Yes, I Teach You Selfishness

Question 1:

It not only goes against many religions, it goes against all the religions in the world. They all teach service to others, unselfishness. But to me, selfishness is a natural phenomenon. Unselfishness is imposed. Selfishness is part of your nature. Unless you come to a point where your self dissolves into the universal, you cannot be truly unselfish. You can pretend. You will be only a hypocrite, and I don't want my people to be hypocrites. So it is a little complicated but it can be understood.

First, selfishness is part of your nature. You have to accept it. And if it is part of your nature it must be serving something very essential, otherwise it would not have been there at all. It is because of selfishness that you have survived, that you have taken care of yourself; otherwise humanity would have disappeared long ago.

Just think of a child who is unselfish, born unselfish. He will not be able to survive, he will die - because even to breathe is selfish, to eat is selfish, when there are millions of people who are hungry and you are eating, when there are millions of people who are unhealthy, sick, dying, and you are healthy.

If a child is born without selfishness as an intrinsic part of his nature, he is not going to survive. If a snake comes close to him, what is the need to avoid the snake? Let him bite. It is your selfishness that protects you; otherwise, you are coming in the way of the snake. If a lion jumps upon you and kills you, be killed. That is unselfishness. The lion is hungry, you are providing food - who are you to interfere? You should not protect yourself, you should not fight. You should simply offer yourself on a plate to the lion. That will be unselfishness. All these religions have been teaching things which are unnatural. This is only one of the things.

I teach you nature. I teach you to be natural, absolutely natural, unashamedly natural. Yes, I teach you selfishness. Nobody has said it before me. They had not the guts to say it. And they were all selfish; this is the amazing part of the whole story.

Why is a Jaina monk torturing himself? There is a motivation. He wants to attain to moksha and to all the pleasures therein. He is not sacrificing anything, he is simply bargaining. He is a businessman, and his scriptures say, "You will get a thousandfold." And this life is really very small - seventy years is not much. If you sacrifice seventy years' pleasures for an eternity of pleasures it is a good bargain.

I don't think it is unselfish.

And why have these religions been teaching you to serve humanity? What is the motive? What is the goal? What are you going to gain out of it? You may never have asked the question. It is not service....

I have loved a very ancient Chinese story: A man falls into a well. It was at a big gathering, a big festival time, and there was so much noise, and people were enjoying, dancing, singing, and all kinds of things were going on, so nobody heard him fall. And at that time in China wells were not protected by a wall surrounding them, at least four or five feet high so nobody falls in. They were without any protection, just open. You can fall in the darkness without being aware that there is a well. The man starts shouting, "Save me!"

A Buddhist monk passes by. Of course a Buddhist monk is not interested in the festival, is not supposed to be interested - I don't know what he was doing there. Even to be there means some unconscious urge to see what is going on, how people are enjoying: "All these people will go to hell, and I am the only one here who is going to heaven."

He passes by the well and he hears this man. He looks down. The man says, "It's good that you have heard me. Everybody is so busy and there is so much noise that I was afraid I was going to die."

The Buddhist monk said, "You are still going to die, because this is your past life's evil act: now you are getting the punishment. Get it and be finished! It is good. In the new life you will come out clean and there will be no need to fall again into a well."

The man said, "I don't want any wisdom and any philosophy at this moment...." But the monk had moved on.

A Taoist old man stops. He is thirsty, and looks in the well. The man is still crying for help. The Taoist says, "This is not manly. One should accept everything as it comes - that's what the great Lao Tzu has said. So accept it! Enjoy! You are crying like a woman. Be a man!"

The man said, "I am ready to be called a woman but first please save me! I am not manly. And you can say anything that you want to say afterwards - first pull me out."

But the Taoist said, "We never interfere in anybody's business. We believe in the individual and his freedom. It is your freedom to fall in the well, it is your freedom to die in the well. All that I can do is just suggest to you: you can die crying, weeping - that is foolish - or you can die like a wise man.

Accept it, enjoy it, sing a song, and go. Anyway, everybody is going to die, so what is the point of saving you? I am going to die, everybody is going to die - perhaps tomorrow, perhaps the day after tomorrow - so what is the point of bothering to save you?" And he moves on.

A Confucian comes and the man sees some hope because Confucians are more worldly, more earthbound. He says, "It is my good fortune that you have come, a Confucian scholar. I know you, I have heard about your name. Now do something for me, because Confucius says, 'Help others.'"

Seeing the response of the Buddhist and the Taoist, the man thought, "It is better to talk philosophy if these people are to be convinced to save me." He said, "Confucius says, 'Help others.'"

The Confucian monk said, "You are right. And I will help. I am going from one city to another, and I will try and protest and force the government to make a protective wall around every well in the country. Don't be afraid."

The man said, "But by the time those protective walls are made and your revolution succeeds, I will be gone."

The Confucian said, "You don't matter, I don't matter, individuals don't matter - society matters. You have raised a very significant question by falling in the well. Now we are going to fight for it. You be calm and quiet. We will see that every well has a protective wall around it so nobody falls into it. Just by saving you, what is saved? The whole country has millions of wells, and millions of people can fall into them. So don't be too selfish about yourself, rise above the selfish attitude. I am going to serve humanity. You have served by falling into the well. I am going to serve by forcing the government to make protective walls." And he walks on. But he makes a significant point: "You are very selfish.

You just want to be saved and waste my time, which I can use for the whole of humanity."

Do you know if anything like 'humanity' exists anywhere, if anything like a 'society' exists anywhere?

These are just words. Only individuals exist.

The fourth man is a Christian minister, a missionary, who is carrying a bag with him. He immediately opens the bag, takes out a rope, throws the rope; before the man says anything, he throws the rope into the well. The man is surprised. He says, "Your religion seems to be the truest religion."

He says, "Of course. We are prepared for every emergency. Knowing that people can fall into wells, I am carrying this rope to save them because only by saving them can I save myself. But remember - I have heard what the Confucian was saying - don't make protective walls around the wells; otherwise how will we serve humanity? How will we pull out people from wells who fall in?

They have to fall first, only then can we pull them out. We exist to serve, but the opportunity must be there. Without the opportunity, how can you serve?"

All these religions talking about service are certainly interested that humanity remains poor, that people remain in need of service, that there are orphans, there are widows, old people nobody takes care of, beggars. These people are needed, absolutely needed. Otherwise, what will happen to these great servants of the people? What will happen to all these religions and their teachings?

And how will people enter into the kingdom of God? These people have to be used as a ladder.

Do you call it unselfishness? Is this missionary unselfish? He is saving this man, not for this man's sake; he is saving this man for his own sake. Deep down it is still selfishness, but now it is covered with a beautiful word: unselfishness, service.

But why is there any need for service? Why should there be any need? Can't we destroy these opportunities for service? We can, but the religions will be very angry. Their whole ground will be lost - this is their whole business - if there is nobody poor, nobody hungry, nobody suffering, nobody sick.

And science can make it possible. It is absolutely in our hands today. It would have been long ago, if these religions had not stopped every person who was going to contribute to knowledge, which can destroy all the opportunities for service. But these religions have been against all scientific progress and they will talk of service. They need these people. Their need is not unselfish; it is utterly selfish.

It is motivated. There is a goal to be achieved.

Hence I say to my sannyasins, service is a dirty, four letter word. Never use it. Yes, you can share, but never humiliate anybody by serving him. It is humiliation.

When you serve somebody and you feel great, you have reduced the other into a worm, subhuman.

And you are so superior that you have sacrificed your own interests and you are serving the poor:

you are simply humiliating them.

If you have something, something that gives you joy, peace, ecstasy, share it. And remember that when you share there is no motive. I am not saying that by sharing it you will reach to heaven. I am not giving you any goal. I am saying to you, just by sharing it you will be tremendously fulfilled. In the very sharing is the fulfillment, there is no goal beyond it. It is not end-oriented, it is an end unto itself.

And you will feel obliged to the person who was ready to share with you. You will not feel that he is obliged to you - because you have not served. And only these people who believe in sharing instead of service can destroy all those opportunities, those ugly opportunities which surround the whole earth. And all the religions have been exploiting those opportunities. But they give good names...

they have become very proficient, in thousands of years, in giving good names to ugly things. And when you start giving a beautiful name to an ugly thing, there is a possibility you yourself may forget that it was just a cover. Inside, the reality is just the same.

I am reminded... I was staying in Calcutta in a very rich woman's house. She was a widow, still young. She had a kid; her husband had died just a few years back, and she was immensely interested in my way of thinking. We were taking breakfast and there I saw a picture hanging on the wall. I recognized the man. I asked the woman, "Is this a picture of Swami Divyanand Saraswati?"

She said, "Yes."

I said, "It is strange. It is impossible to be interested in me and in this man. I know this man. He belongs to a very chauvinistic Hindu group, Arya Samaj, very fanatic." His religion believes that it is the only true religion, and all other religions are untrue, and that the Vedas are written by God, and their existence cannot be calculated in years... ten thousand, twenty thousand, one hundred thousand - no, they were created simultaneously when the existence was created. How can God create existence without giving it guidelines? Of course that seems to be logical. And Vedas are enough, no other book is needed. There are four Vedas - so utterly childish, so foolish and so full of rubbish and crap that God must be insane if he creates this kind of book.

So I had met this man and immediately we became enemies forever because I said, "It is all crap that you are thinking God created. And if this is what God created then your God is in urgent need of psychiatric treatment."

The Vedas say God created the woman. Of course, he is the father: he created the woman, he is the father... and he became infatuated, he started running after the woman. The woman became afraid of being raped by her own father, so she tried to hide. That's how the whole creation came into existence. She became a cow - but you cannot deceive God, He became a bull. That's how all these animals came into existence; the woman went on changing, and God also went on changing.

That's how this whole existence has come into being. It is God still chasing the woman in millions of forms. But the very idea of the father who has created.... He is a rapist, and no ordinary rapist, an eternal rapist - he still continues to chase. And this you call a book created by God?

So I asked the woman, "If you are interested in me then how is it possible that you are interested in this maniac?"

She said, "I am not interested in him at all. You are right. It was my husband who was interested in him. And because he had put the picture there, and he has died, just out of respect to my husband I have not removed the picture. But I never look at that picture. But what my son did to him, I always enjoy."

I said, "What did your son do to him?"

She said, "Swami Divyanand used to come here and stay with us." They had a beautiful meeting hall for at least five hundred people, so he used to deliver lectures in their home.

One day... the child must have been at that time not more than five or six years old. The woman was certainly sitting in front, the child was sitting in front - they were the hosts - the husband was sitting in the front. And in the middle of the discourse of Swami Divyananda, the child said loudly to the mother, "I want to piss."

Now this is in front of Swami Divyananda and the whole hall, and everybody started laughing. In fact everybody was wanting the same thing. The lecture was such that it created the urge, the desire to go to the bathroom. And because everybody laughed, Divyananda felt very angry. These so-called religious people are carrying such rage, such anger. He called the woman close to him and said, "This is not good. You should teach your son."

She said, "What can I teach him?"

He said, "You can do a simple thing. You can tell him that whenever he wants to go to urinate, he can simply say, 'Mum, I want to go to sing. I want to sing.' You change that word piss to sing. Nobody will understand, only you will understand the code language."

So the mother said, "Okay."

After six or seven months he came back again to Calcutta and stayed there. The mother had to go out because some very close relative was just on the deathbed and she wanted to see him and be with him. So she told the swami, "I am going out. My husband is not at home - he always comes back late - and I don't want to take this child with me. The person is going to die, perhaps within an hour or two, and I don't want the child to go through that agony of death there. And he will not sleep alone, he never has slept alone, so will you be kind enough to let him sleep with you on your bed?"

The swami said, "There is no problem - he can sleep on my bed with me. And when you come back, you can take him to your bed."

This was settled. In the middle of the night the child shook the swami and said, "Swamiji, I want to sing."

The swami said, "Is this a time for singing, in the middle of the night? You idiot, just go to sleep.

Don't disturb me."

The poor boy just out of fear closed his eyes, but he wanted to sing. How long can he manage...?

So he again shook the swami; he was again snoring. He woke up: "What is the matter now?"

The boy said, "The same. It is impossible, I cannot hold it any more; I have to sing."

He said, "But what will people in the neighborhood think... in the middle of the night? And what kind of song? And I'm tired, the whole day traveling and talking to people, and now I have to listen to your song? Can't you wait? In the morning I can listen."

The boy said, "No, I cannot wait."

The swami said, "Just be a little patient. Everybody can wait, there is no problem. Singing is not such a thing that you can't wait."

The boy had to listen to him because he was shouting loudly. And he was alone there - the father was not there, the mother was not there. And this man says it can be controlled, you have to be patient.

He said, "Okay, I will try." He closed his eyes but within a few minutes.... The swami was snoring again. He woke him. He said, "Now, whether you stop me or not, I am going to sing, here, in the bed."

The swami said, "Then you do one thing: you simply sing softly in my ear so nobody will hear it. You devil, just whisper in my ear."

The boy said, "Do you really mean it?"

He said, "Yes, I mean it. You whisper, and then go to sleep and let me sleep. And never again in the night, this singing business - in the morning." So the boy whispered in his ear - but then it was too late. Then the swami remembered what 'singing' means, and why the boy was incapable of controlling it. It was his own doing. He had changed a reality into a phony, false word, and he himself forgot about it. All these religions have given good names, beautiful names, to ugly realities.

Why serve the poor when poverty can be destroyed? No religion says, "Destroy poverty." They are in deep conspiracy with the vested interests. They don't say destroy poverty. They don't suggest any measures for how poverty can be destroyed, stopped. But serve the poor, serve the widows.

They don't say, "Why force the woman to remain a widow?" So simple a phenomenon.... In India the man is allowed to get married as many times as he wants. In fact the moment the wife dies, her body is being burned on the funeral pyre and people are beginning to talk about marriage, where to arrange this man's marriage. So ugly, so inhuman - the body of the wife is not yet burned completely... but sitting around there, what else to do? They have to talk about something, and this is the most hot topic. Now this man needs a woman, and they are suggesting where it will be good to marry, which woman will be suitable for him - and not a widow.

Nobody is ready to get married to a widow. She is a used woman. Woman is a thing, used by somebody else - how can you use it? Man is not used; he always remains fresh, pure. He can get remarried. In India for thousands of years the woman has suffered so much because of this idea that she has to remain a widow. Millions of widows... they cannot use any other color than white.

They have to shave their heads, they cannot use any ornament. In every possible way it has been made clear to them that they have to live almost a dead life.

They cannot move in the society as other women do - particularly in festivals they are not supposed to. At marriages they are not supposed to be present, because their very presence, their very shadow, is a calamity. And the widow is told that she has eaten her husband - it is because of her fate that the husband died. If he had not married her he would be alive; she is responsible for his death. The whole life she carries this burden, and now she has to remain in every way ugly.

"Serve the widows." In India there are institutions especially for widows, because in homes they are not even equal to the servants. They do all kinds of work, the whole day they work. But they don't get any respect: no salary, no respect, and continual condemnation that because of them somebody's son has died, somebody's brother has died.... Everybody is against the woman. And she has to remain hidden like a shadow. She is not allowed to be there when guests are there. She lives like a ghost.

So institutions are opened by religions; this is service for the widows. But why have widows in the first place? It is such a such simple logic: make it a law that any man who wants to marry a second time has to marry a widow, not a virgin - simple. And the whole problem disappears. Rather than making the problems disappear, you help them to continue.

Now the same thing is happening in the West, in other ways, in other directions. Medical science has evolved so much that the scientists say that there is no intrinsic necessity for the human body to die for at least three hundred years. And this is a very conservative estimate, three hundred years.

They say for three hundred years there is no intrinsic necessity for the human body to die. For three hundred years everybody can live fully... young.

And if one can live three hundred years, can you think what the implications of it will be? Just think - Albert Einstein living three hundred years. What blessings would he not have showered on humanity! Such a mature mind! At the age of twenty-six he was able to present the theory of relativity, which transformed the whole of science and its shape. Just think, if he was able to live for three hundred years, all that seems impossible would have been possible through him. And I am taking just one example.

If Bertrand Russell can give so much in one hundred years, in three hundred years.... It is not possible for a man like Bertrand Russell to sit and not do anything. Even when he was a hundred years old he was far younger than your so-called young people - in his vision, in his approach, in his reasoning, in his clarity about everything. And if this man had been able to live three hundred years, I can say with absolute certainty that he would have changed many things that he had said when he was fifty, forty, thirty. He may have turned inwards, he may have become a meditator. He may have proved to be one of the greatest religious men on the earth. He had every capacity, and he had every courage that is needed to use that capacity. But the time was short. A hundred years for a man like Bertrand Russell is very short.

He has such a multidimensional interest: in education he wants to create a revolution; in philosophy he brings new concepts into existence; in mathematics... which was not his subject, but he was so interested in logic that he was compelled to go into mathematics, because they function on the same lines. Mathematics is logic applied. With one of the great mathematicians and philosophers of America, Whitehead, Russell joined hands, and together they wrote a book: Principia Mathematica.

It is so far ahead of its time - it was written fifty, sixty years ago - even today there are only perhaps a dozen or two dozen people who can understand it, what it is.

If he had lived three hundred years he would have given you a totally new mathematics, perhaps a higher mathematics about which Gurdjieff, Ouspensky - mystics like these people - were interested, a high mathematics which does not deal with ordinary material experiments but which deals with ultimate problems. And your mathematics that you learn in the universities cannot deal with the ultimate problems. Ultimate problems are beyond it. A totally new mathematics is needed, because when you come closer to the ultimate you find all your categories, logic, mathematics, falling apart.

Existence behaves differently - so differently that sometimes two plus two can be three, sometimes two plus two can be five. One thing is certain: at the ultimate, two plus two are never four.

I can give you a simple example. Why can two plus two never be four at the ultimate core of existence? It is because no two things are exactly similar. Two chairs are not exactly the same. Two other chairs are not exactly the same. You put all of them together, and you call it four chairs - and they are not the same, each chair is different. To be absolutely right, you cannot use four.

The electrons, the protons, the neutrons - the world deep at the ultimate core behaves in a totally different way. If you go out of a room, we know that you can only go out of the room if you pass through a certain passage, maybe ten steps; then you reach outside. But you will be there, in each of the ten, each time you take a step. But at the ultimate level, the electron jumps without being in between. It is at point A, then it is found at point B, which is far away from A, but it is not found between the two at all. From A it disappears and appears at B, and between the two there is no passage. Now, how can your ordinary mathematics, measurements, geometry, function? Something totally different is needed.

And as man's life has grown longer we have been able to discover science. You may not have thought about it. Science has come into existence only in the last three hundred years - why? Why not before? We have not been able to find a single skeleton of a human being who lived three thousand years ago - to say nothing about further back - which is older than forty years. The man must have died at the age of forty. Forty must have been the age limit sometime, because we have not found a single skeleton which proves that the man died at fifty, sixty, seventy; forty is the oldest.

So there is nothing strange when the Vedas say - and Hindus think it is something of tremendous glory to them - that people never get old. Hindus think that in the times of the Vedas science must have been so advanced that nobody was ever old. That is not the truth. The truth is everybody was dying at forty, so how could one get old?

When man started living longer, and seventy became the average age - and in Western countries, in some countries eighty, in some countries ninety became the average age - then science developed.

Otherwise, in forty years what can a person do? He is just trying somehow to survive - himself, his wife, a line of children - and then comes death. Science or philosophy or religion or anything higher needs more time, more luxury, more comfort.

Now man can live three hundred years. And if man can live three hundred years, why not six hundred? Why not one thousand? Once man comes to live three hundred years it is absolutely certain we will find there are ways to make him live longer. Then he becomes accumulated wisdom.

Then he can work out complicated problems.

Solve the problems! There is no need of teaching people service. What are the problems? The population explosion is the problem. All the religions are teaching, "Serve the poor," but not a single religion is ready to say, "Accept birth control so that the population is reduced."

I am for absolute birth control. Only a few people should be allowed to give birth to children, and that too should be done by artificial insemination. ... Because what is the need? It is possible you fall in love with a girl, the girl falls in love with you, but you may not be the right persons to become parents, to give birth to a child. You may not be, because love takes no account of your inner chemistry.

You don't go to the chemist to find out, "I am falling in love with this girl; do our inner chemistries meet?" If you go at all, you go to the idiot astrologer, the palmist... the blind leading the blind. It is a biochemical question, nothing to do with palmistry, nothing to do with astrology. But man's ego feels as if stars are interested in you. Just think of the stupidity of the whole idea that millions of stars are concerned with you, and are affecting you, and their combinations are affecting you. It just makes me feel sad about man. What kind of humanity has grown up on the earth?

But all these religions are against birth control, and without birth control there is no way now. I am in support of absolute birth control, remember, not just birth control; because with birth control people - if not religions, then governments - are compelled to accept that they should have only two children or three children. No, that won't do. Even two, three children won't do. Absolute birth control: nobody is to be allowed to give birth to children; anybody who is interested in children can go, contribute his semen to the scientific lab, and the lab should decide who is going to be the woman for your child's mother.

It need not be your wife, there is no relationship in it. You love your wife, your wife loves you, but that does not mean burden the earth with a crippled, blind child. You don't have that power, you don't have that permission from existence. Why are you taking such an irresponsible burden on yourself and on the whole of humanity? You give birth to a child who is crippled, or blind, or mad, or insane, and he will give birth to other children.

That's how the idiots are always in the majority in the world. They are bound to be, because the right combination can happen only through a scientific lab. You cannot... you don't know what you are carrying in your genes; you don't know what your potential is, what kind of child you are going to give birth to. You love the woman - there is no harm in that; love should be absolutely available to you, that is your birthright. You love the woman; but every woman need not be a mother, every man need not be a father. Soon there will be no need for the mother either. The child can grow in the scientific lab itself.

You want a child, and if you really love children, you would like the best child possible. So who contributes the semen and who contributes the mother's womb should not be your concern. Your concern should be that you get the best child possible. So I suggest artificial insemination and test-tube babies. And I also suggest euthanasia.

Just as we are putting a barrier on birth, birth control, let me give you another word: death-control.

After a certain age - for example, if you accept seventy as the average, or eighty or ninety as the average - a man should be free to ask the medical board, "I want to be freed from my body." He has every right, if he does not want to live anymore, because he has lived enough; he has done everything that he wanted to do. And now he wants not to die of cancer, or tuberculosis; he simply wants a relaxed death.

Every hospital should have a special place for people, with a special staff, where people can come, get relaxed and be helped to die beautifully, without any disease, supported by the medical profession. If the medical board feels that the person is valuable - for example, somebody like Einstein or Bertrand Russell - if the medical board feels that the person is of immense importance, then he can be asked to live a little longer. Only a few people should be asked to be here a little longer because they can be so much help to humanity, so much help to others. But if even those people don't want to live, that is their birthright. You can pray, ask, request. If they accept it, good.

But if they say, "No, we are not interested any more," then certainly they have every right to die.

Why should a person be forced to live when he does not want to live? And you make it a crime, you make the man unnecessarily worried: he does not want to live but he has to live because suicide is a crime. He has to take poison, or he has to jump into the ocean or from a hill. This is not a good situation. And strange: if he dies, good; if he is caught then he will be sentenced to death. Great society! Great minds creating laws! He will be sentenced to death because he was trying to commit suicide.

All these problems can be solved. Hence there is no need for public servants, missionaries, and their kind. We need more intelligence brought to the problem and how to dissolve it.

So I teach selfishness. I want you to be, first, your own flowering. Yes, it will appear as selfishness; I have no objection to that appearance of selfishness. It is okay with me. But is the rose selfish when it blossoms? Is the lotus selfish when it blossoms? Is the sun selfish when it shines? So why should you be worried about selfishness?

You are born: birth is only an opportunity, just a beginning, not the end. You have to flower. Don't waste it in any kind of stupid service. Your first and foremost responsibility is to blossom, to become fully conscious, aware, alert; and in that consciousness you will be able to see what you can share, how you can solve problems.

Ninety-nine percent of the world's problems can be solved. Perhaps one percent of problems may not be solved. Then you can share with those people whatsoever you can share - but first you have to have something to share.

All these religions up to now have not helped humanity in solving a single problem. Just look at what I am saying: have they solved a single problem? - and they have been doing this service business for millions of years. The poor are still poor, and go on growing more poor. The sick are there, old age is there, all kinds of diseases are there, all kinds of crimes are there - and they go on increasing. Every year there are more crimes in the world than the last year. Strange... prisons go on increasing, courts go on increasing - they think they are there to stop crime, and with them the crime goes on increasing.

Something is basically wrong somewhere. What they are doing is unrelated to the problem. The person who is committing a crime is not a criminal, he is a sick person. He need not be thrown into a jail and tortured, he has to be put into a psychiatric hospital and served there, medically, respectfully.

It is not his fault.

You must know there was a time when mad people were thought to be criminals and they were thrown into prison, and there they were beaten. It was only a few hundred years ago that it occurred to anyone that these people are not criminals, they are suffering from a certain disease. By beating them you cannot beat the disease out. You are simply being idiotic. They need treatment, and you are mistreating them. And the same is true about all criminals... because I don't see that any criminal is a born criminal. The way he is brought up, the society in which he is brought up, makes him a criminal. And once his mind starts becoming criminal, then you have to change the whole way of his mind. It is no use chaining him, throwing him into jail, starving him, beating him - it does nothing. It is simply reinforcing in him that when he comes out he will be a confirmed criminal, a graduate criminal.

Your imprisonments, your prisons, are universities for criminals, from which they graduate. So once a man goes to the jail, he comes out having learned many things from old criminals with whom he has been there. And all that he learns from your behavior is that to commit the crime is not the crime, but to be caught is the crime. So he learns ways not to be caught.

You have to change the track of his mind which moves into criminality. And that can be done.

Biochemistry can be of much help, medicine can be of much help, psychiatry can be of much help.

Now we have every resource to make that man a dignified human being.

Service is not needed, what is needed is a sharing of your consciousness - your knowledge, your being, your respect - but first you must have it.

To me the greatest problem with humanity is that they don't know anything of meditation. To me, that is the greatest problem. Neither the population, nor the atom bomb, nor hunger... no, these are not basic problems; they can be easily solved by science.

The only, basic problem that science will not be able to solve is that people don't know how to meditate.

To my people I say: first you be selfish, utterly selfish - blossom. Come to flowering and fragrance, and then spread it. Then share it with those unfortunate people who had the same potential as you, but life has not given them a chance to go inwards, to have a taste of their own godliness.

I am against all the religions because to me, what they have done is absolutely useless. But they 'do' with beautiful words, and they hide things in beautiful words.

For example: Jesus on the cross says to God... and Christians have been quoting that for centuries as one of the most profound sayings; and it appears so, but only appears so. Don't be deceived by the appearance, the appearance is not the reality. Jesus says on the cross, to God, as his last prayer, "Abba" - that is Aramaic for father - "Abba, forgive these people because they do not know what they are doing."

Such a beautiful statement, such forgiveness... that they are crucifying him and he is asking his God to forgive those who are crucifying him. But I have looked deeply into Jesus' life and into his sayings. He is not a man to ask forgiveness of. He could not even forgive a fig tree which was out of season. He cursed it because he and his followers were hungry and the tree was without fruits - as if the tree was inimical to them. He cursed the tree. And it was not the season for figs! And even if it was the season and there were no figs, what can the tree do? And what responsibility has the tree for them to be fed? And this is from a man who is thought to do miracles and change stones into bread, and water into wine.

What is the need? Such a man, if these miracles are true, could have simply ordered the tree, out of season: "Be full of figs, ripe figs!" In fact there was no need for the tree; stones could have become figs. But all those miracles are bogus. This incident proves that all those statements are bogus.

Why should he go to beg in the town in the first place if he can turn stones into bread? And if this man was capable of turning stones into bread, why did poverty remain in Judea at all? I am only talking about Judea - in fact, I should say why on the whole earth? Turn the whole Himalayas and Alps into big loaves of bread. If this man is capable of that, then why go on turning small stones into pieces of bread? Then turn these mountains into bread - people can cut and take away and eat forever. And why turn a little water into wine? - why not turn the whole ocean into wine? When you know the secret, when you know the miracle, then turn all the oceans into wine and let the people drink! There should not have been any poverty if Jesus' miracles are true - but they are all false.

And Jesus says, "Those who are not going to follow me will fall into the seventh hell for eternity. And they will be tortured in every possible way." This man does not know forgiveness. And if he cannot forgive you just because you have not followed him, how can he forgive those who are crucifying him? A simple logic - nothing much is needed.... Who are you to throw somebody into the seventh hell because he does not follow you? You cannot forgive a simple thing - that he did not follow you - and you are asking God to forgive all these people who are crucifying you? No, it is not forgiveness that is being asked, but something else.

Even on the cross he wants to show to the Jews, "Look, I am the messiah, and you are all ignorant."

He is asking God, "Forgive these ignorant people. They know not what they are doing." It is not forgiveness on which the emphasis should be laid, because this man is not forgiving - his whole life is against it - it is to prove all these people ignorant.

At the last moment also he is insisting, "I am the knower, the knowing one; and you, you are ignorant.

But I will ask God for you to be forgiven." He is still trying to be the messiah, because that is what the old scriptures say, that the messiah will be crucified and on the crucifixion he will pray to God, "Forgive these people, they know not what they are doing." He is stubborn, just adamant. Even crucifixion is not going to change anything: he is the messiah. And his last statement is just again declaring everybody else ignorant.

You can use beautiful words, beautiful phrases to hide some ugly truth. I don't want to do that kind of job at all.

I teach you to be natural, and I teach you to accept your naturalness.

I know one thing for certain, that when you have blossomed, you will be sharing. There is no way to avoid it. When the flower opens up there is no way for it to withhold its fragrance and keep it imprisoned. The fragrance escapes. It reaches in all directions. So first, be fulfilled, be content.

First, be. Then out of your being there will be a fragrance reaching to many. And it will not be a service, it will be a sheer joyous sharing. And there is nothing more joyful than sharing your joy.

Okay Sheela?