Chapter 13

[NOTE: This discourse will be in the book "India Coming Back Home", which has not been published, as of August 1992.]

SINCE YOU WERE OBSERVING SILENCE DURING THE PERIOD OF THE OREGON COMMUNE, HOW DID YOU PARTICIPATE IN THE BUILDING OF THE COMMUNE? AND WAS A COMMUNE OF THIS TYPE YOUR NECESSITY, OR THE NECESSITY OF YOUR DISCIPLES, OR THE NECESSITY OF THE SOCIETY AT LARGE?

First, I was not participating at all. This will be a little difficult to understand -- that things are possible without participating in them.

For example, in the morning the sun rises and the birds start singing. The sun is not a participant: it is not in any way doing anything to the birds, it is not provoking them to sing. The flowers open up -- the sun is not a participant.

Scientists had to find a new word for this, and that word is synchronicity. It means that the very presence, not the participation, of the sun makes it possible for the birds to sing, for the flowers to blossom.

So I will say I was not participating at all; it was a synchronicity. I was present in my silence -- more so -- and my presence helped my people to create the commune. I had discussed the commune for many years, I had given the whole vision, but when it was being built I did not take any active part in it. I was just a presence.

So I cannot use the word participation, but I can use the word synchronicity. And that word is in many ways significant, it opens many new doors, many new meanings.

It is possible just to look in somebody's eyes without saying anything -- he has not heard anything, and yet something has transpired. I have not said, he has not heard, but something has happened.

In ancient India we used to call it satsang. The master would simply be present, - - people would sit by his side. Something out of his silence would start changing their hearts, opening their beings. We have known it and we have used it in many ways. Just like satsang, is the word darshan. Somebody goes to see a master.... Now, what is the point of seeing a master?

The West up to now has been almost incapable of understanding what it means, just to go and see Gautam Buddha. Unless he speaks, says something, does something, unless there is some communication, it is pointless just to see him -- you can see his picture, you can see his statue. But now they are realizing their mistake. The picture is dead, the statue is dead. Gautam Buddha is a living presence of tremendous power, of great love, of immense silence, and the East was absolutely right that there is no need for any communication in words.

Just to see this man is a transforming experience, as if you have taken a shower.

You cannot see what is radiating from the man; it is not visible to the physical eyes. And you cannot hear the music of the man, because it is not available to the physical ears. But it is there and if you are receptive, open, available, humble enough, nonresistant, then miracles are possible.

One man, a great philosopher, came to Buddha and asked a series of questions.

All the questions were significant, and he wanted Buddha to answer them. He had been to many philosophers and he had argued, but nobody had been able to satisfy him. Buddha listened to his questions and instead of answering him, asked him, "To how many people have you asked these questions?"

He said, "To hundreds -- to anyone who is known as a master, as a saint, as a sage. I have traveled all over the country and no one has been able to satisfy me.

My questions remain exactly the same as they were the day I started the journey."

Buddha said, "Then listen to me. If I answer them you will not be satisfied; I will also be added to those hundreds of people. But if you really want the answers then you will have to do one thing: for two years simply sit silently by my side and just be. After two years I will ask you to repeat your questions."

Before the man could say anything one old disciple, Mahakashyapa, started laughing loudly.

The stranger asked, "Why is he laughing?"

Mahakashyapa said, "I am laughing because the same thing happened with me. I had come with questions and he told me to sit silently for two years. I sat silently for two years by his side -- all my questions disappeared, all my thoughts disappeared. I became completely a new man. After two years he asked me about the questions and I said, 'Forgive me, I don't have any questions. Your silence has silenced them all. I don't have any answer either, but I am immensely fulfilled.' I laughed because if you want to have the answers, this is the time; insist on them now. But if you want satisfaction then wait for two years -- but you won't get any answers. The questions will disappear."

And this was the usual practice of Buddha, to tell people to sit silently. For thousands of years in the East people have been going to masters, to sages, just to see them. That is the meaning of darshan. Any materialist is bound to ask, "What can you gain just by seeing a man?"

You can gain immensely. It depends on two things: whether the man has something that radiates, whether the center of his being is absolutely silent, whether he has achieved himself, whether he has come home. And second, are you a little bit receptive to unknown, invisible radiations?

I was silent for three and a half years in the commune. I was emphatically silent at that time because I never wanted to interfere with what people were doing. I never wanted to actually participate. I had given the vision to them; now I wanted to give them my energy. Vision they had, energy they needed -- and that energy is not something visible, not something measurable.

So I had no participation, but there was a synchronicity. They were joined with me in my silence. I was part of them in my silence. Whatever they were doing, in a very subtle way they were my hands, they were my eyes, and I was all over without ever being physically present anywhere.

The second thing you ask: "Was it your necessity?"

I don't have any need, any necessity. As far as I am concerned, I am fulfilled. If this moment I die, I will die with absolute contentment. Nothing is incomplete. I will not ask even for a single second to complete something.

It was certainly for my disciples, the people who have loved me, who have gone a long way with me. They needed a place, an energy field rather; five thousand meditators together... it makes a difference.

In science they have a parallel. They say that at a certain point quantitative change becomes qualitative change. For example, up to ninety-nine degrees the water remains water. One degree more, one hundred degrees, and the water changes; it evaporates. The addition was a quantity, but the change is qualitative.

One man can meditate, but if five people meditate together, there is a qualitative strength. And if five thousand people are meditating together, there is an aroma of energy. It is just like a great current which one alone may not be able to cross, but which five thousand people together can cross easily.

It was for my sannyasins, and for those in the greater society who were interested. There are millions of people in the world who are frustrated, who are living in misery, who have everything they need and yet something is missing.

Their misery is not of hunger, it is not of poverty; their misery is something spiritual. So I wanted this commune to become a model -- and we have communes around the world in other countries on the same model, functioning in the same way.

So for anybody who feels some spiritual thirst, there is a possibility for him to come to the commune. Just the way universities function they exist for everybody; but if you are not interested then they are not for you. If you are interested, if you have a thirst for knowledge, the university is available. These communes were spiritual universities for anybody who was feeling a gap in his life and was becoming aware that material things alone are not going to fill it; that something more, something from the above, something higher is needed.

These communes could become for him universities where he could learn meditation, learn how to uncondition his mind, learn how to make his love a purity and come to his own innermost center.

So it was not my necessity, but it was certainly the necessity of my sannyasins and it was certainly an open door for anybody who was seeking, searching.

MR. RAJIV GANDHI HAS INVITED THE WHOLE NATION TO CONSIDER AND MEDITATE UPON THE QUESTION OF REFORMS IN THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. DO YOU HAVE SOME SUGGESTIONS TO OFFER IN THIS REGARD, OR WILL YOU WAIT FOR A FORMAL INVITATION FROM THE GOVERNMENT BEFORE YOU ANSWER?

No formal invitation is needed. In fact I have already been speaking on it. The government has been deaf.

It is just stupid of Rajiv Gandhi to ask the people of the country what reforms they think are needed in the educational system. In a country where more than eighty percent of the people are uneducated, and the ones who are educated are educated just to become clerks, the people cannot suggest anything. If Rajiv Gandhi wants really to change the system then he should call a conference of the leading people who have been involved in education.

This education system was started by the British government to create clerks; it was never established to create intelligent people. No government wants intelligent people. Every government wants people to remain retarded, because then it is easier to exploit them, easier to rule them, easier to avoid any revolution, and easier for very ordinary people to become leaders. The British government managed very beautifully. For twenty-five years, almost one third of his life, a person is processed in such a way that he turns out either to be a station master, a head clerk, or a postmaster. These were the needs of the government.

It is something to be understood: that all the gold medallists in the universities, the people who come first in their subjects disappear in the world -- you never hear of them again. They should make some mark. In the university they get the gold medals, but in life they become head clerks.

The whole system is wrong. So it is not a question of reforming it, it is a question of revolutionizing it. A real educational system will take care of the whole man; this education system takes care only of the mind. The whole man means the body, the mind, the heart and the soul. Unless education takes care of all these four in a balanced way, it cannot create an authentic man, a whole man. For example, the university does nothing about the body. Much needs to be done with the body because everything else is based on it. It needs not only exercises, yoga, aikido and other systems of training, but also a systematic, scientific approach about food -- because what you eat, you become.

No vegetarian has been able to achieve a single Nobel prize. It is a clear-cut condemnation of vegetarianism. Why do all the Nobel prizes go to non- vegetarians? -- because vegetarian food does not contain those proteins which create intelligence. And unless we provide those proteins, intelligence cannot grow. The body is a very delicate phenomenon and it needs a very well balanced diet.

In my commune, I have added non-fertilized eggs to the vegetarian food. I am a vegetarian and I would like the whole world to become vegetarian -- but not at the cost of risking your intelligence. Non-fertilized eggs fulfill the need completely; in fact, better than non-vegetarian food. We should make it a point that non-vegetarian food is not allowed in the universities because to kill, to do violence just for food, is so ugly and so inhuman that you cannot expect these people to behave lovingly, sensitively, humanly. Non-vegetarian food is one of the basic causes of the whole society being almost in a continuous fight. It makes you insensitive, it makes you hard, it makes you a stone. And it creates things in you -- anger, violence -- which can be easily avoided.

Taking care of the body means the body should be given adequate exercise.

Students are sitting in the universities the whole day and in the night they have to do their homework and they have to go to the movies. They become just sitting idiots. The body, by nature, is not created just to go on sitting. Students should be walking, running, swimming, climbing trees, climbing mountains. The bodies should be given a chance to achieve their natural potential. But the body is a neglected part; nobody is interested in it. We live in the body, but nobody thinks about what we are eating.

Now scientists have discovered that there are people in the Soviet Union who have passed the age of one hundred and fifty; there are a few who have reached the age of one hundred and eighty and are still working as young people -- old age has not come yet. They have studied what they are eating, what is the reason that they are living so long, and they have found a few things which these people -- who are really poor people -- have in their diet. Yoghurt is one of the essential things. The other thing is something like what in Gujarat they call khakhra.

These two things seem to be giving them longevity. Now it is such a simple thing to add khakhra and yoghurt to everybody's diet and give him a long life.

Certainly when you are wasting twenty-five years in education you should add at least twenty-five years to a person's life. He should live at least one hundred years.

Scientists say that as far as the body is concerned it seems to have the capacity to go on renewing itself for three hundred years. So if people are dying at seventy, something is wrong with us. Nothing is wrong with the body, we are just giving it the wrong food, no exercise or the wrong exercise.

So my first concern is the body. Experts in the body, in diet, should be consulted.

Taste cannot be the decisive thing; taste can be added to anything. But the basic thing should be the science of the body.

Secondly, don't ask the people! What can the people do? That's why I call these politicians cunning. They don't want to do anything about the educational system. Whenever you do not want to do anything, ask the people what reforms they want. What do they know about education, or the educational system, or about the body, or about the mind, or about the heart? What do they know? So nobody will be coming out with any suggestions. And the politician feels perfectly good that he was ready to change, but nobody wants any change. It seems that people are perfectly satisfied. That is not right. The people are not satisfied, but they are not experts.

I would like Rajiv Gandhi to ask the experts. Call a conference first of the people who know about the body, people who have been practicing yoga for years.

Learn from their experience. Every university should have some yoga class which is required for everybody.

Ask people in Japan who know about aikido -- a totally different kind of discipline concerned with the body -- or ju jitsu. Ask them, because they have managed to create a body as solid as steel. Ask all over the world, because in every country there is a certain system which has been followed for centuries and has accumulated a wisdom. There is no need to remain confined to one country; wisdom from everywhere should be the base of the revolution in education. Ask people who have been working with diets, who have found what kind of food makes people healthier.

Ask why forty percent of Nobel prizes go to Jews. They are not that big a population in the world; it is absolutely out of proportion. Something is strange!

The Jews say -- and now it is being accepted more and more even by Christians -- that it is because of their circumcision: circumcision helps the intelligence.

The Jewish child is circumcised shortly after he is born. Medical science has accepted it as hygienic. It is less probable for a circumcised man to have diseases of the genitalia. But Jews have been saying that when the child is born, to circumcise the child, to cut the thin small skin, hits his intelligence center. This is an ancient tradition with the Jews. There is a possibility, and it should be explored, because their intelligence proves that there is something different in Jews. It is possible -- I have been thinking about it -- because the centers of sex are not in the genitalia, they are in the head. There are seven hundred centers in the head. The sex center is just next to the intelligence center -- so close, almost touching. Naturally, when a small child's skin is cut he gets a shock. Perhaps that shock gives a certain strength to the intelligence center. This should be researched. If it is so, then it is not a question of whether you are a Jew; everybody should be circumcised. No university should accept anybody who is not circumcised.

Just as we have to think about the body and its tremendous impact on the whole personality of man, we also have to think about mind. Why, after twenty-five years wasted in education, are you creating pygmies? Something is wrong, and my understanding is -- because I have been a teacher in the university -- that the whole teaching is based on belief. Belief is a poison. It does not allow your intelligence to grow. Belief should be simply removed and replaced by doubt, because it is doubt, it is skepticism, that sharpens your intelligence.

I was expelled from many colleges simply because I was not ready to believe anything unless I was convinced intellectually. Just because you are saying it...

You may be a great professor, you may be a very respected professor -- all that is granted -- but anything you say you have to support by the best of argumentation. You should not ask that it be accepted on belief.

I was expelled from one college because the professor threatened the principal that he would resign if I was not expelled. He said that for eight months I had not allowed him to teach anything.

The principal called me and asked, "Why are you creating so much disturbance?"

I said, "I have not created any disturbance. I am simply asking that he should give an argument for whatever he says; otherwise he should not say it. He says that his concern is to finish the course. My concern is to sharpen my intelligence; I am not concerned with his course. What am I going to do with his course? And he has not been able to give any argument even for simple things that he says.

For example, he says that Aristotle was the father of logic in the West. It is an assumed fact, repeated at almost all the universities around the world.

"I asked him, `Do you know that Aristotle wrote that women have fewer teeth than men? And are you aware that Aristotle had two wives? He could have asked either of his wives to just open her mouth and count her teeth. Men and women have the same number of teeth. I cannot accept as a man of logic a man who has two wives and writes that women have fewer teeth than men! I cannot accept him as the father of Western logic. He is simply superstitious -- the woman has to be less in everything.' So in Greece it was an accepted fact that women have fewer teeth. Neither any woman nor any man ever counted. I asked him, `You have read Aristotle's life and it did not disturb you?'

"He said, `It did not. I simply read his statement and the fact that he had two wives.'

"I said, `Did you not bother to count your wife's teeth? A wife is not such a difficult thing to find.' This man is not logical."

I said to the principal, "Tell me, who is creating trouble? He should accept that Aristotle is not logical, he is superstitious. Once it is agreed he can go on further.

If he does not accept it, every day I am going to stand there and ask, `What about Aristotle?'" And now science has proved that the whole Aristotelian logic is wrong. They have developed a new system of logic, the same way as they have created a new system of geometry. For centuries they have been teaching and nobody has bothered to argue, for the simple reason that our whole approach is to believe.

The professor knows and we do not know. Why waste time? -- he knows and we accept.

The universities should be more intelligent, professors should give more emphasis to discussion, to doubt, and they should destroy completely any textbook belief system. Those books should be removed; then you would see an explosion of intelligence.

But to doubt seems to be doing something evil, and to have faith seems to be very spiritual and very religious. Just the reverse is the case. To have faith is evil; to doubt is natural. Go on doubting until you come to an indubitable fact.

So universities have to change their whole attitude about doubt and belief. And it is not important that you pass the examination; those five examination questions can be answered by a person who knows nothing else. I am against examinations because they create a totally wrong approach. The student becomes only interested in passing the examination. So rather than reading the book, he looks for a shorter version or a key. The professor has answered questions which are probable examination questions, so the students read just these and nothing else. Their intelligence remains retarded. It is the examination system that creates a wrong attitude.

My idea is that students should be given credit by each professor, every day, just the way they take attendance. And the credit should be given according to the intelligence shown by the student.

Our whole system depends on how much you can memorize, not on intelligence.

But memory is not something great; a computer can do it. And soon there will be no need of any memory; you can just have a small computer in your pocket and any answer you need will be immediately available. Why waste time and life and torture people about memory when memory has nothing to do with intelligence?

Right now, our education system is based on memory. I would like it to be based on intelligence. Every professor should give credits every day, not just at the end of the year, because that creates trouble. Students don't take any interest for the whole year; just for one month at the end they are torturing themselves trying to learn everything at once. I would like them to get credits every day, and if somebody is intelligent enough to get enough credit in six months to pass to another class, why make him waste six months more in the same class? The moment he gets the required credits he moves into the next class. So nobody passes, nobody fails; people simply move. Somebody may take more than twelve months before passing into the next class.

Then the university becomes a moving phenomenon. People are moving according to their intelligence, and there are no fixed barriers. This is good because with barriers fixed, a very strange thing happens: the most intelligent student has to keep pace with the idiot. The idiot and the intelligent person each have twelve months in the class; the lowest denominator in the class is determining the pace for everybody. It is not right; it is sheer violence against intelligence. If the idiot wants to stay in the class two or three years, it is up to him. But it is my experience that whatever courses universities are teaching for one year are not worth more than two months. Any intelligent person can pass them in two months. Those other ten months are sheer wastage.

And in those ten months students will do all kinds of harm. They will strike and they will rape and they will burn the college and they will beat the teachers, because they have energy and energy needs some expression. You are just keeping those people closed in small cells, in small classes. They don't have anything to do, because they know that if they study just one month or two months, at the end they will pass.

Instead of memory, intelligence. It is very significant that people of very good memory are not the people of very good intelligence. Memory functions mechanically and intelligence functions non-mechanically. People of great intelligence are not necessarily of very good memory. For example, Albert Einstein would -- forget to get out of his bathtub. Six hours he would remain in his bathtub, unless his wife created great trouble and knocked on the door: "It is too much, six hours! What are you doing there?"

He said, "Six hours have passed? I was thinking that it is my usual, normal bath."

He was the greatest mathematician the world has known. But one day he got on a bus and gave some money. The conductor gave him back the change.

He counted the change and said to the conductor, "This is not right. You are cheating me!"

The conductor counted again and said, "It is perfectly right, I am not cheating you. It seems you don't know how to count."

He remembers in his memoirs that, "He was right. When I went home I told my wife, and she said, `He was right, you were wrong. But how did you miss?'" He said, "Because in my mind I was concerned with faraway stars and I was not there counting."

So it is possible that memory and intelligence are different phenomena. And it has always happened that people of great memory have never been of great intelligence, and people of very great intelligence have not been of great memory.

The mind should be moved from belief to doubt, to skepticism, to intelligence. So examinations should be removed and the students should be mobile, depending on credits the professors give every day. Nobody fails, nobody passes; it is only a question of time: two months sooner or two months later. This will also help to destroy the inferiority complex that you create in people who fail, and the superiority complex in the people who come out on top. Both are dangerous, both are sicknesses. There is no question of anybody being superior or anybody being inferior.

The heart is absolutely neglected just as the body is. No university bothers that a man will be dry, juiceless if his heart is not functioning. They are just concerned with the mind. Students should be taught music, dance, painting, and these things should not be optional. What is necessary for the whole development of man should not be optional. They should be taught poetry -- whether they are students of science or commerce or art does not matter. Poetry is not only for poets. Every scientist should know poetry, because poetry helps your heart to open to experiences which are not available from mathematics. Music takes you to heights which geography cannot do.

And finally the soul, which also is absolutely forgotten, should be taken care of.

For the soul there is a simple thing: every student has to meditate one hour each day. There should be a professor of meditation teaching students how to meditate. And if a student goes to the university six years, in six years, just one hour every day devoted to meditation and he will become a man of immense silence and peace and beauty and love. I call this an absolute necessity.

My final suggestion is that the government should call four conferences, one for each part of the human personality. Experts should suggest what can be done; the masses cannot suggest. If you are sincere in a desire to change, then ask the experts. There are thousands of meditators in the world, there are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation. Let all those people be invited. Find out the most simple method of meditation and let it be introduced in all the universities.

And do the same in the other areas. We can really make the university a place of immense spiritual revolution. And a new man can come out of the university.

Right now, a man just comes out seeking employment. This is a condemnation of our whole system.