whole world is against it. For example, you cannot find a single man in the whole world who is for my ninety Rolls Royces. Do you think you can find anyone? Nobody! But whatever I want to do, I will do. At least Rolls Royces don't come into my dreams. That is the last thing!"

Nikos suffered very much. He was a world-famous writer. He has written beautiful novels of tremendous importance, of great meaning. He was not confessing to a priest; he confessed in his own way. Nobody will think that ZORBA THE GREEK is his confession. This is what he has been repressing, this is what has been continuously hammering him: "You have to do it." He makes an individual, Zorba; he gives him reality, blood and flesh, and allows him to do everything that he has not allowed himself.

Zorba the Greek is not a Christian. Zorba the Greek has nothing to do with churches. Zorba the Greek is a very practical, pragmatic, natural human being.

He loves a woman, Bubbalina. She is not very beautiful, she is not very young, but Zorba and his master - that master is Nikos Kazantzakis, nobody else - they are working in a small village on some project. In that small village it is very difficult to find a beautiful woman available. His master - that is Nikos - asks him, "What do you see in this woman?"

He said, "I close my eyes when I meet her; I put the light off. But that is the only woman available - what to do? I have to make the best of whatever is available. If one food is not available, you have to eat something else. You may not like it so much, but you cannot remain hungry."

Zorba dances, plays on his musical instrument. Nikos just looks from his cabin, and cannot believe it - what has this man got that he is so happy? A poor man, a servant to Nikos - but every night in the sands by the side of the river where they live, he is dancing alone, singing alone.

Nikos asked him, "Zorba, what have you got that makes you dance and sing?" Nikos was not aware what the answer will be.

Zorba said, "This is strange! Dance is an end in itself. You don't have to have something else in order to dance. You don't need something first, to sing or to play on your musical instrument. If I were waiting for some great thing to happen to me, that I will dance when I am in the White House...."

In fact, I have not heard that any president in the White House has danced or played on the guitar and sang. Have you heard of any president, any prime minister dancing, anybody who is in some top post? No, he becomes serious - Jesus Christ crucified, crucified in the White House.

Zorba says one very significant thing to his master, "Boss, only one thing is wrong in you. You take things too seriously! Life is a playfulness, and you are too serious." And he drags the boss to the side of the river. And the boss is reluctant, he is saying, "What are you doing?" But Zorba is a strong man. The boss, self-tortured, feeling guilty - what to do, what not to do, to be or not to be - has no strength.

Zorba drags him, and he says, "You just follow me." He plays on his instrument, he starts dancing, and he says to the boss, "You start!"

The boss says, "But I don't know how to dance."

He says, "Dance has nothing to do with knowing. Can't you jump up and down? Do whatever you feel. The dance will come on its own. You just come out of your seriousness!"

In that night, in that aloneness, in that isolated spot Nikos follows Zorba and cannot believe that he is dancing, cannot believe that his dance is becoming more and more intense, cannot believe that so much dance is hidden in him. He starts singing!

And Zorba says, "Look Boss, what have you got? Why are you dancing? Why are you singing? Life is to dance! Life is to sing! Life is to love! And all serious things you can do in your grave, because there will be no disturbance. You can think great thoughts: God, heaven, hell - whatever you want.

But at least don't miss life! You will be eternally in the grave with enough time!"

Zorba is a fictitious character - but not absolutely fictitious. Nikos knew a man who gave him the idea of ZORBA THE GREEK. And he presented his first copy to the man, who could recognize himself immediately. And he wrote to Nikos, "Your Zorba is nobody but me!"

And this man died far away, somewhere in Poland. But he wrote a letter before he died: "I never knew myself. Your ZORBA THE GREEK has made me aware of all that I am. I am immensely grateful." So there was a real man too. But Nikos is projecting that real man on a fictitious character.

That too is not fictitious, that is his own repressed part. It is a kind of psychoanalysis.

What do you do in psychoanalysis? You lie down on the couch, and the psychologist is sitting behind you so you cannot see him - because if somebody is watching you, you may not open up, you may not reveal things. Resting on the couch, paying hundreds of dollars for one hour, naturally you think it is better to do something. And you start saying things which you have not even been aware are within you.

Psychoanalysis helps people, it helps them to become aware of their repressed part. And awareness has a magical power: of anything you become aware of, its grip, its power over you is finished. You are no more in bondage to it.

Nikos Kazantzakis is really doing a very psychological thing. He is writing ZORBA THE BUDDH...

the GREEK... Forgive me, because to me, Zorba is always the BUDDHA.

That is my state. In me Zorba is not Greek, in me Zorba is the Buddha. So please forgive me, because I go on saying ZORBA THE BUDDHA while I am supposed to say ZORBA THE GREEK!

But it is natural for me. Zorba the Greek is absolutely a stranger to me. Zorba the Buddha is my experience. But for Nikos, poor Nikos, ZORBA THE GREEK was the reality.

He has written books like CHRIST RECRUCIFIED: they are also his mind projections. He lived his whole life on a cross, because he did not allow the Zorba his nature. He was bound to be on the cross, suffering. He has projected that too in another novel.

All his novels together are in some way or other a tremendous experiment in self-analysis. But the best part in him is Zorba - which he missed. Hence, he suffered. Hence, he felt guilty. Hence, he became obsessed with religion, obsessed with death.

I hope this does not happen to you. It is happening to everybody all over the world. Almost every person is split - for such silly and stupid things you cannot believe.

You will not allow a saint just a little bit of smoking? No, saints are not allowed to do that. But once in a while it is really playful, making rings of smoke. There is no sin involved in it.

You will not allow your saints to have marijuana - just a little bit? He will lose his sainthood and he will be put into jail. But what is wrong in marijuana? I don't see that he is harming anybody, and a little bit of marijuana may do some good to him. At least in those moments he will not be a hypocrite.

This has been my experience in India, because in my childhood days in India no drug was prohibited, and particularly those in the same family as marijuana. In India it is called bhang, but it is the same family and the same drug. At each festival, on each festive occasion, in marriages bhang is used, and I have watched - people under the influence of bhang are so real, so authentic....

I have seen one of my principals shouting four-letter words. We had never known that part of him, and when we told him later on, he said, "You must be joking! I cannot use such words."

But I said, "I have collected many eyewitnesses - I knew that you would say this to me. They are waiting outside."

He looked through the window, there were ten other people standing whom I had collected. He said, "Disperse them.!You are right; somehow a vague memory is still with me. I have used those words you are mentioning, but I have always been repressing them."

This was a good experience, to know some repressed part, to become aware of it. Through awareness it can be dropped.

In Eastern religions, for thousands of years drugs have been used just to make you aware that you are not your personality that you go on projecting in the world, that you are much more. The personality is just the tip of the iceberg. Deeper down is your bigger reality - nine times more than your conscious mind.

Drugs can certainly be used to make people psychologically healthy. They can be used to make people again one, to destroy their split. What psychoanalysis does in three, five, seven years with thousands of dollars wasted, thousands of hours wasted, drugs can do within hours. But religions are against them. Politicians are against them. Governments are against them.

Why so much antagonism? I can understand there may be some bad side effects, but we have so much scientific knowledge today that all those elements which have bad side effects can be removed from the drugs. Rather than forcing millions of people into jails around the world, rather than wasting money on all these prisoners, the better and wiser way will be to give the money and the project to the scientists. LSD can be more purified, can be more ecstatic, without having any side effects. But nobody is ready to do it.

Why are they not ready to do it? The governments are afraid that if people are not split, they will have so much energy that they will not be controllable. To enslave a split person is easy, because he is fighting with himself; he has no time to fight with anybody else.

Politicians don't want you to become one.

Religions don't want you to become one because if you become one, who is going to be guilty?

Who is going to confess to the priest? Who is going to bother about God and church and all kinds of nonsense? No, they want you to remain psychologically split. They want you to remain in this sickness where only guilt arises. But guilt leads you to religion, to God, to prayer.

To cut the roots of guilt is to destroy all hocus-pocus religions which are dominating man.

Nikos Kazantzakis has made a tremendous contribution by revealing himself in many novels. From ZORBA THE BUDDHA... now I cannot even ask your forgiveness! So please, be kind... from ZORBA THE GREEK to CHRIST RECRUCIFIED - between these two novels there are other novels - but these two are the polarities. He was continuously obsessed with Jesus, Christianity, God - and simultaneously afraid of death. The man never lived.

He was here - and what a man, of tremendous potential. All that he needed was a meditative consciousness - that could make the split disappear. Yes, there would have been a loss; he would not have written ZORBA THE GREEK, he would not have written CHRIST RECRUCIFIED. But I think it is worth risking - he would have lived!

All these novels are from a person who has not lived. Perhaps if he had lived he would have created something... what I call Zorba the Buddha.

That's what I am writing! - in your hearts, because I don't believe in writing in books. That's what each of my sannyasins will be carrying in his heart. That is the right soil for Zorba the Buddha to grow; hence my insistence that you should not renounce Zorba.

If you renounce Zorba you can never become the Buddha.

It is your Zorba, accepted with respect, love, dignity, that is going to grow slowly slowly into the Buddha.

The Buddha is the peak.

The Zorba is the foundation.

They cannot exist separately; both are incomplete.

Gautam the Buddha is incomplete. He has the whole upper structure without foundations. So it is not a coincidence that his religion died with him and everything disappeared within a few centuries.

Just three hundred years after Buddha's death Alexander reached India, but he could not find a man who could even come close to the idea of Buddha that he had heard resounding all over the world.

Alexander also was Greek, by chance. He was seeking a Buddha, but he could not find one. There were statues - thousands in number - but not a single man. What happened?

Gautam Buddha is perhaps the most religious man in the whole history of man. But what happened?

Why did everything fall apart the moment he was not there? The reason is, there was no foundation.

The structure was without foundation, it was going to fall apart any moment.

Buddha is incomplete. It hurts me to say that, but now I have decided to say everything, whether it hurts me, or hurts you, or hurts anybody - I don't care. The truth has to be stated, naked.

Zorba - you can find many around the world, but they are incomplete. They are just eating, drinking, merrying; but life is much more. The Zorba is like the foundation, but the palace has never been raised upon those foundations.

I mentioned Shahjehan, who made the Taj Mahal in memory of one of his wives. He was also making another memorial for himself. On one side of the river Yamuna - a beautiful place - he had raised the Taj Mahal. But it took twenty years. Exactly on the other side - you can see from Taj Mahal to the other side - he was making another memorial, so that when he died the memorial would be ready. He knew that his sons would not be so interested in making the memorial, which was to be better than the Taj Mahal.

The Taj Mahal had taken so much energy, so much money, that his successor was not going to bother about another memorial. So he was making it himself.

The Taj Mahal is made of white marble; he was making his memorial with black marble. But he died; only the foundations are there. And he was right, his sons did not bother to make a memorial for their father. They buried him just within the foundations.

Every Zorba is only the foundations. But foundations cannot have any meaning; their whole meaning is in the palace that is going to be raised upon them.

Both types have existed in the world, but separately - that is the misery of the whole humanity.

My effort is to make Zorba and Buddha meet together, be one. That is my vision of the new man - psychologically healthy with no split personality, with no garbage about guilt, sin, God.

Zorba the Buddha will not go to any temple, to any mosque, to any gurudwara to worship, to pray.

His whole life will be a worship. All his acts will be his prayer.

Whatever he does will be his art, will be his painting, his poetry, will be his sculpture.

Each movement of an integrated human being is going to have tremendous beauty and fragrance.

Nikos Kazantzakis could have become Zorba the Buddha. I feel sorry for the man; he had the potential, but Christianity destroyed him.

Christianity has destroyed thousands of people.

Other religions are also doing the same on a smaller scale, but Christianity is committing crimes on a mass scale.

Question 2:

He is right. Although he is senile, still he is right.

To accept a guru means now you will be only a shadow. You have lost your independence of inquiry.

That's why I insist continuously that you are not my followers; you are my friends, my fellow travelers.

And Krishnamurti knows this, but still he goes on saying things. Now this whole reference is about sannyasins, but he does not understand that this is not the sannyas that he has been accustomed to know in India. Just the name is the same; otherwise, my sannyasins are absolutely opposite to all the sannyasins that have existed before or are still existing in other religions.

Your robe, your mala, your locket, are all non-serious. There is no seriousness about it, it is just playful. Any day I can say to you, "Go to the river and throw all the malas and all the dresses; they have served their function." Whenever I feel that now there is no need....

You are not a sannyasin who has renounced the world. You are a sannyasin who is rejoicing in the world. Krishnamurti cannot make the distinction, which is so great. Renouncing existence, renouncing life, renouncing love; and rejoicing in existence, rejoicing in love, rejoicing in life, are polar opposites.

You can ask me then, why I have chosen the name sannyas.

I have chosen the name sannyas because the past history of sannyas can be destroyed only in this way.

Now in India particularly, where other religions have their sannyasins in the same color, in the same robe, they are finding it difficult. My sannyasins are moving hand in hand with their girlfriends, and Indians are shocked. Sannyasins?

One of my sannyasins who lives near Bombay and commutes every day to Bombay and back, took sannyas. After the second day or third day he came and told me, "You will have to give sannyas to my wife too."

I said, "Why?"

He said, "Why? People will kill me! Yesterday they caught hold of me on the railway station and a crowd gathered. And they said, 'Whose wife is this? This sannyasin seems to be escaping with somebody else's wife' - because sannyasins are not supposed to have wives. I tried hard to explain to them that this is not the old sannyas. They said, 'There is only one sannyas, there are not many sannyases. Don't try to deceive us. You have to come with us to the police station.'"

He said, "I had to go to the police station. Fortunately the inspector knew me, and he said, 'She is his wife, and this sannyas is absolutely non-serious. Don't be bothered about it.'"

So he said, "It would be good if you give her sannyas also so no problem arises, because anywhere we can be caught. It was good that I was caught at the station where I live, so the inspector knew me."

I gave sannyas to his wife. Two, three days afterwards, he was again there with his wife. He said, "Now give sannyas to my son, because yesterday in the train it became a trouble."

It is a well-known fact in India, and a certainty, that many people go on stealing children from other people. Then they cripple them, blind them, and make them beggars, and whatsoever they earn comes to the man who is doing this business. Beggary in India is now a very strange phenomenon.

The blind man to whom you are giving money will not get it - he will get only food enough to live. All the money will go to the boss who is running the whole factory where he creates crippled people.

"So the crowd," he said, "caught us both and they said, 'They are stealing somebody's child!' We tried hard to convince them that it is our own child.

"They said, 'YOUR child? Sannyasins have to be celibate. We cannot believe it. In the first place, this is wrong, that you are moving with a woman sannyasin. Woman sannyasins have to move separately from man sannyasins. And not only are you moving with a woman, you are moving with a child. This child is not yours.'"

He said, "It was so difficult. Just because the child was not too small he said, 'They are my father and mother and they are not stealing anybody!' Because he spoke we were saved. But please, give sannyas to him also, so there will be no problem left."

I wanted the old idea of seriousness, which has dominated sannyas for thousands of years, to be completely eradicated. And the meaning that has been given to sannyas has to be completely changed - from renouncing, it has to become rejoicing.

Krishnamurti is aware of this but has not guts to say it - that this sannyas makes nobody dependent on me, that this sannyas simply makes you free from all kinds of seriousness that has been part of being religious.

As far as the old sannyasins are concerned, he is perfectly right. But he is not saying those sentences to old sannyasins. That statement is made to my sannyasins; because I have told all the sannyasins belonging to the places where Krishnamurti visits, "Go and sit in front of him."

In India he goes to Delhi, Bombay and Madras. I have told my sannyasins there, "Don't miss that opportunity. Wear the reddest clothes possible, with the mala perfectly visible to him, and sit in the front row."

And the poor old man cannot see the point - why in every place in India are sannyasins always sitting in the first row? And he becomes so annoyed - he is a very serious man and he is a very angry man too. Serious people are angry people. He gets annoyed very easily, irritated very easily. So seeing my sannyasins in the front row, he forgets what he was going to say; he starts condemning my sannyasins. And I have told my people, "Laugh as loudly as you can!"

He has remained just one step away from enlightenment and now there seems to be no hope.

Otherwise an enlightened person does not bother who is sitting in front, who is sitting at the back, who is wearing red, who is wearing blue; he says what he wants to say. He opens his heart.

But Krishnamurti completely forgets what he had come there for, he starts condemning me and sannyasins. And if he is so interested in my sannyasins and in me, then he should come here and see. Have you seen sannyasins in a disco? Have you seen sannyasins playing cards, gambling?

Have you seen sannyasins on the street hugging their girlfriends, boyfriends, so much absorbed in each other that even while I pass by the side they don't know about me? Do you think I am their guru?

I am nobody's guru, and nobody is my follower. I hate the word 'follower'! I hate the words 'leader', 'guru'. All these are just hangups from the past, the rotten past. I am not your guru.

So if you happen into a place where Krishnamurti is speaking, don't forget: sit in the front row, find the reddest clothes possible, and enjoy his irritation, because the moment you enjoy, he becomes more irritated. Laugh and clap - when he condemns me clap and laugh. Make him confused...

"What is the matter with these people? I am speaking against them and they laugh and they clap. I am speaking against their guru and they are enjoying."

And then in the end, stand up - because he has two parts to his speeches. First he speaks, then he asks people for questions. When he has spoken and he asks for questions, then stand up and tell him, "Whatever you are saying about sannyasins does not apply to us. And if you are so interested, then come to our place.

"We respect you, we love you, we have named our lake 'Krishnamurti Lake'. And we feel sad and sorry also for you - because this is not the way of an enlightened man to behave in such a way, to be so irritated, so angry. You never laugh, you never smile. You seem to be hanging exactly like Jesus Christ on the cross.

"And you completely forget that there are other people who have come to listen to you - you are speaking only to ten, twelve sannyasins. Come to our world capital, just visit our place and you will know that our red clothes mean nothing, that our malas are just to irritate people like you."

My secretary told me, "On television, what they do is, they cut your locket our of the picture." When they are taking her interview they just go on cutting off the locket. They take her face, but don't allow the locket to show.

I said, "Don't be worried. Start wearing a cap and put a locket on your head."

She said, "What about the other locket? Because - two lockets?"

I said, "That is even better! Now let them cut whatever they want to cut. If they cut off the top one, the lower one will show. If they cut off the lower one, the top one will show." And that's what is happening now.

Those lockets, those colored robes, are just to irritate people because that is the best way to let them think about what is happening here.

So stand up when the question period comes and ask him, "What do you know about our sannyas?"

Ask him, "You don't wear the red robe, true, but how many girlfriends do you have? Our master says that he has so many he cannot give a record of them. How many hours do you sleep? Our master sleeps eleven hours. How many Rolls Royces do you have? How many discos have you opened, where people can dance and sing and love and enjoy? How many restaurants you have opened?

How many communes exist where your people live together?"

Not a single commune has he been able to create in his whole life. And he is such a serious man that he cannot of conceive discos, dances, of people easily changing their partners without any difficulty, without any trouble.

Just tell him, "Come to our world capital and you will understand. Perhaps you may become a sannyasin! You are missing just by one step. And you cannot take that one step without becoming a sannyasin, because for ninety years you have been stuck there, glued. Somebody is needed to push you into the lake. And it will be the best thing that you are pushed into the lake which is known as 'Krishnamurti Lake.' Then the name will become absolutely significant, meaningful."

His whole life he has wasted, struggling with ghosts. He had gurus from his childhood up to his twenty-fifth year - and many gurus, not one. And he is against them because they sexually abused him. He was a beautiful boy and all those gurus were homosexuals. Gurus are bound to be homosexuals - you prevent them having girlfriends, you force celibacy on them. You are expecting something unnatural.

His great guru was an Englishman, Leadbeater, who was a confirmed homosexual. And it is not that I am stating it - the case was brought to a court, a Madras court, because Krishnamurti's father came to know that his boy, who was only nine years old, was being sexually abused. So he reported it to the court and he wanted the boy to be returned to him.

But Leadbeater, Annie Besant, and all the other theosophical leaders were cunning enough - and moreover, because they were all white people, they managed to take Krishnamurti out of India, where the court's judgment would not affect him. Before the court could give the judgment that the child should be returned to his father, they had taken the child out of India. Naturally, if a child has been sexually abused by his gurus he will be against all gurus. The association in his mind with the word 'guru' is not good, it is not nice.

And for twenty-five years, those gurus.... And they were many, because somebody was teaching him Sanskrit - he had to know ancient Sanskrit because they were preparing him to be the world master. Somebody was teaching him yoga, which is simply torturing your body, distorting your body, forcing your body into unnatural situations, standing on your head.... Somebody was teaching him English because he would be the world teacher, so he had to know English perfectly well.

Somebody was not only teaching him but writing books in his name. He was twelve, thirteen years old, and his best book was written at that time: AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER.

The book was written by Leadbeater - because I have read all Leadbeater's books and I can say with absolute certainty that this book is written by the same man - the same language, the same content. Of course it is far better than his other books because he was now an experienced writer.

And they put the name of J. Krishnamurti on the book just to create the atmosphere in the world that a boy of thirteen years old who can write such a tremendously significant book must be a world teacher. The name of the book was, AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER - at the feet of the guru.

Now Krishnamurti renounces it, he says, "I don't know anything about it. I have never written it." But a thirteen-year-old child of the intelligence of J. Krishnamurti can at least remember who wrote it. He does not want to even mention Leadbeater's name because he was the one who was homosexual and who was abusing J. Krishnamurti sexually. Perhaps others were doing the same.

That anger, that irritation, still persists. That has become his barrier to enlightenment. Just one step more - and now he is too old, ninety years old. There is not much hope that in this life he will be able to take that step.

He will have to die unenlightened - and remember the law, that if you die unenlightened you have to begin another life from the very scratch. If you die enlightened then there is no other life for you - you become universal.

I feel sad and sorry for him. He wanted to meet me at a time when I was in Bombay, but he wanted me to go to his place. I said, "If he wants to meet me, he should come here. I don't want to meet him, so why should I go? I am even giving an appointment to him to meet me - that is enough, more than that you cannot expect of me. Why should I go? I have nothing to learn."

The person who had come to me was a close friend of Krishnamurti. He said, "But he is old and it looks mannerly - you are young, you should go to him."

I said, "You go back and you ask him - does he believe in old age, young age? Does he believe that the young person should necessarily respect the older person? And tell him clearly that he wants to meet me, I don't have any desire to meet him. So he should come." But the ego... he never came, and since then he has been angry with me But I don't understand: if you want to meet me, then you have to come.

And what did he wanted to meet me for? If he goes on condemning the idea of accepting somebody as your master - then what did he want to meet me for? There cannot be any other reason than to learn something... or to teach something. And what has he been doing his whole life? Even at the age of ninety he is continuously traveling; sick, old, suffering from many diseases.

For thirty years he has been suffering from headache. It is something unique. No enlightened person has suffered from headache. He may have suffered from everything else, but not from headache.

His head is so relaxed, not a single thought moves there - no traffic. Krishnamurti's headache shows that he is in the head, not in the heart.

And all these years, what has he been doing? If he says that you should not learn from others because that makes you dependent, then he should stop speaking - because that is nothing but teaching people, that is giving them ideas.

And remember, clothes can be easily thrown away. Ideas cannot be thrown away so easily. They go deep into your mind. You can drop the clothes instantly, but can you drop your ideas instantly? And that's what he has been doing - giving people ideas.

And I am telling my people that I am just one amongst you, as ordinary as you are. I am not holier than you, not higher than you. And I am not giving you a doctrine to believe in. I am simply exposing my heart, how I came to know myself. Perhaps in some way it may be of help to you.

I am teaching you to doubt, not to believe - and still that old senile man goes on criticizing me.

I am teaching you that this is not a faith, this is a scientific work. To become enlightened not through believing, but through doubt.

Doubt everybody - me included.

No guru has ever said that.

No guru can ever say it.

His whole gurudom is based on creating belief in you, faith in you.

So next time, if some sannyasin happens to be in his discourses, don't miss the opportunity. Stand up and make it clear to him that without understanding the man, without understanding his fellow travelers, without understanding the non-seriousness of the clothes and the mala, it is absolutely ungentlemanly to go on criticizing.

Invite him here. Tell him, "Once you wanted to see that man, but just because of your ego, that you are older.... Now you are even older, and death is not far away. We have made a beautiful lake for you to jump in - perhaps that may make you enlightened. Otherwise in the next life you will have to start from the very scratch.

"And who knows? - you may again get caught with some Leadbeater, because homosexuals are growing fast. So in your next life you will be born in a society with homosexuality, lesbianism, AIDS....

It is good to get enlightened in this life and be finished!"

Give him the challenge. Tell him that I am ready to discuss openly here whatever he wants to discuss.

It is not a criticism of me when he says that all these things are unimportant and nonsensical. This is a beautiful compliment to me because this is what I am saying. All these things are unimportant and nonsensical. He thinks he is criticizing me!

I have worked in such a way that nobody can criticize me, because I have not exploited anybody, I have not enslaved anybody, I have not indoctrinated anybody, I have not converted anybody. I had started my journey alone. And people started coming and joining me and the caravan became bigger and bigger. Now it is all around the earth. And it is going to become bigger and bigger.

But nobody is my follower. Nobody is going to be my successor. Each sannyasin is my representative. When I am dead, you all - individually - will have to represent me to the world.

There is not going to be any pope. There is not going to be any shankaracharya. Each sannyasin, in his own capacity, has to represent me.

This has never happened - but it is going to happen! You are all my successors.

When I am dead, that simply means I have left this body and entered all the bodies of my people.

I will be within you.

I will be part of you.

Question 3:

Just great!

But this is not a question. And I know who is asking it, because I have been seeing smoke arising, flames.... Just inform the fire department! It is none of my business. Either you go to the fire department, Maitri, or inform the fire department to come here and cool you down.

Okay?