Judgement Day - a very stupid idea

Question 1:

They will never locate heaven and hell anywhere. They are fictions, lies told to humanity to keep it enslaved, to console it in its suffering and torture, to prevent it from any revolution that could change the whole scene on the earth.

But in a certain sense, those words are significant. They are usable but only for your psychology, not for your geography.

And you know perfectly well where they are.

Everybody knows moments when he is in hell and moments when he is in heaven. These are states of the mind. Most of the time you are in hell. Once in a while, on the weekend, perhaps you have a little bit of heaven too.

That little bit of heaven is dangerous. It keeps you in hell, hoping for that little bit of heaven:

"Tomorrow it will be coming. So it is only a question of somehow passing today, and just waiting patiently for tomorrow."

Hell is the state of the mind in turmoil, in neurosis, in psychosis - split, in schizophrenia; a chaos, feeling no meaning, no purpose, and darkness all around. There are moments - you are perfectly acquainted with them: those moments are hell. It is not a reality outside you, it is what you create inside you.

And in the same way, sometimes just tired of the hell - continuous suffering, torture, you cannot take it anymore - you relax for a moment. And a little breeze, a little coolness - you have a glimpse of heaven: in your love, in your friendship, in watching a sunrise, a sunset, or in just looking at the immensity of the universe, the stars. If you can see beauty, if you can be sensitive to the delicate music of existence, you will have a few moments here and there, scattered, which you can call heaven.

But this is not what the religions have been telling you. They say there is heaven above your heads, far away in the clouds, and a hell below you, far below.

There is a problem.... In India, the hell used to be here in Oregon, deep down. If you go on digging a hole from India, it is going to end up in Oregon - that's how I ended up here. Just trying to dig a hole, suddenly I found myself in this desert. And for the Oregonians India is hell, because it is below them.

The earth is round! What is above your head? Heaven, if it existed, or hell, if it existed, would be in constant trouble, because your head is continuously moving with the earth. They would go crazy!

Hell would be trying to remain below your feet; heaven would be trying to remain above your head.

And the earth is revolving on its own center; not only that, it is also going around the sun.

No such heaven, no such hell exist.

Yuri Gagarin, the first man who went closest to the moon, who had the first close look and circled around the moon, the first question he was asked in Soviet Russia was, "Did you see God there?"

He said, "I did not see anybody." So in Moscow they have a planetarium. In golden letters on the gate of the planetarium is written, "There is no God. Yuri Gagarin has looked and He has not been found."

You can go to the farthest stars - one day man will go, but he will not find God. And you will not find anywhere heaven and hell; they have never been there.

Religions have been playing upon your greed, your fear, your tremendous need for protection.

Man is in a very precarious condition. All kinds of fear - and particularly the fear of death, sickness, disease, old age - and they go on increasing. It is not only man that is evolving; diseases go on evolving side by side. The fear of poverty, the fear of dying hungry in a street, the fear that perhaps nobody needs you - that you are just accidental, that if you are gone nobody will ever miss you....

There are layers and layers of fear in your psychology.

The priests became aware of your fear very early, in the very beginning times of humanity. They were the first psychoanalysts. And your fear can be exploited, you just have to be convinced that if you do certain things you need not fear. If you do certain other things, then certainly you will fall into even deeper and darker spaces, into hellfire.

The earth is only a place where you have to prove whether you are worthy of enjoying heaven, or you deserve hell.

They exploited your greed. Who does not want to enjoy? Who does not want to live forever? Who does not want no sickness, no old age, to be always young, fresh? They created a heaven for your greed; it is the projection of your greed. And hell is the projection of your fear.

Naturally, someone has to be in the seat of judgment; otherwise, who is going to decide where to send you? Without a judge there will be difficulties: the stronger people, although they have committed every kind of crime, may enter into heaven; simple people who have never committed any crime will have to go to hell. No, somebody has to be there with omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent powers; somebody who can see all, who can be present everywhere, who knows all, who can do everything. An absolutely powerful God is needed to decide.

And it seems to be logical. If there is going to be something like a hell and a heaven, then somebody has to be decisive, and somebody has to force you to go to the right place. So they created God.

Out of your fear and greed you accepted heaven and hell, and then you had to accept God.

In every culture, in every society, in every civilization, it is not the same God - obviously, because their psychologies differ. Their minds are conditioned differently, so their projections differ. There is a question here about the Mormons: they believe in a material God, and they also believe that God created the world out of preexisting material. Who created that material?

When you create a fiction you create many problems. If nobody asks any questions it is okay, but if somebody starts asking questions, your fiction is going to be exposed. So there are religions who believe that before God nothing existed, God created everything. Now the question arises, from where? Just out of nothing?

And if he could create out of nothing this whole universe, why did he wait so long? Christians say only four thousand and four years before Jesus Christ he created the world. So what was that dodo doing all the time for eternity? Just sitting in his rocking chair? But there is no mention of a rocking chair in any holy scripture. He must have been doing something.

Any fiction will create problems. To avoid that, Mormons say God created the world from preexisting material so he is not producing the world out of nothing. But they forget that you can patch up your fiction from one side; the hole will appear on another side. From where did this preexisting matter come? Who created it? There must be another God, bigger. But it will lead you into an infinite regress. That bigger God will also create the world and your first God out of preexisting material.

Who created that? Now you will be simply going into stupidity.

The Mormons are strange people - nice, intelligent, and still believing in such stupid things! The leader of the Mormons had seven or eight wives. If God is the creator of this whole world, at least the leader of the Mormons can create a little world out of eight wives - a big family. And that was their idea, that if all the Mormons marry many women, then sooner or later Mormons will be ruling over the world: just go on creating children.

But a strange idea, that God is a material thing.... This does not solve anything, it creates more problems. Other religions have the problem that God is a spiritual being and he creates the world - but the problem is: a spiritual being, from where does he get all this matter?

He is spiritual, just pure spirit. He cannot take out from himself any matter, but he cannot take it out from anywhere else, because that will mean the matter was already in existence. To avoid the difficulty Mormons believe God is a material thing, and now they fall into a bigger ditch: a material thing can create other material things?

Matter cannot create matter. And matter cannot be worshipped either. Matter cannot be prayed to.

What is the difference between the matter you walk upon and the matter that God is? To avoid one difficulty, they fell into another difficulty.

The other religions who think God is a spiritual being and the world is material have created a split in existence; it is not one, it is two. And that split is the cause of all human schizophrenia and suffering.

Because they believed God is separate and the world is separate, naturally that separation goes down, back to your life.

Your body is separate, your soul is separate; and you have to fight the body, destroy the body, torture the body, so that you can become a saint. The soul has to be freed from the body and bodily desires, bodily instincts.

It you look at the history of all the religions you will simply think, "Is this a history of religions, or mad people?"

There has been a Christian sect - it still exists - whose basic prayer is to beat themselves early in the morning as much as they can, till the blood starts coming out of their body - because the body is the enemy. It is the matter that is preventing them from becoming totally spiritual.

It is the body who asks for food, asks for sex, asks for a thousand and one things; and because of these desires they cannot reach desirelessness. This body has to be beaten and put right. Anybody who beats himself better than others becomes a saint, obviously - he is better in beating his body, he has more soul. He is becoming victorious over the body.

In Russia before the revolution, there was a Christian sect which used to cut off their genitals, because these are the troublemakers. But they could not see a single, simple point - that by cutting off the genitals you will not be able to get rid of your sexual mind. The real sex center exists in the mind; the genitals are only extensions of that center. Even without genitals, you will go on thinking about sex - perhaps more than ever.

But by cutting off their genitals, they became spiritual! Of course the women were not going to be left behind; they started cutting off their tits. These people were thought to be very great religious people - they were worshipped. They should be put into mental asylums. But the whole idea arises from the division of God and the world.

There is no God, so don't be afraid of the judgment day. There is never going to be any judgment day. And anyway, in twenty-four hours, just think - even if your God is absolutely powerful - how many millions of people who have lived for millennia will be gathered on one judgment day in one court? And half of them will be women, who don't care about the court or anything; they will go yakketty-yak, yakketty-yak.... An immeasurable crowd shouting for judgment!

I don't think it is manageable just in twenty-four hours to decide who is going where. Judgment day - the very idea is stupid. There will be so many files on everybody that it will take eternity for God to sort out the files. According to many religions you don't have only one life, you have millions of lives - transmigration of life. And each life - even if you think moderately it is seventy years - will have loads of files about your actions, because even the smallest action has to be counted.

According to Jainism, if you kill an ant it is recorded. Jaina monks use a mask on their nose, like the doctors do in the hospitals, because from the nose comes hot air and that hot air kills very small living beings in the air. With each breath you are killing almost one million living beings. Everything has to be counted. Even while sleeping you are committing sins.

And Jainism goes to the very logical end. It says whether you commit a sin really or you only dream about it, it makes no difference. As far as your record is concerned, it will be recorded.

Thoughts are the origin of things. If you have an idea of murder, you may not get the opportunity to materialize it, but the very idea of murder in your dream shows your mind. You are a murderer. Now, making love in your dream with somebody else's wife, which almost everybody is doing.... You don't allow it in the daytime, so the poor human mind has found a substitute. In the daytime the neighbor is sitting there with his gun, but in the night you have absolute freedom to make love to Cleopatra or anybody, even the queen of England. Even God cannot save her! In your dream, nobody can save her.

In Egypt there was one king who commanded his people, "Anybody coming into my dream will be immediately beheaded. I want silent sleep and I don't want to be disturbed." You cannot go even into his dream - and you are not going! You have nothing to do with him, it is his dream!

But many people were beheaded because once in a while somebody would show up. Most of them were women - neighbors' women. Most of them were his own court people, because you see in your dream people with whom you are in some way acquainted. Some work is incomplete; the dream completes it.

The dream is a tremendous help to you. For example, your bladder is full in the night and you are asleep. Now if you become aware of the bladder, you will have to go to the bathroom and your sleep will be disturbed. The dream is very protective - you start dreaming that you are going to the bathroom. There is no need to go anywhere, there is no need to disturb the sleep. You simply dream you are going into the bathroom and you are relaxed. The dream saved you. The disturbance in the sleep is not allowed; the dream has created a buffer.

Every dream is your dream - nobody else is responsible for it. But there are idiots of all kinds. That king killed many people. And people were at a loss - what to do? Everybody was afraid, because if somehow he appears in the king's dream, his life is finished. People stopped going any place where he could see their face, because perhaps he may remember the face in his dream and that is the end of their life.

Man has been in many ways repressed.

The body has to be repressed... in fact that's why you have dreams, because you are repressing so many desires which pop up in your dreams. If you were living your life totally and fully, without any repression, you wouldn't have any dreams. One beautiful woman journalist was just asking me, "I have heard you don't have dreams."

I said, "Certainly, I don't have dreams. For example, I love you. You can be my girlfriend."

She was shocked! She could not believe it! She enjoyed it too. She said, "But why are you saying it?"

I said, "That's why I don't have any dreams. It came to me to say it, so I said it; it is finished. You need not trouble yourself to come into my dream. But if I don't say it to you now, then you would have to come into my dream, and THEN I would say it to you.

"It is simply finished. I have said it, you have heard, you have enjoyed. You have giggled. You will never have such an interview again in your whole life! I just do the thing that I want to do, without thinking of any consequences. That's why I don't have dreams. Do you want to question me more about it?"

She said, "No!" - because this man seems to be crazy. He may start making love to me, right now, here, before the television camera! If he can say it, he can do it too! It is better to change the subject.

If you are living your life consciously, alertly, not repressing, not being against your body, you will have a tremendous silence. In your night there will be no disturbance - no dreams, just silent sleep.

And in your day you will have a very cool feeling surrounding you - no thoughts, no traffic of thoughts which keeps your head hot the whole day.

Somebody was asking me, "In India you never used to have a cap. Why have you started wearing strange caps here?"

I said to him the reason was that in India I had to keep my head open so thoughts could go out. Now I don't have any thoughts! I have to prevent other people's thoughts entering me, because they are all throwing their thoughts. I don't see anybody having a cap here! It is dangerous among so many people throwing thoughts at you. I need a shelter, and the shelter has to be thick!

Thoughts are very cunning - just a small loophole and they will enter. With much difficulty I have been able to throw my thoughts; now I don't want anybody's burden, anybody's rubbish thrown on my head.

The religions have not been beneficial to humanity. They have been committing very basic crimes, and this is one of the basic roles: to make man feel split, to make him feel his body is wrong and his soul is right.

The division is false - you are one.

Your body, your consciousness, are different only in words, in dictionaries - but not in existence.

Neither can your soul live without your body, nor can your body live without your soul. They are one, interwoven.

And from there you can understand that there is no God as a creator separate from creation.

Creativity itself is divine. Creativity itself is godliness. Once you remove God, you remove all split, all schizophrenia. And strangely enough, if you are not split you will not suffer hell. Fighting with yourself, you are destroying your life, hence you are miserable. Not fighting with your life but enjoying it, relishing it, you will be in heaven.

First, send God into nothingness forever.

He is not needed at all.

He has done enough harm. And it is only a word, it does not mean anything. And with God disappear heaven and hell; and you start living a natural, beautiful, authentic, sincere life. No religion is needed.

Medicine is needed if you are sick. The doctors will die from starvation if nobody falls sick. The doctor's profession is a very contradictory profession. He helps people to come out of sickness, knowing perfectly well he is destroying his own business. That's why poor people get healthy quickly; they are not much of a business. Rich people... the doctor helps the process linger on.

I have heard about a doctor who sent his son to medical college. The son came back, and the old man said, "Now that you are a doctor, I can retire. I am really tired" - because the doctor's profession is such; in the middle of the night he may be called, in the cold night with snow falling, he will be called, and he has to go. Day and night, twenty-four hours he is on duty.

"So I am really tired. You have come, now you take charge of the clinic."

The boy was very happy. After three, four days the father asked him, "How are things going?"

He said, "Really great. The woman that you could not cure for thirty years, I have cured in three days."

The father said, "My God, that was our basic income! That woman I have been keeping sick for thirty years. She has so much money, she can afford to remain sick for three hundred years. You idiot - you cured her! All your education has come from her sickness. Who do you think was sending you money to study in a medical college? It was that woman. If this is the way you are going to behave with my patients, perhaps you should retire; I will do my work. You will destroy the whole business."

The boy can be forgiven - he was not yet aware of the profession. He had just acquired the medical knowledge, but he was not aware that there is a business side to it. He said, "I can understand. Now I know why you were sending me so much money."

His father said, "It was all coming from that woman, and that woman could afford it, there was no problem - I just had to keep her sick."

The religious priests depend on your fear, on your greed. They create hell and heaven; they create a god and they become the mediators. Anything you want to send to God, you cannot send directly.

You don't even know the address, or the phone number.

The Mormons believe that their president has a direct phone connection with God and whatever he says is God's order.

I came to know about this when this city was incorporated legally by a panel of three judges in Wasco County. Two judges were favorable. They were the majority; naturally the city was incorporated. Out of the two, one was a very nice old man - but he was a Mormon. And God immediately informed the president of the Mormons that this fellow has to be sent to Nigeria to spread the message of the Mormons.

Certainly this message was from the White House. What does God have to do with this poor man in Wasco County, and how will he know?... In this big world he chooses immediately this Mormon!

Strange choice, at a strange time....

Because the politicians should not pressurize him - he is a sincere man - they sent him for one year to Nigeria. And of course they appointed another judge, who was appointed only because he is against me and my people. Now the majority is against us, so for two years the city remained legal - and suddenly after two years it became illegal.

We have not committed any illegal act. In fact, this is the only place where no illegal acts are being committed: no rape, no prostitution, no stealing, no murder, no suicide. And this is our fault, that we are not committing any illegalities. And in New York, every moment a crime is committed. But New York is a legal city; we are illegal.

In four years not a single illegal act - this is a record. No other city in the whole world can say that in four years not a single illegal act has happened there.

We don't have a prison. The police, which belong to the Oregon state - we call it the peace force, because to us the word "police" seems to be dirty - they are getting tired, holding their guns the whole day. Nothing happens. And I am afraid if someday something happens, by that time they may have forgotten how to use their guns!

This man is educated, a gentleman in every way, but the religious stupidity is still there inside. He went to Nigeria.

I sent him a message, "This is very strange, that you have been chosen especially, so suddenly.

God has never shown any interest in you before, and there are so many Mormons. You are not a priest, you are not an orator either. What word are you going to spread there? Some priest should be sent, somebody who can speak should be sent. And why Nigeria? In this whole world, only Nigeria needs the word of Mormons to be spread?"

Perhaps the White House was hoping - because Nigeria is the only country that has cannibals.... It was an absolutely considered phenomenon to send him to Nigeria. Why not India? The whole world is there... but he is sent particularly to Nigeria where he will be facing.... Poor man, he is not very strong, old - those cannibals may finish him!

That must have been the idea, so that he does not come back again, because he has a respectability in the country; if he stands again for judge, he will be chosen. But somehow he has managed not to go near the cannibals.

They have their camp - nobody goes there. Once in a while a Christian priest is caught. When one Christian priest was caught and they tied him to a tree and started making a big fire, he said, "What are you doing?"

They said, "We are going to cook you."

He was at a loss - what to do now? - he has come to spread the message. Still, he said, "Whatsoever time is left... while they prepare the fire, and bring big pots and oil, I should do my work. I should spread the word as much as I can in this small time."

He asked the cannibals, "Have you ever tasted religion? Christianity?"

They said, "No, you are going to be our first taste. We will taste Christianity within one hour, don't be worried!"

This poor judge somehow remained hanging around the cities where there are no cannibals.

Cannibals are decreasing in number because they go on eating their own people. If they don't find anybody else, what else to do? At the beginning of this century there were two thousand cannibals in Nigeria. Now there are only three hundred, and every day their number goes on decreasing.

Religion has exploited people tremendously. Man has to free himself from all this exploitation. But that is possible only if you destroy the fiction of God, heaven and hell.

Life is enough, more than enough. This universe is autonomous, it needs no creation. And this universe is totally one, it needs no division. And you have to live an undivided life; then you will know what paradise is.

Question 2:

Your father is really enjoying, it seems, because whatever he is saying is absolutely right. He just has to learn a little bit of my language.

Dependence, independence - both are fictions.

Interdependence is the reality.

And it is not only that you and I are interdependent, the whole existence is interdependent. If you don't breathe for a few minutes you are gone. That means you were somehow connected with the atmosphere around you, the air. If you don't eat food, how long can you stay alive? If you don't drink water.... But will your father say that he is dependent on water, he is dependent on air, oxygen, he is dependent on the sun, the sunrise?

And the other way is also the same. It is difficult to prove because science has not yet been able to discover the proof but it is assumed that if the sun gives energy to us, it must be getting some energy from us. Otherwise, this business cannot go on forever. There must be some mutual transfer of energy.

And we know it about trees - there is a continuous transfer of energy. They give you oxygen, you give them carbon dioxide. But will your father say he is dependent on trees and trees are dependent on him? The word "dependent" seems to be not right, because there is nothing which is independent - not for a single moment!

Existence is an organic unity. So either call it interdependent.... But if you would like me to give you a word, I will call it organic unity, because that word "interdependence" somehow carries the word "dependence" and all the wrong associations with it. It is an organic unity.

Certainly my commune is an organic unity. We are all one, so the question of dependence or independence does not arise at all. But if he is attached so much to those words, he can call it interdependence.

But he should remember that God is also dependent on the world, because without creation how will he be the creator? And the pope is dependent on Catholics - without the Catholics he will have to go back to Poland and be what actually he is!

Can you give me a single example of anybody, anything, which is independent? It is not possible.

We are all one life, different expressions of one life - just like sea waves. They all look different - some are higher, tidal waves; some are slower, smaller - but they are all one in the ocean. Their expressions, their personalities may be different, but their being is part of the whole.

So I support your father, he is perfectly right. But he should remember this truth does not apply only to this commune, this truth applies to the whole existence. And we are an existential commune.

Certainly I cannot be here without you, because then I will think, "What the hell am I doing here?"

And the same is true about you. Without me, the same question will arise in you.

In fact your father is also dependent. What the hell is he doing here? - dependent on his son! And because his son is in the commune, he has to come to the commune. And now he is enjoying the commune. If he is really enjoying, and if he is sincere... then be part of the commune, show it!

Otherwise the commune will drive you nuts in your dreams.

His understanding is correct. And a man of such a correct understanding need not be an outsider here. So, help your father so he can be part of this beautiful phenomenon. Then he need not come to visit you, he can be here. And then he will find that not only his son is worth visiting, every sannyasin is worth visiting, because every sannyasin has some unique expression.

Why remain attached to small things - "my son", "my father"? In this commune we have lost all small attachments. It may be difficult for you because your wife may be at home, and you may be afraid of her; she must be preparing hell for you. Don't go!

You have come to the right place accidentally. But you are a man of understanding, so it is perfectly good to get lost in the orange people. Just become red, then even your wife will not be able to find you out.

It is better to be red than to be dead!

I mean: d-a-d, dad!

Question 3:

In the first place, Jesus will be by this time so old that I don't think it is possible for him to have another coming. Even the first coming will be difficult! Second time coming...? Impossible!

The story that is around there in the Vatican is in a way true. And that's why he had promised his disciples, "I will be coming soon." Now, you cannot stretch the word "soon" for two thousand years.

Maybe one hour, two hours, one day, one week - but you cannot stretch it for two thousand years.

What happened to his promise?

As far as I can see, although he was not very learned - he was illiterate - he was a man of a certain intelligence. Why should he come here?

What did you do to him when he had come for the first time? You crucified him. That was the reward.

It is enough. And now you are saying that if he comes this time - which is absolutely improbable - you will put him in jail for his whole life, to prove to him that humanity is no longer barbarian.

But being crucified finishes within a few hours. Keeping him his whole life in prison will prove you more barbarous. That is a long torture.

My suggestion is use an electric chair. That will really prove you are no longer barbarian, you are no longer primitive; you are scientific, technological, in every way evolved. Use an electric chair, comfortable - and within a second, not even knowing when he is gone, he will be gone.

But this will not prove that you are civilized. What method you use in killing him does not matter, that only proves methods of killing have improved; but the killer is the same.

Two thousand years ago, rabbis had killed him; now cardinals and popes will kill him - they are the same people, just the name is different. The rabbi and the cardinal are not different people - they are both priests!

In Dostoevsky's masterpiece, BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, he has a beautiful story about Jesus coming back to the earth one day. Of course he had chosen Sunday, because on the other six days who will take care of him? Who will bother about him? Sunday... and he had chosen the right place - in the center of the town, before the church.

People were coming out of the church after the sermon in the morning, and Jesus was standing there on a platform under a tree, waiting to see whether they recognize him or not. The crowd gathered. They said, "He looks like Jesus Christ. What a strange coincidence! Certainly he is a hippie, but he looks exactly like Jesus Christ."

Listening to this, that they are thinking he is a hippie, Jesus said, "No, I am not a hippie. You are my people. You worship me in the church, you have my statue on the cross. You can't recognize me?"

The people were in shock, looking at each other. What to do? They said, "As far as we are concerned, it does not matter whether you are a hippie or Jesus Christ. One thing you should do quickly - because the bishop is coming out; if he sees you, you will be in trouble - you escape as fast as you can!"

Jesus could not believe it! He said, "Wait! You are ignorant people, you don't understand. You don't recognize me, but my bishop - who has been teaching my teachings his whole life, kneeling down before my statue, praying to me every day - certainly he will recognize me."

The bishop came, the crowd gave way. The bishop came near, looked from up to down, from down to up, and thought, "Looks exactly like Jesus Christ. A great actor!" And he said, "You get down from the platform! You get down immediately!"

Jesus said, "Don't you recognize me?"

He said, "I have recognized you. You get down!" And he told a few people in the crowd, "Catch hold of him and take him inside the church, and lock him up there."

Jesus said, "What are you doing? You must be joking! The people who crucified me of course were not my people. The rabbis of course were not my followers, but you are my follower...."

He said, "You keep quiet! You simply do what you are being told to do."

And Jesus was locked in a small cabin, dark, dismal. He could not believe what was happening.

"These people go on praying, 'When are you coming?' Now I have come - and this is the treatment you give to the founder of your religion?"

The whole day, hungry, thirsty, he waited. In the middle of the night somebody opened the door.

The bishop entered, put a candle on the windowsill, fell at the feet of Jesus Christ and said, "I had recognized you, but I cannot recognize you in front of people. You will destroy our whole business.

With great difficulty we have established the firm! It took us tremendous labor, fights, bloodshed, wars; finally, somehow we have managed the church. And you should be proud of us, that we are the biggest religion in the whole world. The largest number of people belong to your religion.

"But I cannot accept you, recognize you, in front of the crowd for the simple reason that people of your type are always rebellious, dangerous. It is good when you are dead, but it is not good when you are alive! You will disrupt everything, you will destroy everything!

"You were saying to the people, 'Blessed are the poor.' Now the Vatican is the richest place in the whole world. The pope rules over the greatest kingdom anybody can rule - immense power, immense riches. You will disturb things; we cannot allow it to happen.

"You need not come, we are taking care of your business perfectly well. So you have to decide:

either you get out and get lost - with due respect - or we will have to crucify you again tomorrow morning, because there is no other way to deal with you. When you are dead, we worship you; when you are alive, we crucify you."

I can understand. That's what they have been doing with me. Many attempts have been made on my life; twice I have been poisoned. The last attempt was made before ten thousand sannyasins.

Just like this morning, it was a beautiful morning, ten thousand sannyasins listening in utter silence.

The police got the message from some anonymous source that somebody is going to assault me, so the police officers reached in time. Twenty topmost police officers were present, ten thousand eyewitnesses, and the man threw the knife at me. The police caught him.

We did not get involved in it at all because it was a police case. The police themselves had caught him red-handed, making an effort to kill me. Still, the man was freed - respectfully. The court said, "There has been no such thing...."

Ten thousand eyewitnesses can be disbelieved because they are my people, but twenty topmost police officers? They had caught the man, we had nothing to do with it. They all told the court that this man had made an attempt on my life, but the court dismissed the case.

The magistrate must have felt guilty, seeing the whole thing. It was absolutely certain - his own police officers were saying it, and ten thousand witnesses were there. The knife was there that the man had thrown. On the knife you could have found his fingerprints - but nothing was done. No witness was called. The case was dismissed.

The magistrate must have felt guilty.

Through a common friend he informed me, "Please forgive me. There is so much political pressure and so much religious pressure on me, because that man belongs to a fanatic Hindu group and he has immense political power.

"I am a poor man, and my promotion is due. If I do anything against him my promotion will be postponed forever. And they will send me to the ugliest, dirtiest place they can possibly find."

In India you can find everything. There is a place, Cherapunji, where it rains five hundred inches in a year. You cannot get out of the house-it is always raining!

Five hundred inches - that is the record in the whole world! Nowhere else does it rain so much. It simply rains the whole year! Nothing can be done. And whenever they want to punish somebody, they send him to Cherapunji.

So he asked my forgiveness. I told the intermediary, "Tell him, don't feel guilty. I can understand - even without his saying - that the man who has tried to kill me has the support of the politicians, of the religious leaders. And don't lose your promotion - I have not lost my life! Don't be worried, you just get your promotion, get a better salary.

"And as far as I am concerned, it does not matter whether I am killed or not. I have lived my live.

I have enjoyed each moment of it, I have relished everything. I have never repressed any desire.

What more can tomorrow bring me? There is no promotion for me.

"I have experienced the ultimate; now, nothing more can happen. So life or death, both have become the same. And one day anyway I will have to die. This is far better."

Ninety-nine percent of people die on their beds. That is the most dangerous place - just looked at mathematically, a simple calculation. Never sleep on the bed! Sleep on the ground. Ninety-nine percent of people have died on the bed - don't take the risk. But wherever you sleep, you will die - death is certain from the very moment one is born.

And in fact, I am a nonserious man. I would love the drama - somebody killing me.

So I will say to the pope and the cardinals, don't be worried. Give Jesus a good, beautiful electric chair. Last time it was a little hard: he had to carry his own cross.

And the cross must have been very heavy... because he was a carpenter's son, his whole life he had been carrying big logs to his father's shop; and he was a young man - thirty-three years old, in the prime of life. The cross must have been really heavy, because he fell three times on the ground before he reached the place where he was going to be crucified. The weight forced him to fall down on the ground three times. Now, don't be so cruel to him.

In the first place, that experience is enough! He is not going to come. But in old age people become senile. Two thousand years old, he may have become senile and forgotten what has happened two thousand years before, and may come again. This time, give him a little more comfortable a death.

You will give him death, that much is certain, because either he can live or you can live - both cannot live together.

You may be reading the Bible, but everything you have been doing is against the Bible! And he will not tolerate it. He is not a very peaceful man; he is very angry, arrogant, easily excited.

He has done everything the last time he was here. He had thrown - when he was only thirteen years of age - all money changers out of the temple of Jerusalem; overturned their tables, their monies, and threw them out. And he was only thirteen!

He said to them, "I have come here to clean the house of my father." The rabbis could not prevent him, they were standing there in shock: what was he doing? But whatever he was doing was according to the scripture.

The rabbis could not forgive this man. Whatever he was doing was according to scripture, and sooner or later people would start asking them questions. And he was going to destroy the whole temple, because the whole temple depended on the money that came to it from poor people. He had to be finished.

Jesus was not a pacifist; otherwise he could not do such a thing. And he used to get angry very easily. He cursed a fig tree! Even the angriest man, even a madman like Adolf Hitler would not do such a stupid thing - cursing a fig tree because he and his disciples are hungry and the fig tree has not offered figs to them. And you have to know one thing more: it was not the season for figs. It was no fault of the poor tree.

So if Jesus comes, help him. Give him good champagne, which he loved. And let him sit on an electric chair so that he knows how much, technologically, man has evolved.

As far as man is concerned, there has been no evolution for thousands of years. We are stuck.

And the people who are stopping the evolution of man are the priests and the politicians and the educationists.

My effort here is to free you from this triangle: the priest, the politician, the professor - these three P's.

Finish them before they finish you.

Finish them before they finish the whole humanity.

If we can get rid of these three P's, humanity can create a paradise without any difficulty.

We have already created in this desert an oasis. We are living joyously - no fights, no anger, no jealousy. And my people, of course, are giving me beautiful chairs - but not electric chairs!

Question 4:

I am! Okay?