Chapter 11

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

Q: BHAGWAN, AFTER THE FAILURE OF RAJNEESHPURAM COMMUNE, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE FUTURE OF THE COMMUNES?

A: First, it was not a failure. Do you think murdering Socrates by poison was a failure of Socrates and his philosophy. In fact, that was the ultimate victory of the man. He proved that a single man and his truth is more powerful than the whole society with all its powers, riches, population, armies. They could do only one thing to this man: they could kill him. But by killing the man the truth is not killed. In fact, on the contrary, by killing Socrates they have made his truth immortal. Or do you think the crucifixion of Jesus was a failure of Jesus? If Jesus was not crucified perhaps there would have been no Christianity. It is his crucifixion which brings his glory to the highest peak.

So I do not consider that destroying the commune in America is a failure. It is a success. We have succeeded in doing many things, we have succeeded to prove that the biggest world power is also afraid of a small commune which has no power except love.

It means love is more powerful than power itself. We have succeeded to prove that a small commune of five thousand people can destroy the sleep of the bureaucrats and the politicians, of the greatest power in the world in the whole history of man. What was their fear? Why our small commune became such a heart attack to them?

The reason was that we were successful with our very limited means and they are unsuccessful with their unlimited sources. And to leave us alone was impossible for them because the comparison between us and the American government was arising in the people's mind, that if these people can succeed in transforming a desert into an oasis, if these people don't have a single beggar, nobody unemployed, no crime committed in four years, no murder, no rape, no suicide, nobody has gone mad, then why it cannot happen on a larger scale.

When you have all the powers to do? And these people have nothing except their intelligence and their labor.

Fourthly, it proved something of tremendous importance, not only for America but for the whole history of man -- past and future too. We had no government, five thousand people have existed for the first time for four years without any government. It is not a small phenomenon. This was the first anarchist commune. Anarchists have been talking about it but nobody has been able to materialize it into reality. And we were not consciously trying to make an anarchist society; it was simply a by-product, we had not thought about it, it was just a later recognition -- that we had no government and yet no crime, not a single baby was born in four years. Without forcing people to use birth control methods, just trusting their intelligence was enough. So we have proved if you trust the individual, his intelligence, his integrity, and if you respect him you can expect miracles from him.

Secondly, which seems almost an impossibility, communist and anarchists have never been able to agree on any point because anarchist says `no government, the government should be dissolved immediately, the government is the sole cause of all crime, all that is inhuman, all wars, bloodshed, all kinds of dirty politics.'

And the communists say `that we hope sometime in future there will be a time when there will be no government, but for the time being to remove government will not improve things, things will go from bad to worse.' And perhaps they are right. Even with the governments the crime is there and it goes on growing.

The human mind seems not to change at all. With all the control, all the courts, all the punishments, the human mind seems to be very stubborn. If all these controls are removed the society will fall into a barbarious state.

So communists say `somewhere far away in the future' -- which cannot be predicted unless the whole world becomes communist and there is no fear of outside interference, the government cannot be dissolved. On the contrary, the government has to be made stronger to enforce equality amongst man because man has become accustomed of being unequal for so long that it is not easy for him to drop the habit. And nobody wants to be equal to anybody, everybody wants to be higher and superior. To destroy this tendency of being superior and higher a very strict government is needed. That's why they say democracy cannot bring communism, it is a very loose government. Only a dictatorship of the proletariat.

So that is the first step for communists to establish a dictatorship of the proletariat. How anarchists and communists can meet? Their first step is no government, not even democratic government; and communist's first step is a very strong, almost a military rule over the country so that we can destroy all the old habits which are clinging to human mind.

Anarchists, like Bakunin, Tolstoy and communists like Karl Marx and Lenin have been constantly arguing. They think themselves enemies.

I went it into detail because what happened in the commune was a miracle.

There was no government and a very higher quality of communism became possible, without any dictatorship. There was no need to enforce anything. All that we had done we have stopped using money inside commune. You can donate to the commune but you cannot use money for any exchange of goods inside the commune. So you maybe having millions of dollars and I may not be having a single dollar but you are not rich in the commune and I am not poor.

Your millions of dollars are useless. Their use is if you can use them, if you cannot use them, whether they exist or not makes no difference. So inside the commune, just stopping money to be used and commune taking over the responsibility to fulfill everybody's needs: medical, educational, nutritional, for clothes, for food, for housing, for vehicles, for everything.

I was not aware that this is going to happen and that's why I say life is such a mystery and so unpredictable and so wonderful that I saw communism and anarchism existing simultaneously. No government, nobody is rich, nobody is poor. This is such a great phenomenon that even if it happened only for four years and it was crucified but no crucifixion has every succeeded.

You crucify someone only when you feel your impotence against it. The commune has been crucified in America, now it will spread all over the world.

Its crucifixion is not a failure; it is a sure sign of success. We have succeeded to prove that we can change every problem that humanity faces.

All those problems are created by human beings. On the one hand they go on creating them and by the other hand they go on trying to find some solution for them. It is such a stupid way the world has lived that it has not even seen that who is creating the problem. Why not cut the roots?

A woman last night was asking me, a very intelligent woman and rare in the sense that she was Mohammedan. She was asking me, "What to do with your mother-in-laws? It is such a conflict and there seems to be no way out."

I said, "First you create the problem and then you start looking for an answer. In the first place, marriage is unnecessary, with the disappearance of marriage all in-laws will disappear automatically -- cut the root. Secondly, the moment a man is able to live with a woman he needs to be left alone with the woman -- it is something psychological... he has been in the mother's womb for nine months, she has brought up the boy, educated him, made him capable and up to now she has been the only woman in his life. And remember, whether she is a mother or not, first she is a woman and it is intolerable for her that in stranger woman comes in the home who has done nothing for you and suddenly she becomes more important to you than your own mother. And for twenty-five years she has been taking care of you. You have forgotten all. That for nights she was waking and sitting by your side because you were sick, that to make you educated she was working, she was trying somehow to provide all your necessities and never let you feel that you are poor. Suddenly a strange woman comes in the home, and she is no more of any importance.

And the wife cannot be made responsible for it because she has married you not your mother. She owes nothing to your mother. And she had her own dreams how to live. They do not coincide with your mother, the conflict starts and then you try to somehow patch up... from one place it breaks up, at another place. If the man takes the side of the mother which he feels as a duty then his woman is going to make a hell for him for twenty-four hours, for a small thing -- that is too much, he cannot pay for duty that much hell.

If he takes the side of the woman, the mother is simply anger which he has never seen. Now there is a great competition and between two women a poor unexperienced man is being crushed and you want a solution. There is no need -- why create the problem in the first place? The moment a person gets married he is now capable of having his own house, his own job, his own work... it should be seen that he is not to live with the old family. Now he has brought a new person into his life. That new person is not going to fit with the old structure.

And this is so simple. But it is still not fundamental. The fundamental is why marriage should exist at all? Two persons are in love -- they can live together.

Love is something, it may be there today, it may not be there tomorrow. What you are going to do when love is not there tomorrow? You will have to pretend.

And the worst sin in the whole life of man is when he pretends love, because love is the highest quality of life and you are pretending it. And if you become accustomed of pretending love, perhaps you may forget how to find the authentic quality of love. The pretension may become your reality and that has become the reality of millions of people around the world. They never experience love, it is always pretension. Pretending to be loving to the mother because she is mother, pretending to be respectful to the father because he is the father, pretending to be loving to the wife because she is the wife, pretending to be loving to the children because they are your children -- all pretensions.

Surrounded by pretensions you cannot have real growth, you cannot realize your potential.

The experience of the commune in America has been of immense importance.

Time does not matter -- four years are enough to prove. What can happen for four years can happen for four hundred years. And what can happen for five thousand people can happen for fifty thousand people.

All men are the same. So don't say that the experiment has failed. No... the experiment has succeeded, America has failed to recognize it. America has proved it is not intelligent enough, not sensitive enough to realize a tremendous phenomenon of anarchy and communism meeting together without any conflict.

As far as I am concerned we have succeeded, we have made the mark and it will be repeated in many lands, in many times, with different people. And it is going to spread.

In other ways also it has been immensely successful. For the first time my existence, my philosophy, my people became world famous. For the first time the world has to recognize that there exists a different kind of man of whom governments are afraid, religions are afraid. Sannyas has become now a household word.

It does not matter that one commune is no more there. We have learned much from that commune.

My second commune should be on an independent island so no question of any government interfering and no question of any government giving you visa or time how long you can stay or not. It will be our home and anybody can stay as long as he wants to stay. We are not going to be part of any country, we are going to be on our own. And we are going to make a far better and superior commune than they have destroyed. It will become a model for all other communes around the world.

Now for the first time you have entered with this destruction of the commune into the eyes of the whole world. Up to now you were a small movement, by the side of the way. Now we are in the middle of the road and everybody has to take a position about us, either for us or against us -- both are welcome. We are not going to leave a single person who is indifferent.

Q: BHAGWAN, WHAT IS YOUR MESSAGE FOR YOUR INDIAN SANNYASIS AND LOVERS WHO ARE WORRIED ABOUT UNCERTAINTY OF YOUR STAYING IN THIS COUNTRY? WHAT THEY CAN DO OR THEY SHOULD DO?

A: One thing: that life is always uncertain. The very idea of certainty creates trouble. Not only in this matter but about other matters also.

My message to the sannyasins here and elsewhere is that we should learn to live with uncertainty because certainty does not exist, you cannot do about it anything. It is simply unnatural, non-existential. You are breathing today, tomorrow you may not be breathing. What certainty is there? I am here today, tomorrow I may not be here.

Uncertainty is the principle that life follows but we are cowardly and we want to make things certain. We are afraid of the unknown so we cling to anything that seems to be certain. And because of this cowardliness, fear and clinging with anything that appears us to be certain, the whole humanity has got into immense trouble because only phoney things are certain.

The plastic rose is certain: it is there, it will be there tomorrow too. In fact scientists say it will be very difficult to destroy plastic. All that bottles, containers, bags which are made of plastic which we go on throwing to the earth... the earth is finding it difficult because it cannot absorb it. They become a blockage in its recycling. Plastic is more permanent than your God.

The real flower is bound to be uncertain. Now the choice is yours. The real flower will be alive, the real flower will have a joy, the real flower will have a fragrance, the real flower will dance in the wind, in the rain, in the sun... but you have to remember that because it is real by the evening it will be gone. And there is nothing wrong in it. Why things go on remaining always? They should go on moving so new flowers, new things, new phenomena becomes possible.

Just think of one thing. If all your ancestors have not died and it will not be a small number and if Darwin is right then to live in that house with all your ancestors, which will be man and half-man and apes and all kinds of animals up to the fish. It will be a zoo and you will either go mad or you will commit suicide. It is good that they have died, it is good that life goes on changing, creating place for the new to arise.

So my message to my sannyasins is: never be worried about uncertainty. Instead enjoy it, it is excitement, it is -- if you are alert -- can become ecstasy.

My being here, if it is certain, you will start me taking for granted. But if it is uncertain, tomorrow I may be gone. You cannot take me for granted. If you want to see me, today is the day. You cannot postpone it for tomorrow.

If you want to live my philosophy, today is the day.

You cannot deceive yourself that tomorrow I will live it... because tomorrow is not in your hands and it may never come.

Uncertainty is beautiful, certainty is dead.

Only corpses are certain, living people are bound to be uncertain.

This has created a great trouble for my people because they can never be certain what I will say tomorrow, they would like me to stop somewhere and say to them that this is the full stop and now you can quote me like a parrot, without any fear that I may contradict you. But this is not possible.

You will be surprised that how things are. My enemies want that there should be a lock on my tongue, that my lips should be sewn together and they will be very happy with me. I won't be a trouble to them. But in a very subtle way the people who love me they also want the same, without knowing that that's what they are wanting. They want me to say exactly what is my philosophy, like a Christian catechism, so you can believe in it.

I don't allow you to believe in me because you always remain in a suspicion.

Tomorrow I may say something which is not consistent with it. But my own approach is that life is never consistent with itself -- that's why it grows.

(Tape side B) If a tree is consistent it may not grow beyond the roots, it will remain consistent with the roots... it is not consistent, it becomes something else which are not roots, it becomes a trunk.

If it remains consistent with the trunk then it will not have any branches. They are not consistent with the trunk. If it remains consistent with the branches it may not have foliage because what relationship is there between leafs and the branch? It may never grow flowers. What relationship is there between flowers and the leafs. It may not come to fruition because the fruits are as far away from the roots as you can conceive. You cannot say they are consistent.

But deep inside the same juice is flowing which is in the roots, which is in the trunk, which in the leaves, which is in the flowers, which is in the fruit... it is the same juice. But to see that juice you need some insight. Otherwise you will see only inconsistencies everywhere.

So let my people know that `learn to love uncertainty, learn to respect inconsistency' because that inconsistency is only in your eyes, because you cannot see deep enough. Deep enough there is a juice which is the same expressing itself in different forms.

And I am not going to leave my friends ever in a certainty, while I am alive at least. To the last breath of mine I will go on being inconsistent and I would like my people also to be the same. Because the consistent people become fanatics. It is the consistent people who have been a curse to humanity.

I want my people to be flexible, not consistent.

Flowing with the life where it goes.

Wherever I am, I am theirs.

And why think only of India because I don't believe in any political boundaries.

This whole earth is ours, this whole universe is ours. So wherever I am it does not matter. I am with you, my love is with you, my message will go on pouring on you....

You will not be missing anything whether I am here or far away. Perhaps if I am here you may miss, because this is my experience....

I was in Bombay for four years. A couple lived just upstairs on top of my head and four years they thought of coming to me and always postponed that `we can go anytime.'

The day I left Bombay, you will be surprised, they left Bombay. They came to Poona to take sannyas the same evening. But I asked, that "I recognize you, seeing in the lift, on the steps... you were living in the same place where I was living."

The said, "We were living but we went on postponing that you are here any day.

But now you are not there. Although we were not your sannyasins, although we were not even acquainted with you, your presence has become something that we cannot live there any more in the house. We have left, we have come to live here in Poona as your sannyasins."

In Oregon, hundreds of Indians came who had never come to Poona and amongst these hundreds of Indians were people who were so poor that they could have never dreamt of travelling so far to America. It was beyond their conception. They sold their houses, they sold their land, risking their whole life because what they will do when they are back, but they said, "Whatever... but at least -- we are old -- and one time we want to see Bhagwan. We missed in Poona, we missed in Bombay, when it was so easy. Now we cannot miss."

Human mind functions in very bizarre ways.

I am here; that is not necessarily a help to the sannyasins in this country. Just their mind will take it for granted.

I am somewhere else then they cannot take me for granted. And it is good that they don't take me for granted, on any level.

And this way I am teaching them how to live joyously with uncertainty, how to live joyously with an inconsistent existence.

Whatever I am doing or whatever is happening around me is part, essential part, of my teaching.

Q: WHAT ARE THE MAJOR HINDRANCES IN INNER GROWTH OF A MEDITATOR, AND HOW HE OR SHE CAN OVERCOME THOSE OBSTACLES ON THE WAY?

A: There are not many hindrances but only few. One is a repressed mind because whatever you have repressed, whenever you will sit silent to meditate, that repressed idea, the repressed energy will be the first to overflow you and your mind. If it is sex, meditation will be forgotten and you will be having a pornographic session.

So first thing is: drop repressions -- which is very simple because they are not natural, they have been told to you... that sex is sin. It is not. Is is nature, and if nature is sin then I don't think what can be virtue.

In fact, going against nature is sin.

Just a simple understanding that whatever you are, existence has made you this way.

You have to accept yourself in totality.

This acceptance will remove the hindrance that can come from repression.

Second thing that comes as a hindrance to the meditator is the idea that have been impressed on his mind about god because that's how the moment you use the word meditation immediately a Christian asks, "On what?" A Hindu asks, "On what?"

Meditation needs an object. All these religions have been teaching just sheer nonsense. Meditation simply means that there are no objects in the mind and you are simply left alone with your consciousness, a mirror reflecting nothing.

So if you are a Hindu you must be carrying in the unconscious some idea of God, Krishna, Rama, or some other idea. So the moment you close your eyes meditation means to meditate upon something. Immediately you start meditating on Krishna or Christ and you have missed. Those Krishnas and those Christs are hindrances.

So you have to remember that meditation is not focusing your mind on something, it is emptying your mind of everything -- your Gods included.

And coming to a state where you can say that both my hands are full of nothingness.

That flowering of nothingness is the highest experience of life.

The third thing that can be a hindrance and is a hindrance is to think in terms of meditation as if you have to do meditation in the morning, twenty minutes, half an hour in the afternoon or in the night... just a small fraction of time and the remaining time you have to remain the way you are. That's what all the religions are doing. One hour meditation is enough.

But one hour meditation and twenty-three hours of non-meditation you cannot conceive how you will be able to win in entering into a meditative consciousness.

What you gain in one hour is wasted in twenty-three hours. Again you start from the scratch.

Every day you will do it, every life you will do it, and you will remain the same.

So to me, meditation has to be something more like breathing. Not that you sit one hour....

I'm not against sitting -- what I am saying is: that meditation should be something that goes with you the whole day just like a shadow, a peace, a silence, a relaxedness, working you are totally into it. So totally that there is no energy left for mind to spin thoughts. And you will be surprised that your work, whatever it is, digging the ground or carrying the water from the well, or anything, has turned into a meditation.

Slowly slowly each act of your life should turn into a meditative act. Then there is a possibility to attain to enlightenment. Then you can sit also because that too is an act, but you are not specifically identifying sitting with meditation -- that too is a part. Walking you meditate, working you meditate, sometimes sitting silently you meditate, sometimes lying on your bed you meditate... meditation should become your constant companion.

And this meditation that can become constant companion is a very simple thing, I call it witnessing.

Just go on witnessing whatsoever is happening. Walking you witness, sitting you witness, eating you witness yourself eating, and you will be surprised that the more you witness things the better you can do them because you are non-tense, their quality changes.

You will also note that the more meditative you become every gesture of yours becomes soft, non-violent, has a grace in it. And not only you will notice it, others will start noticing it.

Somebody was asking me that, "Now you have allowed even people who want to take sannyas, if they don't want to wear red clothes, mala, it is perfectly okay.

But how they will be recognized?"

I said, "Now the recognition will be more subtler. Now they will be recognized by their meditation and if they are really meditating, they cannot deceive anybody."

Even non-meditators in the marketplace who have nothing to do with meditation, who have never heard even the name meditation, will see that something has changed. The way they walk, the way they talk, there is a certain grace and a certain silence surrounding them and a certain peace. People will wait for you because you will become a nourishment.

You must have known in your life there are people who are avoided because to be with them feels as if they are sucking you, as if they are pulling your energy and leaving you empty. And after they have left you feel weak, you feel robbed.

Something just the opposite happens with the meditator. Being with the meditator you will feel nourished. You would like to meet the person. Once in a while just to be with him.

One of my professors, Dr S.K. Saxena, he was the head of the department of Philosophy and I was his student. But he won't allow me to live in the hostels and it was a little embarrassing for me, for the simple reason because he was a drunkard, gambler, a very nice man and has never lived with his family... his family was living in Delhi, because he could not tolerate anybody.

And I feel embarrassed because he will take me to his house and then he will not drink, just out of respect and love for me. And I knew that it will be too difficult for him, he is an old man and he is not just occasional drunkard, he is a drunkard, he needs every day otherwise he cannot live.

So I told him that, "I can come with the condition that you will not change anything in your life because of me. You will have to continue whatever you do...

if you want to drink, you drink, just the way, as if I am not there."

He said, "That is the difficulty. I take you there because when you are there I don't need the drink. You are a nourishment to me. When you are in my house I feel my house has become your home otherwise I am just living in a house. I have never had a home. My wife is there, my children are there, but somehow that atmosphere never happened that becomes immediately possible the moment you enter into my house.

"You are sleeping into another room, I am sleeping into another room but I sleep so deeply when you are in my room, and without drinking. So don't think that I am making any obligation on you to take you from the hostel to my bungalow, which is more comfortable in every possible way... no. You are making an obligation on me. I feel so nourished."

He said to me, that "When you are there I don't eat so much as I eat every day and my doctor goes on telling me: `not to eat too much, you are old, you have diabetes, you are a drunkard. That drinking is killing you, that drinking is making your diabetes worse and you go on eating and you love sweets and you love delicious food.' But when you are there, simply my appetite is not there, I feel full. What the doctor has not been able to do in years, you have not even told me."

In fact, I used to tell him, that "Doctor you should eat something. Only I am eating and you are just sitting there."

He said, "I know, but there is no appetite and I am feeling very good."

Not only you will start feeling changes, others will start feeling changes. All that is to be remembered is a simple word: witnessing.

Q: HOW TO BALANCE THE INNER AND OUTER WORLDS? HOW TO BECOME A CHARVAKA?

A: There is no need to balance, they are balanced.

Just the religions have created the split. They have told you that your body is separate, your soul is separate, that the world is matter, God is spirit.... All these ideas have created a schizophrenic state. Otherwise you are already functioning together.

Your body, your mind, your soul -- all are functioning together, there is no problem in it. Just those ideas you have to get rid of, they are rubbish.

Existence is one, the body is as much spiritual as the soul is material. The body is the visible soul and the soul is the invisible matter. But it is the same energy.

Condensed it becomes matter, and now modern physics has proved it beyond doubt that atoms can become energy, vast energy. In a small atom so much energy. So energy and matter are no more separate in physics.

Now they are not talking of separation. Matter is simply very condensed energy, that's why it looks solid. And energy is... it is just like you see ice, a solid block of ice. It can melt and can become water, it is no more solid, it is the same thing, it can be heated up and it can become vapors. For a moment you will see them and then they become invisible.

All these three states of ice, water and vapor are not three different things; it is one thing, one energy manifesting in different ways.

So it is not a question of how to try because if you are trying that means you have accepted the division already and now you who are the soul and the body who is the CHARVAK, the Zorba, has to be forced. No, just drop the divisions. Live simply -- then eating is spiritual, then having a bath is spiritual, then making love is spiritual, then whatever you do your everything is involved in it: your body, your mind, your soul.

The society will be creating disturbance because they cannot conceive that eating can be spiritual, but that's what charvaka said: `Eat, drink and be merry!'

But nobody has understood the poor man. He is one of the most misunderstood men in India. He is saying "make an ordinary thing like eating a spiritual rejoicing."

And the same is true about every action that you are doing. Don't reject anything with condemnation; try to find out something good out of it.

I was in jail in America... the first jail there were six inmates in my cell. They were very happy because they were seeing me on the television every day and they were just waiting... and the nurses told me, that "They have went to the department to get good clothes and they had taken bath; and somehow they have heard that you have allergy so they have not used any soap that smells, and they have never been so clean and they have made everything as beautiful as possible in a jail and they are just waiting for you."

And they were really happy people. After one hour when we were introduced to each other and I said, that "I have not slept the whole night so let me sleep."

They said, "You can sleep. We will not create any disturbance." And for one hour they did not even talk to each other. And after I woke up they asked me, that "There is only one problem: we feel very bad to ask you, that in this jail there is nothing to do, either you see television or you sleep, eat, see the television, sleep, this is all that you have to do. No work... so we go on playing cards. And we were worried that would you like and allow us to play cards."

I said, "There is no harm. In fact, I will join. I don't know the rules. You will have to teach me. And I don't know how many days I have to lay here so this is good teaching, you can teach me."

They said, "Really? You mean it? A spiritual person can play cards?"

I said, "Cards have nothing unspiritual in them and you can play so attentively, so meditatively, that playing cards can become a meditation."

They said, "We never thought about it."

I joined them. They were very much troubled that I am joining.

They said, "Just don't do it for our sake."

I said, "Not I, your sake... I am also here. I don't know how many days these people are going to keep me and playing cards will be beautiful and you teach me because they will change me from one jail to another jail, so I will know something."

So they said, "We will teach you all the tricks, the great tricks -- that will be good."

They reported to the sheriff that, "We had thought that spirituality is something in the clouds, that is not true. This man can play cards, can learn tricks and we are so happy that you have chosen us to be with him."

And when I left they were all crying and weeping. And I said, "There is no need to cry and weep. If you want I may come again. Just a slight crime I can commit and they will put me back here, there is no problem in it, don't be worried."

"No," they said, "no, we don't want you to be back here. Your people must be waiting there. We are thinking that just in three days you became so much part of us that we are crying for you, what will be happening to your people who have been living with you for years?"

And this is from criminals. And I came to know that those criminals are far more human than your politicians and your bureaucrats and more truthful and more sincere -- to be with them was a joy.

Your question finished or still there is one? Okay.