Chapter 9

[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]

A: I am always the same: just fine.

Q: BHAGWAN, HOW DO YOU THINK THE WORLD SEES YOU?

A: To me everything is very simple: I never do anything that is not spontaneous.

I just live in the moment, no attachment with the past moment, no projection for the future moment. I am always here now. These two words "here now" contain the whole existence and after Albert Einstein there are not even two words.

It is one reality, space and time are four dimensions of the same reality. Time has three dimensions, space has one dimension, here has one dimension, now has three dimensions. But within these two words, everything is included. Einstein has to make a new word, because to express exactly it is not good to use two words, that gives a sense of duality, so he invented spacio-time. That is a technical word. I have also made my own word: "nowhere". Just one word, not even a hyphen between now and here.

Q: IF, IN A FEW WORDS COULD YOU COMMENT ON THE FOLLOWING WORDS, OR JUST WITH ONE WORD, WITH THE WORD THAT I AM GOING TO GIVE YOU. FOR EXAMPLE, IF I SAY, "LOVE", WHAT DOES LOVE SAY TO YOU?

A: It means three things. Love can exist only as a physiological relationship, then we call it sex. And most of the people go on believing that that is love; that is only the beginning. The second is something deeper, psychological. That can be called love... what poets talk about, what musicians sing about... it has nothing to do with sex. It is just a magnetic attraction between two persons. Something transpires between two persons; they suddenly feel that they are made for each other. Something almost gives them the sense that without the other I am half, incomplete, with the other I'm complete. A sense of completion, that is the second quality... a sense of being entire, the whole circle.

The first is very momentary, very superficial. The second is very deep, but needs great sensitivity. It is not available to everybody. The first is available to everybody. It is available to even animals -- birds, trees -- so there is nothing special in it as far as man is concerned. A man who has known love only as sex has remained below human dignity.

Humanity begins with the second. Only a few poets, a few musicians, dancers, few sculptors have sensed it... very few people around the world, in the whole history have lived it because it needs a tremendous courage to dissolve yourself with somebody else. A moment when the other is no more the other. A moment when you can feel a tremendous at-onement....

It happened in Ramakrishna's life. He was a man of immense sensitivity. They were passing the river Ganges in a boat going to the other side and just in the middle of the river he started shouting, "Don't beat me. Don't beat me." The people who were around him all were his disciples and nobody was beating him and tears were flowing from his eyes and they said, "What are you saying, nobody is beating you." But he was in a convulsion, as if somebody was hitting him hard. The disciples could not understand, he fell into the boat, almost unconscious. They reached to the other shore and what they say there, a man has been beaten to unconsciousness. A crowd had gathered there and the most significant thing was, that the man's clothes were torn, his back was having blood marks. They uncovered Ramakrishna's back and found the same marks and the same blood flowing out of it.

That is the height of the second quality of love, where you can feel such oneness that if the other is dying, you will feel like dying.

Everybody hankers for the second, but it needs a certain training in sensitivity.

For example, a person who is violent in his life -- full of anger, jealousy, possessiveness -- will not be able to experience the second quality. And he will remain frustrated his whole life because what he wanted he could not get but nobody is responsible for it. He himself for it. He himself never prepared to receive something higher. You have to deserve it.

In the first love, there is no question of deserving, it is biological. You are already gifted because nature wants to continue reproducing, it has not left to you.

Nature has not left many things to man. For example, breathing has not been left to you. You may forget, you may get involved into some work and forget breathing. In sleep you are bound to forget, then there is going to be no morning for you. So the nature has kept breathing in its own control.

Sex is the continuity of life, it cannot be left to you; it is in the hands of biology.

But because it is in the hands of nature you feel a certain compulsion, a certain slavery and that's why sexual partners are continuously fighting. They are not aware why they are fighting, why they fight the man they love, the woman they love. The reason is that each feels deep down that the other is my trouble, my problem.

Jean Paul Sartre has a very significant statement, "The other is the hell."

But as far as sex is concerned, the other remains the other. The other disappears only in the second stage and I don't think even Jean Paul Sartre reached the second stage. He was a man of tremendous intelligence, but not of great sensitivity. They are different things: intelligence is of the head, sensitivity is of the heart. And in fact our whole education is to sacrifice the heart for the head.

So the people who get your Nobel prizes, none of them gets the Nobel Prize for the heart, they get the Nobel prizes for their head.

Your universities teach nothing about the heart, they only go on training and sharpening your head. For the head, the other is hell, for the heart, there is no other and that is heaven. So only very few poets and painters and that type of crazy people have know love.

But that love also is psychological and your mind is not something stable, it is one thing today, it is something else tomorrow. So with the change of the mind, with the change of your psychology -- which is continuously changing -- your love has to change continuously. That is a great problem.

It is not necessary that the person you love will also change in a synchonicity with you -- he may lag behind, he may go farther, he may stop moving -- all possibilities are there. And with his changing psychology a child may fall in love with another child... we call it childhood love... but as they grow old, that love because a beautiful memory; it has no significance.

A young person falls in love with another person. The child psychology is gone, its love is also gone. In fact, you will never get a more beautiful experience of friendship as you get it in your childhood, never again that joy of friendship, because as you become younger, friendship is no longer your need, your need becomes more and more sexual.

Only rarely a person who is young has a poetic sensibility but that sensibility also changes. In fact, the more delicate a phenomenon is, more possibility of change. Retarded people who remain below the age fourteen, as far as their mind is concerned, can remain faithful to their wife, to their husband their whole life.

They have stopped growing when they were fourteen and at that very time their love has also stopped, has come to a full point, the terminus. Now they will go on repeating the same thing their whole life.

But more intelligent people will find it difficult, hence as man becomes more civilized, more intelligent, one cannot live with one woman, with one man forever. If he tries to do that, both become sad, both become bored, both become frustrated with each other, that is the point when the other starts becoming hell.

People are afraid of reaching to the second stage because the second stage is just like a breeze, it comes and goes. When it comes it fills you totally, it gives you so much contentment that you cannot think there is anything more than this and you cannot think that this can ever change. That's why lovers go on promising each other, but their promises are not going to be fulfilled, then they will feel guilty. Of course, when they had given the promise, it was not a lie, they were really, authentically feeling it. But it was the feeling of that moment.

After a time your psychology develops -- your maturity develops, you start loving new things, new people, your vision of beauty changes -- your attitude in all its dimensions goes on changing. It is almost impossible for the other person to change exactly with you. Neither it is possible for you to change exactly with the other person and that's where the whole society is living in a tremendous suffering.

We have forced people to live because they had promised something, they don't deny it, but what they can do, in that moment the promise was true and then everything changed. And now they don't feel anything for the other person, not only that they don't feel, they feel they are strangers. You can look at husbands and wives and inquire, "Do you know your wife? How long it has been that you have not seen into her eyes? How long it has been that you have not given her a moment to see her or to listen to her?"

Perhaps years have passed -- it is one of the strangest things that husbands cannot remember the face of their wife with whom they have lived for thirty years. Just you ask them, "Close your eyes and try to remember your wife, her face," and everything goes vague. For thirty years they have not looked at her, they have really tried not to look at her. They were afraid to look at her -- there was one day when they wanted to look at her for twenty-four hours.

Psychological love is a changing phenomenon and unless humanity accepts its changeability, gracefully, we will never allow human beings to raise to second level, because those who raise to the second level suffer more. Poets suffer more.

Farmers don't suffer that way, woodcutters don't suffer that way, fishermen don't suffer that way, painters suffer, musicians suffer because they go on changing. They need continuously something new. Now the other person cannot make it available and the other person has his own individuality, her own individuality. And they start growing farther and farther and farther away from each other. And the society goes on forcing them to live together because marriages are made in heaven.

Q: DO YOU DO ANY ART WORK?

A: My whole work is art! I don't do anything else except art work.

Q: DO YOU DREAM? AND WHAT KIND OF DREAMS DO YOU HAVE?

A: No. I cannot dream.

Q: I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW IF THERE'S ANOTHER ENLIGHTENMENT AFTER ENLIGHTENMENT.

A: No.

Q: AND IF YOU WERE TO GO ON VACATION WHERE WOULD YOU GO AND WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

A: I can just kiss from here, you may be on another planet, that makes no difference. What people call kissing is so unhygienic, so ugly, mixing the saliva with each other, touching tongue, exploring each other's mouth with the tongue - - just that is not possible for me. There is no need, just seeing loving eyes is enough. You have touched.

Physical touch is a very lower phenomenon. Just to see a person with love, with compassion, with friendship, with respect, is enough. Eyes can reach any distance. Silence can speak much which words cannot do.

In India when we salute each other we don't even shake hands, that is too physical, unhygienic too. No medicine or medical person can support it. We salute each other with both the hands folded and that has a spiritual significance.

We are giving you the same respect as we give to God, that's the way people go in a temple, with folded hands. That's the way they respect their elders. The same respect is shown to the strangers. And two hands folded together represent what I was saying, the merger of two into one.

In the first love, which is sexual, kissing is part of it, but in the second love, which is psychological, kissing is not part of it. It is more an energy phenomenon than a material one.

Every body has an aura of energy, now it can be even photographed. In the East we have been talking about it for five thousand years, perhaps more ancient is the idea, but we had no way to prove it. Now there is a certain photography, Kirilian photography, developed in Soviet Union by a photographer who has made so sensitive plates that when he takes a picture your energy aura also comes into it. It differs person to person, for example, a person who has never known anything more than sex, his energy aura is just two inches around his body. And a person who has know something of the second love, his aura is almost six inches around his body.

And there is a third love of which I was just going to speak, which is spiritual, which is not even psychological, which is more like lovingness, rather than love - - there is no passionateness in it, it is more like fragrance than a flower. You can catch hold of the flower but you cannot catch hold of the fragrance. It is not like the flame of a candle, but the light of the flame.

That third stage of love, the person has almost twelve big aura around his whole body. People who know the third love can just sit silently together, their energies are meeting. You will think they are sitting not even close, like lovers sitting very close to each other, they may be sitting with a gap between them. They can allow to sit at least two feet gap is possible and yet their energies are touching. Their energies are kissing and that is a far bigger touch, not local. Kiss is a local touch.

They can touch each other's body totally without touching the physical body at all. And that love does not change, because it is not dependent on the beloved, on the object of love. It is not dependent on the changing mind, it is something concerned with your eternal being. You may change, your body will change, your mind will change, but your love cannot change, it remains the fragrance of your being. Only at that point two persons have truly met.

It rarely happens between lovers, very rarely, but it happens between masters and disciples very often. That's why I say that the relationship between a master and a disciple is a love affair of the highest category. And that is the goal that can fulfill. Those who have not known it have lived incompletely.

In that state, whatever you do is art. You cannot do otherwise -- the way you walk, the way you sit, the way you talk -- even just the gesture of your hand has something artistic to it, something creative in it. That's why I say I don't paint, I don't compose music, I don't write poetry, but if you see a little deeply what I am doing with my disciples, they are my canvas. I'm painting living beings. They are my poetry, they are my sculpture. Continuously I'm trying to work so that they can be released from all bondage and they can taste freedom, love, beauty.

I don't paint on ordinary canvases and I don't write poetries on paper, but on living beings. And each of my sannyasin is my poetry. And each of my sannyasin will carry my gestures, my attitudes, my approaches and he will make it even richer because he is a living person. He may give it more polish, he may give it more beauty; he has to do it, that will be his gratitude towards the master. That will be his thankfulness.

So from the morning til night I am continuously creating but to see my creativity you need to be part of it. You cannot be just an spectator; you have to be insider, not an outsider, because it is so subtle and so delicate, so invisible that unless you enter into it, with open mind, without any prejudice, you will not be able to experience it. Just a little experience will open the door.

Q: IS THAT WHY YOU STARTED TALKING AGAIN?

A: That's true.

Q: AND WHAT HAPPENED WHEN YOU WEREN'T TALKING? DO YOU MISS NOT TALKING?

A: I was working in my silence.

Q: WHAT WERE YOU WORKING AT?

A: My people were sitting in silence with me.

I wanted to see how many people can understand my silence. I wanted those people to go away who are hanging around my words, because they are wasting their time; they should be somewhere else, this is not their place. But they had become enchanted with my words, my theories, but it was an intellectual approach. So when I became silent, they went on hanging around for few days, then slowly they thought, "Now I'm not going to speak again, what is the point?"

Silence they could not understand.

The moment I saw that all those people had left, I started speaking again. Now these are the people who remained for three and half years, not even asking, not even a single person asking me to speak. They were perfectly happy just by my presence.

It was on my own accord that I started speaking. If I had remained in silence for my whole remaining life, these were not the people to leave me. That's why I am speaking to them because these are my people. Now my talk is heart-to-heart.

And they don't bother what I am saying, whether I am contradicting myself or not, it is none of their concern. They cannot be deceived by my words. They know me and knowing me is such a deeper relationship that who cares what I am saying.

Q: BHAGWAN, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF KHALIL GIBRAN'S SAYING, "WHEN YOU HAVE SOLVED ALL THE MYSTERIES OF LIFE, YOU LONG FOR DEATH, FOR IT IS BUT ANOTHER MYSTERY OF LIFE."

A: Three words one has to understand clearly. One is, "the known," the other is, "the unknown," and the third is, "the unknowable."

The known was one day unknown. The unknown will become one day known, but the unknowable was unknowable before, is unknowable now, will remain unknowable forever. Only unknowable it the mystery.

The science can deal with the known... With the unknown.... The science has no way even to conceive the unknowable. And that is where religion becomes significant. That is religion's are A: the unknowable. And all the religions in the past have betrayed. They started trying to make the unknowable known; that was their betrayal. They all started trying to prove God. Once God is proved by arguments, he's no more God.

Karl Marx used to say, that "I will believe in God only if you can put him in a test tube in the lab, dissect him, find out all the qualities, all the constituents; only then I will believe in him."

One of his followers, very significant philosopher in India, Anand Roy, who had participated in the Russian revolution, was a friend of Lenin -- close friend. I asked him, because he was continuously writing about Karl Marx, his philosophy, and he was of tremendous reasonable rationality. He could prove.

I asked him just one thing, that, "In your book you write about Marx' statement that he will believe in God only if God is in a test tube observed by the scientists.

I want to ask you, will that be God that scientists can dissect, can find out of what he is constituted of? That will be another matter; it won't be God."

But all the religions in the past have been trying to prove that which is unprovable. They have been trying to demystify existence, and I call it a betrayal.

Let science do its work. That is science' work to demystify existence. Anything that is not known has to be made known -- that's the whole scientific approach.

We will not leave anything unknown in existence. And it is possible to conceive one day perhaps we will have exhausted the unknown.

But what about the unknowable?

The scientist himself is unknowable. He knows everything. He does not know who is the knower. In fact, he denies the knower -- and that is so stupid that one of Indian scientists, Khorana , who got a Nobel prize, I asked him that, "You are a Nobel prize winner scientist. Have you ever bothered that you go on searching, discovering, new areas but who is the seeker and who is the searcher? Have you ever thought about yourself?"

He said, "I don't have time for that."

But I said, "This is strange, because whatsoever you can find cannot be more valuable than you, the finder. Whatever you can know, howsoever valuable it is, cannot be more valuable than the knower. It remains an object of knowledge.

"And you say you don't have time for yourself? This is not a scientific answer.

This is trying just to avoid the subject. You cannot avoid it. At least I will not allow you to avoid it. You have to say something definite. You have to say whether you exist or not. If you exist, then what you are -- just matter? Or something more?"

He said, "You are putting me into trouble because if I say I am just matter, it simply does not feel right, because how matter can discover matter? How matter can know mysteries of matter? Matter has no consciousness, I can understand. So I have to accept that there is something more than matter. But please don't insist, because science is not willing to accept the knower. Science' whole approach is:

unless something is experimented through scientific methods in a scientific lab, it cannot be accepted."

I said, "Naturally. Then the scientist will remain unknowable forever."

And that is the arena, the area of religion.

And this unknowability of consciousness, this mysterious phenomenon in you -- in everybody -- is the most precious thing.

Nobody can know it but everybody can taste it.

Nobody can reduce it into a theorem but everybody can dive deep into it, its bliss, its serenity, its silence, its tremendous ecstasy.

Nobody can explain it but everybody is capable of experiencing it.

One of the great philosophers of Europe, perhaps the best of this century, was Ludwig Wittgenstein, and he has a statement in his one of the rare books in the whole history of books. The name of the book is Tractatus Philosophicus. He never wrote treatises; he only writes maxims. One of the maxims in that strange book is that one should not speak about something which cannot be spoken of.

I wrote him a letter -- he was alive; now he is dead -- that, "The moment you say one should not speak about something which cannot be spoken of, you have already spoken. You have said something. You have described certain quality, that nothing can be said about it. That too is an attribute. And if this much you have spoken, then try a little harder. You have broken your rule yourself. You accept there are things which cannot be spoken of. Your statement certainly proves that you accept there are things which cannot be spoken of. Certainly there must be some way to know those things which cannot be spoken of.

Otherwise, how you have come to that conclusion?"

I say there are things which cannot be explained, cannot be reduced in theories, theologies, philosophies, but which can become part of your experience, which can become the very light of your life, which can become the very center. It is not demystifying them, it is in fact entering into the mystery and becoming yourself a mystery.

That's why we have called saints in the East mystics. We have not called them saints. Saints is a Christian contribution to the world -- very ugly word. It comes from an original root sanction. A saint is one who has been sanctioned the certificate from the pope. This is stupid. The pope himself is not a saint, and he is issuing certificates -- posthumous certificates.

Joan of Arc was made a saint after three hundred years. One infallible pope burned the poor woman -- who was a rare woman in the whole history of man -- burned her alive, declared that she is a witch. But people could see the ugliness of the whole thing. The woman was a genius -- so young, so beautiful, yet so courageous. She alone was fighting for the freedom of the country -- and she won. The whole country loved the woman, but that was the trouble. She became a competitor to the pope. She has to be destroyed.

She was burned alive, but in three hundred years the pope became condemned by people by and by, realizing the qualities of the woman. Her diaries were discovered. And she was such a beautiful, authentic, sincere human being that after three hundred years the other pope became afraid that if she is not given sanction and made a saint, she will create a division in Christianity. To avoid the division she was declared a saint.

In the East we don't use that word. We say these people mystics, and that exactly describes their world: the world of mystery.

They are not demystifying it. They don't give you any idea about it. They hold your hand and take you on the journey. They do not give you any proof; they give you eyes to see.

And that's the function of the Master: not to give you a philosophy -- just dead words, what you are going to do with them? The authentic Master will give you some taste of reality. He will hold your hand, he will take you into the unknown territories where alone you may be afraid to go in. But the trust of the man, the love for the man, will not allow you to escape.

Q: HAVE YOU TALKED TO THE POPE LATELY?

A: I have not talked to him but I have talked about him enough, and I don't think he will be ready to talk with me. Because I have been condemning him continuously and he knows about it. And I don't see anything that he is doing is right, so there is no meeting point either. Whatever I am doing is immoral in his eyes. What he is doing is criminal in my eyes.

Right now he is in South Africa where real problems -- he is not even touching them. Eighty-five percent people are black. It is their country. Fifteen percent white people are ruling over them. The country is very rich. It has diamond mines, it has gold mines, it has silver mines. It is really one of the richest land in the world. But the people are dying, starving. The people are the poorest because all those mines are captured by fifteen percent white people. So all the riches are under white people's power.

You will be surprised to know South Africa has the biggest army in the world.

Those fifteen percent people need it; otherwise eighty-five percent people dying, and you are exploiting continuously their country, and all the fifteen percent white people are immensely rich. And you will be surprised to know that even in twentieth century eighty-five percent people don't have even voting right. Only fifteen percent white people vote. Naturally the question does not arise of any black people to be in power.

It is their country, it is their wealth, and they are continuously being shot dead, continuously being killed, burned.

Pope is not touching the real problem.

And those eighty-five percent people have the biggest birthrate in the whole world: three percent per year. They are already overpopulated and they are continuously overpopulating and becoming more and more poor. Because what they can inherit to their children? they don't have anything.

And pope is preaching to them that birth control is sin, that abortion is a great sin. The government is trying to introduce birth control, abortion. He is speaking against birth control, against abortion. He is going to be responsible for all the poverty that will happen. He will be responsible for all those starving, dying people.

And the real problems he is not touching, because that will disturb the vested interests: the white people.

So no question about freedom, no question about voting power, no question about white people leaving their country and going back to their own countries.

Or even if they want to live there, my suggestion is -- because for three hundred years they have been there; their own countries -- they belong from different nations: Spanish, English, British, Dutch, from all over Europe -- their own countries are not going to accept them because their own countries are in trouble with population.

My suggestion is that fifteen percent land of South Africa should be given to white people and fifteen percent wealth of the country should be given to the white people, and eighty-five percent land and eighty-five percent riches should go to the black people. And the country should be divided.

Simple solution: already they live separately, so there is not much problem. The black people are not allowed even to enter the areas where white people live. So it is so simple.

I can understand the difficulty of the white people that they have not home; three hundred years is a long time, they cannot leave this country. Absolutely right, I accept it, it seems to be perfectly human that they should be given place there, but they cannot have more than fifteen percent. They cannot have hundred percent land, hundred percent riches, and eighty-five percent people starving and dying.

And this idiot pope goes there and talks to those people. He's not telling the white people. The white people are already practicing birth control, the pill, the abortion, everything. He's not talking to the white people.

Q: HAVE YOU SENT SOMEONE THERE TO TALK TO THE PEOPLE?

A: No. Because I have tried for thirty years in India.

The poor people have many problems. One of the problems is, they are uneducated, illiterate. They cannot understand anything beyond their tradition, the tradition they have inherited. And their tradition is all superstition, stupid.

For example, the idea that God gives you children. Now it is very difficult to make those people convinced -- for thirty years I been trying hard that God cannot be so stupid to give to many children to you that you cannot even give them food. God cannot be so unkind.

If he is a compassionate God as you call him, he should send each children with a piece of land, with some trees, some cows, something so they can live on it. He simply sends children naked, not even an underwear. And he goes on seeing your children dying. Out of ten children, nine children in India used to die; and this is your God.

And people like the pope were there. Mahatma Gandhi was there, who was against birth control, who was against abortion, who was against inoculation, because it is against nature. Without inoculation all little children were suffering from smallpox and dying. But inoculation they will not accept. Birth control is just beyond their idea. That means you are talking immorality. You are talking anti-religiousness.

Thirty years talking to them, all the rewards that I have got are stones thrown at me, shoes thrown at me, knives thrown at me, poison given me twice, that was the reward. And they will not go against their tradition.

Q: WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU WHEN YOU PHYSICALLY DIED FOR SEVEN HUNDRED YEARS, BETWEEN YOUR REBIRTH?

A: No, I never think of the future. No, I think only of the present.... And I want to make the present as intelligent for my people, as beautiful, as comfortable as possible. And I want my people to be as meditative... in the present -- future will take care itself. Intelligent people will find out a way. Who am I even to think about the future? That is a subtle strategy of dominating even when you are dead.

Just the idea of creating a successor means I will continue to dominate you through my successor. That's how dead are dominating the living -- Jesus, Moses, Buddha -- still are dominating people. This is ugly; dead dominating the living is simply unacceptable to me.

Buddha lived twenty-five centuries before. He knew nothing of electricity. He knew nothing of railway trains. He knew nothing of population growth. He knew nothing that their will be a time when people will be dying if they don't stop reproducing.

In Buddha's time the whole world's population was only two hundred million. I think Oregon's population must be two hundred million now. That was the whole population of the world.

Buddha had no idea that his country will be almost eight hundred thousand million, otherwise he would not have talked nonsense. But we cannot criticize him; whatever he did, whatever he said was relevant in his time. One thing he did wrong that he made a tradition, created laws and regulation for the future.

That is to me dictatorial, not democratic.

Who am I for the future? Right now I am alive, you can argue against me, you can decide against me, you can doubt my idea, but when I am dead.... And the whole emphasis of all the religions is to believe, to have faith, so people go on believing and having faith in ideas which are simply out of date, which are dangerous to believe. For example, Buddha preached celibacy. Now celibacy is absolutely unnatural. Perhaps at the age of eighty-two he may have been celibate. In fact, what else you are going to do at the age of eighty-two?

Q: DO YOU HAVE A GIRL FRIEND?

A: I have many. (laughing) You are welcome; there is no trouble in it. I don't think anybody has as many girl friends as I have, thousands.

I am against celibacy. It may be good for an impotent person, it may do some good for him, at least a consolation that he is celibate. But, impotency is rare and impotency is a sickness. The impotent person has never done anything worthwhile. He has never created anything. He has not even been able to become a saint, which was the easiest thing for him to do.

Buddha, and others talking about celibacy, have created sexual perversion in the whole world. And now there are homosexuals and there are lesbians and there are people who are making love to the animals and there are all kinds of perversions. And for all these perversion who is responsible: these people who talked about celibacy.

When I said to the Indian masses that celibacy should be condemned as a crime, because it goes against nature. You can go to any medical college and you can go to any medical board and ask them, but such is the ignorance that even doctors try to be celibate, particularly in India where celibacy seems to be a great spiritual thing.

Even doctors, even they cannot understand that it is something natural to your physiology, your chemistry, your biology, and your body does not understand that you have taken a vow of celibacy. There is no way to convey the message to the body. The body will go on the same way. You may be Hindu, you may be Christian, you may be Mohammedan, you all will feel hungry. It doesn't make any difference; the body knows nothing about that you are a Mohammedan and this is the month of Ramjhan , the sacred month when one should not eat in the day. The body feels hungry.

There is no way to communicate the idea that a Mohammedan in the month of Ramjhan for whole month cannot eat in the day. He can eat only in the night. At least Mohammedanism allows to eat in the night, so people eat in the night as much as they can and they are eating early in the morning before sunrise again so that the whole day they don't feel hungry. And this is just disturbing people unnecessarily. Their whole night they could not sleep; they were just eating and eating and eating, preparing for the whole day, because in the day they will not be able.

But there is a religion, Jainism in India, in its sacred days, ten days per year, you have to fast. You cannot eat in the night, because according to Jainism, you cannot eat into night any day of the year. Eating in the night is sin. As the sun sets, the Jainas cannot eat. Not only that, those who are very orthodox they will not drink water.

It was such a trouble in my childhood because I was born in a Jaina family. That, in India it is so hot, and summer nights so hot, and you cannot even drink water.

I simply refused. I said, "I am willing to go to hell. That will happen after death.

There is time. I will do something, but right not I am going to drink. I don't want this night to suffer in hell."

In those ten days you cannot eat at all, for ten days continuously. And I know that in those ten days Jainas think only of food, nothing else. Day and night, their dreams are full of food.

You were asking about dreams. Jainas dreams in those ten days are full of food.

Christian monks, Hindu monks, their dreams are full of sex. Whatever you repress in the day becomes your dream in the night. I don't repress anything, that's what there is no possibility of having a dream. My night is a dreamless silence.

Q: YOU DON'T MISS STRUGGLING OR PAIN OF A -- ANYTHING?

A: There is no... no problem. As far as I am concerned there is nothing that I miss and I never repress anything. For example, I don't think anybody would have said to you, that "You are welcome to be my girl friend." I don't think, but I don't repress anything; the idea came to me. Rather than seeing you in my dreams, I said it. I am finished with it. Now you cannot come in my dreams.

My life is simple and open. Dreams are possible only if you repress. If you don't repress, dreams disappear. And the disappearance of dreams is such a beautiful experience, the whole night such a joy, such a bliss.

In India, Mahatma Gandhi was doing exactly what the pope is doing now. He was telling people, that "Go back." In his the spinning wheel is the last invention of humanity. After that whatever has happened has to be dropped. In fact, everything that has happened after. Spinning wheel must have been invented twenty thousand or thirty thousand years before. Every thing of any value has happened afterwards, but with his ideology spinning is the full stop and we have to back behind that stage.

These people don't understand at all that how can you manage eight hundred thousand million people just by spinning wheel. If a person -- I have calculated -- spins eight hours a day, then he can cover his whole body for the whole year. He can have his bedsheet, his blanket, his pillow covers, but eight hours every day will be needed -- what about his wife, what about his children, what about his old parents, what about his sick mother?

Only he can manage for himself and what about food? What about other necessities of life? Just clothes are not enough, you cannot eat them. And if eight hours he is just spinning, when he is going to earn his bread? When he is going to earn enough money for his money dying by tuberculosis?

But Mahatma Gandhi has appeal because he is in tune with the tradition. I am saying something which goes against their tradition. Gandhi says to people, "You need not worry; God takes care, he is compassionate," and people are absolutely willing to accept the idea because that idea has been conditioned in their mind for thousands of years. And when I say, "There is no God and nobody is taking care of you, you have to take care yourself," it hurts them in two ways: first their traditional idea of God they are not willing to drop. Fear arises. Secondly, to accept responsibility of everything needs guts.

It is very easy to transfer to a father figure in the heaven that he will take care.

Even if there is nobody does not matter, but you are consoled for the moment.

And I am stirring your fear, your insecurity, your death and there is nobody to take care. It is all empty; you have to find your own way, there are not super- highways made for you by others that you have to simply walk on.

Truth is something like a bird flying in the sky, leaves no footprints behind him, so if one person reaches to truth you cannot follow him. He has not left any footprints in the sky. You can try to understand the man, you can try to imbibe his vibe. You can sit in silence with the man and let something transpire in silence. You can love the man, you can be open to the man so his love can flow towards you. Perhaps in these mysterious ways he may be able to take you by the hand into the unknown. Otherwise there is no road, he cannot say, "Just go five miles right, then turn to the left, and you have arrived."

It is not that easy.

Trying thirty years with Indians I decided that it is just futile. I dropped the whole idea. I started working only for those who are capable to understand me.

In 1970 I stopped traveling in India. For thirty years I have been traveling continuously. In 1970 I stopped traveling and began the movement of sannyas.

Q: AND FOUR YEARS AGO TODAY YOU ARRIVED ON THIS RANCH, AUGUST 29TH....

A: Four years ago I arrived here.... In four years we have made this desert an oasis.

Just go on coming and every time you will find a great change continuously happening. When we had come there was only one house here. That too dilapidated. Now we have houses for five thousand sannyasins, fully equipped with...

Q: AIR-CONDITIONING....

A: ... Air-conditioning, everything. And this is against the government, against the people of Oregon, against all kinds of allegations, cases. We don't bother. We go on fighting in courts and we go on doing what we want to do. And we know finally we are going to win and we are going to make this one hundred square miles a lush, green place, a place where tourists all over the world will be coming to see because it will be so full of laughter and so full of love.

Q: WELL YOU HAVE EIGHTY-ONE THOUSAND ACRES, HERE....

A: Eighty-four thousand acres. Nobody had that much land ever.

Q: SO YOU'RE RICH AND FAMOUS.

A: We are. And we are going to become richer and richer and more famous because of us now Oregon is famous all over the world.

This small commune, Rajneeshpuram, is the world capitol. We are going to make it a world capitol.

Every country is represented here, every race, every religion is represented here.

Q: LAWYERS, DOCTORS....

A: And every profession, every kind of people and all educated, all intelligent, so there is no need for me to think for their future, just I have to make their present as beautiful and as intense and total so out of that totality and intensity their future will be born.

Q: HAVE YOU BEEN TO THE UNIVERSITY, YOU KNOW, RIMU, THAT PLACE DOWN THE ROAD?

A: No. I never go any where. People listen to me and if they find something is valuable, they take it to the university, they take it to the fields, to the commune, its work. But I never direct anybody in anyway. I never give any instructions.

I am available with all my vision. If somebody feels that it triggers something in you, do it. But you are doing your thing, not my thing. You are doing it because it has triggered your heart, you are following your heart, I am just accidental.

You are not to believe in me, you have to be just available to me as I am available to you. And all these people here are not my followers. As far as I am concerned, they are all my friends, my lovers, my fellow travelers. So whatsoever they can take and materialize they go on doing it, they are doing beautifully. I see the commune growing every day, becoming greener every day.

I will go on sharing my vision to my last breath. And now it is up to them. That's why I said my sannyasins are my poetries, my sannyasins are my music, my sannyasins are my paintings. My sannyasins are my future.

I need not bother about future, it is already here. It is all around the world, one million sannyasins around the world, hundreds of communes around the world.

And every commune trying to be exactly maintaining the same standards, the same comfort, the same food, the same luxury, the same medical facilities.

I want my communes to become a model to the whole world. I don't want to argue with them, this is my argument. My commune is my argument that man can live so beautifully, so relaxedly, so creatively, why you cannot live? Just because you have not tried, just because you are clinging to old ideas which are no more workable.

You have to learn only one thing: that is to be contemporary. Very few people are contemporaries. Somebody is living two thousand years before, somebody three thousand years before; strange world. Here you will not find contemporary people. And I can have appeal only to the contemporaries. So I stopped going to the graveyards and talking to the graves and disturbing the dead, what is the need? Let them rest in peace.

I have found my people and they are coming in hundreds every day. And my appeal is only for the intelligent, the unintelligent is simply, cannot have any communication with me. My things above his head. But he has his popes and bishops and churches; he can go there.

My whole effort is to make the intelligent people so tremendously significant that they cannot be ignored anymore, that the world has to take notice of them, that the world has to learn that there is something that they are missing and these people are having. So my argument is very existential, rather than philosophically talking to them that I have done for thirty years -- it does not make any sense.

Now I am trying to produce an existential proof that whatever I am saying is realizable. You can come and see that it is not just an ideology just an utopia, that it can be effectual reality.

Okay.