Chapter 24

[NOTE: This is a typed tape transcript and has not been edited or published, as of August 1992. It is for reference use only.]

QUESTION:* YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT ONE THING, BHAGWAN. I DID COME BACK. ONE EARLY PROPHECY THAT WAS CORRECT. BHAGWAN, AS YOU ARE THE WORLD'S GREATEST SHOWMAN, MAYBE YOU WOULD LIKE TO ASSIST US IN PROMOTING THIS PERFORMANCE FOR AUSTRALIA WITH A LITTLE NATIONAL GREETING TO AUSTRALIANS. WHAT WE SAY IS, "GOODAY MATE! IT'S GOOD TO BE BACK ON SO MINUTES!"

BHAGWAN:* Just start. I am twenty-four hours ready for any show.

Q:* YOU TOLD ME THAT YOU LOVE SHEELA, AND SHEELA SAID YOU WERE THE MAN OF HER EYES. SO IS THIS THE END OF A GREAT LOVE AFFAIR NOW?

A:* Love affair never ends. It can turn into a hate affair. From my side, never, but from her side it has become a hate affair.

Q:* IT DOES SOUND TO ME IT HAS TURNED TO A HATE AFFAIR FROM SHEELA.

A:* Yes. From her side it has turned. She did not prove to be a woman, she proved to be a perfect bitch.

Q:* WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE A LOOK AT WHAT SHE HAS TO SAY TO YOU?

A:* I know her mind. I can see, but I can say without knowing....

Recording of Sheela's voice: It's time that you let people know who you are, the way I have come to know you, which is that on one hand you're a genius and a beautiful man, and on the other hand you really exploit people by using their human frailty and emotions.

A:* She is drugged. She is on hard drugs. It is true, I exploit people. I exploit them because that is the only way to wake them up. Exploitation is not necessarily evil. I exploit their stupidity, their idiotness. I exploit their conditionings, I simply want them to be utterly nude, naked, as they were born.

So it is perfectly true. And I am a genius in exploitation, but that exploitation turns out to be finally the transformation of man. About that transformation she cannot understand even the ABC.

Q:* WE ARE ONLY GOING TO INFLICT ONE MORE BIT OF SHEELA TAPE ON YOU. WHAT WILL YOU DO IF SHEELA TURNS UP? WHAT WOULD YOU SAY TO HER IF YOU MEET AGAIN?

A:* I will accept her. I love her. I love bitches, many of them. If she comes back, she will be welcome. But she will not have any power any more, because she has misused it.

Q:* WILL SHE ASK YOUR FORGIVENESS?

A:* No there is no question, because I am not angry. It is her problem to forgive herself by doing something to help this community which she has betrayed. I am simply out of it. If I was angry I could have forgiven her, but I never became angry. I simply accept people as they are. She was the type, she proved it. She killed her first husband by depriving him of oxygen, and he was a block*. She killed him for this other man, and then she came for some work to America and fell in love with another man. She does not know what love means.

Q:* SHE SAYS IN THIS SECOND TAPE THAT IT WAS YOU WHO FORGOT HOW TO LOVE, THAT YOU ROBBED HER OF HER DIGNITY.

A:* I will say about that...

Recording of Sheela's interviewer's voice:* He might be watching. He says that it you ever meet again, you will throw yourself at his feet and beg for mercy.

Recording of Sheela's voice:* Would he wish. That's his dream again. Not true, Bhagwan. No. One thing I have is my dignity, and that was a problem for you, you know it too.

A:* She has no dignity. All dignity that she thinks she has was given by me. She was just a hotel waitress, and I made her almost a queen. And now she is just a criminal, and will be soon behind the bars. What dignity she is talking about?

And a person who kills the husband for a lover, and then within weeks married another man, destroying the lover and his heart, and now she has married third man without even divorcing the second. The second man is American. She married him because it was useful, convenient, now he is no more useful. Now she needs a Swiss husband, so she has married a Swiss husband without even bothering to divorce the American. This is love!

Q:* SHE DOES HAVE AN APPETITE.

A:* Hmmm?

Q:* SHE DOES HAVE AN APPETITE.

A:* Just the appetite of a bitch, not of a woman.

(Conversation between interviewer and cameraman) And she has done every crime that a human being can do. She has done arson, she burned the Planning Office of Wasco County. We have the witnesses. The police has all the evidences, all the testimonies. She taped all the telephones going out of the commune, which is against human freedom, human privacy.

She has taped almost all the houses in the commune, even my room was bugged.

Q:* YOU HAD NEVER APPROVED THAT? ANY OF THAT BUGGING?

A:* I will approve bugging in my room!

Q:* NOT YOUR ROOM, NO.

A:* She has bugged the whole hotel, one forty-five* rooms. I would have never come to know about it. She herself made it clear to me, because I was talking to my physician one evening and tomorrow morning she came and she said she has a dream, and in the dream she saw me talking with the physician. Am I not feeling well? I said, "Sheela, I don't think you have any intuitive powers." She said, "Not only I have dreamt it. Savita, Vidya, all have dreamt the same dream."

I said, "You don't know even about dreaming. Three persons dreaming the same dream have never been heard in the whole history. So don't be stupid. Simply tell me that this room is bugged. And I had specifically talked to the physician so that I can catch hold of you." She simply denied that, "No, I have not bugged any place, not this room, not any other room." And that was the last time I saw her.

Again she never dared to come before me. For three months more she was here, but continuously going to Europe, to Australia, to Singapore, to Holland, somehow avoiding facing me. Even on the last day she did not come to see me.

Q:* THE FBI SAYS THIS PLACE WAS BUGGED WORSE THAN THE CIA.

WHAT WAS THE REASON FOR THAT?

A:* Certainly, because we have better engineers, better electronics experts, better electricians. And she used them. And she used them in my name. They all have confessed with tears in their eyes, because she used them that, "It is for Bhagwan's protection." So they did everything. I was in silence for three and a half years, and in isolation. That gave her an opportunity. So much power, so much money, so many people with whom she could tell to do anything in my name, and she was my only connection with the people, so I will know only what she wanted me to know, and the people will know only what she wanted them to know. She used the opportunity.

As I started becoming aware that my place is bugged, then I became aware that few people, particularly my physician, my caretaker, my dentist, had been poisoned. When it became a certain proof that my physician has been poisoned four times, then I said, "It is time that I should come out of my isolation, out of my silence." And the moment I came out of my silence, the whole commune was rejoicing and dancing except Sheela, because my coming out of silence means her power is finished.

Q:* AND WHAT WILL YOU TESTIFY ABOUT SHEELA WHEN YOU APPEAR BEFORE THE FEDERAL GRAND JURY?

A:* I am not a eyewitness for anything, because I was in isolation and silence.

Whatever I can say is just hearsay, whatever I heard from my caretaker, from my physician, from my dentist. These were the three people who were able to approach me. So all that I have heard is hearsay. But when I started speaking I called a press conference and exposed everything that I have heard, and invited the police and the federal agencies to investigate. And now whatever I have said, they have found proofs for everything.

Q:* BUT AREN'T YOU GOING TO HAVE QUITE A HARD TIME CONVINCING THOSE AUTHORITIES THAT AS AN ENLIGHTENED MAN YOU DIDN'T KNOW THIS WAS HAPPENING?

A:* There is no reason for an enlightened man to know these things, that they are happening. It is not part of enlightenment. People have strange ideas about enlightenment. Enlightenment simply means I know myself. It does not mean that I know that my room is bugged. Enlightenment and bugging has no relationship.

Q:* SO YOU DIDN'T KNOW SHEELA, EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE KNOWN HER SINCE SHE WAS NINETEEN?

A:* I started slowly, as I started hearing the stories. Something was wrong. And when she disappeared and started moving into other communes in the world and became afraid facing me because I will ask about things, how it happened, how the Planning Office in the Wasco County was burned, who burned it, how Dalles reservoir was poisoned -- to kill the whole city.

Q:* ARE YOU SAYING SHE TRIED TO KILL A WHOLE CITY?

A:* Yes. She killed a man here. She has brought three thousand street people. To me she said, "This is just a humanitarian gesture. We have..."

Q:* HOW DID SHE DRUG THEM?

A:* She imported certain drug Haldol.

Q:* THAT'S A TRANQUILIZER?

A:* Yes. Drums of Halcode*. And with every food -- tea, coffee, everything -- they were drugged, for twenty-one days, so they became almost like robots. The whole idea was that they will now do whatever she wants them to do. They will vote for her. One man was overdosed and died. She simply threw her body out of Rancho Rajneesh, without any feelings. As these stories started slowly coming to me -- because it was difficult for people to reach me, I had prevented them not to reach me, otherwise what is the point of being silent? I was not reading newspapers, I was not seeing television, I was not reading books, I was simply relaxing into my silence...

Q:* HAVE YOU TOLD THE POLICE?

A: ... and for everything that I have said I am not a eyewitness. But there are eyewitnesses for everything. They drugged another street person, thinking that he is an informer. Gave him a good beating whole night, so much that he became unconscious. Then drugged him so that for three days he remained unconscious, and just left him unconscious in Portland. Now we have found the doctor who did all this under Sheela's direction, and we have informed the police just yesterday.

But bureaucracy is so stupid. Yesterday we have informed; they have not turned up yet, and the woman doctor is trying to escape to Germany to meet with Sheela's group. And we have informed that, that she is trying to escape. We don't want to take law in our own hands. It is your duty to catch her. They have not turned.

Now I had to inform the FBI that if state government is not taking any step, then to let her go to Germany -- and she is German, she will not return back -- then it seems you want to protect the criminals. And that is my assumption, that they want to protect the criminals, and all the criminals have escaped. Twenty criminals have escaped with Sheela.

Those few who have remained -- for example, this doctor was not suspecting that she will be caught. But from the pharmacy those drugs are missing. From the record those drugs are missing, and they are in her name. Where those drugs have gone finally she had to confess. Now we are giving criminals to them, and they are not even ready to catch hold of them. Their idea is to protect the criminals and to destroy the commune, so that they can catch hold of the innocent people.

Q:* BHAGWAN, IT'S FUNNY THAT YOU MENTION DRUGS, BECAUSE SHEELA SAYS THAT MOST OF THE TIME YOU'RE HIGH AS A KITE. SHE SAYS YOU LIVE LIKE A ROCK 'N' ROLL STAR BEHIND THOSE CLOSED DOORS, THAT IT'S SEX AND DRUGS AND ROCK 'N' ROLL. THAT'S SHEELA'S PORTRAIT OF YOU AT HOME.

A:* Sheela seems to be really getting insane. I have never made love to her, that much is certain. Perhaps that is the jealousy. She always wanted, but I have made it a point: Never make love to a secretary. And I have kept that rule.

Q:* THAT'S A RECORD A LOT OF OTHER BOSSES WOULD BE PROUD OF.

A:* Yes. So she seems to be jealous. I love women, I love everything beautiful. I am not an ascetic. I am against celibacy. It is celibacy that has driven the whole humanity into all kinds of perversions. I am not a monk. I am a natural human being, and I want to live as naturally as possible, not going against nature in any way.

Q:* SHEELA SAYS, BHAGWAN, THAT YOU ARE NOT INTERESTED IN THE NATURAL STATE, THAT IN FACT YOU LIVE IN A VERY UNREAL WORLD FULL OF DRUGS?

A:* For her it may seem unreal. For me it is the reality. And can you see in my eyes that they are drugged? Are you...?

Q:* AN HONEST ANSWER?

A:* Yes.

Q:* I OFTEN WONDERED WHAT WAS IN YOUR EYES.

A:* Yes, in my eyes there is something, but it is not drugs. It can drug you!

Q:* NOT MY BAG, NOT MY BAG. YOU HAVEN'T GIVEN ME AN ANSWER, THOUGH. I MEAN, I SAID LIKE A ROCK 'N' ROLL STAR. A ROCK 'N' ROLL STAR REACHES FOR ANY DRUG HE CAN GET HIS HANDS ON TO GET HIGH.

A:* There is no way for me. I remain in my room. I never go out of the room. I never go to the pharmacy, I never go to the commune, I never go out of the commune. Unless you believe me, like Jesus, I am turning water into wine, water into LSD, then it is a different matter. Otherwise, from where are those drugs are going to come to me? She was the only one coming to me. Was she bringing all those drugs to me?

Q:* WELL, SPEAKING OF MIRACLES, SHEELA TELLS ME THAT SHE IS GOING TO BUY A HOTEL IN THE BLACK FOREST FOR FOUR AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS. WHERE IS SHE GOING TO GET THAT MONEY FROM?

A:* She has stolen money from the commune.

Q:* A LOT OF MONEY?

A:* Forty-three million dollars.

Q:* THAT'S A LOT OF MONEY.

A:* Not lots.

Q:* NOT WHEN YOU HAVE NINETY-ONE ROLLS ROYCES.

A:* Nothing much. If I had forty-five... forty-three million, just in one day I will spend it. It is not a lot.

Q:* YOU DO LOVE THE RICH, BHAGWAN.

A:* Certainly!

Q:* ARE THE RICH AS EASY, ARE THE RICH AS GULLIBLE? DO THEY HAND OVER THEIR, ALL OF THEIR, POSSESSIONS TO YOU AS EASILY AS THE POOR?

A:* I am a poor man. I don't possess anything. Those Rolls Royces are not my possessions. They belong to the commune. Everything that I use is loaned by the commune to me. I am the poorest man on the earth. Just me people love me and want me to live like an emperor, and I live like an emperor. But I know I am poor as far as things are concerned. But as far as my being is concerned, I am the richest man that has ever been on the earth.

And the rich people you are asking about are more capable of understanding me than the poor people, for the simple reason that a poor person, uneducated, illiterate, hungry, starving -- an Ethiopian -- will not be able to understand Mozart's music, will not be able to understand Van Gogh's paintings. He is not in a state where Mozart's music or Van Gogh's paintings or Nijinsky's dances can be understood. For that you need a certain culture, a certain sophistication, a certain well being, a certain standard of life, a certain education. And having all the things of the world, still feeling unsatisfied.

That is the basic point to understand.

Q:* WELL, THAT IS YOUR BASIC PRODUCT, ISN'T IT? IN SHEELA'S WORD, IT WAS AN INTANGIBLE PRODUCT THAT YOU ARE SELLING:

ENLIGHTENMENT. BUT SHE SAYS THAT REALLY WAS, IN HER PHRASE, A CON.

A:* Anybody who cannot experience it, it will look like a con. But look around my people and you will not find more rejoicing people anywhere, more happy, more loving, more gentle than anywhere. And they are yet only on the way.

Q:* REJOICING EVEN AS THEY HAND OVER THEIR MILLIONS?

A:* Yes. Still rejoicing.

Q:* IS THAT ENLIGHTENMENT?

A:* My enlightenment has nothing to do with it.

Q:* IT'S ENRICHMENT.

A:* I am enlightened thirty years. And anybody who is discontented is bound to find some way to find contentment. I sell contentment. I sell enlightenment.

Sheela could not get it, because she has a very third-rate mind. I have never heard any bitch becoming enlightened. (Long pause) Let me make the point clear. All the religions of the world have taught poverty.

Naturally, the world is poor. They have raised poverty into something spiritual, which is sheer nonsense. Poverty is the source of all crimes. It is not spiritual. I am the first man in that sense who is against poverty and against its being declared spiritual. I want to destroy poverty, and it can be destroyed only if wealth is respected.

And wealth can be created, but it should be given the same respect as a painting, as a poetry, as a dance, as music. Everybody is not Henry Ford, just like as everybody is not a Picasso. The wealthy man has also a genius, and I want the world to be so wealthy that there is no need for communism; the wealth is so much available that there is no need to distribute it and no need to hoard it.

Capitalism at its highest peak is bound to flower into a new type of communism, which will not be enforced. There will be no dictatorship of the proletariat.

Q:* YOUR EMPRESS, SHEELA, SEEMS TO ADMIT RATHER BRAZENLY THAT SHE PRESIDED OVER A CONFIDENCE TRICK, THAT PEOPLE HANDED OVER THEIR MONEY THINKING THEY WERE GETTING ENLIGHTENMENT, BUT IN FACT, SHE SAYS, YOU WERE NOT TERRIBLY INTERESTED EVEN IN ENLIGHTENMENT. SHE PAINTS A PICTURE OF YOU AS A SPOILED BHAGWAN.

A:* She simply is trying to hide all her crimes. You can ask my people whether I am interested in their enlightenment or not. I was interested in their enlightenment till she was my secretary. And just within a week, when she escaped like a criminal from here, I am no more interested in people's enlightenment. You should ask the people. Who she is? What she knows about enlightenment?

Q:* SOME OF YOUR PEOPLE NOW SEEM CONFUSED AS TO WHAT'S HAPPENING. I MEAN, IS THIS ...

A:* For a few days there will be confusion. That is natural. But after few days that will be gone and there will be more fresh air. It is already felt, that we are getting rid of a fascist regime that she had created here.

Q:* AND WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THE RAJNEESHEES IN AUSTRALIA AND AROUND THE WORLD?

A:* I have withdrawn... Rajneeshism is dead. There is no religion like that, and there are no Rajneeshees. They are individual seekers. They love me. They are my friends, not my followers. Even I have changed the name of Rajneesh Foundation International. Now it will be Rajneesh Friends International.

I don't want anybody to follow me. I simply want to share my experience if they are ready to open up. It is up to them. I don't want to impose any belief. I don't ask their faith. My teaching is based on doubt and skepticism. And for three and a half years she was telling my people, that "You have to surrender and you have to believe." She completely spoiled, so I am cleaning the house: spring cleaning.

Completely, whatever she has done, I have to undo it.

Q:* THEN YOU PROBABLY WON'T LIKE WHAT SHE SAYS ABOUT THE END OF RAJNEESHPURAM. SHE SAYS IN FACT THAT YOU PLAN TO SIT IN THAT CHAIR AND TAKE A VERY LONG RIDE, NOT IN A ROLLS ROYCE, BUT TO TAKE YOUR LIFE.

A:* She is just going more and more insane before she goes to imprisonment. You just wait. Either she will kill herself out of the very burden of all the crimes that she has done or she will have to suffer her whole life in imprisonment. Just for one bugging, five years imprisonment, and she has done so much bugging that one thousand years will not be enough. So now whatsoever she is saying is simply nonsense and meaningless, and if she has guts she should come back here. And she should face me directly rather than hiding there and telling anything that comes to her mind. Fictions won't help.

Q:* BHAGWAN, YOU ASK PEOPLE TO BE SKEPTICAL. HOW DO WE KNOW THAT YOU AREN'T IN CAHOOTS WITH SHEELA? HOW DO I KNOW THAT SOME MONTHS FROM NOW YOU WON'T BE SITTING IN A HOT TUB IN SHEELA'S CHALET IN THE BLACK FOREST?

A:* Try to find out! Be skeptical!

Q:* YOU GO BACK A LONG WAY, YOU TWO. HOW DO WE KNOW IT'S STILL NOT PART OF THE PERFORMANCE?

A:* You have to find out. If I say anything, you will be skeptical of it. Yes, I was sitting. Now be skeptical. Now doubt it!

Q:* DO YOU PLAN TO SEE SHEELA AGAIN?

A:* I never plan anything. I never bother about Sheela or anybody. All I am concerned is that she should have courage enough to say the truth rather that creating a smoke of lies and hiding whatever she has been doing for three and a half years. She tried to kill three persons. Eyewitnesses are there who saw the person injecting my physician in a public meeting, in my morning discourse.

And my physician immediately pulled his robe and showed to people: blood coming out, and the point of the needle.

(Conversation between interviewer and cameraman) Q:* DO YOU THINK, BHAGWAN, THAT THE GRAND JURY PROCESS HERE, GIVEN THE PRESSURE THAT HAS BEEN ON YOUR COMMUNITY, DO YOU THINK THAT THE GRAND JURY PROCESS WILL LAY CHARGES AGAINST SHEELA AND THE OTHERS? EXTRADITE THEM FROM SOUTHERN GERMANY?

A:* They have to, because every fact is against Sheela and her company. There is not a single fact against the commune. The commune has not done anything wrong, just a company of twenty people. And we have provided all the testimonies. When Sheela left, in her room books on poison, books on how to murder people, books on snakes, poisonous spiders ...

Q:* PRETTY FANTASTIC STUFF, ISN'T IT?

A:*... And my physician is not just an ordinary M.D. He is one of the most intelligent medical experts, and the youngest Fellow ever who has been accepted as a member of the Royal Society of Physicians in England. Very brilliant, a genius. He was four times poisoned, and all times he said it is a certain poison which is undetectable. He named the poison, but there is no way to detect it.

Other doctors said, "What we can do? Because in the blood you cannot find it, there is no sickness that you can find it. There are no symptoms."

When Sheela left, in her room the books on the poison -- that very poison is underlined. Only that one poison is underlined with the description that it is undetectable. So you can give it to anybody, there is no problem of being detected. And that poison she had given to the attorney of Jefferson County, to one of the judges of Wasco County, three of my sannyasins.

This... In her room, when the new president and my secretary, Hasya, moved, they found a underground room which nobody was aware of, with a tunnel going out. The house is fenced all around, the tunnel goes out of the fence. Even if the police is surrounding the house, it will be inside the wirings, the tunnel goes out of the wirings, reaches exactly to the airport. An airplane can wait there and you can immediately escape.

Q:* WHAT DID SHE WANT TO ESCAPE FROM? WHY DO YOU THINK SHE WAS PARANOID?

A:* Doing all those things will make anybody paranoid. If you kill people, if you poison people.... They were making small lab in which they were culturing virus for AIDS, for other diseases. Sheela has one of the persons with her, a medical expert. The idea was that anybody who is antagonistic, does not want to do anything according to them, can be made sick, can be made an AIDS victim. And what she did: two persons who had disobeyed, their blood was sent for testing and it came with positive AIDS, so they have to be removed into isolation, away from the commune.

When she left, their blood was sent again. It was negative! So it seems she has two persons with her which are homosexuals: Dipo, the person who she is married now, and Anubhavo. Both are homosexuals and both may be having AIDS. So the blood was changed. Because these two persons while they were here remained separate, isolated. They never allowed anybody even for cleaning the room. They ate in paper plates. All that shows that something was wrong with them. And their blood was sent. They were saved from AIDS and these two innocent persons were unnecessarily harassed.

Perhaps she was thinking to culture more AIDS virus and spread in the whole commune. Her whole desire was, as if without her the commune cannot live. She is absolutely wrong. The commune is far better than when she was here. The commune is far more happier, far more freer, as if a great bondage has disappeared from people's minds. And nobody is afraid of anybody.

Q:* DO YOU HAVE ANY WORRIES ON YOUR MIND?

A:* No, I don't have any mind and I don't have any worries.

Q:* HAVE YOU EVER HAD A VISION, THEN OF BEING LED IN HANDCUFFS TO JAIL YOURSELF?

A:* I... It was not a vision. It was a challenge, challenge to the American government, that "If you have guts, then arrest me with handcuffs, so with my handcuffs I can show to the whole world that America is not a democracy but a hypocrisy." A man who was in isolation and in silence, who was not coming out of his room, has burnt the Wasco County -- two hours journey from here -- has killed people, has poisoned people, has done all kinds of crime.

It was simply a challenge to the American government. I want them to understand that fight with me is not going to be easy. It is not a small question. I will fight for the Constitution of America, because I respect it more than Holy Bible. Holy Bible is just rotten, but the Constitution of America has some hope for humanity, some values. And I will fight for it against the American politicians.

Q:* WHERE WILL YOU GO? IF YOU ARE WASHED UP IN AMERICA, WHERE WILL YOU GO?

A:* I don't go anywhere. All the Americans are foreigners except red Indians. If I need a green card, they all need green cards from red Indians. They are invaders; I am not a invader. I have to fight in the Supreme Court, and tell to the Supreme Court, that "If you respect your own constitution, then the government should be handed over to the red Indians and all Americans either should go to their own countries or they should apply for green cards."

Q:* BHAGWAN, YOU WERE CERTAINLY RIGHT ABOUT ONE PROPHECY, THAT WE WOULD BE SITTING TOGETHER. YOU SAID I'D BE BACK. WILL YOU STILL BE HERE A YEAR FROM NOW?

A:* Yes. I will be here, and you will be coming again.

Q:* SEE YOU THEN.

A:* Okay.

Q:* THANK YOU.

A:* Great.

Q:* THANK YOU VERY MUCH. TO BE CONTINUED. IT REMINDS ME OF GURDJIEFF'S TITLE MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN. SOMEWHERE DOWN THE ROAD I'M SURE WE'LL MEET AGAIN.

A:* Come on again.

Q:* THANK YOU.

PRATIMA:* BHAGWAN, WHAT IS OBJECTIVE ART? IS CREATIVITY SOMEHOW RELATED WITH MEDITATION?

BHAGWAN:* Art can be divided into two parts. Ninety-nine percent of art is subjective art. Only one percent is objective art. The ninety-nine percent subjective art has no relationship with meditation. Only one percent objective art is based on meditation. The subjective art means you are pouring down your subjectivity on the canvas, your dreams, your imaginations, your fantasies, your dreams. It is a projection of your psychology in the same way it will be in poetry, in music, in all dimensions of creativity. You are not concerned with the person who is going to see your painting. You are not concerned what will happen to him when he sees your painting; that is not your concern at all. Your art is simply a kind of vomiting. It will help you, just the way vomiting helps. It takes the nausea off, it makes you cleaner, makes you feel healthier. But you have not considered what is going to happen to the person who is going to see your vomit. He will become nauseous. He may start feeling sick.

Look at the paintings of Picasso. He is a great painter, but just a subjective artist.

Looking at his paintings, you will start feeling sick, dizzy, something going berserk in your mind. You cannot go on looking at Picasso's painting long enough. You would like to get away, because the painting has not come from a silent being. It has come from a chaos. It is a by product of a nightmare. But ninety-nine percent art belongs to that category.

Objective art is just the opposite. The man has nothing to throw, he is utterly empty, absolutely clean. Out of this silence, out of this emptiness, arises love, compassion, and out of this silence a possibility for creativity. This silence, this love, this compassion, these are the qualities of meditation.

Meditation brings you to your very center, and your center is not only your center, it is the center of the whole existence. Only on the periphery we are different. As we start moving towards the center, we are one. We are part of eternity, a tremendously luminous experience of ecstasy which is beyond words, something that you can be but very difficult to express it. But a great desire arises in you to share it, because all other people around you are groping for exactly such experiences. And you have it. You know the path.

And these people are searching everywhere except within themselves -- where it is. You would like to shout in their ears. You would like to shake them and tell them, that "Open your eyes! Where are you going? Wherever you go, you go away from yourself. Come home back, and come as deep into yourself as possible."

This desire to share becomes creativity. Somebody can dance. There have been mystics -- for example, Jalaluddin Rumi -- whose teaching was not in words, whose teaching was in dance. He will dance. His disciples will be sitting by his side, and he will tell them, that "Anybody who feels like joining me can join. It is a question of feeling. If you don't feel like, it is up to you. You can simply sit and see." But when you see a man like Jalaluddin Rumi dancing, something dormant in you becomes active. In spite of yourself you find you have joined the dance.

You are already dancing before you become aware that you have joined it.

Even this experience is of tremendous value, that you have been pulled like a magnetic force. It has not been your mind decision, you have not weighed for pro and for against, to join or not to join, no. Just the beauty of Rumi's dance, his spreading energy, has taken possession of you. You are being touched. This dance is objective art.

And if you can continue -- and slowly you will become more and more unembarrassed, more and more capable -- soon you will forget the whole world.

A moment comes, the dancer disappears and only the dance remains. And then there is a meeting with the Master, the synchronicity I have been talking about again and again in different ways from different directions. They are not two.

The ice has melted. Slowly, slowly other disciples will be joining.

A famous story is about Jalaluddin Rumi. He was living in a forest monastery with five hundred disciples. Few visitors who were passing by the road just out of curiosity, that "What this fellow Jalaluddin Rumi is doing here? We have heard five hundred people are living with him, but what they go on doing inside this monastery?" They went it. They saw. They could not believe. Five hundred people dancing madly. Nobody even took any note of them. They remained there for at time being, and then they thought that these people are mad.

"Returning, we will see what happens. Perhaps we can find them sitting and then we can talk about, 'What you are doing?' This time they seem to be completely mad."

Next time when they were coming back after few months, they again went into the monastery. The five hundred people were there. Nobody was dancing, all were sitting like statutes, with closed eyes. There was a eternal silence. It was even more frightening to those people. Dancing at least there was some activity.

Now what has happened to these people? They have gone, seems to be, completely mad. Dancing in the hot sun in the desert for days -- this is the result.

But they thought, that "When we are coming again for the next trip, we will see what happens."

Next trip they came, there was only Jalaluddin Rumi. The five hundred has gone.

They were very much puzzled: "What has happened? All those people are dead?" That's what they could logically think. "First they were dancing madly, then they were sitting like statues as if not breathing at all. Perhaps they have all died. This old guy is dangerous! But now at least we can talk something to him."

They reached to him and asked him, "What has happened to five hundred people who used to dance here and then sit?" Jalaluddin said, "The work is over. They have learned what they have come to learn. Now they have gone to teach others.

Are you interested?" They said, "No. We are going for a business trip." Jalaluddin said, "You can go for a business trip later on, but this is far more important."

They said, "Just, please, forgive us. Not this time, because that dance in the hot sun -- we cannot manage." Jalaluddin said, "You need not be worried. It manages itself. You don't have to manage it." They said, "Before we leave, we want to ask, they what happens? Why they were sitting like statutes?"

Jalaluddin said, "When the dancer has disappeared, who is going to dance?

There is a momentum -- the dance continues for awhile -- then that, too, stops.

Then comes a period when one is utterly silent, just sitting, doing nothing. But the bliss of it is incomparable. So whenever you can find time, if I am alive you are always welcome."

There are in India statutes which you have just to sit silently and meditate upon.

Just look at those statutes. They have been made by meditators in such a way, in such a proportion, that just looking at the statue, the figure, the proportion, the beauty....

Everything is very calculated to create a similar kind of state within you. And just sitting silently with a statue of Buddha or Mahavira, you will find a strange feeling which you cannot find in sitting by the side of any Western sculpture.

All Western sculpture is sexual. You see the Roman sculpture: beautiful, but something in you creates sexuality. It hits your sexual center. It does not give you an uplift.

In the East the situation is totally different. Statutes are carved, but before a sculptor starts carving statues he learns meditation. before he starts playing on the flute he learns meditation. Before he starts writing poetry he learns meditation. Meditation is absolute necessity for any art, then the art will be objective.

Then just reading few lines of a haiku, a Japanese form of a small poem -- only three lines, perhaps three words -- if you silently read it, you will be surprised. It is far more explosive that any dynamite. It simply opens up doors in your being.

Basho's small haiku I have on the pond near my house. I love it so much, I wanted it to be there. So every time, coming and going.... One of the persons I have loved. Nothing much in it. "An ancient pond...." It is not an ordinary poetry.

It is very pictorial. Just visualize: "An ancient pond. A frog jumps in...." You almost see the ancient pond! You almost hear the frog, the sound of its jump:

"Plop."

And then everything is silent. The ancient pond is there, the frog has jumped in, the sound of his jumping in has created more silence than before. Just reading it is not like any other poetry that you go on reading -- another poetry, another poetry.

No, just you read it and sit silently. Visualize it. Close your eyes. See the ancient pond. See the frog. See it jumping in. See the ripples on the water. See the sound, hear the sound. And hear the silence that follows.

This is objective art.

Basho must have written it in a very meditative mood, sitting by the side of an ancient pond, watching a frog. And the frog jumps in. And suddenly Basho becomes aware of the miracle that sound is deepening the silence. The silence is more than it was before. This is objective art. By 'objective' it means the person is not simply trying to get rid of his sickness, garbage, of which he is so full of wants somehow to throw it out.

I used to know a principle. I was only a student in his college, but we became very friendly, because so many complaints were coming against me to him, that finally he thought, "This boy seems to be unique. Every day some professor comes with a complaint, and whenever I call the boy, I always find he is right.

This is such a strange thing: that all my professors prove wrong and he is always right. I cannot say that you have done anything wrong."

We become friendly, I told him, "Whether they send me or not, I will be coming at least once every day!"

He said, "I enjoy your coming, so you can come, whether they send you or not. If they send, good, if they don't send you, you come on your own. And now we are not going to discuss for what you have done and for what they have sent you.

Because I can see, we can discuss far better things. And I love your insight into things."

So I started going to the principle and then I became aware of one thing, that whenever I will go to him, he will take his earplugs off. I said, "What are you doing?"

He said, "You know, my whole life I have been tortured by all kinds of complaints, finally I decided not to hear anything. Everything is right! So I just keep earplugs. They go on saying; then I go on nodding. And they feel happy and I feel happy. But with you I really want to talk, so I have to take (them out), but don't tell it to anybody else."

I said, "This is really a great device. Everybody should use it. It prevents other people pouring their garbage in your mind. And everybody is so interested in pouring his garbage in your mind."

That I have heard -- I told the principle the story, that's why I remember it -- that a thief was caught. And the man, in whose house he was stealing, came to the court and asked the judge to forgive the thief. The judge said, "This is strange. He was trying to steal in your house. Why you want him to be released?"

He said, "In fact, he would have stolen and he would have left, but I was awake, and you know, I am a poet. So I told him, 'Sit down and listen to my poetry, otherwise I will give you to the police.' So out of fear he sat down. He returned everything; he said, 'You take everything, but please don't tell me your poetry, I am a poor thief and I don't understand poetry.'" The poet said, "It does not matter, whether you understand or not. I am enjoying telling it. And if you are going to create trouble, I am going to phone the police.

The whole night this poor man has been listening to my poetry; he has suffered enough. And then he was caught by the police. Just release him. And I hope that once in a while he should come and visit me. And no need to catch hold of any thief, because I am capable enough to catch hold of thieves and make them listen to my poetry. I write the poetry with so much effort, and nobody is there to listen to me. So only once in a while I get some audience. And this man was really very attentive. He seems to be a lover of poetry."

People are ready to throw their garbage, their advice, their wisdom, their knowledge, everybody is ready to catch hold of you and put something in your mind. You are already too much burdened. Subjective art burdens you more.

Objective art unburdens you. Subjective art should be part of psychiatric hospitals only. People suffering from mental sicknesses should be allowed painting, poetry, sculpture, anything they want. And it is going to help, it is therapeutic. It will make them healthy.

Now it is being used by few psychotherapists. Carl Gustav Jung has used painting to heal many patients, but that painting should not be allowed to be sold in the art galleries to reach to people, because if they see it, something sick is bound to radiate from it.

Subjective art is good for the artist but not for the one who looks at it, who sees it, who listens it, who reads it. It is harmful to him.

And objective art is only one percent, for the simple reason because very few people have been meditating. And out of those very few people, only few expressed their silence into artistic forms.

But my idea is that as your commune matures, as you are finished with your necessary things, your houses, your roads -- and they too can be very artistic, they can be expression of your meditation -- as you are finished with utilitarian things, I have the idea that the university should be teaching you with meditation, painting, dancing, singing, music, sculpture, poetry, every possible thing.

This commune should become a commune of creators. Unless you are a creator, you will never find real blissfulness. It is only by creating, that you become part of the great creativity of the universe.

But to be a creator, meditation is a basic necessity. Without it you can paint, but that painting has to burnt, it has not to be shown to others. It was good, it helped you unburden, but please, don't burden anybody else, don't present it to your friend, they are not your enemies. Objective art is meditative art, subjective art is mind art.

Okay, Pratima?