God: the need of the old man

Question 1:

It is a complicated question. In the first place, you do not know the meaning of agnosticism. Just not to teach you religion is not agnosticism. Just not to believe in religion is not agnosticism. If you call it agnosticism, you will have to use the word "negative"; it is negative agnosticism.

The positive agnostic is a seeker, and he goes on seeking, risking everything to find the truth, the life.

It is so easy to be a negative agnostic; not much intelligence is needed for that. All religions are so full of rubbish that any man of average intelligence can see it. And seeing it, he becomes non- religious. Your parents must have been of the same kind. Religions were wrong - that was their intellectual standpoint. But they never tried to fill the vacuum that religion was occupying. They threw the baby out with the bath water.

To be an agnostic means tremendous search. You have not to believe, and you have not to disbelieve either. The negative agnostic disbelieves; and there is not much difference between belief and disbelief. The religious person believes in God, the irreligious person does not believe in God, but their beliefs and their disbeliefs are only mental games. Neither of them has searched, meditated, gone deeper into his own center. To be an agnostic needs tremendous courage, immense energy and patience.

And when the agnostic comes to the center of his being, certainly he finds there is no God, because the moment you know your center, you have known the center of the whole existence. On the periphery we are separate, but our separation is only at the circumference. As you go on moving towards your own self, you are coming closer and closer to other people's selves. Ultimately when you reach to the center, you are amazed: there is no God, but there is tremendous beauty, incalculable silence.

If their agnosticism were what I am defining it to be, they would not have been in desperation. The agnostic can never live in desperation. Either he is involved in the great search of what it is all about.... He has no energy for desperation, he is pouring his whole effort into one single dimension:

he wants to know.

The agnostic is not the end of the search.

It is just the beginning.

The agnostic cannot say there is no God, there is no heaven, no hell. That is what the atheist goes on doing. Perhaps your parents were atheists. The atheists are bound to come someday to deep despair. As death comes close by, they start trembling. They have not believed in God, they have disbelieved in religion. It was good when they were young, but before death almost all atheists become theists, they start believing. A simple arithmetic....

Death is there. What is beyond they don't know. They don't know themselves. It was easier when they were young, hot. They enjoyed criticizing, they enjoyed destroying arguments of those who believe. And it is very easy to destroy their arguments. God is not an argument. At the moment of death, as they become older and the gap between them and death is becoming less and less, they freak out. Now they are no longer young, no longer hot. They have become just cold, shrunken, and death scares them.

Now the only way is to accept religion, because religion is a kind of opium. It helps you to forget your despair, your anguish. It helps you to hallucinate whatsoever you want. And the reasoning is: "If there is no God, there is no harm. By becoming a theist, if there is a God, then we can say, 'Forgive us, we were too young, inexperienced. Knowing nothing, we started disbelieving in you.'" And all the religions teach that God forgives those who ask for it.

It is simple. Whether he is or not, is not the question. The person is going to die and has to face the reality - if he survives death, with what face is he going to encounter God? This is the despair of your parents. Young, they were painters and poets and dancers. It is easy, when you are young, to do all kinds of foolishnesses. And when you do not believe in the religion people all around you are believing in, you have a certain satisfaction that you are unique, individual. You assert your uniqueness. It is nothing but an ego number.

In youth, everybody thinks he is a great painter, a great poet, a great musician. Youth is blind - it is just the energy of nature which is overflowing in you. And you are not even concerned with death, it is too far away. There is a certain limit beyond which you cannot be worried. You can worry for tomorrow, you can worry for the day after tomorrow, but are you going to worry about the coming year? Are you going to be worried about the coming century? You will say, "Today is so much, tomorrow is close by - who cares about the coming century?"

One person has asked, "Bhagwan, is it not enough to be with You and enjoy, rather than thinking of the future of humanity?"

He himself is in doubt; otherwise from where does the question arise? Who is telling you to be worried about the future of humanity? It is enough if you can manage your life; the future will come out of it. Tomorrow is going to be born out of today. Whatever you are doing today will create your tomorrow. Once you know the secret, you are not only enjoying here, you are also creating the future.

The way the question is asked it seems you must be worried about the future of humanity. You want my approval: that it is perfectly okay, don't feel guilty, just enjoy this day with me. Your question does not need an answer, your question needs approval.

But in youth, death is almost non-existential. You cannot disregard it when you get older. Your parents must be getting older. Their youth is finished, the love between your mother and father is finished - that too was there because they were young. In old age everybody would like to be divorced, not only from his wife, but from womankind as such.

Youth is the time of romance. That's why young people have never been taken seriously. The elders, the old people who have passed through all experiences of life, have been respected throughout history. You will not find a single civilization where the young man was respected - just tolerated; he was only a nuisance and nothing else. But the old people knew - they were also young once, they have also befooled themselves in many ways: "There is nothing to worry about, these young people will also get over their romantic ideas, ideas of revolution, of the future of mankind."

As death comes, you will shrink to a single question: What is beyond death, what is going to happen?

If there is a God, then I am doomed - my whole life I denied him.

If there is no God, that too is scary. Then you will become a ghost, without a body, a consciousness who wants things but cannot get them, because things are material and the ghost is not material, he has no material body. This is one possibility, which is not very appealing.

And ghosts have never been known to paint, or to compose poetry, music. They have never been known to dance and enjoy. Ghosts don't fall in love, for the simple reason that the ghost has lost the body, the biology, the physiology; he is just a shadow.

It is not appealing to become a ghost and wander around hungry for all the things that he had desired in life. He would like to have a woman, but in ghosts I have never heard that there is any sexual difference. They are all alike. There is no beautiful ghost, and there is no ugly ghost; there is no male ghost, there is no female ghost. And they are stuck with all kinds of desires.

No, no old man would like to live like that; it is better to die completely. Death should be total, not only of the body but of the soul too. That will be a great relaxation, because if you are not, who is going to worry?

Just think back: when you were not born, do you remember that you were very much concerned about things - nuclear weapons, world war, Ethiopia? And do you think that before your birth, when you were non-existential, there was any problem? There was no problem. Not to be is the end of all problems, all sufferings, all misery.

But if there is a God, the old man who has denied him all his life is in despair. He cannot say now that God exists. It goes against his ego which he has cultivated for seventy, eighty years. And now he cannot stand up so strongly for his disbelief either.

It is my experience that any atheist I have come across is always young. I have never come across an old man who is an atheist. It is a similar case: you never come across an old man who is a hippie. To be a hippie you need to be between twenty-five and thirty-five. For those ten years you have strength to fight the society, to go against its morality, to do things which are not allowed - to take drugs.... It is a challenge.

But as you go on growing, nearabout between thirty-five and forty the hippie disappears. Suddenly thousands of hippies simply disappear. Now that youthful, romantic ideology of free love, drugs, not caring about anything, is not possible. You are becoming older; you need a home, you need a wife to look after you. You need children, because they will be, in a subtle way, tremendously satisfying.

You know that you will die, but at least you will live in your child. The child is part of you. Even if a part is saved, it gives consolation.

Your parents in your childhood were young, full of romantic ideas. In fact, the young man wants to be recognized, his greatest need is attention. If you are a theist, who is going to give you any attention?

There are millions of theists, it is a very common thing. But to be an atheist - you immediately start getting attention. That fulfills the ego.

And the trouble is that the atheist can always defeat any other kind of believers. The atheist can win in argument with any theist, because the theist has no evidence, no eyewitness about what happens after death, because nobody comes back after death and tells you stories about what is beyond death. So it is left up to your imagination. Of course, older people start imagining a God; otherwise they will be so helpless without the body - wandering like a cloud with no direction, no purpose.

They need God. God is the need of the old man.

Children don't care; they are forced to believe in God. The old man is again in a similar situation, but far more difficult and complex. A child can easily be molded; he is soft, vulnerable, imitative.

The old man feels for seventy, eighty years he has been a certain kind of person. His personality has become consolidated, and now at the moment of death it is very difficult for him to undo himself.

That is why the old are in despair.

Why did they get divorced? As youth leaves you one day, it takes many things from you; it does not go alone. It takes all your paintings, all your poetries, all your music, all your dances. It takes all your love, and leaves behind something utterly empty, dark, nobody to take care of. Children must have been grown up by now, they must be passing through revolutionary, rebellious stages - perhaps they may be hippies. They don't care about you; you have lived your life, they want to live their life.

They may be somewhere in Kabul, in Kulu Manali, in Kathmandu, in Goa - they are enjoying their youthfulness and its freedom, and they have energy to waste. They must be taking marijuana, hashish, opium, LSD. They don't care even if they are imprisoned - I have known many people who have been imprisoned for using drugs which governments declare illegal. But imprisonment does not help. Out of the prison, they are again on the same track: Kabul, Kulu Manali, Kathmandu, Goa.

Goa is their destination. These are just stopping, resting places; Goa is the final goal.

By the way, just a little drifting.... All the Christian countries are against marijuana, LSD, hashish, but they are not against alcohol, which is far more dangerous to health. Why? - because Jesus himself was a drunkard, his apostles were all drinking. So alcohol has some religious significance for the Christians.

The Christian community or the Christian country cannot prohibit it. Prohibiting it, making it illegal, means you are raising questions against Christ and his behavior, you are doubting the great twelve apostles. And if Jesus can drink wine - not only that, if he changed water into wine - how can you say wine is illegal? If wine is illegal, then Christ was not doing a miracle but was committing a crime by turning water into wine.

Christians accept alcohol - it is strange - and they deny LSD, for the simple reason that LSD was not available to Jesus Christ. Otherwise, I can say with certainty that Jesus Christ and all his apostles would have been taking LSD and real grass. They had to confine themselves only to alcohol; that was the only drug available.

You ask me what went wrong with your parents? Everything. First, they got married. If they were not married, at least they would have saved you from this life! And they were so much involved with painting, poetry, dances.... I have never heard their name as a great painter, or as a great poet, or as a great dancer. But in youth the balloon of the ego is big. You write a third-rate letter and you call it a love letter. Most probably you have copied it from a third-rate novel, or from a movie.

You perform the act of love - it is some kind of exercise, it is not love. Real love is possible only to the meditator, that is his reward. A man who does not know himself, a woman who does not know herself - these two ignorant people fall in love with each other, and out of this ignorance you are born. And sooner or later, those two ignorant people become fed up with each other.

Now your parents are living separately, alone, in despair, in desperation. What is their desperation?

Now your father knows that his paintings are just stupid, these same paintings that looked as if a new Picasso is born. His poems look like rubbish. There is nothing in them, he was just putting words together in a certain order. These poems are created, composed, they have not been given birth.

The real poet gives birth to his poetry. He breathes it, his heart beats in it. In the moment he is pouring forth his poetry, his music, his dance, he is not there. If he is there, then the poetry and the dance and the music will remain mediocre. One has to disappear, one has to disappear in the act so totally that nothing is left behind.

One of the great poets, Coleridge, was asked by a professor, "I want to come and see you, because I am in trouble. Your poetry I have to teach to the students. There are a few lines, statements in your poetry, which I find difficult to explain. And the students are asking me. I feel embarrassed to say that I don't know, and I am a D.Litt in literature! I thought it better I come to you and ask the meaning of those lines."

Coleridge said, "You can come, but remember, I am also in great difficulty."

The professor said, "About your poetry you are in difficulty?"

He said, "Yes. When I wrote them, two persons knew the meaning of what I was writing: God and I.

Now only God knows! I cannot figure out myself what the hell I have done."

An authentic poet is not present, he gives way for the poetry to flow from him. And the same is true about music and dance, sculpture and architecture, about everything that is beautiful. If they come out of a meditative state, then they are not ego products. Ego products are going to be very ordinary.

Now, let me come back.

Why have your parents divorced? You are asking me what has gone wrong. The romance is over.

Romance is nothing permanent. It is just like the wind: it comes, you feel the coolness, the breeze, and then it is gone. It is like the flowers blossoming in the early morning sun - so beautiful, so colorful, so magical that even dewdrops on their petals look like pearls. But by the evening the petals are falling, the flower is disappearing.

Romance is just a flower. It is not a coincidence that the hippies and their type of people were called flower people. They will blossom and they will disappear, there is no need to bother about them. It happens, this disease, to every young person.

And if your mother was also a dancer, then certainly both were artists. It happens more to the artistic people. They are against the whole world, against everything, because they think they can create a new world. The old poetry, the old paintings are nothing to them, and their very ordinary painting is just the greatest piece of art.

In youth you can believe in anything. And when you can believe in your creativity, poetry, music, it is easy to drop believing in God, in religion, because you have found your own opium. You don't need pope the Polack to supply opium to you. You grow your marijuana in your own garden; there is no need to get it from all kinds of peddlers. But one day youth is going to disappear. And the day youth disappears, you have entered into the arena of death. Old age is only a preparation for death.

Now they must be feeling empty. Their art has failed, their love has failed, their revolution has failed, but their ego is still there. The ego cannot go against itself. If it has been atheist all its life, it cannot become suddenly theist. That is the desperation. Otherwise, just as youth has its opium, old age has its own opium: believe in God, believe in Jesus Christ, believe in the messiah - he will save you, he will take you into the kingdom of God.

Reverend Jim Jones managed to convince one thousand people that if they died with him, he would take all of them into paradise. He went a little farther than Jesus Christ. Jesus was saying, "At the time of judgment, the final day of judgment, I will choose my sheep and take them into paradise."

Reverend Jim Jones is more progressive, more speedy, more American. "Why wait for the day of judgment? I am going, come along with me." And all those people - most of them black, uneducated, uncultured, knowing nothing about existence, its experiences - they had heard only this fool, Reverend Jim Jones. They had followed him out of the country; then finally they followed him out of life.

And it is a surprise that nobody criticized Christianity for it. Nobody could see a simple connection:

that what Jesus was saying, this poor fellow, Reverend Jim Jones, was practicing, of course with more modern techniques. The people who died in Jonestown, they were given Kool-Aid to drink which was full of poison. Really contemporary! Jesus cannot be thought to have known anything about Kool-Aid.

It was tasty, and death was not a fear because the leader, the shepherd, was going with them, and he knew the way, he had a direct communication line with God.

On the contrary, Christians criticize me; they say that I am creating another Jonestown. They are responsible for Jonestown. They are responsible for so much violence in the whole history that it would have been a great blessing if the holy ghost had missed his target. The world would have been in a better condition without Christians. It will be, one day, in a better condition without all religions. In some way or other, they are all suicidal. A few, like Reverend Jones and his followers, do it quickly.

Jainas in India have followed the same idea for the thousand years at least: their monks fast unto death. It takes sometimes seventy days, eighty days, ninety days. The man goes on becoming a skeleton. His eyes go on deepening, becoming dark. He cannot move, he cannot speak. I don't think after seventy days' fast he recognizes anybody, or even knows what is happening, what he is doing. They have given it a beautiful name, santhara, and they think this is the greatest ascetic practice. It is a crime, but the Indian government cannot stop it: it is a religious crime and you are not supposed to interfere in religion.

Your parents are feeling empty, trembling before death. All that was meaningful is no longer there.

They are simply hollow. It is right that you say, for you they are dead. They are really living a ghostly life. On the one hand, their whole past does not allow them to change their minds. On the other hand, death, the darkening night. Death says it is better to change your ideology; perhaps there is a God, who knows?

If they were real agnostics, by this time they would have found what the truth is. The truth is godliness. Yes, there is no God, but there is a quality so high, so pure, so innocent, so fragrant, that once you have known it, you have known all that is worth knowing.

It is a quality. That's why I emphasize again and again that if you meditate you will come to a space of godliness, but you won't find an old man with a long beard, sitting on a golden throne, saying to you, "Hi! So at last you have come. How do you do?" No meditator in the whole of history has found any person. Yes, every meditator has found a tremendous experience of awakening, enlightenment, liberation.

Your parents need meditation, otherwise they will die in tremendous despair and frustration. And meditation needs no belief system, so they need not drop their belief systems. Meditation does not require you to believe in God, heaven and hell. It requires nothing. It simply gives you a method which you can work easily.

You say that they are afraid to take any chances. Of course, they had lived with a certain disbelief for so long, and that disbelief and the philosophy they had woven around it have failed. And there is not much time left. Now to try anything new, naturally, they will feel afraid. They tried one thing their whole life, and it failed. Their paintings failed, their poetry failed, their philosophy failed, their music, their dance - they are bankrupt, spiritually bankrupt.

If you love them, if you have any feeling for them... and you must have, otherwise the question would not be raised. You may think they are dead, but you know they are not dead; they are dying. Then it becomes a responsibility for you.

At least they have done one favor to you - you have to accept the obligation - they never taught you any religion. It is time to help them. It is a great opportunity for paying back all the love that they have given to you when they were young. Teach them how they can meditate. And the way of meditation I am teaching you is very simple. If they can just watch their minds - and we are not asking much - if they can become just a witness, a watcher, the mind will slowly melt away as ice melts when the sun rises.

Meditation is the only medicine for them now. If they can die meditatively, silently, blissfully - which is simple and possible - you will feel also relieved of a burden; otherwise, you will carry some burden on your soul, that you could not help them when they needed it.

You are asking, "They were so juicy - what has happened?" Everybody is juicy when they are young, youth brings all your juices to their peak. But youth is a fleeting phenomenon.

I have heard about three old men: one was seventy, another was seventy-five, and the third was eighty-five. They were sitting in a park - and that was their routine, every day they would come.

They had no work the whole day, so by the evening they would come and sit and talk about the past.

The old man has no future, he has only a long past. The child has no past, he has only a long future; hence children want to grow fast. Old people cling to the past: perhaps that will help against the oncoming death.

So they used to talk about beautiful moments in their life, difficult times in their life, successful moments in their life - most of which was exaggerated. It was their imagination that they were a great success when they were young, that they were this and that.

This evening when they met, the first old man, seventy, said, "One thing has been bothering me, and I would like to say it to you - it is almost a confession - so that I am relieved of it. I cannot go to the priest, he is just a young fellow - what does he know about religion? You are older than me, you have lived more, known more. I would like to confess to you."

The other two became very excited. They said, "What is the thing that is bothering you? Tell it, get rid of it."

He was very embarrassed, but he said, "The problem is that I was caught red-handed peeping through the keyhole of the bathroom, because a beautiful woman was the guest and I could not take myself away from the keyhole. And my grandmother caught me red-handed. I am ashamed."

The two old people started laughing. One said, "You are a fool! Everybody does it, it is not a problem. In fact, why are keyholes made? This is their purpose, and we all have done it, so don't be worried. And it is our experience, that from the keyhole of the bathroom, an ordinary, homely woman also looks like Cleopatra, because you cannot see exactly. It is vague. You can make it seem, through your imagination, as if a fairy has descended in the bathroom. We all have done it,"

those two said, "you don't be worried."

He said, "You don't understand me at all. It happened this morning!"

Then they were a little shocked. This morning? At the age of seventy?

They said, "Naturally, it is understandable why you are feeling so much in the dumps. But, boy, get out of it. What has happened has happened. Next time, be careful. First watch about your grandmother, whether she is around or not; all that is needed is that little awareness. And find some excuse - drop your handkerchief on the floor. The moment your grandmother comes, start looking for the handkerchief, so you have an excuse: 'The handkerchief had fallen and I was just picking it up. I have nothing to do with the keyhole.'"

The seventy-year-old man was very happy. He said, "Great idea! I never thought that some way I can manage an excuse to be there. This is great! I am completely unburdened. Now I will really be waiting for tomorrow morning. It will be difficult to sleep tonight. That woman is really great!"

Because he had opened a certain subject, the second man said, "I also have something to confess to you. For almost five years I have been making love to my wife in a special way."

They said, "What special way? You should have told us. Don't you think we are your friends? You have found a special way, and you are keeping us in the dark? Tell us! What is the special way?"

He said, "It is nothing much. Before going to sleep I hold her hand, and press her hand two or three times, and then we go to sleep."

The other two said, "This is a way of making love?"

He said, "What else to do? The trouble has arisen because once in a while I forget to press her hand, and she immediately starts nagging me, 'It seems you are pressing some other woman's hand! I will not allow this! You have to give an explanation. With whom are you making love nowadays?'"

The third man said, "You both are idiots - you think these are difficulties? I am eighty-five. I am feeling a real difficulty, and when you know about my difficulty you will forget all this nonsense of pressing hands, being nagged by the wife, becoming a Peeping Tom, finding some excuse...." He said, "I never thought that you are so stupid.

"The real trouble is with me. This morning when I started preparing to make love to my wife, she said, 'Have you gone mad? - because two times in the night you have done the same thing. And it does not suit you - an eighty-five-year-old man making love three times? You disturbed my sleep and I am fed up with you! I was hoping that now that we are getting old, this animal game will finish.

You are getting older, and you are doing more and more the same thing that I was thinking would be finished!'"

The two were really amazed. They said, "You think this is trouble? This is great!"

He said, "It is a great trouble. In fact, my memory is failing - I didn't have any idea that I had made love two times, I was thinking this is the first time. Your problems are nothing - my memory is just disappearing!"

Your parents are old. They must be having many kinds of problems which only old people have. Help them to meditate a little bit. Perhaps they can get back the memory of those juicier days. Perhaps they can start painting again, and now it will be far better. Perhaps they can start music and dance, and now it will be better because it will be coming out of their meditation.

Everything changes its quality the moment the meditator touches it. I say it to you on my own experience. I never quote the scriptures unless something is my own experience. For these thirty- two years or more, I have enjoyed food as I had never enjoyed before. Since enlightenment I have enjoyed everything so profoundly, so deeply that I feel sorry for the whole humanity. They also eat, but they go on doing many other things in their mind while their mouth is chewing. Their mind is engaged - how can they know the taste?

That's why people eat too much. That's why it is one of the biggest problems in rich countries.

Women are dieting, men are dieting, doing exercises to make the body slim, because a fat man is declaring by his fatness that he is empty and filling that emptiness with food.

After enlightenment, when you are eating you are simply eating. You are not there, there is only a process of eating. Then it becomes exactly like painting, when the painter is not there. It becomes like dancing, when the dancer disappears in the dance.

I want to teach you that it is not only painters and dancers and singers that have the prerogative to enjoy life. It is everybody's birthright - it has nothing to do with special talents. Cooking can be a joy, cleaning the house can be a joy.

It is all the same. What you are doing is not the point; the doer must be lost in doing, you should not remain separate. If you are separate, then of course, there is going to be boredom. Every day cleaning the house.... All housewives are bored, utterly bored. All men are bored: the same job, the same stupid customers, the same wife at home.

To a meditator, everything is beautiful.

He lives life in its abundance.

I say to you, only the enlightened person can live luxuriously. Whether he has luxurious things around him or not does not matter. He has some inner change. His vision, his attitude, his approach to things is totally different from the average man or woman.

Help your parents. Pay the debt. And if you can see them again painting, dancing, perhaps they may fall again in love. Perhaps they will come closer to each other. My feeling is that people get divorced only because they both become too much to each other. It becomes simply impossible to live together, it becomes a constant harassment to both.

If you can introduce meditation... and I am certain they will welcome it, because they are in desperation. They need some help from somewhere. And if you cannot do it for them, who is gong to do it for them? And remember, meditation is not something that happens while you are young. It is not something like love, romance, great ideas about revolution.

I was also young, and while I was studying, I had many friends. Somebody was a communist, somebody was a socialist, somebody was a fanatic Christian, somebody was a Hindu chauvinist, and they all were full of great ideas.

They used to ask me, "You don't seem excited about the great problems the world is facing."

I said, "You leave me alone. I am working in a totally different dimension - you cannot understand it. Be a communist!"

Now they all have disappeared in the crowd. Once in a while, if, by accident I met somebody, I would ask him, "What happened to your communism?"

He would say, "Forget all about it! My wife is pregnant, four children I have already. Prices are going up, the rupee is shrinking smaller and smaller, and I am just a clerk. There is no time for me to think of communism. Those days are gone when I was trying to reach to the moon."

None of the students - and there were thousands of students in the university - none, not a single one, has remained what he was in the university. Perhaps I am the only one amongst that whole crowd of socialists, communists, who has remained in the same dimension, going on and on; I have found the way to infinity.

Remember, enlightenment is not something that happens as an incident and there comes a full stop, no. Enlightenment begins, but it never ends. It is an ongoing process. It becomes juicier and juicier.

And when things go on becoming juicier and juicier, how are you going to go back? Who remembers the way back, the past? - because every day you are facing a new revelation, a new light, a new joy. Every day it is so fresh that there is no need to look backwards.

The enlightened man is a child forever.

He has only the future, and there is no limit to his growth. Perhaps even the sky has some limit, but enlightenment knows no limit.

Question 2:

The sixth of August can never be forgotten. That day we proved that civilization has not happened to humanity yet, that we are barbarians, that we are cannibals, that we are still animals. Darwin is wrong; the whole idea of evolution is just imagination.

Instead of believing in Darwin, I believe in the monkeys, because monkeys also have their idea: they think man has fallen - and certainly he has fallen - from the trees. Falling from the height, you call that evolution?

The sixth of August proved the monkeys are right, because to drop atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the ugliest thing that man has done in the whole of history. Everything else paled before it. And the wonder of wonders is that it was not needed at all. Germany had already surrendered; the Japanese forces were almost finished. Perhaps without the dropping of the atom bombs the war may have continued one week more.

That would not have been a great calamity - people had been fighting for five years; for seven days more.... But that was the reason for dropping the atom bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, because if the war ended then you would never be able to drop the atomic weapons that you had. It was the time to make the world feel how much power and strength you had. America wanted it to be remembered that if Nagasaki and Hiroshima can disappear in smoke, then there is no problem:

Moscow, New Delhi, London, Paris - any place can be evaporated within seconds.

American was trying to prove itself the greatest power in the world. It had nothing to do with the war, they were winning. Now, dropping atom bombs on people who are already losing every day - there cannot be any other reason.

President Truman - and what a name he has got. Certainly he was a true-man. We should change his name to President True-monkey; that's where he belongs. Even his military experts were not willing. They told him, "It is absolutely unnecessary, the war has really ended. It is only just a week's work and Japan will surrender. Now that Germany has surrendered, Japan cannot survive; the basic power was Germany. And we are winning every day, so just wait seven days more. And if after seven days the war is not finished, you can drop atom bombs."

But he did not listen, because there was some other motivation in dropping the atom bombs. It was not to win, they were winning already. The motivation was to make it clear to the whole world that now America is by far the biggest power. And just to prove this, two big cities, throbbing with life, were just destroyed.

Obviously, Japan surrendered immediately; otherwise Tokyo would go the same way as Hiroshima and Nagasaki had gone. And President True-monkey told his military experts, "See? The war is finished immediately. We don't have to wait."

Hiroshima and Nagasaki are wounds which have not healed yet. And rather than healing those wounds, America is piling up nuclear weapons. Naturally, afraid of America, Russia is doing the same; they are piling up nuclear weapons. In fact, it is now difficult to say who is more powerful, because about American things are known, how much power America has, but about Russia everything is secret. She may be more powerful, she may have more nuclear weapons. She may have new methods which are even superior.

For example, they have been trying, and perhaps they have succeeded, in creating death rays. No bomb is needed, certain rays are just directed towards the country. You will not see them, so you cannot protect yourself. When somebody is bombing, there is time - Russia cannot destroy the whole of America in a day, nor can America destroy Russia in a day. But death rays will kill people and nobody will be able to know what is happening. Suddenly the death ray hits your heart, you fall dead. It is an invisible way of killing, and as far as I know, there is as yet no way found to protect people against death rays.

And because these two biggest powers in the world are continuing to create more and more destructive weapons, even small countries - just out of fear, the whole humanity is living in fear - countries which are starving, cannot manage even to survive, which perhaps will not be there to see the third world war at all, they are also trying to make atomic plants, nuclear plants. Their people are already dying and starving, and they are preparing death for others, knowing perfectly well that now there is no time to become in any way a great world power.

Russia and America are so far ahead that by the time you reach that point, they would have moved again, miles further ahead. Now there is no way for them to catch up. It is sheer stupidity on the part of other countries to waste their money on nuclear weapons, for the simple reason that they can never be the top power. That is impossible; they don't have the means, they don't have the time.

And it is stupid for America and Russia too, because they have already so much destructive energy in their hands that they can kill all living beings on the earth, from trees to man - everything that breathes. They both are ready enough to destroy life seven times over. Can you see any intelligence in making more weapons? Are not these enough? A man dies only once! And you are not the begotten son of God, that after death you will be resurrected with glory, so they will have to kill you again.

But I think the whole idea of resurrection of Jesus is a fiction. Yes, I know he did not die on the cross.

It was a Friday, and that was chosen specially by Pontius Pilate. He was not a Jew, he had nothing against Jesus. He was simply worried that a young man, only thirty-three, innocent in every way - he has never committed any crime, he has never harmed anybody - is being crucified. And Pontius Pilate will be remembered always as the person who gave orders for the crucifixion.

Judea was under the rule of the Romans and Pontius Pilate was the Roman governor general of Judea. He tried in many ways to free Jesus; first he tried to persuade the chief priest of the Jews, but they were adamant. Then he tried.... Three people were being crucified: two were criminals, murderers, and it was a custom that if the chief rabbi and the people wanted, one person could be forgiven. Pontius Pilate was hoping that the people would ask that Jesus be forgiven. He had not done anything wrong. But people asked that Barabbas should be forgiven. He was a confirmed criminal who had been to jail again and again many times. They asked that Barabbas should be released. So that second idea also failed.

Then he tried a third method. On Friday Jesus was to be crucified. Pontius Pilate managed to delay the process as long as possible. Jesus was to be prosecuted and crucified in the morning, but Pontius Pilate was able to postpone it a little bit more: he had to ask the emperor, the message was coming, all the papers had to be filled in.

Jesus was crucified in the afternoon; this was a strategy - because the Roman way of crucifying a man is really barbarous, utterly inhuman. They nail the person's hands on the cross, his feet on the cross; then slowly blood starts oozing out. It takes at least forty-eight hours of immense suffering for the man, and only then does he die.

Crucifixion is not an electric chair, where before you know you are dead, you are dead - just a switch and you are finished. Even Adolf Hitler was more human, although he killed millions of Jews; but he had created gas chambers. People would go into the chamber, and within a minute you would see smoke rising above the roof: the people were gone. Thousands of people together, within a single minute, just evaporated.

But to hang a person and keep him hanging for forty-eight hours at least.... He will be hungry, he will be thirsty - more so because blood is oozing out, there will be dehydration....

Pontius Pilate managed to crucify Jesus in the afternoon. It was a custom of the Jews that on Saturday - that is their sabbath, their holy day - all work should stop, everything should stop. On the day of sabbath nothing is to be done. Pontius Pilate took advantage of this. He said, "If it is so, then Jesus should be brought down" - he was still alive, because blood was still oozing; when a man is dead, blood does not come out of the body. "So he should be brought down, and after three days, we will crucify him again."

He was put in a cave with a big rock that single-handedly he could not remove. And after three days, the cave was found empty. This was not resurrection. This was Pontius Pilate and one of Jesus' sympathizers who managed the whole strategy. First, you bring him down - he is still alive - put ointments on him, give him enough to drink, and then remove his body.

Jesus died in India in Kashmir. Naturally, those six hours on the cross gave him a great lesson. And he had seen that there is no God, he had seen that there is no miracle, he had seen that: "I was just crazy proclaiming myself as the only begotten son of God." In India he lived really a long life - one hundred and twelve years, but in India he never said again, "I am the messiah, the prophet." Those six hours took away all his fanatic ideas; those six hours brought him to his senses.

He was thirty-three when he was crucified. In India he lived to one hundred and twelve years. He escaped Judea, because if he was in Judea he would be crucified again. The experience of six hours on the cross was enough. He did not want to do any more teaching, preaching. He did not want anymore to be the savior. In fact, he saved himself, just in time. He remained there with a small group of followers, but no promises of the kingdom of God. He had promised that, and he had seen the result.

That's why the world does not know what happened to Jesus after crucifixion. And Christians took the opportunity to claim that he was resurrected, because the cave was found empty. But his grave exists in Kashmir.

I have been to his grave, and it is an absolute proof, because on the grave the writing is in Hebrew.

Nobody knows Hebrew in India. Mohammedans also make graves, but their graves always point towards Mecca, their holy city. There are only two graves in India - one of Moses and the other of Jesus - which are not pointing towards Mecca. And on both the inscriptions are in Hebrew.

Of course, Jesus Christ is not named on that grave, because in Hebrew his name was Joshua, not Jesus. Jesus is a Greek translation of Joshua. And Christ is not used, because Christ is also a Greek word for messiah. So on the grave you will not find the name of Jesus Christ, you will find the name Joshua, the messiah. But that is the Hebrew name by which he was known to his people.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki create a division in history. And now, to go on piling up more and more weapons of destruction, just out of fear.... Even India wants a nuclear plant. The difficulty is that one of the most important things needed to make nuclear weapons is uranium, and uranium is found only in Russia and America. So anybody who wants to create a nuclear plant has to depend on these two powers.

America has bigger resources for uranium, so although India deep down condemns America, it cannot declare openly that "We are not with America," because from where are they going to get the uranium? Russia has only enough for itself; otherwise Russia would have provided the uranium for India.

And the situation is absurd. When you have already enough to destroy every man seven times, then stop everything! All the energy should move to provide people with more comfort, more education, more health, more medicine. And this is so simple.

People go on asking me, "Don't you have any compassion for Ethiopia? What are your people doing for Ethiopia?" I am not so unintelligent as to send you to Ethiopia to serve the poor people there who are starving. The crisis has been going on for four years, because for four years there have been no rains. I don't feel responsible at all for Ethiopia, or India.

There are two kinds of people who are responsible, and on this sixth of August, those two categories should take the responsibility to see that things like Hiroshima and Nagasaki never happen again.

Who are these two categories? One is the politicians. They should stop - not a semicolon, a full stop. No more money goes into making destructive things, no money goes into the service of death.

And you should remember, seventy-five percent of the energy of all the nations is going into the service of death. This seventy-five percent of the energy should become available to the poor, the downtrodden. And can you imagine? Seventy-five percent of the finances, if released from the service of death, can make this earth a paradise.

This sixth of August.... The second category is that of priests of all religions, who are teaching people that birth control is against God, that abortion is a crime, is a sin. These are the people who are helping the population grow faster and faster. These people should be behind bars: the pope, his bishops, the shankaracharya, the imam, Mother Teresa - certainly at least one woman should be included with these criminals. They all should be in prison. Leaving them out is leaving ferocious animals without chains in the society. They go on helping the population to grow, and the population goes on creating more poverty.

I am not responsible. For thirty years I have been continuously teaching that the pill is the greatest revolution after the discovery of fire. Nothing else in between is of any importance. Birth control is your birthright. It is up to you to decide, because there is no God who is deciding. You have to take the responsibility upon yourself.

We are in our own ways trying to raise the consciousness around the world to prevent the politicians from creating more destructive weapons. And whatever nuclear energy, atomic energy, is available should be used for creative purposes. The same energy can bring clouds over Ethiopia; the same energy can stop floods in India. Energy is always neutral. It depends on you for what purpose you are going to use it.

The politicians are responsible - and the religious leaders. I am not responsible at all, because for thirty years I have been teaching in favor of birth control, the pill and other methods. And I have been teaching against atomic energy. But if people don't listen then it is their responsibility.

If Ethiopia dies, it is not my responsibility; it is the responsibility of Ethiopia itself. If India dies, it is not my responsibility. They should hang their shankaracharyas who are responsible for poverty in India. They should tell their politicians, "We don't need nuclear plants." India is dying, half of India is starving, and the wheat is being exported, because only by exporting wheat and other things which their own people need, can India arrange finances enough to make nuclear plants.

These politicians should be forced: "Either stop all efforts for war, or get down from your seats. We will find other presidents, other prime ministers."

The sixth of August should be a day of declaration against the politicians and the priests.