Will-to-power: The Cancer of the Soul

Question 1:

I am not against anybody. I have no grudge, no competition, no jealousy. Why should I be against the politicians? I am not a politician. But my statements can be misunderstood.

I am against the disease called wilI-to-power. This is the greatest disease, as far as man's consciousness and its growth is concerned. It is just like cancer; it is the cancer of the soul. Will- to-power can express itself in many ways. The easiest is politics, because it does not need much intelligence. All that it needs is the capacity to create false hopes in the masses, hopes which have never been fulfilled, which were never meant to be fulfilled; their purpose was something else. And the masses are in suffering. They are poor, they are ignorant. They also need all the comforts of life, they also want to live like human beings, with dignity. The politician gives them the hope, and exploits the hope for his own purpose, because once he gets the power, once he becomes somebody - a prime minister, a president - then something in him feels at ease. It was his psychological need.

These people are basically, deep down, impotent - hence the urge to power. They feel their weakness and powerlessness; they know they are nobodies. But if they can convince the mediocre mob that they will be fulfilling their needs, then it is a mutual understanding, a bargain. Then the masses give them power. Once they have got the power, they forget all their promises; in fact, they never meant them, and once they have the power, then you see their real face.

Lord Acton was absolutely right when he said, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." But he was not aware of why power corrupts, how power can corrupt. The man must be carrying the seeds of corruption already but was incapable of doing anything; he needed power.

Once he has the power, then slowly his mask starts falling away and you will see within him the egoist in its utter nudity. The politician is nothing but an egoist. Inside he feels empty - and afraid of that emptiness. He wants to be somebody so that he can forget his own emptiness. Power gives him the chance. He can see that millions of people are under his thumb. He can convince himself that he is not a nobody, he is somebody special. And he starts behaving that way. He starts misusing the power. Once he is in power, then he never wants to be out of it. Then he always wants to remain in power, because now he knows perfectly well that out of power he will be more aware than ever of his emptiness and his impotence.

What I am against is the game of the ego. Who plays it, in what subtle ways one plays it, is a totally different matter. The politician is the most apparent player of the game. The religious messiah, avatara, tirthankara, paigambara - Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, Buddha - they are on the same trip, it is the same number; but it will need tremendous intelligence to see their power game. The politician is nothing compared to them. The politician is playing a very trivial game.

But when Jesus says, "I am the son of God, the only begotten son" - what is it, if not a power trip?

He says, "I am the awaited messiah of the Jews and I have come to redeem the whole of humanity from suffering, misery. Those who follow me will enter into the kingdom of God, and those who do not follow me will fall into hell's darkness for eternity" - this is the same will-to-power, but in a religious garb. It is difficult to detect it; it is more subtle, more refined, more polished. When Krishna says to Arjuna, "Leave everything aside and come to my feet; I am your deliverance" - what is he saying? What is he asking? It is the same need.

When Mohammed says, "I am the messenger of God, and I am the last messenger; after me no messenger will be coming again. I have brought you the ultimate word. Yes, before me there have been a few messengers, but because humanity was not prepared, their messages were incomplete.

I bring you the complete message, the absolute message; all that you have to do is to believe in me." One God, one messenger of God - that is Mohammed - and one book of God - that is Mohammed's written book, the Koran - these are the three fundamentals of a Mohammedan. One God, one messenger, one book - nothing has to be added. These power-hungry people have always been afraid that somebody later on may prove better.

Mahavira says, "I am the last tirthankara of the Jainas. Now the message is delivered in its total completeness, and there will be no more tirthankaras. What is he saying? Twenty-five hundred years ago he closed the door. Darwin had not happened yet, Freud had not happened yet, Marx had not happened yet, Einstein had not happened yet - and he closed the doors. The message was complete.

In fact the whole of science has happened within three hundred years, and the last religion is Sikhism, which is five hundred years old. After Sikhism there has not been any great religion. And in these three hundred years everything has gone upside down. Up to three hundred years ago, Aristotle was the father of logic and the last word in logic. Not any more. His logic has not proved true to the latest discoveries of science. It was such a great problem for the scientists when they discovered phenomena which went against Aristotle's logic. They had never thought that anything could happen contrary to Aristotle's logic. But Aristotle cannot dictate to existence. These people tried in every way somehow to fit things into the Aristotelian system, but it was impossible.

And then, finally, they had to accept non-Aristotelian logic. They had to accept a simple fact - that nature, existence, has to be listened to. What we impose upon it may be true for the time being; tomorrow we may discover more, it may be proved wrong. Three hundred years ago, Euclid's geometry was the only geometry, and a complete science. It is not any more. Non-Euclidian geometry has taken its place. Because of the great discoveries in science, it became absolutely necessary that we think contrary to Euclid, contrary to Aristotle.

Mahavira, Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, Moses, Mohammed - they all happened before science had even started scratching the very beginning of things. But they all thought that with them evolution stops, with them time stops. No, time does not stop with anybody. Evolution does not stop with anybody. These are all egoistic claims. The ego would like to say that "everything stops with me - I am the ultimate happening. Nothing more, nothing better, nothing higher is going to happen."

Even Gautam Buddha forgets completely. He declares, "I am the highest awakened person, the suprememost awakened person. Nobody has been so awakened before, and nobody will be so awakened again. Nobody is higher than me, and nobody will ever be higher than me."

And these people, on the other hand, go on teaching, "Be humble. Drop the ego." It seems to be a beautiful arrangement. To the people say, "Be humble" - and you be the only begotten son of God!

To the people say, "Be egoless" - and you declare yourself the suprememost awakened person! Not only are you the highest up to now, you are even closing it for the future - nobody can transcend you.

In India there is a religion, Radhaswami. They have a list; they think there are fifteen stages of the evolution of the soul. Mohammed is on the third stage - I am just telling you as an example - Jesus is on the fourth stage, one stage higher; Krishna is on the fifth, one stage higher; Buddha on the tenth. They have put all the names in categories. Their guru, who is not known outside India, not known outside the city of Agra - it is a very small sect - he has reached to the fifteenth, the last.

There is no other stage above it.

I was visiting their temple - they are making a temple just according to the same power trip. Agra has the Taj Mahal, one of the most beautiful creations of man; they are making a better temple, just to defeat the Taj Mahal! They have been working for almost sixty years on it; only one floor, the ground floor, is ready. It will take at least two hundred years more. But the way they are doing it...

even from the incomplete structure you can see that, if they succeed - which seems to be difficult - if they succeed in making it they will defeat the Taj Mahal. You can see, just whatsoever they have done is superb. That was their guru's wish: that his samadhi, his memorial, should be better than the Taj Mahal, "Otherwise don't make it. If you make it, then it has to be better than the Taj Mahal. If you cannot manage...."

It was difficult. The Taj Mahal was made by a great emperor, Shahjehan, who ruled over India.

Perhaps at the time Shahjehan ruled, India was four times bigger than it is today, because his empire spread beyond, far beyond the boundaries of today's India. Afghanistan was part of it, Burma was part of it, Ceylon was part of it. Shahjehan's empire was certainly four times or more bigger than India is today.

And he was making this memorial for his wife - that too, again, the same game. You will be surprised:

it was not out of love. He had many wives; Mumtaj Mahal was just one of them. Perhaps she used to meet him once a year, because if you have four or five hundred wives.... And I don't think he would have recognized her if he had suddenly met her in the marketplace. He may not have seen her more than a half-a-dozen times in her whole life. But she died. She was the first one in the whole army of his wives, so he decided to make a memorial which would be the best in the world. He forgot at the time... what about his memorial?

Twenty thousand people continued to work for twenty years to make the Taj Mahal. All the best artists who could work on marble, from all over the known world, were brought to Agra. And when the Taj Mahal was complete.... Taj Mahal is so named because the wife's name was Mumtaj; hence Taj Mahal, the palace of Taj - 'Taj' he used to call her lovingly. Then he started making his own memorial before he died, because he was absolutely certain that his son would not be able to put so much energy and so much money into it.

And now it was a great problem before him - he recognized it only when the Taj Mahal was complete - that "my memorial has to be better than the Taj Mahal." Of course the husband's memorial has to be better than the wife's, the male chauvinist is everywhere - but it is the same power trip. So on one side of the River Yamuna is the Taj Mahal; it is made of white marble. He started to make another memorial on the other side of the river with black marble, and it was going to be better than the Taj Mahal. It is only half complete, but you can see it would have been better if Shahjehan had lived to complete it. He died - he was old - and his son simply dropped the whole project, it was too costly.

So there lies an incomplete memorial which was going to be bigger than the Taj Mahal. And then, with these Radhaswamis, there is again another which is certainly better - if it succeeds, which is almost impossible because it is such a small sect: very rich, very creative, but to compete with Shahjehan is not possible. And do you know what Shahjehan's son Jehangir did? Not only did he discontinue the project, he cut off the hands of the best artists so that nobody could make anything comparable to the complete Taj Mahal or the incomplete memorial of his father. That was the reward given to those people who had worked almost three generations. Ego trips....

So I was invited to this temple. They told me, "Our master has taught us that there are fifteen stages, and this is the way he has described who is where - who is who and who is where. What do you think?" they asked me.

I said, "Your master is right, because from the fifteenth I can see him trying to reach to the sixteenth, but he goes on slipping, it is very slippery - this is the last. The poor fellow goes on falling - I know him." These stupid people! But, in the name of religion, it is the same will-to-power. You will find it very refined in the poets, in the painters, in other artists, singers, dancers - but it is the same.

So I am not against the politicians, I am against the will-to-power, because the will-to-power is nothing but ego projection, and that is the greatest barrier between you and existence. The bigger ego you have, the farther away you are from existence. If it is not there... the meeting, the merger.

But I will not tell you to drop the ego. I am fully aware how cunning the ego is. It can even play the game of dropping itself, and you can say, "Look, I am the humblest person in the world, the most egoless." It has come in from the back door again; now you are the humblest, the most egoless - but you have to be somebody special and extraordinary.

I only say to you: if you try to drop it, it will come in from the back door. Just try to understand its games, that's enough. Just try to see how many games it can play, in how many ways it can deceive you. Just be alert. And if you are aware of all the possible ways of the ego, it disappears just like darkness disappears when you bring a lighted candle in. And you start looking with the candle where the darkness is. And you go on looking... and wherever you go it is not... wherever you go it is not.

When the light is there, the darkness disappears. It is not that darkness escapes; darkness does not exist at all. It is only an absence of light.

Ego is just like darkness; it has no existence of its own. It is only the absence of awareness. So I don't say drop the ego, I say watch it. Be watchful, observe it - and you will find it in so many layers that you will be surprised. The politician is a gross egoist. The saint may be a very subtle egoist. He is in more danger than the politician, because the gross can be caught very easily. I know both. I know the grossest politician and I know the subtlest saint, and I know all the categories in between.

I have met all these people.

My whole life's work is to find out the basic problem of humanity. And once we know the basic problem of humanity, it is not difficult at all to dissolve it. In fact, in the very finding it dissolves, because your awareness becomes a light unto itself.

I cannot say I am a messiah, I cannot say I am the avatara, because I know those are subtle ego games. All that I can say is: I am just as ordinary as anybody, or as extraordinary as everybody.

In existence, the smallest blade of grass has the same significance and the same beauty as the greatest star. There is no hierarchy. There is nobody higher, nobody lower.

I am not against anybody. But my basic work is to expose before you all the diseases, the bondages, so that you are not caught in them, so you can remain free, so you can have a merger with existence, without any barrier. And ego is the only barrier. It can come in so many ways that unless you are really alert it will deceive you. It can become so subtle - almost like a shadow - that it will follow you, and you will not be aware of it.

I would like to tell you a small story. Two monks, Buddhist monks, are returning to their monastery; they come to a ford. The current is very powerful. It is a hilly place. A young, beautiful girl is waiting there, waiting for somebody to help her to cross. She is afraid to enter alone.

One monk, who is the older one of course... because he is older, he walks ahead - all games of the ego. If you are older, you have to walk ahead; younger monks have to walk a little back. They cannot walk parallel to the older monk; of course, they cannot walk ahead. And these are the people who are talking continuously of dropping the ego! Even physical age is used to fulfill a certain ego.

The older monk comes first. The young girl asks him, "Bhante" - Bhante is the Buddhist equivalent of 'reverend' - "Bhante, would you help me; just hold my hand? I am afraid, the current is so strong and perhaps it may be deep."

The old man closes his eyes - that's what Buddha had said to the monks: that if you see a woman, particularly if she is beautiful, close your eyes. But I am surprised: you have already seen her, then you close your eyes; otherwise how can you determine she is a woman, and beautiful? You are already affected, and now you close your eyes. And remember, with closed eyes the beautiful woman will become even more beautiful - she will become a dream girl. And Buddha had said, "Don't talk, don't touch a woman" - because just talking, you may get caught; touching, you may forget that you are a monk.

So he closes his eyes and enters the ford without answering the woman. You see the ugliness of it.

And these people are saying, "Help, serve"and that poor girl was simply asking, "Hold my hand, just for a few seconds, so I can pass the ford." And the man closed his eyes.

Then the second, younger monk comes. The girl is afraid, but there is nothing else to call upon: the sun is setting, soon it will be night. She cannot go back, the town is far away. She has to go ahead, then only can she reach her home before it becomes too dark. But how to pass this ford? So under compulsion she asks the young monk, "Bhante, will you please hold my hand? The ford seems to be deep and the current strong... and I am afraid."

The monk says, "It is deep, I know, because we pass through it every day. On the other side is our monastery, so to beg food we have to come to this side to the village. It is deep, and it is good that you have not entered alone, otherwise you would have gone with it. And just holding hands won't do; you just sit on my shoulders and I will carry you to the other side."

The young girl jumps on his shoulders; he carries her to the other side. When they are just in the middle of the ford, the old monk remembers that a younger fellow is coming behind, and he is too young and too new, he may get caught in the devil's net - the woman is the devil's net. Perhaps it is the devil himself standing in the form of a young, beautiful girl. He opens his eyes, and what he sees he cannot believe: the young monk is carrying the beautiful girl on his shoulders. Now he is tremendously angry, shaking with anger.

The young monk leaves the girl on the other shore and follows the older monk towards the monastery. When they reach the monastery door - it must have been two or three miles from the ford - on the steps the older monk stands and says to the young one, "You, fellow, you have committed a sin and I am going to report to the Buddha that not only you touched a woman, not only you talked with her, you carried her on your shoulders. You should be expelled from the community; you are not worthy of being a monk."

The young man simply laughs and says, "Bhante, it seems although I have dropped that girl three miles back, you are still carrying her on your shoulders. Three miles have passed, and you are still bothered by it?"

This is what happens if you start fighting with anything - it may be sex, it may be ego, it may be greed, it may be fear, it may be anger, whatsoever - if you start fighting with it. And how will you drop it? Other than fight, how are you going to drop it? You will push hard but where will you push it? Anything pushed goes deep down into your own unconscious. And anything in the unconscious is far more powerful than in the conscious, because conscious is only one part; the unconscious is nine times bigger than that. And in the conscious mind at least you are aware what is there. In the unconscious mind it is so dark, you don't know what is there; and it is nine times bigger, more powerful. It can take over your conscious effort any moment.

Now, what is happening to this old monk? Many things at the same time. The girl was beautiful; he has missed a chance. He is angry. He is jealous. He is full of sexuality. He is what he is saying the younger one is - really in a mess. The younger one is completely clean. He took the girl over and left her on the other shore, and that's that, the thing is finished. But the younger monk must have been of tremendous awareness.

That awareness is my teaching. Never fight with greed, ego, anger, jealousy, hatred - all those enemies that the religions have been telling you, "Fight with them, crush them, kill them. You cannot kill them, you cannot crush them, you cannot fight with them; all that you can do is just be aware of them.

And the moment you are aware, they are gone. In the light, the darkness simply disappears.

Question 2:

Yes and no. First let us discuss the no. I am against the communism that exists in the Soviet Union, in China, and in other communist countries. I am against the communism that Karl Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, these people, have given birth to, because what they have given birth to is not communism; that's why I am against it.

What they have given birth to is a dictatorial, inhuman, slave society - undemocratic, with no respect for the individual and no recognition even for the individual. He is only a number, just as in the army numbers exist. One man dies: on the army board, number eight is killed, or number eight is lost, not found. But do you see the psychological difference? Number eight has no wife, no children, no mother, no old father, no old grandmother. Number eight is just number eight: arithmetic. It has nothing to do with humanity. But if you replace it with his real name, then you feel differently. You start thinking, what will happen to his wife? He was a friend to someone - what will happen to his mother, to his old father, who were looking to him and depending on him? What will happen to his children?

Hence, in the army they don't use names - they will create psychological disturbance in other people - only numbers, and numbers are replaceable. Number eight has fallen, let him go; somebody else becomes number eight. He will not become the husband of number eight's wife, and he will not become the son of number eight's father. The army is not concerned about that. Numbers are replaceable; human beings are not. The communism that has arisen out of Karl Marx is inhuman, because it does not take account of your individuality at all.

Marx says you are nothing but matter. And if you are nothing but matter, then what does it matter whether you live or die? So it was very easy for Stalin to kill millions of people in Russia. It would not have been so easy if Marx had not said that you are only matter. There is no problem; Stalin feels no prick in his conscience destroying millions of people: they are not people, they don't have any souls. They are only mechanisms.

I am not going to be a supporter of this idiotic ideology, which takes humanity from man. His humanity has to be enriched, his individuality has to be sharpened.

They destroy everything that is individual. They want you just to be a part of the collective whole - just a part, a cog in the wheel, which is always replaceable. And I know that no human being is replaceable, because every human being is so unique, so utterly unique, that there is no way to replace him. In Marxian communism there is no respect for the individual. What are they closing, do you know? They are closing the door to your own being, and if the door is closed to your own being, you are separated from existence totally. Then there is no question of seeking and searching the truth; there is no question of knowing thyself, of being thyself. In fact it is dangerous, being thyself, knowing thyself. It is better to be just a cog in the wheel, with no self.

Marx's idea is not based on any inner search. I pity the man; he was intelligent, but he remained only intellectual, bookish, a bookworm. In the British Museum library he entered every day, the first man, and he had to be forced out every night because the museum was going to be closed. And sometimes he had to be taken on a stretcher, because reading the whole day and smoking cigarettes - that was all that he was doing - he would become unconscious. For forty years continually the British Museum had to deal with this man. But they became aware that "we have to accept him. He is the first man - before the door opens, he is standing there - and he is the last man. If you find him conscious, you can take him out; if you find him unconscious, you carry him on the stretcher to the hospital."

This man never even for a single moment meditated. He knew nothing of the inner; he was just concerned with books. What he has written in Das Kapital... no communist reads it. I have met hundreds of communists; no communist reads it. Every communist keeps it in his house, just as a Christian keeps The Bible. It is the bible of communism - and they have created the trinity exactly:

Marx, Engels, Lenin; and the bible is Das Kapital - but nobody reads it. I have gone through it, from the first page to the last. It is all words, no experience; quotations from other books, but no authentic experience, not a single experience of his own.

What kind of man is Karl Marx? Jews give a strange type of people to the world. First they gave us Moses, who for forty years drove the whole Jewish community... seventy-five percent of his people died in forty years, searching for Israel. And what a coincidence, that he passed over all those places which are now the richest - the Middle East, all the oil sources, he passed all those. He is God's chosen prophet, and he knows nothing about the oil! And he stopped at Israel, where there is nothing - just a desert. If he had stopped somewhere before, Jews would have been immensely happy; they could have created a paradise.

Then comes Jesus, another Jew. And because of Jesus, Jews gave birth to Christianity. They are responsible. If they had not crucified Jesus there would have been no Christianity. And what has Christianity done to humanity, do you know? In the past twenty centuries, how many million people Christians have killed, burned alive? - in the name of God, and the holy ghost, and the son. They could burn people alive because they were absolutely certain that what they were doing was right.

Jesus has given them the right to bring everybody to the fold. So there were crusades going on continually against the pagans.

And you will be surprised: the pagans are far closer to existence than anybody else. The pagans are the people who worship nature, trees, mountains, oceans, rivers, stars. The pagans are those who accept this whole that surrounds you as divine. They are far closer to me than these so-called religious people.

They were killing pagans because they did not believe in a creator God. And the pagans were being killed by everybody. Jews were killing them because they were not believing in the Jewish god, Christians were killing them because they were not believing in the Christian god, Mohammedans were killing them because they were not believing in the Mohammedan god - and there are so many gods.... It is good that Hindus never started killing, because Hindus have thirty-three million gods! If they had started killing, then there would have been no humanity at all. Thirty-three million gods...

the idea is so old that at that time there were not thirty-three million people even on the whole earth, what to say about Hindus. The whole earth had not thirty-three million people, but the Hindus had thirty-three million gods. Why did these Hindus have thirty-three million gods?

Because Jainas have twenty-four tirthankaras, Buddhists, just not to be left behind - that ego goes on - invented.... They have only one Gautam Buddha, but they invented... It is a fiction, but they had to compete with the Jainas; they were their competitors, their contemporaries. Jainas authentically had twenty-four tirthankaras; Buddha was alone. First he tried to say that he was the twenty-fourth tirthankara. When he was not accepted by the Jainas, and Mahavira succeeded in being accepted, he created the fiction that there have been twenty-four Buddhas - twenty-three before him. In fact, those twenty-three were his lives; he has been twenty-three times before as a Buddha in the world, and this is his twenty-fourth life.

Now this is pure fiction; just to compete with the Jainas there had to be twenty-four. But Hindus at that time had the idea of only ten avataras. Seeing that Jainas and Buddhists had twenty-four, they immediately changed their number; so any scripture that is written after Gautam Buddha and Mahavira says, "We also have twenty-four avataras." But then, to defeat this competition forever, they managed this idea of thirty-three million gods.

Marx is another gift of the Jews to the world - and really a Jew! And the reason that he is the founder of communism is not any compassion for the poor. No, not at all - it is jealousy of the rich. This you have to understand clearly, because that will change the whole attitude. His father was poor, his father's father was poor. He was poor; he remained dependent on the support of a friend, Frederick Engels, who was a rich man who went on giving him money.

Frederick Engels is not a great intellectual or anything, but because he was supporting him financially, Marx went on putting his name with his own on every book he wrote. Nothing is written by Frederick Engels, it is just Marx showing his respect. In fact it is in a way right, because without him Marx would not have been able to write; he would have starved and died.

And to be a Jew and poor is a very difficult situation. I know because I was born in a Jaina family - Jainas are the Jews of India. You will not find a single Jaina beggar all over India; all the beggars are Hindu, not a single Jaina beggar. I have searched all over India, I have not been able to find a single Jaina beggar. They are not poor; everybody is comfortably rich, and most of them are the richest people in the country.

Now, to be a Jew and poor, when all other Jews are rich, naturally creates jealousy. It is not compassion for the poor. Nowhere in Das Kapital, The Communist Manifesto, and other books of Marx can you find a single statement which shows compassion for the poor - no, not at all. It is jealousy of the rich.

So if I have to define it exactly the definition will be: Marx's communism means, destroy the rich, divide the riches equally. That's what they have done in Russia, in China. The poor are still poor, but in a way satisfied because the riches have been distributed. The rich people have been destroyed.

The comparison has disappeared; now there is nobody rich to make you feel poor. You are still poor.

The poverty, of course, is equally distributed. Everybody is equally poor, so nobody can compare, nobody can feel jealous. Nobody can think that things can be better than they are.

I am not in favor of distributing poverty, of destroying the rich. So I say no to the communism that exists today, the Marxian communism. But I say yes to a totally different concept of communism. To me communism is the last and the highest stage of capitalism.

It is not against capitalism that communism can succeed. It is in the fulfillment of capitalism that communism happens.

Capitalism is the first system in the world which creates capital, wealth. Before, there was feudalism - it never created wealth; it exploited people, it robbed people. The wealth that the kings had in the past was a crime. It was exploited, forcibly taken from the people, from the poor; it was not their creation.

Capitalism is the first system which creates wealth. It needs intelligence to create wealth. And unless we create so much wealth that wealth loses all meaning, unless we create a standard of wealth so high that the poor automatically start becoming richer.... Nobody can eat wealth - what are you going to do with it? There comes a point of saturation. And when capitalism comes to the point of saturation, then only comes the flowering of communism. Hence I call my community a commune. Communism, the word communism, is made from 'commune'.

I believe in capitalism. Perhaps I am the only person in the whole world to say so clearly that I believe in capitalism, because this is the first time in the history of man that a system is there which creates wealth, and can create so much wealth that with science and scientific technology added to it, there is no need for poverty. There is no need for distributing wealth, it will be distributed automatically.

There is no need for any dictatorship of the proletariat. Capitalism can remain perfectly in tune with democracy, with individuality, with freedom of speech. It destroys nothing.

So my approach is that we have to spread the idea of creating wealth rather than distributing it.

What are you going to distribute if you don't have it in the first place?

Even Marx never said that communism would happen in Russia or China, because these countries are so poor - what are you going to distribute? Even Marx's idea was that communism would happen first in America. But it happened in Russia. Of course, it is something false. It is something not exactly making people happier and richer and freer, but spoiling all that they have and giving them a false hope that, "Soon you will all be rich." When will that 'soon' come? Sixty years have passed, more than sixty, since the revolution. All the revolutionaries have died. All were hoping that it is coming. Russia has remained poor, is still poor.

Even the poorest man in America is in a better position than a well-salaried person in Russia. And what they have lost is of immense value. They have lost freedom, they have lost individuality, they have lost freedom of expression. They have lost everything. They are living in a vast concentration camp: no justice available, nowhere to appeal, no possibility to be heard.

I am against this kind of communism; this is so destructive. But I have my own idea of communism; hence I say yes and no. 'No' for the communism that you are aware of, and 'yes' for the communism of which I am continually talking to you.

Create wealth, richness. And now that science and technology have given you all the means to create it, it is simply foolish to think of distribution. Forget about distribution. Create it so much that it comes to a saturation point. Then from there it starts spreading to everyone.

Communism is the ultimate flowering of capitalism.

Okay Sheela?