Everybody wants freedom, nobody wants responsibility

Question 1:

Certainly. But you don't understand one thing - Rajneeshism is not an "ism." It is just because of the poverty of language that we had to call it Rajneeshism. It is not an "ism" because it has no theology, no ideology, no philosophy - which are basic needs for an "ism" to exist.

You are absolutely free individuals. You don't belong to a certain concept about existence, about God, heaven and hell. You simply don't have any conceptualization.

We are existential: the "ism" is a mind thing. Our approach to reality is not a mind approach, it is a communion of heart to heart. All "isms" have belief systems: we don't have any belief system. You are not required to believe in anything unless you know it; and when you know something you don't believe, there is no need. You believe only things which you don't know.

Belief grows only in ignorance.

Knowing something is enough, there is no need to believe. We are seekers, searchers, not believers.

We don't have any idea beforehand about what we are going to get in the end, when the search is over. Hence, I say to you, it is just poverty of language that our approach to reality is called Rajneeshism.

But it is not an "ism" at all, because it does not fulfill the requirements to make it an "ism."

Communism is, socialism is, fascism is; all religions are. They are not existential. They are not trying to discover individually, in a very intimate and personal way, what this life is all about. They have taken for granted words of others - and words are just words, containers without any content.

Words have a strange quality. You can go on and on building big palaces, castles in the air, through words, but there is no base to your castle in the air. The base is provided by your own experiencing.

You can become a Christian just by believing in THE BIBLE. You can become a Hindu just by believing in the VEDAS.

You cannot become a Rajneeshee by believing in my words. You become a Rajneeshee when you also start feeling the same song I am feeling, you start the dance that is happening within me, you become full of the fragrance.... It is not wordy, it is existential.

To call it Rajneeshism was just a necessity enforced by poor language - it has no word for the existential approach. Even the philosophy of existence is called existentialism - the same stupid idea. Those philosophers are saying that there is no way to find the truth through argument, intellect.

Existence is available if you are silent, listening to it.... The sound of the running water, the wind blowing through the pine trees, the smell of a rose; the beauty of some face; the ecstasy of dropping all ideas, becoming a child - innocent, enchanted by everything life is made of. He knows nothing about it, but he feels it.

A just-born baby.... You bring the rose close to him, he will see it, he will certainly find fragrance.

But he cannot have in his being, anywhere, words. He cannot say to himself, "What a beautiful red rose." He does not know that beautifulness has a name, that there are words which call this a flower, a rose.

He knows nothing about colors, he cannot say it is red, but he finds it redder than you find it. He finds it livelier than you find it. He discovers immense beauty, fragrance, fragileness - but he has no words. He does not say anything within himself, he is utterly silent, absorbing all that the roseflower can give to him.

Rajneeshism is basically a transformation of you to the child again.

The word "ism" is not really applicable, but what to do? Language is a kind of imprisonment. Some word has to be used and all words will be wrong. So I said, "Okay, call it Rajneeshism. But as far as the 'ism' idea is concerned, include Rajneeshism completely out of any other 'ism' that has existed before."

It would be easier to call it something totally new, but then nobody would understand what it is. So until we have enough people to understand, we will have to carry a wrong label on it. Once they have understood, the label will be removed. Once we have our own world around this earth, "ism" is not going to be part of our way of life. So if you think Rajneeshism is also an "ism," throw it away. You have not understood anything. Your approach is still intellectual; otherwise, such a question would not have arisen.

You can see - no dogma is preached, no belief system is given. You are not required to accept anything. The atheist can become part of my communes, the theist can become part, the communist can become part, the capitalist can become part. We don't discriminate against anybody. Our basic approach is such, that whosoever becomes part of us, we deprogram. And the process of deprogramming is the same; whether you deprogram a Communist or a Catholic or a Protestant does not matter.

It is just like surgery. If a communist has cancer, goes through surgery, do you think the surgery will be different than the surgery when a Catholic has cancer? Will there be a Catholic surgery? Hindu surgery? Mohammedan surgery? You can understand perfectly well that surgery doesn't take any account of who you are, but it knows how to remove the cancer. And I am continuously hammering on your cancer to destroy it.

All "isms" are nothing but spiritual cancer; and if you think of Rajneeshism also in the same intellectual terms, I am going to hammer on it too. But it is not an "ism," it is not a cancer: it is a surgical method. We just had to give it a wrong name, because no right name exists in any language.

Yes, the day will come when we will start creating new words, new languages. It is certainly foolish that in this world there are thousands of languages - all that it needs is one language.

And these languages have grown haphazardly, unscientifically, but we go on carrying them - just junk, thousands of years old.

Just as I say one world is needed and one world government is needed, so one scientifically created language is needed, so that all men, wherever they are, are capable of understanding each other.

No old language should be accepted as the world language, for the simple reason that old languages are not capable of coping with the new reality that goes on changing. And the second reason: if you choose one language out of the old, all other languages which are not chosen will fight against it, naturally. If you just think of numbers, then Chinese will be the world language, because of every four people, one is a Chinese. And Chinese is the most difficult language, the most unscientific, because it is one of the most ancient languages.

It has no alphabet, it has only symbols. Just to be able to understand Chinese you have to understand at least ten thousand symbols - just to begin with! If you want to be a real scholar in the language, then one hundred thousand symbols you have to remember. It is an unnecessary burden, absolutely not needed. And even those symbols are not clear.

If in Chinese you want to write "war, conflict, struggle, fight," you have only one symbol - very true.

The symbol is one tree and two women under it. That is, one husband and two women under one roof: the tree is the roof. But is is up to you whether to understand it as war, as fight, as struggle, as battle, or just a conflict, a debate, a discussion - because the symbol can represent all these things.

You have to learn the context in which the symbol is used.

To learn Chinese, if you are not born Chinese, takes at least thirty years. As far as numbers are concerned, Chinese is the first language, and they will not be ready to give chances to any language which is far behind them.

No old language will do. But man is capable of creating a language like Esperanto and making it absolutely scientific so that no confusion arises. And because it will be a new language, there is nobody who will be privileged because it is his mother tongue. And nobody else will be disadvantaged because he has to learn a language for thirty years - almost half his life.

A new language will be equally acceptable to all. It will not be a competitor to any language. And only a new language can manage to be scientific; old languages cannot. Old languages go on adjusting to the new realities, but their adjustments make them silly. For example, horses are no longer important, but horsepower... strange, a car has so much horsepower, an aeroplane has so much horsepower. This is adjustment. Horses are gone, but horsepower will continue.

In English you have a word "daughter." You may not be aware that it is very ancient. It comes from the Sanskrit, duhita. Five or ten thousand years ago, it was the privilege of the daughter to milk the cow. duhita means one who milks the cow. Now from duhita has arisen the word "daughter,"

because only daughters were doing that job ten thousand years ago in India. The reason is that the cow is holy to the Hindus, and they would like it to be milked only by a virgin girl, to keep the milk holy. But what has it to do with daughter? There may be millions of daughters who have never touched a single cow, and they are still being called daughter.

If you look into the history of any word, you will make amazing discoveries. How has it arisen?

Centuries have changed the word's color, its tone, its pronunciation - everything. New qualities have been given to it which are not applicable. Words are dead things, and it is time that we have one language, scientifically arranged.

When the first American woman met me, it was nearly thirty years ago. She was interested in me - I was traveling, and she asked, "What is your schedule?"

I said, "Forgive me, I don't understand this word - skedual? What is a skedual?

She was puzzled. She said, "This is a simple word, a common word."

I said, "You just explain it to me, perhaps I may be able to figure out what you mean."

And then I found out - because in India, English is spoken with the British pronunciation, not the American. Certainly the American pronunciation of the word is more accurate because of the spelling of the word. The British pronunciation is "shed-dule," not "skedual" - they are the same words. I was accustomed to hearing ""shed-dule."

I said to her, "Forgive me, but there was no way to figure out that it is 'shed-dule' that you are using."

There is so much misunderstanding in the world, and one of the greatest reasons is that we have so many languages. It is a tower of Babel. You cannot understand what the communist is saying, because he has his own connotations of the word, his own meaning. The communist cannot understand what you are saying, he has different connotations of the same word.

Communists believe they have the real democracy, because how can a democracy exist where the society is divided into classes? - the poor and the rich and the middlers. If the society is divided and the gap is so big between the rich and the poor, the rich are going to dominate; so don't call it democracy, it is aristocracy. No communist is ready to believe that in America there is democracy, because the first basic thing is not to write in the constitution that "all men are equal," but to make them equal; then democracy is possible.

If there are so many poor people, their votes can be purchased. They are being purchased, because for the poor man democracy cannot give bread and butter. The word "democracy" is for those who have everything, it is not for him. If he can get something tangible just for giving a vote, he is ready.

I have seen it in India - India is a democracy, but not a single poor man becomes the prime minister, the governor, the chief minister. It is impossible for the poor man to reach there, because the expenses of election are so big. Yet in the constitution everybody has equal rights, and every vote has equal value. Communists cannot accept the idea.

America cannot accept Russia as a democracy, because only one party exists. There is no choice - how can you apply freedom? You have to choose the communists, there is nobody else. You have to choose the communists unanimously. What kind of democracy is this? Democracy according to the American mind needs two parties at least.

Russians go on declaring themselves the most democratic. Americans go on declaring they are the greatest democracy. Now, that word "democracy" is not scientific. It has different meanings to different people.

You know the English word "go." You cannot imagine, howsoever wild a dreamer you are, from where this word "go" comes. It comes again from the cow.

In Sanskrit, the cow is called cav. And the Hindus have been interested in the cow so much, they love the cow so much, they have called the cow their mother. And in fact, ten thousand years ago, when the hunting society was changing into an agricultural society, the cow became of immense importance. She was giving food, she was giving bulls to be used for bullock carts, to be used in farming. Everything that the cow gives is usable - even cow dung, because it is a very powerful fertilizer.

So they used to worship the cow. And it was a common thing that in the morning the cows would go to the grasslands, and in the evening at the time of sunset they would come back home. And the Hindus started saying, "The cow is going to the forest, the cow is going home." Going became associated with the cow.

The English word "go" or "going" has come from ten thousand-year-old Hindus, and it is associated with the cow, not with you. When you say, "I am going," you are saying, "I am a cow"! And that's what Sanskrit-speaking people will understand. And they will be amazed: "What are you saying?"

All the languages of the world create walls, very subtle transparent walls, which are far more difficult to remove than the wall that exists in Berlin. The world needs one language, and a new language - simple, accurate. The pronunciation has to be according to the spelling, so that there is now way to mispronounce a word.

Perhaps it is going to be our work sooner or later to create a new language which gives scope enough for all types of experiences. Right now, there is no way, so just out of compulsion we have called our approach to life, Rajneeshism. But if you think of it as an "ism," you don't understand it. If it is an "ism" for you, throw it. If you understand that this is only a label - out of compulsion we had to call it that, to use it - then you will not ask such a question.

We are not a religion in the same sense Christianity is, Judaism is, Hinduism is. But what to do with the American bureaucracy? Unless I am a religious leader, they cannot allow me to stay here. I am nobody's leader, and certainly not a religious leader. I am destroying all the roots of all the religions.

But they won't understand it; I had to accept their stupidity and call myself a religious leader. They don't have any other category.

Just the other day my secretary was saying to me, "Somewhere you have said you are an anarchist.

If the American government comes to know about it.... They have a basic rule that no anarchist should be allowed to become a resident of America." They do not understand. I am not an anarchist like Prince Kropotkin. Prince Kropotkin wanted governments to be dissolved immediately; he said there was no need of any government. I think he was a little bit crazy.

Governments in existence.... There is so much crime, so many murders, so many rapes, so many drugs, thefts. Just think, if for twenty-four hours the government stops functioning - just a holiday - for twenty-four hours there is no law, no government, what do you think will happen in America?

Thousands will be murdered, thousands will commit suicide. Everywhere there will be stealing, everywhere there will be cheating. And it is only for twenty-four hours that the law is no more applicable, so you have to do it fast, whatever you always wanted to do.

Man has not come to the point where governments can be dissolved. Prince Kropotkin is against the government, the law. He wants to dissolve them. I am also an anarchist, but in a totally opposite way to Prince Kropotkin.

I want to raise the consciousness of human beings to the point where government becomes futile, courts remain empty, nobody is murdered, nobody is raped, nobody is tortured or harassed. Do you see the difference? His emphasis is: dissolve the governments. My emphasis is: raise the consciousness of human beings to the point where governments become, of their own accord, useless; to the point that courts start closing, that police start disappearing because there is now work, judges are told, "Find some other job." I am an anarchist from a very different dimension.

But my secretary was afraid that they would not understand. To them, anarchism means Prince Kropotkin.

I am against Prince Kropotkin and his anarchism because he is talking nonsense. First let people be ready - and governments will disappear on their own account. I am not in favor of destroying governments; they are fulfilling a certain need. Man is so barbarous, so ugly, that if he is not prevented by force, the whole society will be in a chaos. Prince Kropotkin is not an anarchist, he is in favor of chaos.

I am not in favor of chaos. I want human society to become a harmonious whole, a vast commune all around the world: People meditating, people without guilt, people with great serenity, silence; people rejoicing, dancing, singing; people who have no desire to compete with anybody; people who have dropped the very idea that they are special and have to prove it by becoming the president of America; people who are no longer suffering from any inferiority complex, so nobody wants to be superior, nobody brags about his greatness.

The governments will evaporate like dewdrops in the early morning sun. But that is a totally different story, a totally different approach. Till that moment comes, governments are needed.

It is a simple thing. If you are sick, medicines are needed. Prince Kropotkin wants to destroy the medicines. I want you to be healthy so you don't need medicines. Automatically you will throw them - what will you do with all those medicines? They are utterly useless, in fact, dangerous; most of the medicines are poisons. For what purpose will you go on accumulating them? See the difference of emphasis.

I am not against medicines, I am against the sickness of man which makes medicines necessary. I would like a healthier man - which is possible - a man who has no possibility of becoming sick, because we have programmed him from his very birth that he cannot be sick, we have made arrangements in his body to fight against any sickness. Certainly medicines will disappear, medical stores will disappear, doctors will disappear, medical colleges will be closed. But I am not against them! That will be simply a consequence of a healthy humanity.

Yes, I am an anarchist, and if the American government wants to bring in the question of anarchism, I am going to fight, because my anarchism is totally different. Perhaps they have never heard the distinction. They don't know that these are two totally different things; you cannot put them under one name. But that's how languages are, because we have not made languages scientifically. They have grown blindly, unconsciously, taken new colors, new meanings. As time changes, languages don't change. The words remain the same, they just acquire new meanings.

In India, there is a word "babu." It is thought to be very respectful to address somebody as babu.

The great leaders of the country, like Subhash Chandra Bhose, are called Babu Subhash Chandra Bhose. Nobody bothers about where the word has come from. And it is not very ancient - only three hundred years old.

When the Britishers invaded India their capital was Calcutta, in Bengal. Only later on when they conquered the whole country and consolidated themselves did they move to the ancient capital of the country, Delhi. Before that Calcutta was their capital.

Bengalis, the people who live in Calcutta and around Calcutta, in the whole big state of Bengal, eat only rice and fish. They love fish so much that anybody who can afford it will have, just beyond the house, a big pond where he grows fish. Just as you see in other countries a beautiful lawn and trees and gardens, in Bengal you will see ponds, according to each one's capacity....

If you are rich you will have a big pond, surrounded by big trees, lawns. If you are a poor man, you will have just a naked pond, without trees, without lawns, but you will have a pond - dirty - and you will grow fish. And the people smell of fish. The word bu simply means stinking. The word ba simply means with.

The British people came in contact first with the Bengalis. Later they came to discover other people - India is a vast continent: so many cultures, so many different kinds of people - but their first acquaintance was with Bengalis. And they were smelling so badly of fish, all the Bengalis, that it was a word of condemnation to call them babu. Britishers started calling Bengalis, babus. It was sheer insult, humiliation. But to be close to the people who have the power... the word "babu" slowly became very respectable. It meant to be close to the throne, to be close to the hierarchy. And everybody forgot its basic meaning.

Now, the first president of India was called Babu Rajendra Prasad. He had nothing to do with fish, he was not a stinking man, but he never told people, "You should stop calling me babu," because he himself might not have been aware what the word means. And if the president is called babu, then anybody will feel joyous and grateful if he is called babu.

One of my vice-chancellors called me babu. I said, "Shut up! And take your words back immediately; otherwise I can be dangerous."

He said, "What are you doing? Have you gone suddenly insane? I have not said anything, I simply said, out of respect, babu."

I said, "It does not matter that you are ignorant about the meaning of babu. I know the meaning."

When I explained it to him, he said, "My God! I used to think this was a very respectful word, and I enjoyed being called babu. I used to use the word for people for whom I have a certain respect. But forgive me; I will never use that word again."

Old languages have become rotten. A new language is an absolute need - totally new, without any flaws, exact in its meaning. The older the language, the more meanings its words have. In Sanskrit, Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, one word has many meanings.

In Sanskrit one word can have one dozen meanings. Slowly, slowly a word got settled with one meaning, but those eleven meanings are there. Because of this, Indian philosophers and scholars were very much at ease; disputing, making new commentaries on the old scriptures was an easy job, because each word has ten, twelve meanings, so you can manage to make the scripture mean whatsoever you want it to mean. Another philosopher writes a treatise on the same scripture, and he gives it a totally different meaning.

The Hindu scripture, GITA - which is the bible of the Hindus - has one thousand commentaries.

That is the number of famous commentaries. There may be many more, but they are not famous; they were written by people who never attained fame, who never attained the attention of the country.

But one thousand commentaries on one book!

If you read one commentary, you will say, "Perfectly right." If you read a second commentary, you will be surprised - that too is perfectly right. And when you have read one thousand commentaries, as I have, you will say, "Crazy! Nuts! They are just playing with words." All the commentaries are contradicting each other. The game is very easy, the language allows it. This is an unscientific language.

I want one world, one language, one religiousness, one humanity, and when humanity is really grown-up in consciousness, one government.

Government is not something to brag about. It is an insult. Its existence says to you that you are still barbarous, civilization has not happened; otherwise what is the need of a government to rule you?

If all the crimes disappear, if all the fears that others can exploit you, murder you, disappear, what will you do with this whole bureaucracy of government? You cannot continue it, because it is a burden on the economy of the nation, a big burden, and it goes on becoming bigger and bigger. The hierarchies have a tendency to become bigger and bigger, for the simple reason that everybody wants not to work, everybody hates work. So everybody needs more assistance; the work is growing.

You can see, in any government office, files just piled up on the tables. Unless you are able to bribe someone, your file may remain somewhere in the huge pile, it will never come to the top. And the bureaucrats enjoy many files there; that makes them big, special. They have power over so many people; all these files, to them contain their power over people.

Files don't move unless you are after them. Bribe one table, the file moves to a higher table. Bribe again, it moves to a higher table. The moment you stop bribing, the file stops moving. Strange, it seems bribery is something like petrol: for the car to go on moving, you have to put petrol in. If you are out of gas, finished, the car has stopped.

I am an anarchist of a totally different category from all the anarchists who have existed on the earth.

I am a category in myself, because my approach is totally different. I am not against government, I am against the need for government. I am not against the courts, I am against the need for the courts.

Someday, some time, I see the possibility that man will be able to live without any control - religious or political - because he will be a discipline unto himself.

Question 2:

They are just excuses and nothing more. There is no fate, no destiny. You are just trying to dump your responsibility on something which does not exist. And because it does not exist, it cannot resist you; it cannot say, Please don't dump your responsibility on me!" God is silent, you can dump anything on him - no resistance, because there is nobody to resist.

Fate is again the same. You fail in love, you fail in other matters. It hurts, that "I have failed." You need some kind of ointment for your wounded heart. Fate is a beautiful ointment, and freely available, you don't have to pay for it. You say, "What can I do? - everything is decided by fate." Success or failure, richness or poverty, sickness or health, life or death - everything is in the hands of an unknown power called fate. "I am doing my best, still I go on failing. I am following all the moral principles preached to me, still I am poor. And I see all kinds of immoral people becoming richer, getting higher, becoming famous. It is all fate."

It gives you solace. It gives you solace that you are not reaching your goals. It also gives you solace that if others have reached, there is nothing much in it; it is just decided by fate. So on the one hand, you are saved from feeling inferior; on the other hand, your jealousy enjoys the idea that the successful is successful only because fate has determined it that way: "It has nothing to do with him, he's not superior to me."

God, fate, destiny - they all come in the same category: throwing your responsibility onto something which does not exist.

If God existed he would not remain silent. I am continually saying he does not exist. If he existed, it is time - he should have appeared in Rajneeshpuram and announced, "I am here! Why do you go on saying that I don't exist?" But he will never come. There have always been people who have denied the existence of God, but he has never made any effort to prove himself.

Simple things.... Edmund Burke, one of the philosophers of the West, stood in the church and said to the priest, "This is my watch. If God exists - I don't want big proof, just a simple proof - my watch should stop moving. You pray, your congregation can pray, you do anything that you want to do.

Persuade your God to stop my watch, and that will be enough to convert me."

They prayed - it was a question of the prestige of the whole of Christianity, a single man challenging God. And he was not asking for a big miracle, just a small miracle: "Stop my watch moving." And God could not do that. Edmund Burke has proved that there is no God. What an argument! - but simple, clear, relevant.

You go on dumping - all over the world - anything that you want to get rid of on God, on fate, on destiny. They are just different names of non-existential things. Certainly you cannot throw your garbage on somebody who is there. There is a limit to patience.

You just try throwing your garbage into the compound of your neighbor. Perhaps for one day he may not say anything; perhaps for two days he may wait - but how long? Sooner or later he is going to grab you by the neck and prove that "I exist. You cannot go on throwing your garbage in my compound." But if there is nobody in the house, you can continue to throw the garbage as long as you want. Nobody will resist, nobody will come out and say, "What is going on? Don't you have any sense of humanity in you?"

God, fate, destiny - these are bogus words, mumbo jumbo, nothing more than that. Drop them completely, because dropping them will make you an individual, fully responsible for your acts. And unless you take the responsibility on yourself, you will never become strong, you will never become independent, you will never have the taste of freedom.

You can have freedom. But the cost is to accept responsibility in its totality.

I have felt such immense freedom that looking at you I feel sad. You have the same opportunity, the same potentiality to blossom into a free individual, but you go on remaining a slave. And the way you manage it is by never being responsible. You think not being responsible makes you free? Not feeling responsible for your actions, for your thoughts, for your being, do you think you are freed from all the consequences? No, absolutely no.

It makes you a slave, it makes you something subhuman. It takes all glory away from you. You cannot walk straight, you become a hunchback. Your intelligence cannot grow because you have not accepted the challenge. You are waiting for fate, for destiny, for God. You are thinking, "When the time comes - the right time, God willing - I will be blissful too." There is no God who can will your blissfulness. You are alone in existence.

You come alone, you die alone. Between birth and death, of course you can deceive yourself that someone is with you - your wife, your father, your mother, your husband, your friend - but this is just make-believe. You come alone, you go alone; you are alone between birth and death.

And I am not saying that you cannot love a man or a woman. In fact, when two independent, free people, who take responsibility on their own shoulders, meet, there is immense beauty in it. Nobody is a burden to the other. Nobody is dumping anything onto the other' you have stopped the very idea of dumping anything. You can be together, but your aloneness remains untouched, pure, crystal- clear, virgin. You never trespass each other's territories. You can enjoy each other just because you are separate.

The more separate you are - the more clearly it is understood that you are alone, she is alone - the more there is a possibility of a great meeting of two alonenesses, two purities, two individuals.

Forget words like destiny, fate, kismet, God. And don't allow yourself to be cheated by astrologers, mind readers, palmists, predictors of your future. There is no future if you don't create it! And whatsoever is going to be tomorrow is going to be your creation. And it has to be done today, now - because out of today, today's womb, tomorrow will be born.

Take the responsibility totally on yourselves - that's my message to you. That's why I am continuously destroying the God in your mind. I have nothing against him. How can I have anything against him? - he does not exist! Do you think I am wasting my time fighting with something which does not exist? No, I am fighting with your conditionings; they exist. God does not exist, but an idea of God exists in you, and I am fighting with that idea, telling you to drop it, be clean, and take the whole responsibility.

This is my experience: the day I took my whole responsibility on myself, I found the doors of freedom opening to me. They go together.

Everybody wants freedom.

Nobody wants responsibility.

You will never have freedom, you will remain a slave. Remember, remaining a slave is also your responsibility. You have chosen it, it has not been forced upon you.

I am reminded of Diogenes, a beautiful Greek philosopher, mystic - and a mystic of a rare quality.

He was a contemporary of Aristotle, and he was as much against Aristotle as I am, so I have a certain friendship with Diogenes.

Aristotle defined man as an animal who walks on two legs. What did Diogenes do? He caught one animal - and there are many animals who walk on two legs, but they have feathers also, they can fly also - a peacock. He took out all the feathers - because men have no feathers. Take out all the feathers of the peacock... the peacock walks on two legs. And he sent the peacock to Aristotle with the message: "Please receive the gift of a human being."

This man Diogenes used to live naked, because he said, "Man is born naked, and he becomes weaker because he is protected by clothes." All around the world no animal has clothes - except a few dogs in England. England is a mysterious country. Dogs have clothes because a naked dog is un-Christian. You will be surprised to know that in the Middle Ages in England even chair legs were covered with clothes, because they are legs and it is not gentlemanly to see naked legs.

Diogenes lived naked. He was a strong man. Four people who were doing the business of hijacking people and selling them as slaves in the market thought, "This is a great catch, this man can bring us great money. We have sold many slaves, but not so strong, beautiful, young. We can have as high a price as we demand; and there is going to be a great competition in the marketplace when we put this man on the pedestal for sale. But," they thought, "four are not enough to catch him. He alone could kill us all."

Diogenes was hearing what they were saying about him. He was sitting by the side of the river, just enjoying the cool breeze of the evening, underneath a tree; and behind the tree, those four were planning what to do. He said, "Don't be worried. Come here! You need not worry that I will kill you, I never kill anything. And you need not worry that I will fight, resist you - no. I don't fight anybody, I don't resist anything. You want to sell me as a slave?"

Embarrassed, afraid, those four people said, "That's what we were thinking. We are poor... if you are willing?"

He said, "Of course I am. If I can help you in your poverty in some way, it is beautiful."

So they brought out chains. He said, "Throw them in the river; you need not chain me. I will walk ahead of you. I don't believe in escaping from anything. In fact, I am getting excited about the idea of being sold, standing on a high pedestal, and hundreds of people trying to get me. I am excited about this auction - I am coming!"

Those four people became a little more afraid: this man is not only strong, beautiful, he seems to be mad also; he is dangerous. But now there was no way for them to escape. He said, "If you try to escape, you will be risking your own life. Just follow me, all four of you. Put me on the pedestal."

Unwillingly they followed him. They wanted to take him, but he went! You see the point? Even in such a situation, he was taking the responsibility on himself. He was a free man even in such a situation, where these people are conspiring and trying to sell him in the marketplace, which is the ugliest thing that can happen to a man - to be sold like a commodity, auctioned like a commodity.

But he told those people, "Don't be afraid, and don't try to escape. You have given me a great idea, I am grateful to you. This is my responsibility, I am going to the marketplace. You put me up for auction."

They could not believe... what type of man was this? But there was no way to escape, so they followed him. And when he was put on a high pedestal so that everybody could see, there was almost silence, pindrop silence. People had never seen such a proportionate body, so beautiful - as if made of steel, so strong.

Before the auctioneer said anything, Diogenes declared, "Listen, people! Here is a master to be sold to any slave, because these four poor people need money. So start the auction; but remember, you are purchasing a master."

A king purchased him. Of course, he could do it - more and more money he offered at the auction.

Many people were interested, but finally a sum, larger than any which had ever been heard of, was given to those four people. Diogenes said to them, "Are you happy now? You can go, and I will go with this slave."

On the way, when they were moving to the palace in the chariot, the king said to Diogenes, "Are you crazy or something? You think yourself a master? I am a king, and you think me a slave?"

Diogenes said, "Yes, and I am not crazy, you are crazy. I can prove it right now." At the back of the chariot was the queen. Diogenes said, "Your queen is already interested in me, she is finished with you. It is dangerous to purchase a master."

The king was shocked. Of course, he was nothing in comparison to Diogenes. He took out his sword and asked his queen, "What he is saying, is it true? If you say the truth, your life will be saved - that is my promise. But if you say an untruth, and I find it out later on, I will behead you."

Fearful, afraid, still the queen said, "It is true. Before him, you are nothing. I am enchanted, allured; the man has some magic. You are just a poor guy compared to him. This is the truth."

Of course, the king stopped the chariot and told Diogenes, "Get out of the chariot. I make you free; I don't want to take such risks in my palace."

Diogenes said, "Thank you. I am a man who cannot be made a slave, for the simple reason that every responsibility I take on myself. I have not left those four people feeling guilty - they had not brought me there, I had come of my own accord. They must be feeling obliged. And it is your chariot, if you want me to get out, that is perfectly good. I am not accustomed to chariots at all, my legs are strong enough. And I am a naked man, a golden chariot does not fit with me."

Take responsibility! And then even in utter poverty, suffering, imprisoned in a jail, you will remain completely a master of yourself. You will have a freedom which comes with responsibility.

All these religions have been making you dependent on God, on fate, on destiny. Those are just different names of something non-existential. What is true is your slavery or your freedom. Choose.

If you choose freedom, then you have to destroy all the strategies of religions which make you a slave. That's what I am doing here: cutting all your chains, making you free from everything, so that you can be yourself.

And the moment you are yourself, you start growing, you become greener. Flowers start opening up, and there is great fragrance around you.