The illogical Electron

The first question:

Anand Akam, freedom can be willed because it is your own decision to remain in a prison. It is your own responsibility. You have willed your slavery, you have decided to remain a slave, hence you are a slave. Change the decision, and the slavery disappears.

You have invested in your unfreedom. Any moment you see the point, you can drop it; instantly it can be dropped. Nobody has forced unfreedom on you, it is your choice. You can choose to be free, you can choose to be unfree; you are so free that you can choose either. This is part of your inner freedom -- not to choose it is part of your freedom.

Hence it can be willed.

But love cannot be willed. Love is a by-product of freedom; it is the overflowing joy of freedom, it is the fragrance of freedom. First the freedom has to be there, then love follows. If you try to will love, you will create only something artificial, arbitrary. A willed love will not be true love, it will be phony.

And that's what people are doing. Love cannot be willed, and they go on willing it. What can be willed, freedom, they go on ignoring. They go on thinking that somebody else is responsible for their slavery and their life of slavery. This is a very topsy-turvy conception of your own life. You are upside-down.

Change the vision: will freedom, and love will come of its own accord. When love comes on its own accord only then it is beautiful, because only then it is natural, spontaneous.

Willed love will be a kind of acting. You will be pretending -- what else can you do? You will be moving through empty gestures -- what else is possible? You cannot be ordered to love somebody, you cannot order yourself to love somebody. If it is not there, it is not there; if it is there, it is there. It is something beyond your will. In fact it is just the opposite of will: it is surrender.

When one is totally dissolved into freedom and when one is really free, the ego disappears. The ego is your bondage, the ego is your prison. In total freedom there is no ego found. Surrender happens, you start feeling one with existence -- and that oneness brings love.

The second question:

Krishna Prem, the old man is dying. And it is good news that the old man is on his deathbed, because the new can be born only when the old is gone, utterly gone. The old has to cease. The old has existed long, and the old man has been a curse, because he was rooted in very stupid conceptions of life.

The old man was based on superstitions. The most basic flaw in the concept of the old man was perfectionism: he wanted to be perfect, and the very idea of perfectionism drives people crazy. The perfectionist is bound to be a neurotic, he cannot enjoy life till he is perfect. And perfection as such never happens, it is not in the nature of things.

Totality is possible, perfection is not possible.

That is the fundamental of the holistic approach. And there is a tremendous difference between perfection and totality. Perfection is a goal somewhere in the future, totality is an experience herenow. Totality is not a goal, it is a style of life. If you can get into any act with your whole heart, you are total. Totality brings wholeness and totality brings health and totality brings sanity.

The perfectionist completely forgets about totality. He has some idea how he should be, and obviously time will be needed to reach that idea. It can't happen now -- tomorrow, day after tomorrow, this life, maybe next life... so life has to be postponed.

That's what the old man has been doing hitherto, postponing, postponing. The man in the past has not really lived; his life was nothing but a sequence of postponements.

I teach you to live herenow with no idea of the future at all. The future will be born out of your lived present. If the present has been lived totally, the future will have even more totality to it. Out of totality more totality is born.

But if you have an idea what you want to be in the future, today you will live very partially because your main concern becomes the future. Your eyes become focused on the future, you lose contact with the real and the present -- and the tomorrow will be born out of the real with which you are not in contact. The tomorrow will come out of today, and today was unlived.

The English word devil is very beautiful. If you read it backwards it becomes lived. That which is lived becomes divine, and that which is not lived becomes devil. Only the lived is transformed into godliness; the unlived turns poisonous. Today you postpone, and whatsoever remains unlived in you will hang around you like a weight. If you had lived it you would have been free of it. It would not have haunted you, it would not have tortured you.

But man up to now has been taught not to live but to hope -- hope that tomorrow things will be such that you will be able to live, hope that tomorrow you will be worthy to live, hope that tomorrow you will be Jesus Christ or Gautama the Buddha.

You are never going to be Jesus the Christ or Gautama the Buddha, you are simply going to be yourself. You are not a carbon copy of anybody else. It would have been ugly to be another Christ or another Buddha; that would have been a great insult to your humanity.

Man has dignity because man has originality.

The old concept was to live according to a certain pattern -- the Buddhist pattern, the Christian pattern, the Hindu pattern. The old was not in favor of the individual, it was in favor of a certain pattern. That pattern creates slavery.

I teach the individual, I teach the unique individual. Respect yourself, love yourself, because there has never been a person like you and there never will be again. God never repeats. You are utterly unique, incomparably unique. You need not be like somebody else, you need not be an imitator, you have to be authentically yourself, your own being.

You have to do your own thing.

The moment you start accepting and respecting yourself you start becoming whole. Then there is nothing to divide you, then there is nothing to create the split. Hitherto, man has been schizophrenic. And I am not saying that a few people have been schizophrenic: the whole humanity has been schizophrenic. Leave a few exceptions -- a Krishna, a Lao Tzu here and there -- you can count them on your fingers. They don't constitute humanity, they are exceptions, and the exceptions only prove the rule. But the greater part of humanity has lived a schizophrenic life, a divided life, fragmentary.

And how did man become so split? First thing: you are not acceptable as you are, so reject yourself. Rather than respecting yourself, reject yourself; rather than respecting yourself, respect some idea, some imaginary idea, of how you should be. Don't live the real, try to live the "should" -- and then you are split, you have become two. You are that which you are, but that you reject, repress. And you want to be that which you are not, and that which you are not you love and you respect and you worship. You have become two.

Not only that you have been split in two, you have been made many -- because you were taught that the body is your enemy, that you have to get rid of the body. You were taught that many things in you have to be cut off, that you are not as you should be, that great changes have to be done.

Naturally you started rejecting your sex, you started rejecting your desires, you started rejecting your anger. And all these rejected parts are energies to be transformed. They are not your enemies, they are friends in disguise.

Anger transformed becomes compassion, sex transformed becomes prayer, greed transformed becomes sharing. But in the past it was told again and again, repeated down the ages, that you had to reject this, reject that. If you listen to the old teachings you will be surprised -- you are rejected almost ninety-nine percent. Only one percent, some imaginary soul of which you are not aware at all, is accepted in you. And all that you are aware of is rejected.

These fragments do not allow you to become one piece, and unless you become one piece there is no peace possible. Unless you are a togetherness, integrated, crystallized, you will not know what God is -- because God speaks only to those who are real, God speaks only to those who are not a crowd, not noisy.

When there are many in you, you are a crowd, and the crowd is noisy. When you become one, there is silence. Only by becoming one will you attain to silence, and in that silence you can hear the voice of God, in that silence you can start feeling the presence of the divine. And when you are one, you will be able to have a communion with the whole. By being a whole yourself, you become capable of having a communion with the whole.

Man has lived very partially -- in fragments, in guilt, in fear. A new man is needed, urgently needed. Enough is enough: say goodbye to the old man. The old has created only wars, violence; it has created sadists, masochists, it has created a very ugly human being. It has made people pathological, it has not allowed a natural, healthy, sane humanity to be born.

Just the other day, somebody asked, "Who is a masochist and who is a sadist?"

A masochist is a person who loves to have a cold shower every morning, but takes instead a warm one. And the sadist is a person who, if asked by a masochist, "Please, please, hit my head hard," says "No!"

People are torturing themselves and torturing others in every possible way. In the name of religion, in the name of morality, in the name of nationality, people are torturing each other, killing each other. Beautiful names have been found for very pathological, insane things. Insanities are called "nationalities," insanities are called "moralities" -- beautiful labels on very ugly things.

But it is time that we get rid of it all. And if we don't get rid of it all soon enough, then the cup will be full. Man is going to die if the new does not arrive; the old cannot survive.

There is no possibility for the old to survive, it has come to its tether's end. It has lived more than expected.

I teach you a new man, a new humanity, which will not think of the future and which will not live with shoulds and oughts, which will not deny any natural instinct, which will accept its body, which will accept all that is given by God with deep gratitude.

Your body is your temple, it is sacred. Your body is not your enemy. It is not irreligious to love your body, to take care of your body -- it is religious. It is irreligious to torture your body and to destroy it. The religious person will love his body because it is the temple where God lives.

You and your body are not really two, but the manifestation of one. Your soul is your invisible body, and your body is your visible soul. I teach this unity, and with this unity, man becomes whole. I teach you joy, not sadness. I teach you playfulness, not seriousness. I teach you love and laughter, because to me there is nothing more sacred than love and laughter, and there is nothing more prayerful than playfulness.

I don't teach you renunciation, as it has been taught down the ages. I teach you: Rejoice, rejoice, and rejoice again! Rejoicing should be the essential core of my sannyasins.

Yes, Krishna Prem, my approach to life is holistic, because to me, to be whole is to be holy.

The third question:

Nellie, confusion is my way of working on you. I confuse you so that clarity becomes possible. People are very much certain, they already think they know. And because of their certainty they are closed. If you already know, then there is no need to seek and search. For what? If you already know, then you can keep your doors and windows closed.

People are much too certain, and that is a great problem. They have to be made uncertain again, they have to be shaken in their certainties; their dogmas and creeds have to be taken away. Hence confusion arises. What is confusion? -- when you start losing grip on your old certainty. You were feeling that you know, and suddenly you start feeling that you don't know. You were thinking you have the answer, and suddenly you become aware that the question is there and the answer was just imposed.

It happens to every new disciple here -- and Nellie is a new sannyasin; just the other day she has become a sannyasin. For a few days you will become more and more confused. It is a good sign, it means you are listening to me.

There are a few people who go on listening to me and are never confused. That simply means they have not heard; their ears are full of wax, they are deaf. There are people who not only don't become confused, but listening to me they become even more certain. That means they have heard something else that was not said.

Two moving-men were struggling with a big crate in a doorway. They pushed and tugged until they were exhausted but it would not move.

Finally, the man on the outside said, "We had better give up, we will never get it in."

The fellow on the inside said "What do you mean, get it in? I thought you were trying to get it out!"

If you become confused by listening to me, that means you have heard me. The more intelligent you are, the more confused you will become. And I use contradiction as a technique, I go on contradicting myself.

Why do I contradict myself? I am not teaching a philosophy here. The philosopher has to be very consistent -- flawless, logical, rational, always ready to argue and prove his statements. I am not a philosopher. I am not here giving you a consistent dogma to which you can cling. My whole effort is to give you a no-mind.

Be perfectly clear about it. My effort is not to strengthen a certain mind, my effort is just the opposite of it: to give you a state of no-mind -- a state which has no knowledge, a state which functions from not knowing, a state of innocence.

I use contradiction as a device. I say one thing, out of your old habit you cling to it; the next day I have to contradict it. When I contradict it you have to drop it. But you may start clinging to the new thing that I have said; I will have to contradict it again.

This will go on, you will go on clinging to this, to that. One day suddenly you will become aware what is happening. I don't allow you any certainty, nothing to cling to.

And if I contradict, what is the point of clinging at all? Then why not wait? I will contradict, and then you will have to leave it, and it is painful. Once you cling to a thing and then you have to leave it, it is painful, it creates anxiety.

So those who have listened to me for a long time, listen simply. They simply listen, they don't cling. They know perfectly well, now that they are aware of the game, that tomorrow I will contradict. So why carry it for twenty-four hours? The pain of carrying the weight, and then the pain of dropping it... slowly slowly it dawns in your awareness that there is no need to cling; this man contradicts. This man is consistently inconsistent.

Once you have understood that, you listen to me as one listens to music. You listen to me as one listens to the wind passing through the pine trees, you listen to me as one listens to the birds singing in the morning. You don't say to the cuckoo, "Yesterday your song was different," and you don't go to the roseflower and say, "Last season the flowers were bigger" -- or smaller -- "why are you contradicting yourself?"

You don't say to the poet, "In one of your poems you said this, and in another poem you have said something else." You don't expect a poet to be consistent, so you don't ask.

Poetry is not a theory, it is not a syllogism, it is a song.

I am not a philosopher. Always remember that I am a poet, not a philosopher. Remember always that I am not a missionary, but a musician playing on the harp of your heart.

Songs will go on changing... you need not cling to anything, then there will be no confusion at all.

The people who are always hankering for consistency can never enter into the mystery of life. Consistency is something manmade, it is arbitrary. Existence is not consistent. And now even physicists agree with the poets and the mystics.

You must be aware that modern physics believes in the theory of uncertainty; modern physics believes in the illogical behavior of atoms, of the unpredictability of the behavior of electrons. It was such a shock to the modern physicists, because they had always believed that matter behaves consistently. The whole foundation of science has been shaken; these twenty years, it has been such a shock. People have not yet become aware of it, because the theories are so complicated and so subtle that they will never become part of common knowledge. And they are so against common sense -- they look more like fairy tales, stories written for children.

The electrons jump from one spot to another, and between the two they don't exist. Now, can it be believed? An electron jumping from spot a to spot b, and between the two he is not? And I am using "he" knowingly, deliberately, because you cannot use "it" any more.

A great mystery... they call it a quantum leap. A special word has been coined -- quantum, because in the middle it is not found.

It is as if from New York you come to Poona, but in the space between the two you are not. You simply disappear from New York and you appear in Poona. Now there is a possibility some day.... Right now it is science fiction, but the possibility is there that one day it may happen that there will be no need to take long journeys, wasting time. Time has limitations.

For example, if you want to go to the nearest star it will take four years -- the nearest star!

And that too only if you go with the speed of light. And it is immense, the speed of light:

one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second. If you go at this speed, which seems almost impossible, then it will take four years to reach the closest star.

And then there are stars which are a hundred years, two hundred, one thousand, two thousand, one million, two million years away. There are stars so far away that we have not been able to detect them yet.

How can journeys be made to faraway stars? The only possibility is if one day we manage to do what the electron is already managing to do... a machine in which you enter here and you disappear, and another machine on the star, one million years away, and you appear there. Between the two, no traveling time is lost: you simply dematerialize here and you materialize somewhere else. It is a possibility. If the electron can do it, why not man? Man is nothing but millions and millions of electrons, so the possibility is there.

Even to think of it seems to be mind-blowing. But modem physics says electrons are behaving in a very mysterious way -- illogical, unpredictable, confusing.

I am not a philosopher who is trying to make a system of thought. I am a mystic who is trying to convey the mysteries that have become available to me. I will confuse you.

It is like a friend of mine who is a jigsaw puzzle fiend. One day his kids were playing with his puzzles and they put his Marilyn Monroe puzzle back in the same box with his Revolutionary War puzzle.

I asked him how he made out with things all mixed up.

"Oh," he said, "I did all right. But I never realized that George Washington had such sexy legs."

Life is a very mixed puzzle. Whatsoever you make out of it is going to be arbitrary, you cannot figure it out in reality. My suggestion to my sannyasins is to forget all about figuring out what it is. Rather, live it; rather, enjoy it! Don't analyze it, celebrate it.

So, Nellie, you will have to put up with me, you will have to tolerate my contradictions.

They appear as contradictions only to you. From my side I am simply talking mysteries, and mysteries are bound to be illogical. But your question is relevant and significant.

You ask: "Do I rightly understand you that even if you and your beloved can transmute your sexual energy into spirituality, that this relationship will not be satisfying either?"

Yes, it will not be satisfying either. In fact, it will create in you the greatest discontent that you have ever felt, because it will make you aware how much is possible. It will make you aware of the tremendous moment of that orgasmic unity, of that spiritual transmutation. But it will remain only momentary. With the outer, nothing can become permanent. And once the moment is gone, the higher was the peak, the lower will be the valley, and you will fall deep down in darkness.

But it will make you aware of one thing, that if male and female energy can have a meeting which is nontemporal, then there will be eternal contentment.

How to manage it? Out of this question the whole science of Tantra was born. How to do it? It can be done. It cannot be done with the beloved outside -- it cannot be done without the beloved outside, remember that too, because the first glimpse comes from the beloved outside. It is only a glimpse, but with it comes a new vision that, deep down inside yourself, there are both the energies present -- male and female.

Man is bisexual -- every man, every woman. Half of you is male and half of you is female. If you are a woman, then the female part is on top and the male part is hidden behind, and vice versa. Once you have become aware of this, then a new work starts:

your inner woman and inner man can have a meeting and that meeting can remain absolute. There is no need to come back from the peak. But the first vision comes from the outer.

Hence Tantra uses the outer woman, the outer man, as part of inner work. Once you have become aware that you have a woman inside you or a man inside you, then the work takes on a totally new quality, it starts moving in a new dimension. Now the meeting has to happen inside; you have to allow your inner woman and man to meet.

In India we have had that concept for at least five thousand years. You may not have seen the statues of Shiva as ardhanarishwar: half man, half woman. That is the picture of everybody's being, inner being. You must have seen shivalinga: it symbolizes the male.

But shivalinga is placed in the female sexual organ, it is not alone; they are together. That again represents the inner duality, the inner polarity, but the polarity can meet and merge.

With the outer, the merger will be only for the moment. Then great frustration and great misery... and the higher the moment, the deeper will be the darkness that follows it. But the meeting can happen inwardly.

First learn that the peak is possible, and then feel grateful to the woman who has given you the peak, feel grateful to the man. Tantra worships the woman as the goddess and the man as the god. Any woman who helps you to attain to this vision is a goddess, any man that helps you to attain to this vision is a god. Love becomes sacred because it gives you the first glimpses of the divine. Then the inner work starts. You have worked without, now you have to work within.

Tantra has two phases, two stages: the outer, the extrovert Tantra, and the inner, the introvert Tantra. The beginning has to be always from the without; it is because we are there, so we have to start from the place we are and then move inwards. When the inner man and woman have met and melted, and when you are no more divided inside, you have become one -- integrated, crystallized, one -- you have attained. This is enlightenment.

But right now everything is upside down. You have completely forgotten the inner; the outer has become your whole life. This is as if somebody is standing on his head and has forgotten completely how to stand on his feet again. Now, standing on your head your life will be really difficult. If you want to go somewhere, if you want to do something, everything will become very very difficult, almost impossible.

And that is what is happening. People are upside down, because the without has become more important than the within. The without has become all-important, and the within is completely ignored, forgotten.

The real treasure is within. From the without, you can get only hints of the inner treasure; from the without, only arrows pointing to the innermost core of your being; from without, only milestones. But don't cling to a milestone, and don't think that this is the goal and you have arrived.

Remember that the ordinary man is living a very abnormal life, because his values are upside down. Money is more important than meditation, logic is more important than love, mind is more important than heart. Power over others is more important than power over one's own being. Mundane things are more important than finding some treasures which death cannot destroy.

Larry went to an Italian restaurant, and just as the waiter was about to serve, he tripped and dumped a whole bowl of minestrone right in Larry's lap.

Was Larry angry? Was he even slightly ruffled?

He simply looked up with great dignity and disdain and said, "Waiter, I believe there is a soup in my fly."

Things are completely upside down. The fly is not in the soup, the soup is in the fly. And that's why there is so much misery. Everybody seems to be simply running after shadows, knowing perfectly well that there is nothing to happen, that nothing is ever going to happen, but what else to do? Standing by the side of the road when everybody is rushing looks silly. It is better to go on rushing with the crowd.

Let this sink deep in your heart: that unless the within becomes more important than the without, you are living a very abnormal life. The normal person is one whose within is the source of everything that he is doing. The without is only a means, the within is the end.

The love affair that you have with a woman or a man is a means to the end. The end is having a love affair with your inner woman or inner man. The outer has to be used as a learning situation; it is a great opportunity.

I am not against the outer love affair, I am all for it, because without it you will never become aware of the inner. But remember, don't get stuck in the outer.

The fourth question:

It is because of a long, long repressive society that the dirty old man exists. It is because of your saints, your priests, your puritans, that the old dirty man exists.

If people are allowed to live their sexual life joyously, by the time they are nearing forty- two -- remember, I am saying forty-two, not eighty-four -- just when they are nearing forty-two, sex will start losing its grip on them. Just as sex arises and becomes very powerful by the time one is fourteen, in exactly the same way by the time one is forty- two it starts disappearing. It is a natural course. And when sex disappears, the old man has a love, has compassion, of a totally different kind. There is no lust in his love, no desire, he wants to get nothing out of it. His love has a purity, an innocence; his love is a joy.

Sex gives you pleasure. And sex gives you pleasure only when you have gone into sex; then pleasure is the end result. If sex has become irrelevant -- not repressed, but because you experienced it so deeply that it is no more of any value.... You have known it, and knowledge always brings freedom. You have known it totally, and because you have known it, the mystery is finished, there is nothing more to explore. In that knowing, the whole energy, the sexual energy, is transmuted into love, compassion. One gives out of joy. Then the old man is the most beautiful man in the world, the cleanest man in the world.

There is no expression in any language as the clean old man. I have never heard it. But this expression, the dirty old man, exists in almost all languages. The reason is that the body becomes old, the body becomes tired, the body wants to get rid of all sexuality -- but the mind, because of repressed desires, still hankers. When the body is not capable, and the mind continuously haunts you for something which the body is incapable of doing, really the old man is in a mess. His eyes are sexual, lusty; his body dead and dull.

And his mind goes on goading him. He starts having a dirty look, a dirty face; he starts having something ugly in him.

It reminds me of the story of the man who overheard his wife and her sister discussing his frequent out-of-town business trips. The sister kept suggesting that the wife should worry about her husband being unchaperoned at those posh resort convention hotels with so many attractive, unattached career women around.

"Me worry?" said the wife. "Why, he'd never cheat on me. He's too loyal, too decent...

too old."

The body sooner or later becomes old; it is bound to become old. But if you have not lived your desires they will clamor around you, they are bound to create something ugly in you. Either the old man becomes the most beautiful man in the world, because he attains to an innocence the same as the innocence of a child, or even far deeper than the innocence of a child -- he becomes a sage. But if desires are still there, running like an undercurrent, then he is caught in a turmoil.

A very old man was arrested while attempting to sexually molest a young woman. Seeing such an old man, eighty-four, in court, the magistrate reduced the charge from rape to assault with a dead weapon.

If you are becoming old, remember that old age is the climax of life. Remember that old age can be the most beautiful experience -- because the child has hopes for the future, he lives in the future, he has great desires to do this, to do that. Every child thinks that he is going to be somebody special -- Alexander the Great, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong -- he lives in desires and in the future. The young man is too much possessed by the instincts, all instincts, exploding in him. Sex is there. Modern research says that every man thinks once at least about sex every three seconds. Women are a little better, they think of sex every six seconds. It is a great difference, almost double; that may be the cause of many rifts between husbands and wives.

Once every three seconds sex somehow flashes in the mind. The young man is possessed by such great natural forces that he cannot be free. Ambition is there, and time is running fast, and he has to do something and he has to be something. All those hopes and desires and fantasies of childhood have to be fulfilled; he is in a great rush, in a hurry.

The old man knows that those childish desires were really childish. The old man knows that all those days of youth and turmoil are gone. The old man is in the same state as when the storm has gone and silence prevails. That silence can be of tremendous beauty, depth, richness. If the old man is really mature, which is very rarely the case, then he will be beautiful. But people only grow in age, they don't grow up. Hence the problem.

Grow up, become more mature, become more alert and aware. And old age is the last opportunity given to you: before death comes, prepare. And how does one prepare for death? By becoming more meditative.

If some lurking desires are still there, and the body is getting old and the body is not capable of fulfilling those desires, don't be worried. Meditate over those desires, watch, be aware. Just by being aware and watchful and alert, those desires and the energy contained in them can be transmuted. But before death comes, be free of all desires.

When I say be free of all desires I simply mean be free of all objects of desires. Then there is a pure longing. That pure longing is divine, that pure longing is God. Then there is pure creativity with no object, with no address, with no direction, with no destination -- just pure energy, a pool of energy, going nowhere. That's what buddhahood is. Atisha calls it bodhichitta, buddha consciousness.

The fifth question:

The so-called saints are responsible. Down the ages, India has lived with a wrong philosophy -- a philosophy that teaches other-worldliness, a philosophy that teaches that the world is illusion and only the other world is true. You have not seen the other world, the true world; you have to believe. And the world that you have seen, and see every day and experience every day, is illusory, is maya.

This foolish philosophy is the root cause of India's poverty. If the world is illusory then why care about science, why care about technology? What is the point? If the world is illusory, poverty is also an illusion, the beggar on the street is also an illusion, the starving person is also an illusion.

The West has lived with the idea that only this world is real. Hence it has become rich, at least outwardly rich. The West has denied the other world: God is dead. And the West started becoming rich only when it started dropping the idea of the other world; then its whole energy was focused on this world. It became rich materially, but it became poor spiritually.

The other world is also real, and real on a higher plane. The East became poor materially.

The other world is real, but the other world can only be based on the reality of this world.

This world functions as a foundation. So maybe, once in a while, a person in India was able to become inwardly rich. But the millions, the masses, remain outwardly poor. And because there is no foundation, they have remained inwardly poor too.

These attitudes have been two halves of one whole. The new man I talk about, and the new humanity, will not be Eastern or Western. It will not believe in this world only or in that world only, it will believe in the totality of man. It will believe in the body of man, it will believe in the soul of man; it will believe in the material, it will believe in the spiritual. In fact the new humanity will think of spirituality and materiality as two aspects of one phenomenon. Then the world will be rich in both ways, within and without.

India has to get rid of its otherworldly obsession. It has to learn to love this world too, it has to learn that this world is also real. The very moment that happens will be a great change in India's life. But the saints, the so-called saints, still go on teaching that this world is unreal. And the poor people are consoled by it, so they go on clinging to the philosophy. If the world is unreal, this consoles: there is nothing to be worried about, it is only a question of a few years, then you will enter into the real world. So why bother?

The Eastern mind remains unscientific because of this basically wrong philosophy; science can be created only if the world is accepted as real. And if science is there, then technology is there, and technology is the only way to create riches. The so-called saints are responsible, and the so-called leaders, the politicians, are responsible, because the politicians go on teaching anti-scientific attitudes to the country. Gandhi's philosophy is anti-scientific. You will be surprised to know that he was against railway trains, the post office, the telegraph, modern medicine. He was against the basic technologies which can help the country. And he still remains the father figure, he still dominates the Indian mind, particularly the Indian politician's mind.

India has to get rid of Gandhi, otherwise it cannot become rich. But Gandhi also consoles, because he praises the poor man. He calls the poor man daridra narayan: he says that God is in the poor man, the poor man is divine. His teaching is that the rich man is something wrong and the poor man is something right. Poverty has some spirituality in it, according to him.

If you praise poverty as spirituality, naturally the poor person's ego is gratified. Hence the poor people in India go on worshipping Gandhi; every town has his statue. The poor man has nothing else to feel gratified about. This idea gives him great contentment, that he has something spiritual in him, his poverty is spiritual.

There is nothing spiritual in poverty. Poverty is ugly, unspiritual, irreligious. The poor man is the cause of all that is wrong in the world, because out of poverty all kinds of sins and crimes arise. The poor man has not to be gratified, he has to be made aware, "Do something and get out of your poverty." If you go on praising the poor man he will become more and more poor to become more and more spiritual. The poorer he is, the more divine.

A farm laborer got a wire from home; it announced that his wife had just given birth to quintuplets. He decided it was time to look for a better-paying job.

"Tell me," said the employment agent at the firm where he applied, "Do you have any sales ability? Can you type, run a computer or drive a truck?"

Sadly he answered, "No."

The interviewer asked, "Then what can you do?"

He reached into his pocket, brought out the telegram and said, "Here, read this."

India's whole creativity consists in bringing more and more children into the world. There is no reason to be surprised by India's poverty. Every day thousands are born. Medicine has helped people to live long, medicine has helped people to die later and later. The deathrate has tremendously changed: just thirty years ago, out of ten children born in India nine were going to die before the age of one. Now nine live, only one dies. The deathrate has been changed but the birthrate remains the same.

Now there are only two possibilities: either drop the birthrate or raise the deathrate. There are only two possibilities: either kill people in some way or other.... And that's what happens again and again -- natural calamities kill people, great diseases spread and kill people, wars come and kill people. But they are all lagging behind; they are not able to cope with modern medicine. Unless the birthrate declines there is no possibility for India to see good days. But the Indians are accustomed to having many children. It is very manly, it is thought to be a great blessing from God: the more children you have, the more blessed you are.

These foolish ideas have to be changed, but it is very difficult to change them. Because I am against all these ideas, the Indian masses are against me. They want to be supported...

their saints go on saying to them that a child is a gift of God, their saints go on blessing them. Now each child brings a new curse; it is no longer a blessing.

The politicians are afraid that if they force birth control on the country then the people won't vote for them, so they cannot enforce birth control. So they deliver sermons on brahmacharya, celibacy; they themselves are not celibate, and they go on teaching people celibacy. And people love these ideas, these are the ideas they have loved for centuries so they feel very good: this is their culture, their culture is being praised. This is the right way to control population -- celibacy.

And how many people are going to do it? That is not the point at all. A cultural idea, praised for centuries, feels very ego-satisfying.

Celibacy is not going to work. Birth control will have to be brought in. If people willingly accept it, good. If they don't accept it willingly, then it has to be forced on them. People cannot be left to destroy the whole country. But if you talk about enforcing birth control they say then you are not a democrat.

You stop people by force in many things: thieves are not allowed to steal -- is it non- democratic? Thieves should be allowed, given freedom -- democracy means freedom!

Murders are not allowed. Now giving birth to so many children is far more of a crime than stealing; in fact it is a far bigger crime than murder.

Things have changed, situations have changed. Now to bring an unnecessary child into the world is far more a crime than killing a person. It is not a question of democracy, it is a question of survival. Democracy is good, but democracy can exist only if the country can survive. The country is dying, starving. Unless birth control is enforced totally, this country cannot be rich.

My attitude is very clear, my approach is absolutely clear, but the country's old mind is not ready to listen. People come to me and they say, "What you are doing for India's poverty? Why don't you run hospitals, and why don't you distribute free food from the ashram?"

This has been done for at least ten thousand years. Ashrams have been distributing free food for ten thousand years: it has not helped. How it is going to help if one more ashram goes on distributing free food? There are so many hospitals -- it has not helped; how it is going to help if we run a few more hospitals?

That is not my approach. I want to cut the very root of the problem, I am not interested in pruning the leaves. But people are duped and dulled by the saints, by the leaders, by the moralists.

Karl Marx seems to be right, at least in a certain sense, that religion has been used as an opium to dupe people and dull their intelligence. Real religion is not opium, but real religion is rare. It exists only when there is a living master -- otherwise priests go on pretending that they have the keys of religion. They don't have any keys; all that they do is serve the politicians.

There is a conspiracy between organized religion and the state -- between church and state. Together they dominate people, together they reduce people into slavery. If the people are poor it is easier to force them into slavery; if people are poor it is easier to give them beliefs, superstitions. If people are poor they are always afraid of hell and always greedy for heaven. The priest can dominate them and the politician can also dominate them because they are so poor.

In poverty, people lose intelligence. Intelligence needs a certain nourishment. It is a well known scientific fact that if certain vitamins are missing in your food you will not be intelligent. And I am really worried, because those are the vitamins which are missing in Indian food. Indian food is very deficient -- hence you see the intelligence is on a very low level. Even the so-called intelligentsia of India doesn't seem to be very intelligent.

Intelligence is needed to transform this country, its poverty.

And that's what my work is here: to create more intelligence through meditation; to create more intelligent people by destroying their superstitions, beliefs; to create more alert people, so they can be more responsive to the real situation that exists in the country and in the world.

Only in this way can we cut the very root of the problem.

The last question:

This is a very philosophical question, Kirtan.

There is a story about two big beefy American football players in philosophy class, sitting at their final examination. The exam question was just one word: "Why?"

All the students began writing madly, filling exam book after book. The two football players looked at each other and shrugged. The first wrote two words on his exam paper:

"Why not?" and left the room. The second fellow wrote one word: "Because" and left with his friend.

Not knowing what to do, the professor gave the first fellow the grade of A, and the second fellow the grade of A minus.

This is really a philosophical question: "Why am I here?"

I don't know. Why not? Or -- because.

Three newly deceased candidates for heaven sit in the waiting room of Saint Peter's office. Finally Saint Peter returns from lunch and asks the receptionist to send in the first candidate.

"How did you die, and why do you think you are eligible for heaven?" Saint Peter asked.

"Well," said the man, "for some time I suspected my wife was cheating on me. This morning a neighbor called and confirmed the awful truth. He told me a guy had entered our apartment a half hour ago and had not come out. Furiously I rushed home, burst into the apartment, and found my wife lying naked on the bed. I started to search the apartment in a jealous rage. I looked through the whole flat -- under the bed, in the closets, behind curtains, everywhere.

I found no one. Finally, out of sheer frustration and blind rage, I picked up the refrigerator, carried it out onto the back porch and threw it down into the back yard, three stories below. The exertion and excitement must have been too much for me, I must have died right then and there of a heart attack."

"Well," said Saint Peter, "that's a very unusual way to die, but entirely moral. Admitted.

Send in the next candidate."

The second candidate told an even more surprising story. "Saint Peter," he said, "if you will excuse the expression, I swear to God I was minding my own business taking a nap in the hammock out in the back yard. I heard a noise and looked up just in time to see a fullsize refrigerator falling on me from the third floor."

"Hmmm," said Saint Peter. "Most tragic and most circumstantial. But, again, entirely proper and moral. Admit this man and send in the next candidate."

"Saint Peter," said the third candidate, "I know you are not going to believe a word I say, I just know it. I got called to this lady's apartment to fix her refrigerator. I was working on it when all of a sudden she screamed, 'Here comes my husband! For God's sake, hide!'

So help me, Saint Peter, the last thing I remember was climbing into the refrigerator and closing the door."

Kirtan, I don't know why you are here. Why not? Because!

Enough for today.

The Book of Wisdom