Chapter 28

[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]

Q:* I DREAMED I WAS HERE AT THE RANCH A WEEK AGO, AND I SLEPT OUT ON THE DESERT THAT NIGHT, AND I LOOKED AT THE STARS AND THEY LOOKED TO ME LIKE THE TIPS ENDS OF ROOTS, AND THE SPACE WAS BLACK SOIL. I KNEW THAT IT WAS A STORY I HAD TOLD MYSELF.

DO STORIES LIKE THESE HELP US TO UNDERSTAND OURSELVES, OR ARE THEY A FICTION THAT WE HAVE TO SEE PAST?

ANSWER:* The ways of the mind are very subtle. Its dreams, its fantasies, its fictions, they all indicate to something which is real; and because they indicate towards the real, they themselves attain a certain reality of their own.

That's why dreams became so important for psychoanalysis. The whole movement of psychoanalysis is based on the interpretation of dreams. If rightly interpreted, a dream is no more a dream, it is a way of the unconscious to say something to your conscious. But the unconscious knows no language, it speaks in pictures. It is just like a small children; they can understand pictures, hence their books are full of pictures -- colored pictures, big pictures. As they become older, the pictures become smaller; as they become scholars in the universities, the pictures disappear, only words remain.

The same is true about the unconscious. The unconscious is still a child. The conscious is trained, has started speaking the language, has become able to rationalize, to follow logic. But the unconscious has no language, no logic; it has only pictures, dreams, visions. They are more significant than what you think, because your thinking is superficial, it does not go very deep. Most of it is borrowed from the books, from other people, from the world around. Your thinking, in fact, is not yours.

But your dreams are certainly yours, they are not borrowed. They indicate more authentically your being, your longing. But you have forgotten the language as far as the conscious mind is concerned, you have forgotten the language, the symbology, so you simply drop them out of your mind as nothing but a dream.

But that is not being intelligent.

The dream should be taken more seriously than you take your thoughts. It should be looked from all angles, dimensions. If you dream yourself that you have a house in this commune, perhaps deep down within you there is something which is searching the same truth these people are searching here.

Perhaps you also want to know your self, you don't want to remain ignorant about your own being, you would like to enter a mystery school where you can learn ways and methods, techniques, how to explore inwards.

Q:* I FEEL THAT I'M IN A MYSTERY SCHOOL NOW.

A:* You are. And your dream is significant. It may turn out to be your future, it may become your very search. Because ordinarily people are living but their life is not deep enough, it has no roots, it is very superficial. They are doing things as if they are taking part in a drama. They are repeating words which they are supposed to repeat which are not coming from their own sources.

The whole society tries every child to become a hypocrite. Not that they want the child to become a hypocrite -- their intentions are very good, but this is the result of their good intentions. They want to make you something, without inquiring whether that is your potential or not. You may have the potential of being a musician, and they may force you to become a mathematician because that is more paying, more respectable; but you will remain your whole life shallow. You will never feel your being in what you are doing. You will do it but not with your totality, intensity, with a love that transforms the very quality of the work. If you had been a musician, perhaps you would not be so respected, perhaps you may not have so much comfortable life; perhaps you may be just a hobo on the street, but just playing on your guitar.

Q:* (INAUDIBLE) A:* You could have felt your deepest part dancing, your very being in a dance.

And to me, to find the way where your potential becomes actual, when you for the first time feel that you're doing what you are meant to do by existence itself....

Q:* I'VE ALREADY FELT THAT.

A:* You have not.

Q:* THAT'S WHY I'M HERE.

A:* That's right. Here is every possibility to inquire into your self. It is not an ideology that I preach, it is not a religion that I impose. On the contrary, my whole effort is to deprogram you. So that you become again an innocent child the way you had come into the world, without any prejudice, without any idea, just innocent. And once that innocence is there, existence opens all its mysteries to you.

So be here for few days, or whenever you can come, come here and remain here for a few days. Mix with my people, who are all seekers, who are all meditators, who are doing things that they wanted to do, and who are rejoicing life in its totality. Just being with them, the very aroma, the milieu, the atmosphere, something may catch fire in you. It always happens.

You have read my words, but words are dead. You have to read me, and to read me there is only one way: to be here for some time, and to sit silently and just let your presence and my presence melt and merge. They have their own way, their own language, which is beyond mind; but once you understand that in silence, in somebody's presence, something blossoms in you, starts growing in you, then you have found a friend on the path.

I'm not a saviour, I'm not a prophet. I'm just a friend. And anybody who wants to walk few steps with me on the path is welcome, and whenever he wants to depart he's absolutely free. There is no bondage, no condition. It is an unconditional togetherness.

My whole commune is not any organization. It is just pure togetherness without any conditions from any side. Anybody can join it, anybody can move out of it.

Everybody is totally free to have his own way.

But being with five thousand seekers immensely helps. Alone the path is really very lonely, alone it is very dark, alone there are many moments when one is discouraged. With other seekers ahead of you, behind of you, by the side of you, you know there is no fear. People have passed this stage. There come nights -- dark nights of the soul, but you know that others have passed through these dark nights, they have reached; and seeing the sunrise, there is no reason it cannot happen to you. It has to happen to you because you have as much right, just by being alive and being part of existence, as anybody else. Nobody is special in existence, everybody is just with the same right.

The differences are created because few people use their right and few people don't use their right.

Q:* I SEE MY WHOLE LIFE AS A PROCESS OF LEARNING. I'VE TAKEN MY TEACHINGS FROM MANY DIFFERENT PLACES; YOUR BOOKS AND TAPES HAVE BEEN A LARGE SOURCE OF THAT. AND THAT'S WHAT I WANT MY WORK TO BE.

A:* I understand, but I would like to say to you that whatever you have learned from the books is just the beginning, just the tip of the iceberg. Don't be contented with it. If it creates more discontent, more thirst, then you are on the right path.

The more you learn, the more you want to learn, because the more you learn the more you see how much is there to learn. The more you learn, the more you see how much you are ignorant. The thirst disappears only when you have arrived to the ultimate end beyond which there is nothing. And that is the point I call enlightenment.

Q:* IT SOUNDS BORING.

A:* It sounds; it is not.

Q:* WHAT'S INTERESTING ABOUT IT?

A:* You think that excitement is interesting. You think that learning new things every day is interesting. It is really your boredom. You get bored with one thing so you want to move to another thing. For a time being the other thing is new and you feel excited.

Q:* EVERY DAY A NEW SUN RISES.

A:* You will get bored. What I am saying is that what you call learning and excitement is nothing but postponing boredom. You learn something; while you are learning, you are excited, it is opening new ways, new feelings, new spaces, but soon they are all old, you want more, you want to learn more. You are fed up with this, you are bored. That's why you think that if there comes a point where there is no more left to learn you will be bored. But you don't know that when there is no more anything left to be learned, there is no more anybody left to learn either. The learning and the learner are not two things; they disappear together. Who is going to be bored? You have to be there to be bored. You are not there. Just a pure silence with no feeling of I, with no sense of ego, with nobody present, but just a pure presence. There is nothing to learn, there is nothing to be bored, and there is nothing to be excited.

This state is the ultimate state of peace, bliss.

Q:* ONCE YOU'RE ENLIGHTENED, COULDN'T YOU LEARN SOMETHING NEW LIKE RIDING A BICYCLE OR DRIVING A HELICOPTER. ISN'T THERE SOMETHING LEFT TO BE LEARNED?

A:* What I am talking about has nothing to do with bicycles and helicopters. And what I am talking about, if you experience it, then neither helicopters have any excitement nor rockets have any excitement -- they are all toys for idiots to play with.

And you cannot be an idiot any more. You are no more, and you cannot go back either. There is no way ahead, there is no way back. Listening about this state, one may feel -- it sounds that one may feel utterly stuck, because one goes on thinking that one is because you have not known a moment when existence is and you are not. But before that, you can go on learning.

And it is not easy to reach to that ultimate point, so don't be worried.

Q:* I'M NOT. I DON'T THINK I'M VERY CLOSE (INAUDIBLE).

A:* We just go on learning bicycles, helicopters....

Q:* (INAUDIBLE) A:* There is no harm. And that point is not so easy to reach, but some day one has to take that challenge too. That is the greatest challenge, as if a dew drop slipping from a lotus leaf into the ocean. In one sense the dew drop disappears; in another sense it becomes the very ocean, it becomes oceanic. When the dew drop is slipping from the lotus leaf, there is a natural hesitation, that "I am going to disappear into this vast ocean. There is still time, if I can hold." But once the dew drop has melted into the ocean, merged, there is tremendous joy because now the other side of the story opens up: now the dew drop is no more there, but an infinite ocean.

Man disappears at one point. His separation from existence melts away at one point, but that is not a death, that is really the greatest orgasmic experience possible -- because one becomes one with the whole. And when one is one with the whole, where you can grow? What can you learn? Where can you go?

Q:* IT SEEMS LIKE NEW THINGS ARE ALWAYS HAPPENING.

A:* New things are always happening, but not to me. To me the last thing has happened. On the outside new things are always happening. You have come to see me for the first time, this is a new thing. But as far as I'm concerned, the greatest and the last thing has happened thirty years before; since then nothing has happened. Millions of new things have been happening all around, but at the very center of the cyclone nothing has happened. And I'm talking about the center of the cyclone. It is absolutely silent, absolutely still, no movement, no sound; but a tremendous ecstasy and a tremendous benediction.

But there is no point in being worried about it. You just go on searching and learning. When some day it happens, please remember me.

Q:* YOU'VE HEARD OF THE GAIA HYPOTHESIS, HOW THE EARTH IS ONE WHOLE SYSTEM, ONE SELF-REGULATING SYSTEM. AND THERE'S A MAN NAMED PETER RUSSELL WHO WROTE A BOOK CALLED THE GLOBAL BRAIN. AND HE SAYS THAT WHAT'S BEING CREATED IN HUMANITY IS A PLANETARY BRAIN FOR EARTH. COULD YOU COMMENT ON THIS TERMS OF GURDJIEFF'S CONCEPT OF ORGANIC LIFE ON THE EARTH BEING FOOD FOR THE MOON.

A:* I agree with Gurdjieff on many points, but I absolutely disagree on that point -- that the earth and the human beings are food for the moon. That is sheer nonsense.

But Gurdjieff was putting many non-sensical ideas in his books for a certain purpose. He will put what is true mixed with many things which are untrue, and that was a device that unless you go through Gurdjieff's methods of crystallization you will never be able to know what is right in his books and what is wrong in his books. Those books are not ordinary books. Those books are devices.

This theory is simply nonsense. But if you have never gone through his methods of crystallizing yourself -- which is one of the arduous methods ever evolved, and very few people have been able even to come close to it, you are going to be confused reading his books. They were written specifically for disciples, written in such a way that nobody who has attained to a certain state can make any sense out of them.

(Tape side B) That theory of man being food for the moon is just one of those non-sensical things that he was putting knowingly into the system.

Q:* THE IDEA OF THE THIN LAYER OF ORGANIC LIFE ON THE EARTH, RECEIVING AND TRANSMITTING ENERGY, WAS THAT SOMETHING ELSE THAT....

A:* That is something different, because moon has no life -- not even a thin layer of any energy. Moon is simply dead.

This planet has a bio-sphere, and that bio-sphere is certainly getting energies from other bio-spheres. In the whole universe there are at least 50,000 planets who have life on them, and they are continuously connected with life rays, supporting each other.

The idea of eight centers are available and the nineteenth is missing has some significance. The nineteenth is missing because of man. Man has not been able to evolve superconsciousness which can become the receptor. Those rays are coming from other planets, but we don't have a receiving station here. The nineteenth system can be created, but it can be created only by people who reach to the superconsciousness.

Just as Sigmund Freud discovered that below the conscious mind there is subconscious mind, below the subconscious mind there is unconscious mind, and then Carl Gustav Jung discovered that below the conscious -- the unconscious mind there is collective unconscious mind....

I am not interested in that kind of work. Otherwise, anybody who is interested I can suggest there is one thing more below collective conscious -- unconscious mind, and that is cosmic unconscious mind.

These are under-steps. Exactly same steps are above the conscious mind. In the same way as there is subconscious mind below the conscious mind, there is superconscious mind above the conscious mind. Then there are higher stages, equal in number as they are under the conscious mind, until the cosmic conscious mind -- of which I was talking to you.... When you reach to the cosmic conscious mind, then there is nothing to learn, nowhere to go, nothing grows.

Then everything is just still and utterly peaceful.

But if we can create just one layer above the conscious mind, that nineteenth system will not be missing. Those scientists cannot do anything about it.

That superconscious mind can be created by meditation very easily. And if at least 200 people -- just 200 people around the earth have created the superconscious mind, the nineteenth missing system will be available. Only that much quantity of superconscious mind will be enough to receive from 50,000 planets energies -- which are still coming, but we don't have a receiving center for them.

Q:* IS THERE ANY NECESSITY FOR MASSES OF PEOPLE TO DEVELOP THIS SUPERCONSCIOUSNESS?

A:* It will transform the whole life on the earth. It will change the whole ugliness that exists, the violence that exists. With the superconscious mind, you cannot manage to have a third world war. With the superconscious mind, so many crimes that man is committing will simply stop. Just that energy has to be available here, just the presence of that energy. It will be something like reign of a new kind of energy because the receivers are available, and that will change not only those 200 people -- they will be changed absolutely, but it will change the whole humanity, it's outlook, it's ways, it's insight into things. Right now it is so retarded. The average mental age of human beings are only thirteen years.

This is so insulting -- that a man of ninety years has only a mental age of thirteen- year-old boy; the body goes on growing old, the mind remains stuck.

With the superconscious energy reigning on the earth the mind will start growing, just as with the rain everything becomes green and starts growing. The mind needs a certain kind of nourishment which is not available to it.

So those people are right. Our bio-sphere has eighteen systems. Those systems are also not functioning well because man has disturbed he whole ecology. If the nineteenth system starts working, the man will stop disturbing ecology; it will put it back into harmony. It will be conscious enough what he is doing, and what has to be done and what has not to be done.

But it has nothing to do with Gurdjieff's idea of moon and.... That is simply....

Gurdjieff was a strange type of master, really a great master, but his ways were his ways, inimitable. He will write books sitting in small restaurants in Paris where customers are going and coming, and people are talking and gossiping, and everything kind of thing is going on, and he will be writing his great treatises: ALL AND EVERYTHING, MEETINGS WITH REMARKABLE MEN.

His disciples used to ask, "Why you choose such a place? People go to a silent place if they want to write something significant. You go to a restaurant." And then every night, whatever he has written, one disciple will read it, and Gurdjieff will sit silently and ask the other disciples, "Have you understood?" If they said YES then he has to write it again. Unless they said NO, he will have to write that chapter again and again. One book took twenty years to write. First the place he will choose to write was crazy; second, his disciples have to be in a state that they cannot understand it -- because if they can understand it then it is not worth, then it is not going to help anybody. It needs to be changed. And he will go on changing. Finally, when the book was published, one-hundred pages were opened -- that was the preface, and nine-hundred pages were not opened, with a note that, "Read the preface, the pages are open. If you still want to read on, you will have to open the pages. If you don't want to read on, you can return the book and your money you can get back. But don't cut the pages beyond the preface."

But even to read one-hundred pages is something of an impossibility. He will write sentences which will run half page, one page, sometimes two pages, and he will create his own words. He never believed in any grammar. He never knew any contemporary language. Sometimes his one word will be so big that it will fill the whole line. Even to read it is difficult. Hundred pages, just ten pages were enough and people returned the book.

The disciples were asking him that, "You worked twenty years on this book, and what is the gain out of it? So much labor. And we read every night for twenty years." Gurdjieff said, "There will come some time, some people, who will understand, but they will be the people who have superconsciousness. This book is written for them. Just consciousness will not help. Howsoever cultured, educated, sophisticated, it is not going to help."

Q:* CAN MASS MEDIUMS LIKE TELEVISION HELP TO SPREAD THE SUPERCONSCIOUS?

A:* It can help in a way. It can teach meditation methods. It can give instructions, for the audience to follow the instructions and do it before the television. If people follow and do it, it is exactly the same, as here a professor in the university of meditation will instruct.

Simple methods can be given, simple instructions how you have to do it, step by step, mass media can be used. It depends whether people want to attain to superconsciousness, or they want to listen to advertisements or they want to see some silly fiction, drama; it depends on them. But effort can be made. I can give you the teachers. If you want, they can instruct the whole thing. And there is no need for the teacher every day; just once you have taped it, you can play the tape every morning or every night -- those who are interested can do it. Few people certainly will get interested.

But superconsciousness is something which is absolutely needed; otherwise this earth is going to die. Eighteen systems alone are not enough; that nineteenth system is absolutely necessary. These eighteen systems were enough till the arrival of man. With the arrival of man, evolution of the man, now there is danger. Man has capacities which can destroy the whole ecology, he has destroyed it. He can make nuclear weapons, he has made them; he's ready to destroy the whole earth. Unless something within him changes so diametrically, so radically, that his whole value system goes through an evolution, there is no future for this earth.

My work here is exactly that: to create the nineteenth center system. But every hindrance will be created by the people of lower consciousness for the simple reason that whatever they have created -- the world, the society, the nations, the races, the religion -- all will disappear. Once superconsciousness descends, the whole super-structure of our society will go into a total change. So all the vested interests are bound to prevent any revolution of that kind.

Q:* IS THERE A WAY THAT MASS MEDIUM, LIKE TELEVISION, CAN BE USED TO DECONDITION PEOPLE -- ASIDE FROM JUST SHOWING THE METHODS, CAN THE MEDIUM ITSELF BE USED TO ALLOW PEOPLE TO BECOME OPEN ENOUGH TO DROP THE OLD WAYS?

A:* That is very difficult. That is very difficult, because I have been doing it for thirty years. That means you will have to tell them the truth about everything, which they believe.

For example, you will have to tell them that your holy Bible is a pornographic book. I don't think your owners will be able to tell it or allow it to do it, or your listeners will not burn your station. It is not possible.

You will have to say exactly what it is. All holy books are pornographic. The Bible is the worst.

Nobody reads; that's the tr -- problem. Who reads Bible? At least Christians don't read; just mad people like me. Otherwise nobody reads. Every house has the Bible; it simply gathers dust. And even if they read, they read with a conditioned mind; they will not be able to figure it out.

So I have told my sannyasins to find out all the passages which are pornographic, and then we will publish a glossy pictorial Bible.... With quotations of Bible, but showing it in real pictures what the Bible says. Then perhaps people will read it the way they read PLAYBOY.

Q:* YOU MAY HAVE TO BUY YOUR OWN STATION TO PUT THAT OUT.

A:* That, too, is there; the idea is there.

Q:* I HAVE AN IDEA FOR A TV STATION. I WOULD LIKE TO HAVE ONE OF THE CAMERAS THAT'S IN OUTER SPACE -- ONE OF THE SATELLITES IN OUTER SPACE, I'D LIKE TO HAVE A LIVE VIDEO CAMERA SO THAT YOU COULD JUST TUNE TO THAT CHANNEL AND SEE THE EARTH FLOATING IN SPACE ANY TIME YOU FELT LIKE IT.

A:* Mm mmm. That's good.

Q:* YOU CAN SHOW YOUR MOVIE ON MY STATION.

A:* Okay. Good.

We have been thinking of having a satellite of our own so that whatever I want to say can be immediately brought (inaudible) all over the world.

Q:* IT'S POSSIBLE NOW FOR EVERY SINGLE PERSON TO HEAR THAT.

A:* Yes, it is possible. So we are thinking. And I'm all for everything, latest technology, latest media. I'm not old-fashioned. So it will be possible soon. But only that can be done from here; you will not be able to do if your station is owned by somebody else, they will not allow you to tell the truth.

Q:* CAN THE TRUTH BE PRESENTED IN A FASHION LIKE A TROJAN HORSE?

A:* You can present it, but nobody will understand it. The question is to present it so naked that nobody can miss; one has to understand it. It has to come so clear and loud that you cannot avoid it, rationalize it, explain it away. It has to be just like a hammer hit on your head; then only people can be deprogrammed.

Q:* THE ATTENTION SPAN OF PEOPLE NOW IS SO SHORT YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE TO DO IN THIRTY SECONDS OR SO.

A:* Yes, I can. Okay?

INTERVIEW WITH MA YOGA PRATIMA QUESTION:* BHAGWAN, WHY HAVE ALL THE RELIGIONS FAILED IN CHANGING THE WORLD?

ANSWER:* The first thing, they failed in changing the world because they never wanted to change it. They wanted it to remain as it is. It was their need. They could exist only in this world -- with poverty, with sickness, with exploitation, with misery, with crime; all these are basically necessities for all those religions to exist. They may have talked about changing the world, but they never meant it.

On the contrary, they gave all kinds of rationalizations for the world as it is.

Christianity, for example, says to people that, "You are born in sin, and suffering is your fate; misery is just the outcome of your sin." And they really convinced millions of people for something very illogical. Adam and Eve disobeyed God, according to Christianity six-thousand years before, and you are suffering in misery because they disobeyed. There seems to be no logic in it. If they disobeyed -- they had suffered; why their children, generation after generation, should go on suffering?

You are born of sin because you are born of sex. To avoid this, they had to invent the story that Jesus is born of a virgin mother so that he is not born in sin. Just one lie leads to another lie. They don't want your suffering, your poverty, your misery, your anguish, to disappear, because these are the things which bring you to the church, to the priest. People who are without any anguish, without any fear, any greed, who don't care about hell and heaven, don't go to the churches.

My people don't care about going to the churches, going to a priest to confess.

They are not committing any sin, why they should confess? If they are making love to a woman or a man, it is not sin; it is the most beautiful thing on the earth.

Hinduism says -- Jainism, Buddhism, all religions born in India tell to the poor, who are starving, dying, and live their whole life in utter misery, but without revolting against the socialist structure, because the religions -- the three religions which are predominant on the continent are agreed on one point only, and that is the law of karma. About everything else they differ, they contradict each other, they write against each other, they are enemies; but on one point they are not. This is something strange. They all say that you are suffering in this life because in the past life you committed some grave sins, some evil acts. That, too, is as illogical as Christianity.

If I put my hand into the fire, it will be burned right now; it won't wait for my next life. That somebody will have to explain me in the next life when suddenly my hand burns, and I don't see any fire any where, then some great theologian is to explain that, "You had put your hand in the fire in the past life; now, reap the consequences." But why so much delay? It seems, in these religions, the divine bureaucracy is even far bigger than any bureaucracy any where, it takes so long.

And for thousands of years, people have believed in them. Their minds are conditioned from the very childhood. Naturally these religions will not like things to change. Things are perfectly good. Religions are getting good number of customers. The whole humanity is divided. Somebody is Christian, somebody is Jew, somebody is Hindu, somebody is Mohammedan, somebody is Buddhist.

Those who are not, they have created their own religion, communism. It differs not in any way. It has its own mecca, Kremlin; it has its own trinity, Marx, Angels, Lenin; it has its only holy book, Das Kapital. It has every ingredient of a religion. You cannot change anything. Now, everything that Marx and Angels wrote are out of date, most of them history has proved wrong. Still, the communist goes on believing in them. The strangest thing is that Marx never had thought that Russia or China will become Communist, he was thinking America will be the first to become communist. According to his logic it seems perfectly right. A capitalist country can become communist. Russia was not capitalist yet; it was a feudalist country, still far backward than capitalism; and according to Marx, communism can be born only after capitalism reaches to its peak. And in Russia there was no capitalism at all, and Russia became communist. Still, DAS KAPITAL is continued and worshipped.

I have been talking to the president of Indian Communist Party, that, "You should at least change those sentences which say that in Russia, China -- countries like these -- communism is impossible, because they are not even capitalist yet. Communism will come into developed capitalist countries like America." He said to me, "Nothing can be changed in DAS KAPITAL ; to us it is as holy as to Christians the holy Bible is holy. Science may have proved that the earth is round, it is a globe; but Bible still goes on saying it is flat. It cannot be changed."

So, every religion -- communism included -- are in favor of a particular society.

For example, communism went through a revolution, but the revolution has not changed anything. It simply changed labels. There used to be feudals, czars and royal family, and the ordinary common masses; now there are communist leaders and the common masses. The same group of people has been ruling for sixty years continuously. And worse are the ways of the communists than czars would ever have implied. And the poor are poor, nothing has changed for them.

Revolution has happened, and nothing has changed.

All the promises that were given by and by have been withdrawn. First promise was that within ten years time there will be no dictatorial government, because once the riches are being distributed the function of dictatorship is finished. They have been distributed long time before, sixty years before; but the dictatorship does not move. Dictatorship has become permanent.

Before the revolution they were saying after revolution, marriage should be dissolved because marriage, according to Marx, came with private property.

Before private property there were no marriages. There were tribes; people lived together in a tribe, they all shared everything; they shared women also. The children had no idea who is their father. So remember, uncle is the older word than father. All people who could be suspected the father were called uncle ; there was no way to decide who was the father. But then private property came in. The powerful people, stronger people -- bullies -- started having things in their possession. Soon they became concerned when they die what will happen to their property. They needed inheritors. Marriage came into existence for an economic reason, for no religious reason, so that you have your own children they can inherit the property and you can die in peace that your own son is going to have all that you have gathered in your life.

Naturally, Marx said after communism comes in and property is no more private, marriage has to disappear, its function is finished. And before revolution they were saying it, that marriage will be finished after revolution. And for three years they tried, for three years after, 1917 to 1920, they tried to destroy marriage, but they found that if they destroy marriage the family will be destroyed, and if the family is gone the nation will be in danger -- because family is the unit of the nation. And they went back, they dropped the idea of dissolving marriage, seeing the implications immediately marriage was restored.

Now, Soviet Russia is the most orthodox about marriage. About divorce it is very difficult; it takes almost three years to get a divorce. Marriage you can get immediately, right now enter the registrar's office and get married. But for divorce, three years -- and that is in a communist country, who have been talking and their scriptures saying that there will be no marriage.

Soon they found that the society is needed in a certain way; otherwise, their own existence is in difficulty.

But this has been the experience of all the religions. Communists found that after revolution other religions were more perceptive; they understood it and never went into any revolution.

So all religions are against change, because their vested interests are with the status quo. I am all for change, and I would like my sannyasins to be always for change. The new has also the right to be experimented with, and the old has been used and found useless. Give chance to the new; At the most it can fail. The old has already failed. We will find something else. How long we can fail, if we go on changing and don't get stuck with a system that is continuously failing, if we are ready to change, sooner or later we are going to find a system that works.

That's the simple way of science, of finding any truth -- go on experimenting.

One experiment fails, another experiment fails, but sooner or later you stumble upon something and you have found the right key.

So always choose the new. It will keep you fresh, young, it will keep you alive, it will keep you flowing. Otherwise the old becomes heavy, a burden, a corpse, and then it stinks. All the societies are stinking with corpses of all kinds.

It is a simple thing. Just the individual has to understand that all that is old is not gold. In fact, all that is old is never gold. If you are in search of gold, try the new, the fresh, the young. Move always into the unknown and the unknowable.

And what is there to lose? The very adventure into the unknown is so nourishing, so rejuvenating, that whether you find something at the end or not does not matter. Every moment of the adventure is of tremendous beauty and benediction.

Okay, Pratima.