The power of nothingness

Question 1:

Education is certainly the process of liberation, but it has not been actualized anywhere in the world.

Liberation means liberating the mind from the past, liberating the mind from theologies, liberating the mind from political ideologies; liberating the mind in such a way that when a student comes out of education he is just a clean pure seeker with no prejudice.

That beautiful sentence at the gates of the universities in India, simply shows how man can be unaware and a hypocrite.

In India, there are Mohammedan universities, Hindu universities. The first step should be that there should be no Mohammedan university. How can it liberate people? - it is going to program people into Mohammedanism. There should be no Hindu university. This is simply ugly. Now Jainas have been trying to create a new university, a Jaina university. In the West there are Catholic universities.

Liberation becomes impossible by the very fact that the university itself has a certain prejudice, a certain program to put into the minds of the students.

So my suggestion is: first dissolve Hindu, Mohammedan, Jaina, Catholic - these names, from the universities.

Secondly: India is a poor country yet it has more than one hundred universities, which is simply futile, meaningless. At the most, each state in India can have one university. Right now each state has almost five, six, seven universities. There are thirty states and there is a competition to have more and more universities. The ultimate result is that the standard of their education goes on falling.

Consolidate universities so that each state has one university, all other universities become colleges affiliated to that university. There is no need for so many universities. It is a wastage of money; and when you have so many universities you cannot get the best geniuses as professors.

To do that, India has many services, for example, the Indian Administrative Service - IAS. It should have an Indian Educational Service - IES.

Just because somebody has a university degree does not mean that he becomes automatically capable of teaching. Teaching is a totally different art. Passing an examination is one thing; teaching is totally different. It needs articulateness, it needs a vast range of knowledge - not only the textbooks that you have read in the university - it needs you to be constantly in touch with the growing knowledge.

In India, this has been my experience. Thirty years ago somebody passed his master's degree or became a Ph.D, became a professor; and for thirty years he has not bothered about what has happened in his subject. In thirty years human knowledge has increased more than has been possible in the past even three thousand years. In thirty years we have discovered, known more, than in three thousand years.

Now a professor who is unaware of these thirty years of development is absolutely incapable. He should not be a professor in the university because he will be teaching his students something which is already out of date, already proved wrong. Something else has taken its place.

I was expelled from many colleges and universities - not that I had done anything wrong, but for a simple reason: the professors could not cope with me. I was fully aware of the thirty years' development, and in front of the class they felt embarrassed.

The professor of logic knew about Aristotle, but he had no knowledge of Ludwig Wittgenstein. And Ludwig Wittgenstein has completely transcended Aristotelian logic, Albert Einstein has completely destroyed the very roots of Aristotelian logic.

In Aristotle, either something is right or something is wrong. It is either-or logic, simple. But the findings of Albert Einstein in physics proved that reality is not so simple. Between yes and no there are many grades. There are points when you cannot say yes and you cannot say no - just in the middle - and they too are real.

One logician had to find a word for it, because if somebody asks you a question, either you say yes or you say no; but the reality may be exactly in the middle. In human languages there is no word for that middle position. One logician has invented a word po: neither yes nor no. po means exactly in the middle of both.

So when I introduced the word po, my professor looked at me. He said, "You are crazy or something?

No dictionary mentions this word. From where have you got this word po? What kind of answer is this? And what am I to make out of it? I am asking a simple question, whether this line is straight or not, and you say 'PO'. Either the line is straight or the line is not straight."

I said, "You are thirty years behind in geometry, logic, physics, because physics has proved that there are no straight lines. There is no possibility of drawing a straight line. Euclid's definition is no longer applicable."

The definition that has prevailed for thousands of years is: The shortest distance between two points is the straight line. But Albert Einstein found that the straight line is illusory. If you go on drawing the line bigger and bigger and bigger, you will find it becomes a curve, because the earth is round.

If you draw it to its extreme conclusion, it will become a circle. Now any part of a circle cannot be straight, it is only an arc.

So I told the professor, "The straight line is just an appearance. Because you cannot see the whole big circle, the small part of the circle looks like a straight line. But what to say? You cannot say it is a straight line, because that goes against Albert Einstein, and he is certainly right. You cannot say no, because it goes against our eyes, our vision. In front of us the straight line certainly is straight.

Neither yes nor no. For that the word is po.

My professor left the room. He said, "Either you will be in this college or I will be in this college, because if you bring such things as po - I don't know anything about them."

I said, "That is your fault. For the thirty years since you became a professor, do you think the growth of knowledge has stopped?"

The vice-chancellor had tears in his eyes when he expelled me. He called me; he said, "I know you are right - and this is the first time I am expelling someone who is not wrong. Whatever you have said you have explained clearly, but our professor is old, nationally famous, and we cannot lose him.

And he has given this resignation to me, 'Either within three days you expel the student - and for three days I am not going to come to the college - or accept my resignation.'"

The vice-chancellor said to me, "What do you suggest?"

I said, "po. What can I suggest? The situation requires the word po. And that is the problem. The whole problem is po."

With tears, he also started laughing. He said, "That's true, the situation is such.... But help me."

I said, "You can expel me, because all expulsions from all the colleges, universities, are my qualifications. And I am being expelled because I know more than the professor. So expulsion is a compliment, it is not anything derogatory."

The Indian universities are suffering from lack of up-to-dateness. So create a central system, IES, which chooses the professors not just because they have a Ph.D. or a first-class master's degree; their degrees don't mean anything. IES will examine them again to know whether they are up to date or not.

Consolidate the universities, so there are not one hundred of them. The very meaning of university in India has been lost. It has become a political thing; every state wants more universities than the other state.

What is the reason? The reason is that politicians are becoming vice-chancellors. Retired politicians, politicians who have been defeated in the elections, who are no longer chief ministers, cabinet ministers - they need some place of respect. The vice-chancellorship has become a refuge.

So make it an absolute law that no politician can become a vice-chancellor, because what does a politician know about vice-chancellorship? What does he know about education? He will pollute the whole university with politics - that is his profession. His whole life he has been in a wrong place, absolutely against the world of education, and suddenly he becomes the vice-chancellor.

And of course because vice-chancellors are chosen, elected by the professors of the universities; those professors can be pressurized. Their promotions... somebody is going to become dean, somebody is going to become the reader, somebody is going to become the professor - their own ambitions can be used.

When I was a student, one defeated chief minister of the state was fighting for the vice- chancellorship against a professor who was in every way capable of being a vice-chancellor but had no influence, no pull: out of three hundred votes he got only twenty-five.

I was in his favor just because he was not a politician; he was purely an educationist and a profound thinker. I went to every professor who was going to vote and told them, "This is a question of deciding between politics and education."

They said, "We understand, but we are sorry because our promotions are due, and there is so much political pressure from the present chief minister." He has promised this minister who is fighting for election as the vice-chancellor that if he does not fight for chief ministership again, he can have a very respected place in the university. And seeing the situation, his old age - he is becoming senile - he thought this is better. After all the troubles of politics, now in the end of his life he can live peacefully in a university."

I said, "Don't vote for him. If you vote for him, that means this university is dead."

But two hundred and seventy-five professors voted for him. And I had met each single professor and they all said, "You are right, but we have to look after our own position."

So make it a rule that no politician can be a vice-chancellor. Keep education pure, without politics; politics is poison.

The universities should be teaching, as far as possible, the latest discoveries, the latest literature, the latest poetry, the latest in everything. What they are doing is thirty years, forty years old. It takes time for people to become well known, but the universities should be sensitive enough: each year there are new novels, new music, new dances, that should become part of the curriculum.

Universities have to remain always up to date, not lagging behind the world.

My feeling is they are lagging behind in everything, and the reason is that the professors were taught thirty years before - and whatever they have been taught is what they are teaching. That's why India is unable to produce great scientists, great mathematicians, great philosophers. Greatness has disappeared from that country. Where the greatest geniuses have been born, suddenly there are no great people. The reason is the whole education system is lagging behind, far behind.

So only one university in one state, and choose the best. And there should be a special examination for the professors - just the ordinary educational degree is not enough, because they are going to do something for which they are not prepared.

I have seen professors lecturing - nervous, perspiring; they have never spoken in their life. They may have been good at the examinations but that is a totally different matter. They are so afraid facing a class... and if there is somebody who knows more than them, then they are so embarrassed.

I have seen them, in the cold season, perspiring because I had raised a question and they didn't know the answer. And they didn't even have the guts to say, "I don't know the answer." They pretend that they know everything.

So there should be a special examination for a professor - that means, whether he is articulate, whether he can speak well, whether he can express himself adequately.

And secondly, the Indian Educational Service should have every year at least a one-month refresher course for every professor of the country, so that they are made up-to-date. Knowledge is exploding so fast and to remain up to date is an absolute necessity, at least for the professors; otherwise the whole country will remain backward.

Refresher courses are needed. Or, if it is felt necessary, then before entering the examination of the educational services there should be a certain training of three months, six months, where they are taught how to teach.

This is strange: school teachers need training for teaching; they have to have a Bachelor's degree in teaching. Strange: primary school teachers have training - and university professors have no training. They are untrained people - and almost always the wrong people, because the people who top the universities are not articulate people. They are involved so much in reading their textbooks, preparing for the examination, that they don't have any time.

Speaking is an art, and a professor should be an artist. His words should not be simply words; they should carry some poetry in them, some music in them.

As far as subjects for teaching are concerned, in India there is a problem: there are thirty national languages, and every state wants its language to be used as a medium of expression. This is impossible. The whole country would become divided into thirty segments which have no way of communicating with each other. So a very clear-cut decision is needed.

The people are not willing to accept any Indian language as the national language. Hindi is spoken by half of India; still they are not ready, the other half is not ready to accept it as a national language.

And I can understand their difficulty. If Hindi becomes the national language, then all other languages - Bengalese, Assamese, Gujarati, Marathi, Malayanam, Telegu - they will all be losers, because in every national competition the person whose mother tongue is Hindi is bound to be superior.

The only way is that English, which is foreign to everybody, should be the national language. So each state should have two languages from the very lowest school to the college, to the university:

English as the national language and the local state language as the state language.

But a certain language is needed which makes communication possible. English is spoken and understood by only two percent of the people and Hindi by fifty percent of the people, but the percentage is not the question. The point is, English is acceptable to everybody because nobody is going to be benefited, it is nobody's mother tongue; everybody has to work hard to learn it.

And in another way also it is good to make English the national language, because it automatically has become the international language. Any country knowing English perfectly well becomes contemporary, a part of the whole world, although English is still not the language spoken by the largest number of people. That credit goes to the Chinese.

But who is going to use Chinese as an international language? It needs at least thirty years to learn Chinese. If it is not your mother tongue, it is the most difficult language, because it has no alphabet.

It is a non-alphabetical language; it has only pictures, symbols. Now, for one million things you have one million pictures....

The alphabet has made language very simple; just twenty-six letters can manage everything. But to have some understanding of Chinese, you have to know at least one hundred thousand words, their figures, symbols. It is really difficult to remember unless you are born Chinese and from the very beginning you have imbibed the language.

But Chinese is spoken by the largest number of people, for the simple reason that they are the largest number of people.

I have heard.... A man was going to have his fourth child. He said to the doctor, "I don't want this fourth child. You have to do an abortion."

The doctor said, "But you are rich and you can afford a fourth child."

He said, "I can afford a fourth child, but I have read somewhere that one in every four persons is Chinese. I cannot afford a Chinese! You will have to do the abortion. Three are okay; this one Chinese will be a disturbance, my whole family will fall apart!"

One-fourth of the world is Chinese. Of course their language comes first as far as the number of people who speak it is concerned. But that number of people is confined to one country. English comes third in numbers; Spanish comes second, but that too is confined to a few countries - most of them poor, uneducated, belonging to the third world.

English is the language of the intelligentsia, of science, of all the developments that are happening; so numbers don't count. One language is certainly needed by the whole world, and I don't think there is any other competitor to English.

So it will be good for India in both ways: Indians are ready to accept English so it becomes the national language, and automatically India becomes part of the international communication system.

All these universities should be under the federal government, the central government, so their standard remains the same. They should not be under the local politicians of each state. It should be a completely separate section, just like justice is. Your courts have a separate world, uninfluenced by your political system. Education should also be a separate world. It is far more important that it should not be pressurized by politicians: your future is being developed in the universities.

So reduce the number of universities and make a separate section of administration for education.

Keep it up-to-date.

And one of my suggestions is that each professor and each student should learn a simple meditation method. He can choose one. There are one hundred and twelve meditation methods; the simplest is vipassana. Through vipassana Gautam Buddha became enlightened. It is the most simple, without any complication. Make vipassana absolutely compulsory - and unless a person passes in vipassana he cannot get his degree.

Then it will be real education. Then it will be a liberating factor, because vipassana will liberate you totally from your religions, from your races, from your countries. It will make you an individual. You will not be anymore a member of a mob. You will have your own integrity, your own centeredness, your own roots.

And if vipassana is made absolutely compulsory for professors too... before they become professor, they should pass through a vipassana training.

And every university should have a meditation place. It will beautify the university to have a beautiful Zen garden, ponds, rocks, ancient moss on the rocks, a silent, peaceful atmosphere, small cottages for people to meditate in....

Meditation is an absolute necessity for humanity to survive. All other subjects should be taught, but no other subject is so important as meditation. But no university is teaching it. If all the graduates from the university come out with a meditative mind, they will change the whole structure and fabric of the society.

These are my simple suggestions, absolutely practical; there is nothing utopian about them. The prime minister of India, Rajiv Gandhi, has just to understand it. He has an intelligent mind, and a certain respect for me.

Question 2:

The question is a little bit complicated - complicated because the people who are being worshipped in India are the cause of its poverty, its fall, its slavery.

India had seen a golden age in the past. Twenty-five centuries back, at the time of Gautam Buddha, India was known around the world as a golden bird. And it was so. People were happy, people were meditative, people were interested in seeking the truth. They were not hungry, they were not starving. But Gautam Buddha and Mahavira - they were contemporaries - created two religions.

The strange thing is, both are responsible for India's poverty, slavery.

It hurts me to say anything against Gautam Buddha. I have tremendous love for the man - his individuality, his rebellion. But whatever he did cannot be ignored. He was not conscious of what he was teaching.

Both these men were teaching poverty. It was good for them, I can understand: they both had come from royal families. Both were going to become kings, there was no doubt about it. Gautam Buddha was the only son, and Mahavira was the eldest son of his father; both had their kingdoms. They had lived luxuriously, they had enjoyed everything that was possible in those days. In fact, they had so much luxury they got fed up with it.

Howsoever delicious a plate is, sooner or later you will get fed up with it. A certain change is an absolute need of the human mind.

Gautam Buddha and Mahavira both knew perfectly well that there was nothing more; all that was possible was available. There was nothing else for which they could have any ambition.

They got so fed up with richness, luxury, that they followed the mind's natural tendency to go to its opposite; they both became beggars. If it is not available - the peace of mind, the silence of being, the experience of ecstasy - if it is not possible in the palaces with all the riches, then perhaps it is possible at the other end, the opposite end. They both became beggars.

Of course by becoming beggars they were very much respected, more than if they had become, and remained, kings. So their psychology has to be understood. They didn't lose any of their ego - in fact, they got more of it.

As kings they were nothing special. In India there were two thousand kings in their time. It was an ordinary thing, nothing special. Amongst two thousand kings you were also a king - so what? But a king renouncing his palace, his beautiful wife, his luxuries, everything.... The people respected them immensely, thinking that they have done something superb in renouncing the world.

Renunciation of the world became associated with being religious.

This is the root cause of India's poverty. The Indian poor do not think that their poverty is anything ugly. They think that their poverty is a blessing in disguise. If even kings have to become beggars to know themselves, God is very kind to them. He was made them beggars already!

The complexity is, when a king renounces the kingdom and becomes a beggar, his state of being a beggar is totally different from the one who is born a beggar. They both look alike, but the man who has renounced the world has a certain richness in him. His renunciation was not out of compulsion, it was voluntary, considered.

And he feels a certain freedom in being a beggar, no anxiety - because with a crown you cannot sleep well. There are so many problems, so many troubles every day. So the man who renounces his kingdom automatically comes out of all the anxieties, anguishes. He feels his beggar state as freedom. Now he is for the first time without any anxiety, without any trouble; he is no longer responsible for anything. For the first time he can sleep well.

India was not poor, and particularly for people like Buddha and Mahavira. They were still served with the best that was possible. People loved them, respected them: they have done something totally new. The Hindu religious leaders were not beggars - they were living in richness, accumulating more and more money. They were just ordinary.

Gautam Buddha and Mahavira created a problem for Hindu monks, because the monks were no longer respected by the people. They could not be compared with Buddha and Mahavira; they were still greedy, they were just ordinary materialists like everybody else. The only difference was that they talked about religion; but they lived just like everybody else.

These two people were not talking, they were living what they said. This created such a deep impression on the Indian soul that poverty became something spiritual.

The poorest in India are called untouchables, because if you touch them you will have to take a bath to purify yourself. And they are almost one-fourth of the whole Indian continent.

Mahatma Gandhi started calling them harijana - men of God - and that gave them great consolation.

They are the chosen people of God. This poverty is just a test of their trust; and it is a passing phase.

So in India, poverty started having a certain glamor of spirituality. And when this happens, a calamity has happened.

Unwillingly, I have to say that Buddha and Mahavira are both the root cause of India's poverty. And you can see - not only of poverty but of slavery, because they both taught nonviolence, and the whole country was impressed by these two people.

Just after Buddha's death, invaders started coming, knowing that the country was nonviolent, they were not going to fight back. Alexander the Great was the first. He was not given any resistance; people were not ready to kill.

But remember one thing: psychologically the other side of it is, a person who is not ready to kill slowly slowly becomes unwilling to be killed. It is not nonviolence, he also becomes a coward. He avoids situations where you may have to fight, you may have to kill - and more than that, where the fear is you may be killed yourself.

After Alexander the Great, for twenty-three centuries invaders went on coming, exploiting the country, taking all the riches of the country - almost without any resistance. The country that was known as the golden bird lost all its gold, lost all its material wealth. For twenty-three centuries the country remained continuously under invaders whose only purpose was to exploit.

So those two persons were responsible in the past. And in the present Mahatma Gandhi is responsible, because he was again talking about the same nonsense: nonviolence. In a violent world, if you are nonviolent you are going to be exploited, destroyed. You cannot resist and there is no other way to prevent it.

India is in a way a very simple country. Once it accepts some ideology it tries to act upon it. It is not hypocritical, whatever the consequences - and the consequences have been bad.

Twenty-three centuries of slavery, but there has been no resistance, no fight, no revolution, no anger, because the qualities that have been taught by its religious masters were patience, no anger, no hate, no violence, no greed, no attachment. If these qualities are part of you, then naturally if somebody takes away your things you have to show your non-greediness, non-attachment; these are all just material things.

Although India has become independent now, it is not liberated from its wrong past.

I don't teach violence, but I don't teach nonviolence either. Never be aggressive, but never allow anybody else to be aggressive towards you - because in both cases you are supporting aggression.

If you are aggressive, to me that is violence; and if you are not stopping somebody else being aggressive towards you, that too is supporting aggressiveness. That too is violent.

Don't harm anybody, but don't let anybody harm you. Then only can a nonviolent person survive in the world, and not become a coward.

Jesus says, "If somebody hits one of your cheeks, give him the other cheek too." Christians are hypocrites, they have never followed it. They have been killing, they have been murdering, they have been burning living people. They have been doing everything which goes against Jesus - and still they go on preaching Jesus in the churches. And no Christian raises the question: "Our lifestyle for two thousand years is absolutely against the teachings of Jesus."

The West has made an arrangement: a teaching is a teaching; it is good, pay respect to it. The Bible is holy - but your religion is Sunday religion, only on a holiday. You go to the church and that's all. Six days do everything wrong that you can do; on the seventh day go to the priest and confess.

And once you have confessed you are forgiven. Great idea! Religion becomes so cheap.

India has taken its religious leaders very seriously. It has tried to follow in their footsteps. If the West had also followed the idea of giving the other cheek, there would have been as much poverty, as much ignorance, as much slavery as there was in India, as there is in India. But the West has never followed Jesus; in fact, Jesus himself never followed his ideas.

He was an angry young man. He cannot be said to have been a peaceful man, or nonviolent. He was very aggressive, very arrogant. What can be more arrogant than to declare oneself the only begotten son of God? What can be more egoistic? Jesus said beautiful things but never followed them. There is not a single instance where he has given the other cheek.

If he meets me, I am going to hit both his cheeks simultaneously just to see what he does then, because there is no third cheek that he can give me to hit.

I have heard about a Christian saint.... Some rowdy person hit him on one of his cheeks. Naturally, the saint gave him the other cheek. But rowdy people are rowdy; you don't expect them to be understanding. He hit the other cheek even harder.

At that moment - he could not believe what was happening - the saint jumped, took his neck in his hands and started almost killing him.

The man said, "What are you doing? Your teaching...?"

He said, "My teaching is finished, because Jesus said to give the other cheek. I have given it - now I am free! Now I will show you exactly what I am! He has never talked about anything beyond the second cheek. Beyond the second cheek everybody is free."

But India really followed.... So these three people - two in the past, Buddha and Mahavira, and Mahatma Gandhi in the present - are responsible for its poverty.

And Mahatma Gandhi is the worst criminal in the whole thing, because Buddha and Mahavira had simply renounced. Mahatma Gandhi's teaching is such that India can never become rich. According to him the whole of human progress should have stopped at the spinning wheel. After that, anything that has been invented has to be discarded: railway trains - things which are absolutely essential - telegraph, telephones, which do no harm to anybody, and every kind of technology.

The Indian government in these forty years has been following Mahatma Gandhi. If this man is followed, India's future will become darker and darker. It is doomed.

He says, "Spin your own cloth." I have tried it, because I never say anything unless I try it. It takes eight hours per day for all your needs for one year. If you spin eight hours per day for the whole year, then you will have enough - not an abundance; just enough clothes, a bedsheet, a blanket and two or three dresses for yourself.

What about your wife? What about your children? What about your old father and old mother? They all have to go naked. And if you are wasting eight hours just for your clothes, when are you going to earn money for your food? When are you going to earn money to make a shelter for yourself?

You need a thousand and one things. The mother is sick, she needs medicine. The father dies, now some money is needed for his cremation; at least you will need wood to cremate him. Your children will grow up, their marriages will have to be arranged, you will need some money. From where is all this going to come? - your whole day is spent in spinning!

Who is going to farm the lands? And who is going to create the vegetables, the fruits, and all kinds of necessities?

If Gandhi is followed, India is going to commit suicide.

I would like to say to Rajiv Gandhi: Be finished with Gandhism. That is poison for your country. Bring the country the latest technology, bring the country the most developed machinery. It is possible, just one thing has to be remembered: don't bother about making atomic plants and nuclear weapons because then seventy-five percent of your energy, income, goes into nuclear weapons. Don't bother about that.

It is so simple... because you cannot become a power like America or the Soviet Union. In three hundred years, if you try hard, only in three hundred years will you be a great power. But by that time all the Indians will be dead. And America and the Soviet Union are not going to stay where they are. In three hundred years they will have moved so far ahead that you will need three thousand years to catch up. It is absolutely meaningless. With so much energy in the hands of two nations...

now no other nation should bother about it. You cannot compete.

You should use your whole energy to create more food, to create more clothes, to create more houses.

Secondly, you have to be very strict about birth control. First put in jail people like the shankaracharya and Mother Teresa, who are preaching against abortion, against birth control, against the pill. Make it a law that anybody who teaches against birth control is a criminal. It certainly is a great crime in a country like India.

Just in thirty years' time, India has doubled its population. By the end of this century it will have defeated China in population; because China is strictly controlling its population, but India is not doing anything.

Birth control has to be done on a war scale; use your whole army to propagate the idea. And the people who resist should be imprisoned. And don't be bothered that you will be told by the world, "This is not democratic." This is democratic. Suicide is not democratic.

The population goes on growing, and you go on becoming more and more poor. Soon you will be the second Ethiopia. Fifty percent of India is already on the verge of becoming an Ethiopia. Then the world will not praise you, tell you that you are a great democratic nation because you never forced people against their will. In fact they are not producing children because of any will; they are just doing it mechanically.

And it is a very strange thing that poor people create more children than rich people. I was looking for the reason. What is the reason? What happens? Poor people go on creating dozens of children and the rich people, without any enforcement, are already under the birth control level - one child or two children, at the most three.

The reason I found was that rich people have many more entertainments. They can go to the movie, they can visit a restaurant, they can go to a concert. They have many things to enjoy.

The poor man has no other entertainment than sex, because it is free. So in the evening he is just sitting there - how long can he sit there? He is not a meditator. If he were a meditator he could sit silently without doing anything.

And it is absolutely certain babies don't grow on their own. Grass may be growing, but babies don't grow on their own. You have to make some effort, do some gymnastics. But the poor man, the whole night, has nothing else.

Impose strict measures. Give the pill free to the women, and make arrangements for a few entertainments for poor people. Just a television in the town may be enough for their interest.

You take everything from them: they cannot drink alcohol.... I think that is far better, that somebody drinks alcohol, comes home and goes to sleep. In the long run that is better, more religious. But you don't allow alcohol.

There are no televisions, there are no radios, there are no movies. In eighty percent of India there is nothing, no games where they can put their energy. The whole day of work, tiring work, and then the night comes and sex is easily available without any cost. Naturally, they go on producing children.

They have to be stopped.

Strict population control, no desire for nuclear weapons - which is there. Already the Indian government is trying to make a nuclear plant, and to make that nuclear plant they are exporting wheat. Their people are dying and starving, and they are sending wheat to other countries! The people who have grown the wheat will not get it, they will get nuclear weapons. You cannot eat nuclear weapons. And it is of no use: a small awareness of the facts is enough to know that you cannot become a great nuclear power.

By a strange coincidence only America and the Soviet Union have uranium. So any country who wants to become a nuclear power has to depend on America or the Soviet Union. And of course they give small quantities; they would not like you to become a great power like themselves. And even that small quantity costs too much for poor countries.

Their scientists are engaged in making nuclear weapons. These scientists should be making better fertilizers, better artificial clothes, better houses - cheaper, with synthetic materials. But the scientists are engaged in something which is absolutely meaningless.

Whom are you going to fight with your nuclear weapons? You are too far behind, and now there is no point in it. For you the race is over.

And it is good, because those who have become great nuclear powers are burdened by their own accumulation of nuclear weapons, and worried about what to do - war seems to be impossible, for the simple reason that it can destroy the whole world. And the whole joy of war is to be victorious - but nobody will be victorious in the war, it will be sheer destruction of the whole planet. So a third world war is out of the question.

Politicians will go on talking about it, because they want their people to remain frightened, they want their people so frightened that they think they need their leadership to keep control of the situation.

In fact, the third world war is not possible anymore. War itself has come to a point where it has become total, and that makes it meaningless.

So I would like to say to Rajiv, "Don't be stupid, and don't try to imitate. That is not going to be of any help - your small nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union or America! Put your whole energy...."

It is a great relief that the world is not going to have a third world war, for the simple reason that it is totally destructive. Nobody will be there to be a victor or to be a defeated person. Nobody will be there even to write, "Ronald Reagan was a great president." Nobody will be there to write a history.

Not only man but trees and birds and animals - all will have disappeared.

In my opinion, a third world war is absolutely out of the question. There is no need for a poor country like India to bother about these sophisticated weapons.

If seventy-five percent of India's income goes back to the poor, and the population grows no more, poverty can be solved.

And don't be bothered about whether it is democratic or not! When it is a question of life and death, then it does not matter. Life has to be saved, because only then can you be democratic. If life is finished, then who is going to be democratic? All these questions of democracy or other kinds of government, are secondary.

So if it is needed, impose an emergency again on India, because I know the Indian mind perfectly well: unless they are forced they will not be able to control the population.

I know it is not good to force anybody. I know it is not good to interfere in anybody's life. But the point is that the person who is producing children is already interfering with the whole nation's life.

So you have to choose between the two. Certainly the whole nation's life is more significant, and the person cannot be allowed to go on producing children and creating more poverty.

Things are simple, only a clarity is needed. And I feel Rajiv has that clarity. Just a little courage....

Even if the whole world condemns you because you are not democratic, don't bother. What does it matter?

I have been condemned by everybody around the world. What does it matter? I have not thought even a single time, "I have been condemned so much, I should pay some attention to it." I don't care.

I go on living my life - my life is my own! If they want to condemn that is their mind, their business, their problem! It is not my problem.

Question 3:

You have found it!

Yes, nothing is there to be found.

But to say it from the very beginning is to destroy the whole business. So religions go on saying to you, "You will find God, and you will find the soul, and you will find this and that."

The truth is: you will not find anything. And it is better that you don't find anything, otherwise there is going to be trouble. Just think: if you find God sitting inside you, what are you going to do stuck with the fellow for eternity?

Nothingness is beautiful.

It implies freedom, infinity.

The whole sky is yours.

And you don't find anyone, so there is no question of quarrel, no question of who is higher and who is lower; no question of how to coexist because to anybody who is there you will be a stranger - red people in Oregon! And that person will try to throw you out; it is his territory.

I am not in the business of religion, I am really cutting the very roots of the whole business. This profession is one of the ugliest on the earth.

So be clear: nothing, absolutely nothing is to be found there. And it is good, because nothingness is silent, peaceful, no trouble. You have found a space which is just yours.

Buddha called it nirvana. Nirvana simply means nothingness. He is the only man who used the right word. If you are ready to be nothing, only then enter into meditation. If you want to be something, then you have to move outside.

"Something" is always outside you. You can become the president, the prime minister or anything, but it will be outside. Something means outside you. That's why religious people's God is also outside, there above the roof.

Once in a while I hear something, but later on I find it was an electrician! I was thinking perhaps God is moving on the roof. He has some interest in roofs; he never comes down from the roofs - always above. God has to be outside you. Heaven and hell have to be outside you.

As far as I am concerned, we are going inwards, and the world of inwardness is the world of nothingness. And nothingness has a beauty, a tremendous fragrance of its own.

If you have experienced it you will not think of God and heaven and hell or anything - all that becomes nonsense. It is nonsense. It is all fiction.

The truth is the center of the cyclone is inside you.

The cyclone is very active, doing many things, being many things. But the center is absolutely silent, doing nothing, being nothing.

You are it.

Question 4:

Somehow you have got a wrong idea about trust.

Trust is not in someone, it is not a relationship.

Trust is a quality in you.

A man of trust... it does not mean in what he trusts, but he trusts; that is his innocence. Even if he is cheated because of his trust, that does not matter, because trust is more valuable than any small thing that he has been cheated of. You can take everything from him, but you cannot take his trust.

Trust is your inner growth, your consciousness at its peak.

Certainly your trust will come in contact with many people, but you will be trusting because trust in itself is such a joy, and distrust is such an agony, that you have chosen trust rather than distrust.

People are miserable all over the world because they have chosen distrust. From their very childhood they have been told, "Don't trust, because if you trust you will be cheated. The world is full of cunning people, so remain alert, don't trust. Trust only when you have found someone, checked all the possibilities of the person and found that yes, he is trustworthy. Then trust.

But to trust a trustworthy person has no meaning at all. It is not your quality it is his trustworthiness.

But to trust a person who is not trustworthy... you know perfectly well that he is not trustworthy, still you trust, because trust in itself is such a great value that it cannot be lost because of this person's unworthiness.

A man who trusts simply trusts. And each time he is cheated because of his trust, his trust is not destroyed, it is strengthened.

Trust is one of the great qualities of your being.

So think of it as a quality of your being, and then you will not ask the question, "Does everything have to be accepted?" There is no question about it.

The man of trust simply lives out of his trust; whatever happens does not matter.

If he is being deceived continuously, then too, it does not matter. Nothing happens to his trust. His trust is something invincible, and that gives integrity.

So don't trust in me.

Don't trust in anybody in particular.

Simply trust. Let it be your fragrance.

Only one thing can I say to you: I have always trusted and I have never felt that it was wrong - although I have been cheated. But strangely enough, I went on trusting the person who was cheating me. And finally the man broke down; finally he came with tears, and he said, "Forgive me, I have been cheating you. And you know it! And it has not been one time, it has been many times.

But why do you trust in me?"

I said, "It is not a question of you, I simply enjoy trusting. That is your problem, that you deceive. If you enjoy deceiving, enjoy it. But I can see you don't enjoy it, you are feeling guilty."

The greater your trust, the greater guilt the person who deceives you will have. And there is a chance that this guilt will change that person - he will have a change of heart.

Trust is tremendously powerful.

So there is no question of accepting anything or not. The question is of growing trust as a quality of your being.

When the rose opens, its fragrance starts flowing all around. It is not addressed to anyone in particular. If the king passes by he will receive it; if a beggar passes by he will receive it. If a thief passes by he will receive it. If a murderer passes by he will receive it. For the rose it makes no difference who is receiving it.

Trust is the fragrance of a silent, peaceful being.

Let me remind you:

Trust is the fragrance of nothingness.

Question 5:

Don't be worried. You are already one-third enlightened!