God is born again

The first question:

Question 1:

Miguel Terc,

THE best thing is never to be born, but that you have already missed. The second best thing is to die as soon as possible; that's a little bit difficult. I don't mean the physical death; that is not difficult. To commit suicide is the easiest thing in the world, the most cowardly. It needs no guts. But to commit psychological suicide needs great courage - to be and yet not to be, to drop the ego.

Yes, there are a few people who even manage to do the first. Lao Tzu must have been one of those few people who were born and yet not born, who came into the world utterly egoless. Hence the story that Lao Tzu lived in his mother's womb for eighty-two years. Until he became ripe, until he became capable of existing in the world without the ego, he resisted the temptation to come out of the womb. He allowed himself, permitted himself, to be born only when there was no possibility of any ego arising. What Buddha attained under the Bodhi tree, Lao Tzu must have attained in the mother's womb.

Yes, there is a way to be aware even in the mother's womb. Then a person is born, but is born without the ego; Jesus must have come that way. A few have managed the second too: the second means to go on dying to all the yesterdays.

The ego is nothing but the cumulative effect of all the yesterdays. If you can die to all the yesterdays, even to the moment that has passed and is no more, you remain without the ego. You are there in utter radiance, in great splendor, but there is no idea of 'I'. A pure amness, just fragrance of being, but no center... then one exists in God and God exists in one.

The second is also very difficult. One needs to be so utterly alert that the moment the moment passes by, one has slipped out of it. One does not go on lingering with the past, one does not go on clinging to the memories. There is no nostalgia, no looking back. It does not mean looking ahead, because looking ahead is another way of looking back. It does not mean beginning a life in the future, projecting a life into the future, because the future is nothing but a reflection of the past. What you can desire in the future is bound to be nothing but a repetition of the past, modified, refined, more sophisticated, more polished but still the same. But there cannot be any qualitative difference; maybe some quantitative differences are there. The future is nothing but the projection of the past.

So I am not saying drop the past so that you can live in the future. That is the past coming back through the back door again. If you drop the yesterdays, you will have to drop the tomorrows too.

When all yesterdays and all tomorrows have disappeared, then what is left? - this moment, this purity, this silence, thisness! Buddha calls it TATHATA, suchness. There is nothing else to desire, there is no should, no ought, there is nowhere to go. One is utterly contented in this moment; one is relaxed, calm and quiet. All desires have disappeared because they can exist only through the past and through the future. And when there is no desire, how can there be mind? Mind is desiring. And when there is no mind how can there be an ego? Ego is the center of the false mind. This is the second best.

The third best is to love, because love is a sweet way to die, to disappear. The SWEETEST way to die is love. It helps you to drop the ego, and with no effort. And it helps you to drop the ego with such grace, with such joy, that if you cannot drop the ego through love then it will be very difficult to drop it at all.

In love, the other is available; the other is an excuse to drop the ego. And the beauty of the other, and the caressing warmth of the other, the protection, the shelter! - it is easy to die because love gives one courage, courage to do the impossible. And love gives one a kind of drunkenness. In that drunkenness it is easy to take the jump, the quantum leap.

Love makes one mad. That madness is higher than what you call sanity, because your sanity remains crawling in the dark holes of the earth, and love opens its wings towards the sun. Love dares, is adventurous. Love is ready to die, because in love one FEELS that even if one dies, one cannot die. Love gives the feel of immortality.

And the path of love is full of flowers - the birds are singing, and the trees are green, and it is very sunny. The easiest is the third.

But for a few people it is very difficult: the very idea of drowning oneself in the other makes them very much scared. The very presence of the other makes them shrink in. The very presence of the other and they become closed. If you are of that type, Miguel, then the fourth way is for you: to meditate.

That too is a way of dying - a little more dry than the third, a little more alone than the third, not so sweet, certainly, even a little bitter... but a few people like bitter tastes - coffee, cocoa. Likes differ, so if you like something bitter, spicy, something hard... There are people who are intrigued only by the harder course; the easy is not a challenge to them, the easy has no appeal for them.

The harder the task, the more they rise to it. They are challenged only by the arduous, the difficult, the impossible; the impossible is their passion. For them is the way of meditation. Be alone - doing nothing, sitting silently, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

In love there is a song, a dialogue, a meeting, a merger. In meditation one simply evaporates. In one's aloneness slowly, slowly one evaporates, and one day nothing is found, the ego has died.

These are the four possibilities.

Miguel, you ask me, "CAN YOU TELL ME WHAT IS BEST FOR ME?" These four things.

But the basic note is the same, and that is: learn to die, because that is the only way to learn to live.

Let the ego die and your life starts taking the flavor of the divine. Death becomes the door to the divine - death of the ego.

And the fifth - which is not really the fifth but a combination of all these four, a symphony, an orchestra - I call it sannyas. It combines all that is beautiful in all the four, it is multi-dimensional. All these four are one-dimensional, sannyas is multi-dimensional. It teaches you how to be born and yet never to be born. It teaches you how to die and yet to live immensely. It teaches you how to fall in love and yet go on rising up. It teaches you how to disappear in love and yet remain aloof, unpossessed, non-possessive. It teaches you how to be with the other and yet remain free and let the other be free. It teaches you how to meditate and be alone and yet not let your aloneness become an escape, to be alone and yet be in the world. It teaches you how to be a lotus leaf in the lake, in the water, and yet untouched by it.

Sannyas is the synthesis of all these four dimensions; it is the very crescendo, the cream of them all.

Many religions have concentrated on the first, particularly the Indian religions; their emphasis is on how not to be born. Hence in India all the religious people go on praying, "God, help us NOT to be born again. We don't want to get back into this wheel of life and death." All Indian religions are basically rooted in one concept: how to be free from this vicious circle of birth and death, how to go beyond birth and death, how not to be born, how to enter into eternity and never come back into the turmoil of time.

The Christian, the Mohammedan, the Jew - their emphasis is on the second: to die as soon as possible, to surrender to God. Prayer is their way. Prayer means dying, dying and disappearing as a person, becoming part of the universal, a surrender, a trust in God. The whole emphasis is on how to surrender your ego, sacrifice your ego, at the altar of the divine.

The third, to love as a method of dying, has been chosen by all the devotees of the world. The Vaishnavas in India and the Sufis of Islam and the Hassidic mystics of Judaism have all chosen the third: love, love intensely, love totally, love withholding nothing back and you will attain, because love kills the ego.

The fourth, to be aware, to be meditative, has been chosen by Buddhism, Jainism, Zen, Taoism.

My effort here, Miguel, is to create a symphony of all the religions. Here, Sufis and Hassids and the people of Zen and Taoism are meeting and merging. I am creating an ocean in which rivers from different mountains, bringing different flavors, bringing different fragrances, are meeting and merging and creating something absolutely new that has never happened before - a universal religiousness.

I don't give it any name.

Miguel, if you listen to my suggestion, become a sannyasin. And the only way to know what it is is to be a participant.

Miguel is a journalist from South America. It will be very difficult for him to participate; the whole training of a journalist is to observe, to be a spectator, to watch with a critical eye, and to find out whatsoever he can find which is negative. If he cannot find the negative, then invent, project, because only the negative becomes news. The positive has no news value, only the negative, only something sensational. People are interested only in the wrong.

If you murder somebody it is news, but if you help somebody you can go on helping your whole life; it will never become news. If you love it is not news, but if you hate and you destroy, it becomes news. Buddhas are really not counted in your history books.

That's why it still remains a problem whether men like Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Lao Tzu, ever existed, or whether they are only just mythology. Nobody is suspicious about Alexander the Great, and Napoleon, and Tamurlaine, and Genghis Khan, and Nadir Shah; nobody is suspicious about them.

They have left so many destructive proofs, you cannot deny them. History is full of the fools; from Tamurlaine to Adolf Hitler they are the major part of history, because they create news. History is ancient news. That which is in the newspaper today will become part of history tomorrow, and that which is history today had been in the news yesterday.

But somehow the Buddhas are left out of the account. Why? What must the reason be? The reason is that these people were not destructive: they never killed, they never conquered, they never possessed anybody. They lived so silently, they lived so blissfully, they never created a ripple.

Once I was talking to the Prime Minister of India; and I asked, "What are the qualifications? How do you choose your cabinet colleagues?"

And the Prime Minister said, "Whosoever has a nuisance value, whosoever can create more nuisance, has to be chosen." That is the qualification! If he is left out of the cabinet he will create trouble. He has to be taken into the cabinet, he has to be made a minister so he does not create trouble.

Troublemakers become powerful. Troublemakers become heads of state, troublemakers create news.

Miguel is a journalist. If his training has gone too deep it will be really difficult for him to participate here. But there are a few things you can know only by participation. If you don't dance you will not know what it is. You can see somebody else dancing, but it is one thing to see a dancer and it is totally another thing to BE a dancer. Seeing a dancer from the outside, you are simply seeing physical gestures. Being a dancer from the inside, you will know the real feel of it.

Somebody can tell you that he has a headache and you can understand that he is in pain. But from the outside, if you have never known a headache, will you be able to understand what exactly his agony is? You will never be able to understand it. It is something interior; you have to participate.

Even suffering cannot be known from the outside - suffering, which is gross. What to say about bliss? What to say about peace, serenity? They are the highest peaks, the Everests of human consciousness. Even dark valleys cannot be known from the outside; you have to go into them, you have to disappear into them.

So if you are really interested, if the question is not just for the question's sake, then be a participant.

Fall en rapport with me. Put your mind aside - that's what I mean by death - put your ego aside.

Enter into this buddhafield as a small child, innocent, knowing nothing. Function from the state of not-knowing - that's what I mean by death - function from the state of innocence, and tremendous are the possibilities: you can also bloom, as other flowers are blooming in my garden.

The second question:

Question 2:

Shivananda,

FRIEDRICH Nietzsche killed God, and Sigmund Freud buried the corpse. God's death is no longer new and no longer news either. Now the new idea is that death is God.

And that's what I am teaching you here: forget about God; let us learn death, the art of dying. And if you know how to die you will know what God is.

The old God is certainly dead, and it is good that the old God is dead. The old God was getting heavier and heavier on the human heart. It was becoming like a rock. It was not helping growth, it was hindering. The old idea was very childish. It was created by the primitive people; it was their need, it was perfectly suitable for them.

Just go five thousand years back, in the days of the Vedas... and it is cloudy, and there is thunder and lightning, and you are sitting in your cave - with no clothes on, of course - shivering, trembling:

you will create a kind of God, the God that is born out of fear. The cave man was constantly in fear: wild animals were roaming all around, no security, no medicine, no protection, no shelter, no light, no fire. Just think of the plight of that man - danger all around, insecurity, darkness. It was natural for that man to create a God as a consolation; it was his illusion. Hence he created a God in the heavens. If you pray to Him He will help you, He will protect you. If you don't pray, if you don't obey Him, He will punish you. That was a childish concept, perfectly suitable for the people who created it. But then it persisted. Times changed, caves disappeared, the whole life became totally different. Man was more secure, more sheltered, more safe. How could he go on carrying that old idea? Sooner or later a man was needed to declare that THAT God was dead.

That's what Nietzsche did. He has done a great service to humanity; he declared something which needed to be declared. He was a courageous man to declare it, and he risked much because he was the first man to declare that God is dead.

Remember, there were people before him who had said there was no God; that is totally different.

There has been Charavaka in India and Epicurus in Greece, and many more all over the world, a few courageous, intelligent people, who have always denied the existence of God. But to deny the existence of God is one thing, and to declare that God is dead is totally different. Hence Charavaka never went mad, Epicurus never went mad.

Nietzsche went mad. To declare that God is dead... He was the first man to encounter this fact - that the old God had become irrelevant and the new was not on the horizon. The old was gone and the new had not come - and the gap! That gap was maddening, as if somebody had taken the earth from underneath your feet and you were falling into an abysmal darkness. You cannot find any bottom anywhere, you go on falling and falling.

That's what happened to Friedrich Nietzsche; he went mad. The day he declared "God is dead", the whole edifice that had been used as a protection up to then was shattered. To say God does not exist is one thing; then there is no question....

A few people had the idea that "God is" because they felt protected with God, and a few started feeling afraid of God because he could punish. Those who wanted to feel more natural, rather than feeling security in God started feeling fear - because if you are natural then you will be in hell. Just to avoid that fear many declared that there was no God. See the point: the person who believes in God and the person who disbelieves in God may not be different people. Their psychologies may be exactly the same, they may be two sides of the same coin. One declares God is because he feels alone, afraid without him. The other declares there is no God because with the presence of God he feels afraid. He is there, constantly watching, and He is the judge; and he is afraid of being judged.

Remember, those who were ascetic people, who were ready to deny their nature, were very happy to believe in God. And the people who were more natural, more normal, were happy to believe that there was no God. The reason is the same: the natural person will feel afraid because the natural person will have sex, will have anger, will have jealousy. And God is going to punish him; if God is there then punishment is certain. It is better to say that there is no God; at least for the time being he can feel relieved. And the person who can repress his sex, his jealousies, his anger, would like to declare that God is, because all his investment is in God's existence. God's existence is very necessary for his asceticsm.

The pathological people declare that God is and the natural people declare that there is no God.

And because natural people have been very few - the society does not allow natural people to exist - hence the majority declare God is. But the majority also only declare God is on the surface; deep down they all become hypocrites, because to deny nature is not easy, it is a rare feat. Only a few people can deny it. Really mad, insane people are needed to deny nature.

Then what is the natural person supposed to do? - he is supposed to become a hypocrite. He should go to the church and the temple and on the surface, formally, declare that God is, and go on living his natural way. He will become a dual personality.

Nietzsche's declaration is very original, he is a pioneer. He said, "God is dead" - not that God is not; God has been up to now, but now God is no more. He took away all the shelter, security, safety. He left man alone. And naturally he suffered, he himself went mad; he could not tolerate the absence of God. He had declared something of immense importance, but-it was difficult even for him to absorb it. The truth of it was so much; he was not yet ready.

You ask me, Shivananda, "Is GOD REALLY DEAD?"

Yes, the old God is dead. The God that used to sit on a golden throne in the seventh heaven is dead. The God that you used to believe in in your childhood IS dead. The God of your conceptions is dead.

Recently a new jet plane was invented that goes nine hundred miles an hour. The test pilot was testing it on the maiden flight and noticed a button he hadn't used before. He pressed it and the plane zoomed miles upward at a fantastic rate.

He breathed in sharply and whispered, "Oh, my God!" and a voice answered, "Yes?"

That God that used to say "Yes!" from high above is no more there. But it is good that the old God is dead; man needs a new conception, a new perceptivity. God will not be back, godliness will be back. God will not come back as a person again - man has passed that phase, man has come of age. Now we will have to think in terms of godliness, not of God; not of personality, but of presence.

That's what happened to Gautam Buddha. H. G. Wells has written a tremendously significant statement about Gautam Buddha that he was the most godless man, and yet the most godly.

Godless in the sense that he never believed in any childish conception of God, he never believed in God as a person. But he was the most godly; he believed in the quality of godliness. Now in that way God will not be a father figure but an experience of love. Now God will be synonymous with love, now God will be synonymous with meditation, awareness. Now God need not be worshipped.

God will not be the deity in the temple any more, God will be your inner consciousness, your inner witnessing, your subjectivity. God will be synonymous with life itself.

Yes, a new God is being born. He has already arrived. It will take time for humanity to understand it.

Nietzsche declared, "God is dead." I declare: God is born again! - but certainly with a new face.

Nietzsche would not be able to recognize it. Only a man like Gautam Buddha will be able to recognize it, or a man like Kabir, or a man like Rinzai. Only those who have loved tremendously and meditated tremendously, only those who have died as egos, will be able to understand this new God - not as a person but as a quality, not as something in particular which can be pinpointed, but as something diffused, permeating the whole of existence.

God is the green in the trees and the red and the gold. God is the song of the bird. God is the white cloud floating in the sky. God is the starry night. God is when two persons meet and hug each other.

God is when two lovers melt and merge into each other. God is in all experiences of beauty, joy, celebration. God is in every orgasmic experience.

Now this is a totally different conception of God: you cannot worship it, you can experience it. You can BE it, but you cannot be the worshipper.

That's why my sannyasins are not worshippers. My sannyasins are experiencers. Their God is not something outside, their God is something INSIDE. The inside of things is God. The inside of this whole universe is God.

And if you can experience your own interiority, Shivananda, you will know God is not dead. God cannot be dead! Yes, concepts change because man changes, but God is eternity, God is this totality - how can God be dead? If God is really dead then Nietzsche cannot be alive, then trees cannot bloom any more, then the earth will not be there, then the sun will not shine, then the stars will simply disappear. Then there will be only darkness and emptiness.

But all is as it has always been; God as an old concept is gone. Prepare the way for the new God to arrive! And that's what sannyas is all about.

I am not initiating you into any traditional sannyas, I am not helping you enter into any traditional way. I don't represent the past, I represent the approaching dawn that is very close by. It only needs a little love in your hearts, a little awareness in your beings, and you will become aware.

This time God is going to be born in you. You have to be a little more innocent, more virgin. You have to become the womb.

And as man grows, again and again new concepts will be coming. They simply show the growth of man. God is always there, but we grow, our concepts grow, our vision becomes more clear. Naturally old concepts have to be discarded, thrown to the junkyard.

All the old Gods are dead - the Hindu Gods and the Mohammedan Gods and the Christian Gods.

All the old Gods are dead, and those who are still worshipping in the ancient temples and mosques are simply following a dead routine. God has disappeared from there. Now God needs new people, new mediums to become vehicles for Him. He needs a totally new human being, a new man.

Shivananda, become part of this great experiment! My whole experiment is to bring the new God into the world, to help the beyond penetrate into the earth. What Nietzsche has done has to be undone.

The third question:

Question 3:

Deva Curtis,

THE feelings that arose in your heart are not of fantasy, are not of paranoia; they are real. There are fanatics, the world is full of them. They would like to kill me. They killed Jesus, they killed Socrates, they killed Al Hillaj Mansoor. Those same fanatics are still there, but there is no need to be afraid of them because in a way, unknowingly, they help the work.

Just think, if Jesus had not been killed, there would have been no Christianity at all. It is the murderers who helped to create Christianity. In fact, George Gurdjieff used to say humorously that it was Jesus' own plan - that he managed that they kill him, that he wanted to be killed so that his message could spread. George Gurdjieff used to say that Judas was not the enemy of Jesus; he did not betray, he simply followed his orders. He was the most close disciple, and the most intelligent of all Jesus' disciples, the most educated, the most sophisticated. Gurdjieff used to say that Jesus ORDERED Judas: "If you really love me, and if your surrender is total, then now go and hand me over to the enemies."

This is a beautiful story that Gurdjieff invented; it has some truth in it. The truth is that the people who murdered Jesus played into his hands. He may not have planned it, but it worked out perfectly well in his favor.

Just think: there have been many Sufi mystics of the same caliber as Mansoor, but the world knows only Mansoor's name, nobody else's. Bahauddin is not known so much, Junaid is not known so much, Hassan is not known so much, Junon is not known so much. And they were of the same height and the same quality, the same enlightenment. But Mansoor has become the greatest name; without Mansoor there would be no Sufism at all. Mansoor has become the central focus for a simple reason: he was killed.

There were many great philosophers of the same calibre as Socrates, but because he was poisoned his name cannot be effaced. As long as humanity exists, as long as there will be any intelligence available anywhere, he will be remembered. Now to look back, retrospectively, it does not seem a bad thing that he was poisoned and killed. Anyway, he was going to die, he was an old man; he could have lived one year, two years, four years at the most.

The court had asked Socrates, "If you leave Athens you can save your life, we can leave you free.

But then you will not be entitled to enter back into Athens."

Socrates said, "No, I will not compromise just for life's sake - because sooner or later I am going to die, so why compromise for something which is going to happen anyway? So how does it make any difference? It is better to be killed than for it to be known later on that I compromised, that I was a coward."

The court proposed another thing; the court said, "Then one thing more - we would like to help you in every possible way. The pressure is much, so we have to kill you, but we can give you one more option: you can live in Athens if you insist on living in Athens, but then stop talking about truth."

He said, "That is impossible. That's my business! If I live, I will talk about truth. Life and spreading truth are synonymous to me. What is the point of living if I cannot even talk about truth? If I cannot commune, if I cannot initiate people into the world of truth, what is the point of living at all? You please kill me and be finished with the whole thing! I am not going to compromise."

And he did well. If he had compromised nobody would have ever heard about him. It would have been more calculating to compromise, he could have saved himself, but he was ready to die. He chose death. Why? - because in a very mysterious way death becomes a seal.

So don't be worried, Curtis, about those fanatics. If they kill me they will be helping my work.

Death is bound to come one day, and the best way is not to die in the bed. Almost ninety-nine percent of people do that. And people like me have been known to find better ways of dying.

A Zen Master was dying. In the last moment he opened his eyes and asked his disciples who had gathered - thousands of disciples; he was a great Master - he asked, "Can somebody suggest how to die? Because people just go on dying on the bed. I would like to try something new!"

They were shocked! What kind of question was he asking? Who had ever heard of people enquiring about how to die? People don't even ask how to live! People go on living without asking how to live, and here is a man who cannot even die without asking how to die. He wants to make it a little celebration, something special.

Seeing that the disciples were silent, he himself suggested, "Have you ever heard about anybody dying in a sitting posture, Buddha - like, in PADMASAN?"

One man said, "Yes, I know of a Zen Master who died sitting in the lotus posture."

Then the old man said, "That won't do! If somebody has already done it, it is not worth repeating.

Have you heard of anybody dying standing, like Mahavira?" Mahavira used to stand while meditating.

That is unique, very unique; people don't ordinarily meditate standing. That's why you will find thousands of Mahavira's statues in India standing. Of Buddha, you will never find a single statue standing; he is always sitting. The sitting posture has always been used as a meditation posture, but Mahavira was of his own type.

Somebody said, "Yes, we have heard - we have not seen but we have heard: in ancient days one Zen Master had died standing."

The old man said, "Then that won't do. Find out something soon, because death is coming close by!

Have you ever heard," he asked, "of somebody dying standing on his head?"

Now nobody had ever heard, nobody had ever even dreamt of anybody dying standing on his head, in SHIRSHASAN, the headstand. They said, "No, we have not heard, we have not even thought of it!"

The old man said, "Then that's perfectly right!" He stood on his head.

Now it was a problem to decide whether he had died or not. And the disciples were afraid also to disturb him now that he was standing on his head. They tried..."breathing seems to have almost disappeared. But how can a man go on standing on his head if he is dead? He will fall! What to do now? And there is no precedent!" Otherwise you know what to do when a man dies, what has to be done. But nobody had ever heard of anybody dying standing on his head, so there was no precedent: "Now what has to be done?"

Somebody remembered that he had an old sister who was a nun; she lived in a monastery closeby; she was older than him. So they ran and they asked the old nun. She said. "I am coming. That old fool! Is this the way to die? I will teach him a lesson! And he has always been a nuisance, I tell you."

The old woman said, "Even in his life he was doing eccentric things. Now is this a way to die?"

She was not worried about death! She came and shouted at the old man, "This is not right! And doing such a stupid thing, and creating trouble for your disciples! Is it right for you? Get up and be normal!"

So the old man laughed, got up, lay down on the bed and he said, "Okay, then I will die in a normal way" - and died!

Don't take death too seriously! Nothing is serious, neither life nor death, because nothing matters in the ultimate sense. Life and death are just episodes in the eternity of time, just soap bubbles - life and death both.

So Curtis, I can understand your apprehension, your love for me, but don't be worried. Neither life nor death have any significance.

The only thing that is significant is: while I am here if I can impart some truth to you, if I can impart something that I have seen, if I can impart my perspective to you, if I can help you to see a little bit of reality through my eyes. If I can help you just a few steps into the unknown, then you will be able to go on your own. Everything else is irrelevant.

And remember, even if I am gone and your love is immense for me, I will go on helping you.

Connections are not disconnected by death. Death simply makes no difference for the lovers. Death does not exist for the lovers. If you have trust, if you have love for me, death doesn't mean anything at all; we will go on communing the same way. Everything will go on being the same, nothing will change at all.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

Dheeren,

A CHILD is pure intelligence because a child is yet uncontaminated. A child is a clean slate, nothing is written on him. A child is absolute emptiness, TABULA RASA.

The society will start writing immediately that you are a Christian, Catholic, Hindu, Mohammedan, Communist. The society will immediately start writing the Bhagavad Gita, Koran, Bible. The society cannot wait. The society is very much afraid that if the child's intelligence is left intact, then he will never be a slave. He will never be a part of any slavery, of any structure of domination. He will neither dominate nor be dominated. He will neither possess nor be possessed. He will be pure rebellion.

His innocence has to be corrupted immediately. His wings have to be cut, he has to be given crutches to lean upon so he never learns how to walk on his own feet, so he remains always in a kind of dependence.

First they are dependent on the parents, and parents enjoy it very much. Whenever children are dependent parents feel very good. Their life starts having some meaning: they know that they are helping some new people to grow up, some beautiful people to grow up. They are not meaningless.

They have a vicarious enjoyment of being creative. It is not true creativity, but at least they can say that they are doing something, they are occupied. They can forget their own problems in the anxiety of bringing up the children. And the more the children are dependent on them, the more happy they feel. Although on the surface they go on saying they would like their children to be independent, but that is only on the surface. A really independent child hurts the parents. They don't like the independent child, because the independent child has no need of them.

That is one of the big problems the older generation is facing today: the new children are not dependent on them. And because they are not dependent you cannot force things upon them, you cannot tell them what to do and what not to do. You cannot be their masters. The old generation is suffering very much. For the first time in human history the old generation is feeling utterly empty, meaningless, because their whole occupation is gone, and their joy in that they are bringing up children is shattered. In fact they are feeling guilty, afraid, that they may be destroying the children.

Who knows? - whatsoever they are doing may not be the right thing.

Parents destroy the intelligence of the children because that is the only way to enslave them; then the teachers, school, college, university.... Nobody wants a rebel, and intelligence is rebellion.

Nobody wants to be questioned, nobody wants his authority to be questioned, and intelligence is questioning. Intelligence is pure doubt. Yes, one day out of this pure doubt arises trust, but not AGAINST doubt; it arises only THROUGH doubt.

Trust comes out of doubt as a child comes out of the mother's womb. Doubt is the mother of trust.

The real trust comes only through doubt, questioning, enquiring. And the false trust, which we know as belief, comes by killing the doubt, by destroying questioning, by destroying all quest, enquiry, search, by giving people ready-made truths.

The politician is not interested in children's intelligence, because leaders are leaders only because people are stupid. Just think: if this country were intelligent, can you believe a man like Morarji Desai would be the Prime Minister of the country? It would be impossible. It is ridiculous! But people are so stupid; they will find stupid leaders. People are so unintelligent that they will be ready to fall into the trap of anybody who can pretend to lead them.

Children are born with pure intelligence, and we have not yet been able to respect it. Children are the most exploited class in the world, even more than women. After women's lib sooner or later there is going to be children's lib; it is far more necessary. Man has enslaved woman, and man and woman both have enslaved the children. And because the child is very helpless, naturally he HAS to depend on you. It is very mean of you to exploit the child's helplessness. But hitherto parents have been mean. And I am not saying that deliberately or consciously they have been so, but almost unconsciously, not knowing what they are doing. That's why the world is in such a misery, the world is in such a mess. Unconsciously, unknowingly, every generation goes on destroying the other generation.

This is the first generation which is trying to escape out of the trap and this is the beginning of a totally new history.

But children certainly are utterly intelligent. You just watch children, look into their eyes, look at the way they respond.

Little Papo seemed to be enjoying himself thoroughly at the zoo with his father. As they were looking at the lions, however, a troubled look came over the boy's face and his father asked him what the matter was.

"I was just wondering daddy... in case a lion breaks loose and eats you, what number bus do I take home?"

You just watch children, be more observant.

A teacher asked her class of small children to make a crayon picture of the Old Testament story which they like best.

One small boy depicted a man driving an old car. In the back seat were two passengers, both scantily dressed.

"It is a nice picture," said the teacher. "But what story does it tell?"

The young artist seemed surprised at the question. "Well," he exclaimed. "Doesn't it say in the Bible that God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden?"

No proofs are needed! You just look around - children are everywhere. Just watch!

Another story I have heard....

In another school the teacher had asked the children the same question: to make some pictures of any story that they like. And a child made an airplane instead of a car. The airplane had four windows. From one window God the Father was looking out, from the other, the Holy Ghost, from the third, Jesus Christ. But the teacher was puzzled, and the teacher asked, "These three I can understand, but who is this fourth?"

And the child said, "Pontius the Pilot!"

But nobody watches children. In fact, everybody thinks they are just a nuisance. They should not be heard, they should only be seen: that has been the dictum down the ages. Who cares what they ask? Who cares what they say? Who listens?

A child came running home panting and breathing hard, and told his mother, "Listen to what happened! A tiger chased me from the school up to the house! Somehow I managed; I had to run so hard!"

The mother said, "Listen, I have told you millions of times not to exaggerate - MILLIONS OF TIMES not to exaggerate! And here you go again! You found a tiger in the street? Where is the tiger?"

He said, "You can look out of the window, he is standing there."

A small dog!

The mother looked and said, "This is a tiger? You know perfectly well that-this is a dog! You go up and pray to God, and ask for forgiveness!"

So the child went back. After a few minutes he came back. And the mother said, "You prayed? You asked God?"

He said, "Yes! I said,'God forgive me! It was totally wrong of me to think of that little dog as a tiger.'

And God said,'Don't be worried! When I first saw him, I also thought that he was a tiger!"'

Children have IMMENSE intelligence but down the ages they have not been allowed.

We have to create a new kind of education in which nothing is imposed on the children, but where they are helped to strengthen their natural, God-given intelligence. They are not to be stuffed with information which is in fact almost useless. Ninety-eight percent of the information that we go on throwing into children's minds is just stupid, foolish. But because of that load, that baggage, the child will never be free of the burden.

I have been a professor in the university, and I have been a student from primary school to university.

My own observation is that ninety-eight percent of the information that we go on throwing on children is utterly futile; it is not needed at all. And not only is it futile, it is harmful, positively harmful.

Children are to be helped to be more inventive, not repetitive which is what our education is based on right now. Our whole educational system is geared to repetition. If a child can repeat better than others, then he is thought to be more intelligent. In fact he only has a better memory, not better intelligence. It almost always happens that the man of a very good memory may not have very good intelligence, and vice versa.

Albert Einstein didn't have a very good memory. Newton, Edison, and so many more great inventors, were really very forgetful of things.

Once it happened that Edison even forgot his own name. Now that should be the last thing; can you imagine forgetting your own name? Even in sleep people don't forget it. If all three thousand of you go to sleep and I suddenly come and call "Rama!" nobody else will listen, but Rama will say, "Don't disturb me, let me sleep! Somehow I have managed a little bit, fighting with the mosquitoes, and now you are here, calling me." Nobody else will listen, but Rama, even in his sleep, knows that this IS HIS name.

Edison once forgot his own name. He was standing in a queue during the First World War days. He had gone to take his ration, and when his number came and the man on the counter asked, "Who is Thomas Alva Edison?" he looked here and there.

Somebody in the queue said, "If I am not wrong, I think YOU are Thomas Alva Edison."

He said, "You must be right! I was also a little suspicious. The name appears to be familiar, but I was thinking that maybe it is someone's name that I am familiar with, maybe some friend's name."

But our whole education system is geared around memory, not intelligence. Stuff more and more information in the memory, make the man a machine! Our universities are factories where men are reduced to machines. Twenty-five years are wasted - one third of your life - in making you a machine! And then it becomes really difficult to unwind you again, to make you a man again.

That is my trouble, my work here. You come as machines, very uptight, full of memories, information, knowledgeability, absolutely in the head, hung-up there. You have lost all contact with your heart and your being. To pull you down towards the heart and then towards the being is really a difficult task.

But in a better world this will not be needed. Education should help people to become more and more intelligent, not more and more repetitive. Right now it is repetition: you cram whatsoever nonsense is told to you, and then you vomit it in the examination papers - and the better you vomit the more marks you get. There is only one thing that you have to remember: to be exactly repetitive.

Don't add anything, don't delete anything, don't be inventive, don't be original.

Originality is killed, repetitiveness praised. And intelligence can grow only in the atmosphere where originality is praised. Efficiency should not be the goal, but originality.

It was a school in the farming district and one morning Johnny came late.

"Johnny, why are you late today?" teacher asked.

"This morning I had to bring the bull out to the cow, teacher."

"That's no excuse," said the lady. "Couldn't your father do that?"

"No teacher," said Johnny. "You got to have the bull."

Meditate over it - you missed it!

And the last question...

Right, you got it!

The last question:

Question 5:

Puna Deva,

WHY NOT?

You know I am an ancient Jew - I answer a question with another question; that is an ancient Jewish habit.

Once Adolf Hitler asked a rabbi, "I don't understand. Whenever anything is asked of you Jews, why do you always answer with another question?"

And the rabbi said, "Why not?"

I am a modern man - in fact a little ahead of my time! I am going to use every possible means to spread the truth: newspapers, video, tape recorders, films, radio, television, satellite transmission, everything.

Buddha had to go to every village. You didn't ask him, "Why do you go on walking from one village to another village?" That is a primitive way of spreading the message. For forty-two years he was travelling and travelling. Now to do that would be foolish.

I can be in my room, and I can fill the whole earth with my message. It would be very unintelligent to go on walking from one village to another village. Buddha was helpless. If I had been there in Buddha's time, I would have done the same. If Buddha were here now he would do the same.

The Press Office creates a question in many people's minds. They think truth need not be declared.

It needs to be declared! Jesus said to his disciples, "Go in every direction and shout from the housetops! Only then will people hear, because people are deaf."

I will not tell you to go and shout from every housetop; better means are available. Man has invented great technology. Everybody else is using that technology, but when it is used for truth, questions start arising. If you use it for business, good, if you use it for politics, good, if you use it for evil, perfectly right, but if you use it for God, then questions start arising.

I am going to use all kinds of media.

A new and rather young lady teacher had joined the school and one day she found written on the blackboard the words: "Johnny Jones is a passionate bastard. He can kiss and cuddle better than any boy in the class."

"Who wrote this?" she demanded, and after a while, found that Johnny Jones had written it himself.

"Right," she said, "you can stay behind after class."

When he eventually reappeared, several of the other boys clustered round him and asked, "What happened, Johnny? Did she cane you?"

"Oh no, nothing like that," replied Johnny who was rather a big boy for his age, "but it pays to advertise."

It ALWAYS pays to advertise.

And this is not a new thing either....

Krishna Prem had been with Moses too! He is an ancient pilgrim, he is not only with me for the first time.

Moses, standing on the shores of the Red Sea with his press agent, announces, "I am now going to raise my hand and the sea will part so my people can walk across safely. Then I will lower my hand and the sea will come together again."

Elated, Krishna Prem, his press agent, screamed, "Baby, you pull that one off and I'll get you two full pages in the Old Testament!"