Chapter 7

[NOTE: This is a typed tape transcript and has not been edited or published, as of August 1992. It is for reference use only. The interviewer's remarks have been omitted where not relevant to Osho's words]

Answer: Okay.

Q: ARE YOU PLEASED WITH THE PLACE YOUR FOLLOWERS HAVE CREATED HERE?

A: Just you start.

Q: IS IT THE KIND OF HOME YOU WISHED TO HAVE WHEN YOU CAME TO AMERICA?

A: I never think of the future. I never think of the next moment, hence nothing can disappoint me. Whatever happens is perfectly good. The problem of disappointment arises only if you have a certain expectation. I have never expected anything in my life. Whatsoever has happened, I am thankful to existence. Everything is as it should be.

Q: DO YOU WISH THAT THE POLITICS IN OREGON WOULD BE DIFFERENT AND THE TREATMENT OF YOU AND YOUR FOLLOWERS?

A: I don't wish anything. I simply live my life, if that changes somebody, that is his problem. If it changes the politics of Oregon, that is Oregon's problem. I am not trying to change anything. I'm not interested in interfering into other people's life. Neither do I want they should interfere in my life. To me, individual, individuality is the highest value. I respect the individual. I don't want to be interfered, nor I am interested in interfering in anybody's life. And that's what politics is, continuous interfering into everybody's life. I'm not a politician. My people have nothing to do with politics. In fact, they have gathered around me to live their life as joyously and peacefully as possible. They are not gathered around me to create a revolution in the world, change the world, make it a classless society or this and that. All that garbage we are not interested in at all.Tomorrow is always uncertain. Even the next moment has no guarantee. Only we have got this moment to live. The politician is a fool. He is destroying his life and he is destroying other people's life. Everybody should live his life, should sing his song and let everybody else to be himself. That will be a real human world. So I do not wish to do anything. I simply live and my people want to live with me. They love me, they rejoice with me. For them, I am their whole world; for me, they are my whole world. Beyond the red clothes, nothing exists.

Q: CAN YOU EXPLAIN TO ME WHETHER YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF TO BE GOD, A PROPHET, A WISE MAN, A TEACHER? HOW DO YOU THINK OF YOURSELF OR YOUR FOLLOWERS?

A: I am not a God. I am not that stupid. Only a stupid God can create this world, this mess, this madhouse. Certainly I am not that idiotic and I don't think God can be idiotic, so the only answer will be: there is no God. That's why this world is in a mess. It is enough proof that there is no God. There is nobody creating, controlling, maintaining; it is all accidental. In a way it is good, because in this accidentalness of existence there is freedom. In fact the very idea of God creating us is ugly. Then we are puppets. Only puppets are created. To me existence has always been here. It has no beginning, no end, it is a tremendous explosion of energy in all dimensions. But everything is accidental. Nothing is planned.

Planning is not the way of existence. So I am certainly not God. And without God there is no possibility of any prophet, any messiah. God is a basic necessity for a prophet to exist. Moses will be nobody if he does not create the illusion that he has encountered God and God has given him ten commandments. Nobody will listen to his ten commandments. But because he's using the authority of God, for which no evidence exists.... Because those ten commandments are so simple, ordinary, that any human person of average intelligence can make them.

There is nothing special in them, nothing unique, nothing that can prove that they are coming from a divine source. But to be a prophet you need a God. To be a messiah you need a God. God is an absolute necessity for all these mad people who want to project their egos; without the backdrop of God, it cannot be done.

So they all insist, "Believe in God." Once you believe in God, then naturally you have to believe in the messenger of God, in the messiah of God, in the only begotten Son of God. Those are logical corollaries. The moment I deny that there is no God, I have denied all possibility of being a prophet, a messiah, a messenger; all that is finished. I am simply a human being, just as you are. I don't have any pretensions of being higher than anybody. Certainly I am different from you, but not higher, not lower. Different only in the sense that you are fast asleep and I am awake. But that is not much of a difference. Just a little cold water has to be thrown into your eyes and you will be awake. And that's what I am doing with my people, throwing as much ice cold water in their eyes.

Q: HOW CAN I GET COLD WATER THROWN IN MY FACE? HOW DO I GO ABOUT IT?

A: I'm already doing it! And you know it! Just don't start shivering, because it's three centigrade temperature in this room. In fact there is no need to throw ice cold water, you are sitting in ice cold atmosphere, where one has to become awake.

Q: HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT I'M ASLEEP?

A: Only one who is awake can know who is asleep. The asleep person cannot know who is asleep and who is awake. I'm awake, that's why I know you are asleep. You cannot know. Perhaps I may be talking in sleep, perhaps you may be dreaming. You cannot be certain about me, but I am absolutely certain about you. Your eyes are open but you are asleep. You are trying hard to wake up a little and look through your glasses and find out who is awake and who is asleep. And that's a good sign. That means you will have to come here again and again, till finally you are awake. The moment one awakes one is simply shocked, seeing that the whole world is asleep. And in sleep people are walking, talking, going to the church, to the synagogue, in sleep writing books, making films, doing all kinds of businesses, but their spiritual sleep continues. When I say spiritual sleep, my meaning is that you don't know who you are. You may know everything around you, but just one thing you are not aware. That is your own center, your own being. The moment you know yourself you are awake; so awakening and sleep I am using as metaphors.

Q: WHAT DOES A PERSON, A MAN OR A WOMAN, EXPERIENCE BY FOLLOWING YOUR RELIGION? DO THEY BECOME AWAKE?

A: There is no promise. I never promise anything to anybody. I am here, available. I am ready to explain how one becomes awake and my work is finished there. Then it is up to you. If you fail, I will not be disappointed. If you succeed, you succeed, I don't take the credit of it. So the success is yours, the failure is yours. My only work is to give you a clear-cut idea how you can become more conscious; I call it meditation, working, walking, sitting. I don't believe what others call meditation, that ten minutes or twenty minutes you do it and then just be your ordinary self for twenty-four hours and again for twenty minutes meditate. This is stupid. It is like saying to a person that every day in the morning twenty minutes breathe and then forget all about it, because you have to do many other things. And then next day morning you can breathe again. To me meditation is exactly like breathing. So whatsoever you are doing and where ever you are do it more consciously. For example, I can raise this hand without any consciousness, just unconsciously, out of habit. I have heard about two Jews walking by the side of the ocean. It was a cold morning and one Jew was keeping his hands in his pockets. It was really cold. And the other was continuously talking and saying and he was puzzled that the other man says only yes, no, but does not participate in conversation. This is not Jewish. Finally he asked, "What has happened to you? Have you changed your religion?" He said, "Whatever you want to say, you can say, but I am not going to take my hands out of the pockets." But he said, "What that has to do?" He said, "A Jew cannot talk without his hands. I am not going to talk; it is too cold to take the hands out." But you can raise your hand with full awareness. And you can see the difference between the two. The act is the same: one is mechanical, another is full of consciousness and the quality is tremendously different. Try it, because it is a question of taste and experience. Walking, just try for few minutes to walk consciously; each step be alert and you will be surprised that the quality of your walk is totally different, it is relaxed. There is no tension and there is a subtle joy that is arising out of your relaxed walking. And the more you become aware of this joy, the more you would like to be awake. Eating, eat with awareness. People are simply throwing food into their mouths, not even chewing it, just swallowing it. Thirty million people in America are suffering from overeating. Strange world we are living one thousand man are everyday dying in Ethiopia because they don't have food, thirty million people are dying in America because they have too much food.These people who are suffering from obesity, fatness, cannot resist eating more and more. No doctor is going to help them, except if they become aware, while they are eating if they become aware. Few things happen as a by-product of awareness. Their eating will be slowed down. They will start chewing, because unless you chew your food you are putting unnecessary burden on your whole system. Your stomach has no teeth. Exactly one has to chew forty-two times each bite. Then anything that you are eating becomes liquid.A man of awareness only drinks, because before he swallows he has changed that solid food into liquid.

And the strange thing is when you are chewing forty-two times, you are enjoying so much the taste. One bite of an unconscious man gives forty-two time more taste to the conscious man. It is simple arithmetic: the unconscious man will have to eat forty-two bites just to have the same taste, and then he becomes fat, and still unsatisfied. Still he feels to eat more. The man of awareness eats only that much that his body needs. He immediately feels that now there is no need, the hunger is gone, he is content.... Doing anything, so my meditation is a totally different kind of approach. It has to be spread all over your twenty-four hours.

Even falling asleep remain alert how sleep is descending on you, so slowly, so silently, but you can hear the steps. The darkness is growing, you are relaxing -- you can feel the muscles, the body, the tense parts which are preventing the sleep -- and soon you will see the whole body has relaxed and the sleep has come. But slowly, slowly, a great revolution happens. Sleep comes to you, but something deep inside you goes on remaining awake, even in sleep. So the situation is: you are asleep even when you think you are awake and I'm awake even when you think I'm asleep. And unless a man becomes aware in his sleep he is not aware, not awake; that is the criterion.And there are so many by products that you can judge. Dreams disappear, because dreams need you to be completely unconscious. They come from the unconscious mind. But if you are conscious, they cannot come. Sigmund Freud would have been immensely enriched if he had come to a man like me who has no dreams. He would have puzzled also and he would have to change his whole idea of psychoanalysis. But he came only across people who were asleep. He himself was asleep -- he had no idea of any spiritual awakening -- otherwise he would have certainly realized that there is a space when man is conscious, just conscious, and there are no dreams at all.If dreams disappear in the night, the second thing will happen to you: in the daytime, thoughts will disappear. That does not mean you will become incapable of thinking, that simply means you will not just go on thinking mechanically, unnecessarily. You will be capable of thinking if you want to think, otherwise you will be silent.And a man who can remain silent for hours is gathering energy so whenever he wants to think his thinking has some strength, some power, some tremendous energy. The ordinary people's thinking are just impotent, their thoughts are just vagrant... clouds floating in their mind. A man of meditation will find dreams disappear and then the sleep is beauty, incomparable. Then sleep becomes spiritual and to transform sleep into spirituality is religion. Then your whole day becomes a day of silence. You will talk but something deep down in you will remain a silent witness. So you will not say things which will unnecessarily create trouble for you and trouble for others. You will say only that which is absolutely needed. You will say only the truth, otherwise you will be capable enough to say, "I do not know." You will not believe in anything. Either you will know it or you will not know it. Belief is a deception: you don't know, yet you pretend as if you know. All these people in temples, in churches, in synagogues, what they are doing? Whom they are praying?

They don't know God. Their priest does not know God. They don't know that ever any prayer has been heard by anybody. They don't know that ever any prayer has been answered by anybody. Still they are praying to a God....

There is a beautiful story in Leo Tolstoy. Three uneducated, illiterate villagers who used to live on a small island in a river, became famous all over the country as great saints. Now this was too much for the archbishop, because in Christianity you can be a saint only if the church certifies you to be a saint. In fact, the word saint comes from sanction. If the church sanctions you, certifies you, you are a saint. And without the arch-bishop signing, who has made these fools saints?

And their fame was far and wide -- even from outside the country people started coming. Finally he decided to go and put these people right. He went into a boat, reached the small island. They were sitting under a beautiful tree, all three looking so happy. They were sitting naked, they had not even clothes. The archbishop went close to them. All the three touched his feet and said, "Why you troubled yourself? You could have sent a message and we would have come to the church ourselves."

Now the archbishop felt confident; up to now he was feeling a little nervous:

three saints, and he himself knows nothing except that he has reached in a religious-political hierarchy, on the top. But now he was confident, and he said to those three people, "That is what is your religion?"

They said, "We don't know. Religion? Are there many religions?"

Those simple are asking a significant question. Only simple people can ask significant questions: `Are there many religions?"

They said, "We thought there is only one kind of religiousness. But you can teach us -- if you feel just being religious is not enough -- you can teach us. We are available. We are illiterate, ignorant people, so don't please feel offended by our answers."

The archbishop asked, "Okay, whatever your religion, what is your prayer?

Certainly you must be Christian -- because in Russia at that time, there was no other religion -- you must be Christian. What is your prayer?"

They all looked at each other and they said, "You tell." The second said to the third: "You tell it." And the third said to the first three, "Better you tell it."

The archbishop was getting angry that: "What is this nonsense? You cannot tell your prayer?" "This is the reality is: we don't know how to pray and we don't know what prayer is, but we have invented our own prayer. Hearing that God is a trinity and we are also a trinity, so we have made a simple prayer for ourselves.

Please don't feel offended. We pray whenever the moment feels like praying. In the early morning sun, when it is so beautiful on the lake, and the whole lake becomes gold, we feel like thanking existence. Our prayer is, `You are three, we are three, please have mercy on us. This is our prayer."

The archbishop said, "This is absolute nonsense: You are three, we are three, have mercy on us. Who has ever heard of such a prayer?"

Those poor people said, "We are ready to learn." So he gave them the official prayer. But it was a long prayer. By the time he ended, they said, "This is very difficult, because we have forgotten the beginning by the time you came to the end. You will have to repeat it. Please repeat it so we can remember the beginning."

He repeated it, just the beginning, but they said, "Please go on, because now we have forgotten the end."

Three times he repeated, then they could get hold of the prayer. They thanked the archbishop. He was very happy that he has put them right and now he can tell to people that, "Those are idiots and you are thinking them as saints."

He went back into his boat. Just in the middle of the river he saw something unimaginable: those naked idiots were coming running on the water! He could not believe his eyes. He had never believed even that Jesus had walked on water; he knew deep down that this is all nonsense. He had never told anybody. As far as his sermons were concerned, he was trying to prove that Jesus could do anything. But these idiots are walking on water, running on water and they caught hold of the boat and said, "Please, just a moment. We have forgotten the prayer. Will you teach us again?"

But this was enough for the archbishop. He touched the feet of those three idiots and said, "Your prayer is right, my was wrong. You just go and do your prayer. I unnecessarily interfered in your life; just forgive me. Seeing you walking on the water.... In fact, for the first time I have become a Christian. I had never believed that Jesus really walked on water.

"Religion is a very simple phenomenon. Theology has nothing to with religion. It makes things unnecessarily complex. Religion is a simple awareness of whatever you are doing, wherever you are. And when this awareness surrounds you always like a luminous aura you for the first time become aware of the universe - - its beauties, its music, its eternal song. And to me that is the religious experience. In religious experience you don't encounter a God. There is nobody there, just this pure existence. But it is all alive -- these flowers, these birds on the wing, these stars -- everything is alive, but because you are asleep you cannot experience the aliveness that surrounds you.

And we are not islands. No man is an island. We are part of this whole living, infinite continent. Those flowers are part of us just as we are part of them. Those faraway stars are within us as we are within the universe. That experience of unity, of at-onement, is liberation.

So my teaching is very simple: meditation is the key, becoming totally aware is the result. Experiencing oneness with the whole is the reward.

"You are three, we are three, have mercy on us."

This is my trinity: meditation, awareness, oneness.

Q: DO YOU THINK THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD WHO NEED THAT MESSAGE OR WANT THAT MESSAGE AND WHO WILL COME HERE TO RAJNEESHPURAM? AND BECAUSE OF THAT WILL RAJNEESHPURAM GROW?

A: Everybody needs that message. Everybody has the birthright to experience existence, its ecstasy.But your question has many questions in it. The first part, I say everybody needs it. The second part you are asking, "Will all of them come to Rajneeshpuram?"

No. Only very few will come. Because although everybody needs it -- but to know that you need it a certain intelligence is needed -- a certain youthfulness is needed, a certain daring, courage, adventurousness is needed, which is missing.

So only very few people will arrive here, although it was everybody's need. But I have my communes all over the world; almost in every country I have my people. There are near about one million sannyasins all around the earth. In every language, in every country, even in places where it is almost impossible, I have my people, even in Soviet Russia. Just the other day I received a Soviet Communist magazine writing against me -- everything just rubbish and false.

But I was happy: that shows that the communists and the government is now getting frightened, the same way as they are getting frightened here in Oregon.

And in Russia I don't have many sannyasins, but enough. They are underground. In fact, I have taken the monopoly of the red color even from communists. They meet in basements. They cannot publish my books. They write with their hand or type or do something to message so that it can reach to other people. Whatsoever books they have been able to smuggle in are mostly caught by the government. KGB is against them. Many of my sannyasins have been persecuted. Although they cannot prove they are sannyasins, but still, in Russia there is no need for any proof, just suspicion is enough.

They have published names of twenty people in the newspaper, that these seems to be my contacts in Soviet Union -- beware of them. That is enough to persecute those people by the police, by the people. They may lose their jobs; they may lose their facilities; they may be thrown to Siberia. But you will be surprised that they are more excited about me and my work than anywhere else, because for sixty years Russia has forgotten what youthfulness means. It has forgotten that being a revolutionary is something part of being young. Now in Russia you cannot be revolutionary.

Q: WILL RAJNEESHISM BECOME A MAJOR RELIGION IN THE WORLD IN TERMS OF NUMBERS?

A: No, it will never. Because we don't convert anybody. Conversion is insulting the other person, his intelligence, his integrity. When you convert a person you are saying you are wrong and I am right, you don't know, I know, so just follow me. No, I cannot allow my people to say to anybody.... Just my people have to live their life, if somebody becomes interested on his own, he is welcome. But we are not missionaries, so naturally our numbers cannot grow and we don't believe in the politics of numbers; that is a political game. But anybody who has a desire to explore into the reality of one's own being is bound, sooner or later, to move towards me. But the well remains in its own place, the thirsty come to it. The well does not go and propagate that, "Come to me, because only I have the right kind of water. Don't go to other wells." And that is their problem, where they want to go.

They will not be prevented from drinking the wine that is I am offering here.

They will be our respected guests.

But I cannot humiliate anybody by saying to him that we have the only true message. That I am the only begotten Son of God. That I am the only prophet of God. That holy Koran is the last message. That you need not think else, just read the Bible, everything is there. That Vedas contain all knowledge. It is enough.

More than that is dangerous.

That's what Hindus say.I don't belong to these people and their company: I am a totally different person, I respect everybody. If somebody chooses to be wrong, it is his freedom. It may be wrong according to me, but to him it looks to be the right, let him go on his way. If it is right, good; he is blessed. If he is wrong, sooner or later he will have to come back.

Q: WHY ARE YOU GIVING INTERVIEWS NOW TO PEOPLE LIKE MYSELF?

A: I enjoy talking.

Q: WHY SPEAK TO A PERSON LIKE MYSELF, WHO IS NOT A BELIEVER IN WHAT MANY OTHER PEOPLE WOULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU?

A: Just because you can send the message to many people. I am going to talk to every journalist around the world. I'm going to use every media just to announce to the people that if they are thirsty, we have the right drink for them. If they want to come, they are welcome. It is not to convert them, it is just to invite them.

Truth only invites. Truth never converts. But the invitation is enough.

Q: WHY, WHY NOW? WHY NOT TWO MONTHS AGO, A YEAR AGO?

A: I am a man of absolute spontaneity. When I feel to be silent, then nobody can force me to speak. When I want to speak, nobody stop me from speaking.

Whatever I want to say I never make any compromise whether it is going to be liked, disliked, respected, disrespected; these are not my considerations at all. I felt to be silent. For three and half years I enjoyed silence. Then one day suddenly I felt the time has come to sing the song again. I started speaking, but I cannot promise for tomorrow. I may be silent again.I am just a little crazy. I just go according to my whims and the people who have to live with me have to live with my whims.

Q: WHERE DO YOU LIVE AND WHAT DO YOU DO?

A: I don't do anything. I am not a doer.

Q: HOW DO YOU SPEND YOUR TIME? HOW DOES THE DAY PASS FOR YOU?

A: It passes so fast. But I enjoy it immensely. I must be sleeping almost ten hours every day -- eight hours in the night, two or three hours in the day -- because to me sleep is meditation. Three hours I enjoy my bathroom, one and half hour in the morning, one and half in the evening.

I have loved water from my very childhood because it is my understanding that life has arisen out of water. And now scientists are thinking on the same lines, that life must have arisen in water.Even every child in the mother's womb repeats the whole cycle of evolution: first he looks like a fish. Only later on he starts looking like a monkey. And between these two he passes almost all the phases that man has passed. Even in his last stage he has a tail that falls before his birth and the place where the tail was attached is still with everybody. Those bones show that there was something attached to them which is missing. But the beginning is as a fish and for nine months the child continuously lives in sea water in mother's womb. The water in which the child floats has exactly the same components as the water in the sea.

That's why when a woman is pregnant she starts eating more salt, starts enjoying more salty things, because that water needs more salt. That baby needs more salt.

She is unaware why she is doing that, but the child needs exactly the sea water.

So I have enjoyed water from my very childhood. My birthplace had a beautiful river. I don't think of anybody in that place but once in a while, lying down in my tub, or in my swimming pool, I remember that beautiful river.

That's the only thing that I remember of my birthplace -- no teacher, no family, no friends -- my only friend, my only teacher, my only school was that river. And it has taught me immensely. Just to create an illusion, I have myself here a swimming pool of olympic size. I have beautiful bathrooms, nothing matters else matters to me much, but my sannyasins have made me two beautiful bathrooms.

Two, because any moment if something goes wrong with one bathroom, then I am not going to miss my bath. And they have made my bathrooms with such love that they look like temples with all beautiful jacuzzis -- with hot water, normal cold water, ice cold water -- and I enjoy that; to me is meditation.In every act my meditation continues.

And then five hours I talk every day: two and half hours in the morning, two and half hour in the evening.

One and half hour goes to my food.One hour I go for driving that I have always enjoyed. I have my own road. My people love me so immensely, I don't think anybody has been loved and has so blessed. I don't know, I wonder why they love me? Because I don't have anything to offer to them. But it is a miracle and miracles happen. They have created a special road just for me. It is used just only one hour every day, twenty-three hours it has to rest -- no traffic. My people are so much concerned about my life that they don't want me to drive in traffic, because I am a terrific driver. And I don't believe in any rules -- I may drive right, I may drive left, I may drive in the middle -- so my poor people has to create a road just for me so I can drive anywhere, anyway, any speed whatsoever I want.And this is how my day passes. It passes so fast. But I live very intensely every moment of it.

Q: WHY HAVEN'T YOUR PEOPLE, THE RAJNEESHEES WHO LIVE HERE, SHOWN MORE LOVE AND COOPERATED WITH THEIR NEIGHBORS IN OREGON MORE?

A: You have to ask them. And you have to ask the Oregonians... my people have not shown any hostility to anybody. My people are living in a place where the nearest neighbor is twenty miles away. We are so engrossed in our own life, who bothers about Oregonians? Who has time for it? Nobody even talks about it. We even don't know whether we are in Oregon or in Afghanistan, we never, we are not interested in anything, just they are afraid. And that too is simply animal psychology.Oregon must have the most primitive people in America, still very much closer to animals than toman. Perhaps all the orangutans have come to Oregon.

Strangee are such a small minority and the governor keeps the army alert, that if any moment they are ordered, within three hours the army has to reach Rajneeshpuram. I cannot believe that such idiots you can choose as governors.

What the army has to do here? If they want their army to learn meditation, we can invite them. There is no need to keep them alert -- we can make them alert for twenty-four hours! They should ask us and they can go on sending one battalion after another battalion and we will destroy their whole army by making them alert. Because a alert person cannot kill. Only sleeping people can destroy.We have no problem with Oregonians. We have no contact even. We are so self-sufficient. We don't need anything from them. We grow our food, we grow our vegetables, we have our milk products. We have everything that is our need. Even if the whole Oregon disappears completely, we will not know about it, unless somebody comes and informs us. We are not interested at all. And why a majority should be afraid of a small commune? They seem to be real cowards, impotents. Such a big majority, what can we do to them?

But there is a reason why they are hostile. It shows something about their psychology. They cannot believe that people can be so happy, and they cannot tolerate the laughter, the love, the rejoicing of my people. Jesus in the Bible says, "Blessed are those who mourn, because they shall be comforted, consoled in Paradise." I think Oregonians will have the first place. My people have no chance, they don't mourn. They can even console God, "Then please don't cry, don't weep, don't feel guilty that You created the world. Forget whatsoever happened, happened. Don't go on having nightmares that You created Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Josef Stalin, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadirshah those nightmares!"

If my people reach there first thing we have to do is to console God. And we have good people here who do the best massage courses anywhere, a beauty clinic. They all will do whatsoever they can do for poor God. But they don't want to be consoled, there is no need. This is the trouble: the basic trouble is the rich man hates the super-rich, the rich man is being hated by the poor.

These unhappy people, miserable people all around, we are just like an island and they can hear the laughter in the valley.For fifty years this place was dead. It was on sale and nobody will purchase it, because it is simply a desert.

But when our people saw it we took the challenge of the desert. It is not a small place -- it is one hundred twenty-six square miles, almost an independent country.

And we have taken the challenge and we are defeating the desert every day. The day I had come here there was only one house, dilapidated. Now there are beautiful houses for five thousand sannyasins, all centrally air-conditioned. No religious community has ever lived in a conditioned commune, monastery -- this is the first commune in the whole history of religion.They think in paradise there will be cool air; we don't bother about it, we create cool air. We don't want to be a burden on God or on Paradise -- what we can do, why we should pray for it?

And we can do everything. We have our own hospital, we have our own school, we have our own legal experts, we have our own veterinary surgeons, we have our own university, our own psychologists. My people are not like Jesus' twelve fools that he called his apostles. Any of my sannyasin would have defeated Jesus in discussion, an illiterate man, uneducated, a carpenter's son. That, too, is in suspicion. What does he know? These people are all graduates from universities -- they have doctorates and D.Litts. -- don't be deceived if they are working on the farm, they have Master's degrees.And it is very easy. A man you will find today teaching in the university as professor, and tomorrow you will find him working as a plumber. here is no problem. There is no hierarchy. The plumber and the professor both are needed and my people are so educated that plumbers can teach in the university and professors can do the plumbing. We are not concerned with Oregon at all. It is just one-sided hostility.

Q: YOU SPEAK OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF YOUR COMMUNITY THAT IT IS, ITS SELF-SUFFICIENCY... WHAT HAPPENS IF OREGON OR SOME OTHER FORCE PULLS THE PLUG AND SHUTS OFF THE ELECTRICITY? IS NOT THE COMMUNITY RUN BY ELECTRICITY FROM AN OUTSIDE SOURCE?

A: We pay for it. We are not taking anything without paying. We pay for it and we have the right to have electricity on this land. This land is part of America.

They cannot refuse.In fact, because of us, many of the businesses of the Oregonians have not gone bankrupt. Many factories who make houses were on the verge of going bankrupt, but because we allowed them to make our houses they survived.

We have been to Oregon a help. Every year thousands of sannyasins are coming here, spending money in Portland, in Madras, reaching here. We have made a place for visitors from all around the world, we have helped the economy of Oregon. Otherwise, have you ever heard anybody going to Oregon? People go to Egypt to see, people go to India, people go to Japan, people go to Nepal deep in the Himalayas, people go to Switzerland. But this is for the first time from every country people are coming to Oregon. Such big economic, financial gain for Oregonians and they are being simply being stupid. They should help us. We can make it the biggest place for visitors and they will be all benefited by it.

And they should come and see -- they don't come even. They should come and see that we have not destroyed their land, we have beautified it. We have made it an oasis. And if they have any intelligence their whole government should help us to make this big desert into a lush, green, beautiful place. And we are ready to put any kind of intelligence, labor, planning, everything....

But rather than helping us they are creating every kind of legal hindrances, although in every court we are defeating them.But still work is delayed and four hundred sannyasins are working in our legal department. This is unnecessary.

And we are certain to win because we are not wrong on any point. And from every court.... Attorney General few days before declared six hundred rup, dollars' punishment because we had made few tents without permission. Tents don't need permission. But because we had made tents, winternized.... They were a unique, new thing. They should have really praised it that we have made a new kind of tent which can be used in winter, in snow, but they put a case. And he fined six hundred thousand dollars for making permanent structures without permission.I told my people, "You simply take a tent to the court and within the court you unfold it, fix it -- it takes ten minutes to fix -- then unfix it -- it makes ten minutes to roll it down and put in a bag -- and ask the court that is this a permanent structure?"

And that was enough argument and the court simply dismissed the case.Now this Attorney General should jump in some lake and commit suicide. Idiots. At least you should have come and seen what you are doing.

But Oregonians seems to be shameless. They don't have any sense of feeling....

Now they are in another litigation against the City that it is illegal. This is an unique city in the world: illegal city.There are cities or there are no cities, but have you ever heard of a illegal city? And particularly a city where no crime has happened in four years, no rape, no theft, no murder. And a city where no rape happens, no murder happens, no stealing happens is illegal. And the cities like New York, where every crime is happening every moment, are legal cities.

People should have a little more humanity and they should start trying to understand strangers. We are strangers. Naturally they feel afraid; they don't know us. That is mankind's one of the weaknesses: it is always afraid of the new, afraid of the strange. We are strangers, but we don't want to remain strangers, that's why I'm talking to you and to every journalist that we are not coming into flying saucers from other planets.Our lifestyle may be different, but it is better than your lifestyle. You can come and see and compare. You can invite us to see your lifestyle, we can invite you to see our lifestyle. And we are absolutely certain that anybody that comes to see our lifestyle is going to praise it, because not a single person in misery, not a single beggar, not a single person on the street -- hungry, without clothes, without shelter -- and everybody is living equally without any communism being imposed on them.

Everybody is respected equally, it does not matter what is his work.They should come and see these smiling, laughing, dancing people and I don't think that they will not change their mind. But they don't come.And of course I cannot take my whole circus on the road. That is not possible because I cannot provide everywhere air-conditioned rooms for five thousand people. They should come and we have all facilities -- hotels for them to stay -- they will not miss anything.

Anything that they can get in a five-star hotel they will get here in our hotel, which is not even one star! Because it is still time for us to make five-star hotel.

Once we make five-star hotels, then your five-star hotels will be just junk.

They should come and see what our people are eating. How our people are healthy. Their water is pure, their food is pure, and everything is being made by us as far as possible.

Even things like my watches. You may be thinking it is a Piaget -- you are wrong.

The Piaget costs one quarter million dollars, this is made by my sannyasins and Piaget people should be ashamed. These are not diamonds. These are just real stones, authentic stones. But with stones we can create a quarter million dollar watch and we have not spent on it anything, almost nothing. These are stones, our people just have made my watches.They love me.They want to do everything for me, everything from my shoe to my head is made by my own people. And I love it, because it has a flavor, it contains their love.... If somebody asks me to sell this watch for one billion dollars, I am going to say no, not even for ten billion dollars. It is not for sale, because love is never for sale. It has no price, although it is a very cheap watch.

Q: DO ALL THE GUNS AND THE HELICOPTERS AND THE SENTRIES, DO THEY MAKE YOU FEEL MORE SECURE?

A: There is no reason for me insecure. I have lived my life so totally, that if I die this very moment, I will not be losing anything because tomorrow is going to be simply the same story. So I don't need tomorrows. If they are given by existence, good; if not, I don't need them, I have fulfilled myself.Thirty-two years I have been living a posthumous life. In these thirty-two years, thirty-three years, if I was killed -- and many attempts have been made on my life.... But I have never felt insecure. There is no insecurity for me.

When I was a professor in the university, insurance people used to come to me that I should get insured. I said, "That is stupid because I never feel any insecurity, why should I get insured." "No," they will say, "For your children." I will say: "I am unmarried. Do you want me to produce children the way Jesus was produced? Just because for your insurance policy I have to produce children?"

I don't feel any insecurity. I am secure in my own inner reality because I know there that there is no death, that my innermost core is eternal, so no bullet can reach there. As far as my body is concerned, it is going to die any day, and there are only seven days in a week, so what is the choice? Monday is as good as Saturday. I don't think that Saturday will be better -- weekend -- or Monday will not be good because it is office day -- I don't have any office! I am always in the weekend, so there is no problem.

And these people are living with me now.

There was a time for thirty years I was traveling alone around India, not even a single person with me, facing hostile crowds of thousands of people. But I have never felt insecure for the simple reason because if I am saying the truth how long you can remain hostile?

Q: IS THE WATCHFUL EYE OF SECURITY HERE TO KEEP OUTSIDERS OUT OR TO KEEP INSIDERS IN?

A: The purpose of the security is just that we don't want any nuisance. Inside there is no problem. But just two days before, two persons, who have been coming for ten days continuously, and because the police force -- which is part of the government police -- suspected them; they did not allow them in. But today somehow, they simply rushed their car.... The traffic policeman had to get to the side, because they were not going to stop, they were going full speed, and he was trying to stop them, but they were not going to stop.Now the policeman could have fired, but my people don't want to harm anybody, he simply stood by the side and informed because it was a morning meeting time.

They rushed into the temple, started screaming and shouting -- we enjoyed it -- there is no problem in it. But the police took them away, they could not allow us to enjoy more.

But it is Oregon's police, we don't have anything to do with it. We don't have a jail here in the city. We don't have even a police station where we can keep somebody for few hours. They had been delivered to the Wasco County, that is their business, they should do whatsoever they want to do. But as far as we are concerned, we enjoyed the scene.

These people think they are Christians and they had come to save my people.

They were saviors. Jesus had given such a rotten idea as to people that if I get this man I'm not going to hit on his one cheek, because he will offer another.

Why waste time? I'm going to hit on both his cheeks and ask him, "Where is your third cheek? Give it to me."Jesus has given an ideology to people who have been for centuries behaving madly, neurotics, psychotics. They have murdered millions of people, burned thousands of women alive and they cannot even allow us if we don't want to be saved.Is it compulsory to be saved?

And particularly we are already saved. We have told them that, "We are already saved; you go and find out people somewhere who are not saved yet." But they had come to save us and shouting and screaming do you think is going to convince anybody? Yes, it will convince that you are simply nuts! So those guards are simply to keep nuisance out. Inside there is no problem at all and even there rarely it happens because these Oregonians are such cowards they don't even come to create nuisance. They just go on gossiping everywhere from the streets to their assembly, they go on talking about us.

Nobody knows exactly what we are, what we stand for. Just few days before there was one professor from California university on the television. He is thought to be an expert on cults. What kind of expert he is? He has never been here, so close, and he is talking about me, condemning me. He knows nothing about me, he knows nothing about this commune. I have sent a challenge to him that he can come and I am ready to discuss with him. How much religion he knows I would like to know. And what kind of expert he is that too I have to see.

I know these experts, these professors, who just collect knowledge sitting in a library, that is not knowledge. This is all bullshit.

Q: ONE OF THE THINGS THAT HAS GOTTEN SPECTACULAR COVERAGE FROM THE PRESS IS THE SEXUAL ACTIVITIES OF RAJNEESHEES. WHAT KINDS OF SEXUAL PRACTICES ARE PEOPLE ENCOURAGED TO PARTICIPATE IN?

A: Nobody is told to participate into any sexual practice. Sex is something natural; you need not learn about it. You don't have to go to a school to learn about sex. People know it already what to do and they do it.In fact, only here they are naturally free to do whatsoever they feel like doing. Everywhere else they are repressed. And because they are repressed by Christianity, by Hinduism, by Buddhism, by every kind of ideologies, their repression sooner or later expresses in some perverted way. Either they become homosexuals, lesbians, masturbators -- even making love to animals and this is the result of your religions.And because of all these perversions now a greater danger than nuclear weapons is facing humanity, that is AIDS. It is a religious disease. All the religions have contributed to it by enforcing celibacy on people.

Celibacy is unnatural. By forcing monks to live in one monastery and nuns to live into another and no way of man or women to meet each other. So what you expect? Homosexuality was absolutely predictable. And out of homosexuality the ultimate is AIDS. Now that is spreading like wildfire and nobody seems to know what to do to prevent it.

Except in this commune, nothing is being done anywhere else in the world. All our sannyasins have gone through tests, immediately, because it is a question of the whole commune. If one person has it he can infect the whole commune and infection does not need actual sexual intercourse, just kissing. Saliva is a carrier.

A woman is crying and weeping and you console her. Now just think of Jesus' sentence again, "Blessed are those who will mourn." But if God tries to wash their tears and console them, he may get AIDS, because tears carry the virus. Any liquid coming out of your body has the possibility of carrying the disease. This is a strange disease. Who is responsible for it? And it is spreading and nobody knows what to do and nobody wants to do anything. But we have done, we have taken all the precautions.

All our sannyasins are tested, only two persons have been found.Those two persons are living in the most beautiful house that we have in the most scenic place, by the lake. All their necessities are provided -- the best we can do, better than we are doing for other sannyasins -- because those people are going to live not much, at the most, two years; that is maximum. In fact, they are not going to live more than six, eight months because there is no cure for it.But we have segregated them, separate, with all the facilities and whatever they need and with all respect because they are victims: victims of popes, victims of messiahs, victims of prophets.

Those poor people are suffering because of Moses and Jesus and Abraham, Mohammed and Buddha and anywhere else they will be condemned.So a problem has arisen around the world: nobody wants to be tested because who knows, he may be having the disease.

And if the society comes to know, then even your own family will not accept you inside the house. Just pack your luggage and get lost. All those people who had said they love you, all those people who had said they will sacrifice their life for you -- your wife, your children, your parents -- they will be all unanimous that you just get lost, you don't enter into the house.Your friends will turn into enemies. You will be thrown out of your job. You will become a sub-human person. You will lose all your dignity, all your respect, all your integrity and you will feel condemned.

So information is being prevented. If somebody is found with AIDS he bribes the physician that keep it to yourself. Don't tell anybody, otherwise before AIDS kills me, people will kill me. There are millions of people around the earth with the disease already, but governments are also repressing information because governments don't want to be condemned in the world that their country has AIDS, that means their country has homosexuality, lesbianism, sadism, that their country is a perverted, sexual land. No government wants that to be known. No religion wants that people will come to know how many AIDS sufferers are in the church or in the synagogue.

But this is a very dangerous thing, not to make everybody aware who is carrying the disease. Because that is the only way to prevent it.The person who is already sick cannot be saved, so make his life as beautiful as possible for few months he is going to live and don't condemn him.

Those two sannyasins are here, with no condemnation -- with all the respect of the community, with all that we can provide for them and they are resting, meditating -- if they can die in deep meditation then perhaps AIDS has not done any harm to them.

Perhaps it has proved a blessing in disguise. Six, eight months they will be just meditating by the side of the lake, under the trees, under the moon. They may not have got that much period just for meditation, completely free of all responsibility.Our effort is to change every misfortune into a blessing and we are grateful to those two people because they did not resist, did not protest that they did not want to be tested. In the outside world people are not willing to be tested. They are afraid of the test, if the test comes and proves them to have AIDS, they are gone.So in the outside world nothing is being said.

The pope is silent about AIDS and he is not a silent person. He is visiting right now South Africa, which has the biggest rate of population growth, which is already over-populated and suffering, starving.The government is of the white people and the white people are only fifteen percent. They are ruling over eighty- five percent black people. They have encroached every valuable thing that is in South Africa -- all gold mines, silver mines, diamond mines -- everything that is valuable is in the hands of the fifteen percent people. The eighty-five percent people are just existing like slaves. They don't have even voting power, only fifteen percent white people have the voting power.

And pope is visiting South Africa and teaching those poor South Africans, "Don't use birth control methods. Don't use abortion, this is against God and this is a great sin." They are dying -- overpopulated, hungry, starving -- and this Polack comes there to teach them against birth control.

And in South Africa AIDS is one of the major problems right now. More blacks have been found to suffer from AIDS than white people. Perhaps it has something to do with their different physiology -- they have a little different physiology -- or perhaps it has to do something with their climate.

Even three monkeys have been found in South Africa having AIDS. The scientists who have found these monkeys are all men so naturally they concluded that AIDS has arisen from monkeys. I could not believe -- when I received the information I said man is such male, masochistic, macho that the simple conclusion would have been that these three poor monkeys have received AIDS from man.

Because in Africa or in forest or in mountains where woman is not available, men are known to make love to animals and monkeys have the same physiology, so it is easier to make love to the monkeys than to any other animal. They are your cousins.

I say confidently that those monkeys have been given AIDS by man, not vice versa, because no wild animal has been know up to now having homosexuality.

But in zoos it happens -- if the females are not available, then monkeys start becoming homosexual, then other animals start becoming homosexual.

Our monasteries are zoos. Our hostels of the universities and the colleges are zoos.

Don't allow man and woman together and you are going to create perversions in their minds and then those people will suffer because of your strange doctrines, strange ideas. Now this is simply lunatic to teach people celibacy. It is almost saying people that you control pissing. And if somebody starts that movement, you will not be amazed, you will find followers. But they will be all hypocrites -- they will piss somewhere, in some way -- but they will keep the hypocrisy that they never piss.

I have heard that two small children -- one a little elderly, six years, the other smaller, five years -- and few monks, Christian monks, were going on the street.

The smaller boy asked, "I am always puzzled: do you know, can you tell me something? What is the difference between a man and a monk?"

The other one said, "I don't know exactly, but I have heard that the difference between man and monk is very small."

The little boy said, "Please explain to me what little difference."

"Little difference is that the monks use their ding-dong only for pissing."

The little boy said, "I don't understand."

The elder one said, "I don't understand either but this is what I have heard from elders. Boys who are older enough, perhaps they know. It is mysterious."

You cannot use your ding-dong only for pissing. No. The ding-dong is made for two things: ding and dong. Okay?