Chapter 14

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

THE LAST FEW YEARS I HAVE OFTEN THOUGHT OF TAKING SANNYAS, BUT I AM AFRAID. WHY?

It is not only your question; there are millions of people who are in the same position.

The fear is very fundamental. To be initiated into sannyas means dropping so many things you have loved, liked, and become identified with. For example, a Mohammedan, a Hindu, a Christian -- the first fear is what will happen to their Christianity, to their Hinduism?

My sannyas simply means that you drop all the conditionings that have been imposed upon you after you were born -- because nobody is born a Hindu, a Christian, a Buddhist. Every child is just a human being, but there are vested interests all around who impinge on the child, trespass his privacy, start conditioning him, continually emphasize systems of belief. By the time he is able to think, those systems of belief have gone so deep that they have almost become his blood, his bones, his marrow. Now he cannot think about Christianity as an objective thing; he thinks as a Christian, as a Hindu, and that is not thinking. To think as a Christian means you have already accepted a certain prejudice. Your mind is not unprejudiced, not open, not available to the new facts that may arise in the inquiry.

Sannyas makes people afraid. Psychologically it will take away all their toys that they think are very valuable but which are simply rubbish. Unless a truth is known by you, experienced by you, unless you are an eye-witness, it is not a truth. It is only a toy, and it is better to destroy it because it is hindering the way to truth.

So this psychological fear is there, and then there are social fears. You live in society, you work in society, and the people, the crowd, never want anybody to be different from them. The different person means a stranger; he does not belong to them. They will not accept him, they will try in every way to crush him, destroy him.

So when you become a sannyasin in society you are taking a risk, you are declaring, "I am an individual, I am not only a cog in the wheel. I am not just part of the crowd; I am myself." This creates the fear that you are alone in a vast crowd of people, and one starts wondering how so many people can be wrong.

One Catholic leaves the Catholic fold. There are six hundred million Catholics in the world. How can six hundred million Catholics be wrong? And am I right against such a vast majority? We have been told, particularly by people with a very wrong idea of democracy, that wherever the majority is, truth is. The minority, just by being the minority, loses its truth. But in the real existential world truth is always individual, it has nothing to do with majority or minority.

Those who have found, have found alone, not as a crowd, not as a company, not as a church.

So these are the fears that go on deep into the unconscious, but the urge to become a sannyasin is far more important than all these fears. One thing is certain: wherever you are, you are not content. Whatever you are, you cannot say that you have achieved the meaning of your life. Whatever you are doing may be giving you a means of living but it is not giving you life itself.

So there are fears and there is that constant urge to seek and to search. And I hope that the fears will not be the winners, because anybody who lives out of fears, lives not; he is already dead. Fear is part of death, not of life. Risk, adventure, going into the unknown, is what life means.

So try to understand your fears. And remember one thing: don't support them, they are your enemies. Support the urge that is still alive in you, make it aflame so that it can burn all those fears and you can move into seeking.

Sannyas is nothing but a name for becoming an individual seeker -- declaring that Buddha may have attained the truth, but that is not my truth; Mahavira may have attained the truth, but that is not my truth. If somebody else has eaten the food that does not mean that I am nourished; I am still hungry.

Millions of people have found the truth, but truth is something which remains individual and cannot be given as a thing to somebody else; you have to find it on your own. I think it is one of the most significant gifts of existence that it has not made truth a commodity. Otherwise, there would have been shops in the market where you could purchase truth. You cannot purchase truth at any price.

You will have to seek it.

And the sooner the fears are dropped the better, because as you go on growing you are growing closer to death. The fears will become more powerful every day and your life energy will become less strong every day. So the sooner you decide and get out of the imprisonment of fears, the better.

I VISITED THE ASHRAM IN POONA AND OFTEN HEARD THE WORD 'ENERGY'. -- PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT ENERGY IS?

There are things which can only be experienced and cannot be explained. For example, electricity is energy, but nobody has seen electricity in its purity, as energy. You have seen it in a lamp, as light; you have seen it moving a machine, a train; you have seen many manifestations of its work, but nobody has yet been able to see what it is that works.

I am reminded of Thomas Alva Edison. He was the first man to make the electric bulb; it took him three years. He was visiting a small village, and, just by coincidence, the village school was having an annual celebration and the school children had made many things to show the public. Having nothing else to do in that village, Edison went. One boy was explaining about electricity. He had made a small electric train running on a track on the table. Edison naturally went to the boy and asked, "How does it work?"

The boy said, "It is electricity. It is energy that is making the train move."

Edison said, "I understand, but what is electricity? What is energy?"

The boy said, "This is too much, I don't know. Perhaps my teacher, who has a master's degree in Physical Science from a well-known university, may have the answer. I will fetch him, sir, you just wait a minute."

He brought the teacher and the teacher said, "We know how it functions, we don't know what it is. I am sorry to disappoint you that we cannot answer a simple question, but perhaps the principal, who is a Doctor of Science from Harvard, perhaps he may. Just wait a minute."

Edison said, "I can wait as long as you want, but I want the answer."

And the principal came and he said, "There is only one man, Thomas Alva Edison, who may perhaps know the answer. We don't know the answer."

Edison said, "That means nobody knows the answer because I am Thomas Alva Edison. And you are right, I only know how it acts, I don't know what it is."

And the same is true about the word 'energy'. You may have heard my sannyasins continuously talking about it, and naturally you must have thought at least 'Thomas Alva Edison' knows the answer. But I don't know! I can only say how it works.

Man's body is an energy phenomenon. Everything is energy: matter exists no more. Friedrich Nietzsche declared in the heyday of materialism that God is dead, but as we penetrated deeper and deeper into the mysteries of matter the whole idea about matter has changed. Now modern physics says there is no thing such as matter. In Friedrich Nietzsche's terms it can be said "matter is dead." Perhaps God may be alive; about that we are still undecided. But matter is certainly dead, because it has been found that the more you divide matter into molecules, atoms, electrons, it turns into energy. And the old division between energy and matter has to be dropped. Matter is energy at such a tremendous speed that you cannot see it as energy, you see it as solid matter.

It is just like a fan which has three wings to it. You can move the fan so fast that you may not be able to see those three wings. It can become just a circle -- they are moving so fast that they are creating an illusion of solidity.

So everything in existence today is energy. The human body has its own bio- energy. You may have experienced, without paying much attention, that sometimes you shake hands with a person and you feel as if you are shaking hands with a dead branch of a tree -- no life, no warmth. And you know others also, to shake hands with them is a joy -- so much love, so much energy radiating from the small handshake.

It has been known experimentally that a child can be given food, comfort, everything after birth that he needs, but he will die within three months unless a woman's bio-energy is made available to him -- he shrinks.

Now it cannot be said what this bio-energy is, but we can see from the results that the child is in constant need of a feminine body. Something transpires between these two bodies which is not visible to our eyes, just like x-rays.

Many experiments have been done, and it has been found that without the mother's physical touch the child cannot survive. And even if he survives his survival will be only minimal. He will never be able to laugh, he will never be able to enjoy, he will never be able to love, he will never be able to dance and sing -- that energy is missing. Something in him is hollow. He is just empty, he has nothing to give.

There are children who are so much full of energy that they are a trouble in the family, they are always doing something or other -- running all over the place for no reason at all, just to throw off a load of energy.

Energy is our basic constituent. Its expressions may be different: it may express as love, it may express as laughter, it may express as silence. When sannyasins talk about energy they are talking about a special implication, implementation, of this energy.

They are all meditating, and meditation certainly gives the energy a new dimension. It immediately starts moving around the person, and if many persons are meditating it becomes an energy field. Those who are open can just enter into the group and, they will be surprised, just as you touch an open wire of electricity and it gives you a shock, in an energy field if you are open you can feel it immediately engulfing you, overpowering you. This makes many people afraid of coming to the communes, coming to the sannyasins -- they think it is something like mesmerism or hypnotism. It is neither hypnotism nor mesmerism, it is simply that so many people have pooled their energy in their silence that when you enter into the group you cannot remain unaffected by it.

That's why I said, "It can be experienced but it cannot be explained." And all these communes that I have been creating around the world are just for that single purpose. Anybody who wants what this energy is can be a guest in a commune for seven days, mix with the commune for seven days, and feel it. You will know what it is, but you will not be able to tell anybody else what it is.

The ultimate always is beyond explanation. But it is not beyond experience.

I HAVE BEEN TALKING TO LOCAL PEOPLE AND GETTING THE FEELING THAT THEY WANT YOU TO STAY HERE FOR TWO REASONS. FIRST THEY RECOGNIZE THAT YOU ARE A SPIRITUAL MASTER, AND SECOND BECAUSE THEY KNOW THAT HIMACHAL PRADESH WILL PROSPER IF YOU ARE HERE. WOULD YOU LIKE TO COMMENT?

They are absolutely right. Himachal Pradesh can become richer both spiritually and materially, but their politicians may not want it to happen. And those poor people of Himachal Pradesh have approached me. From Manali the Panchayat leaders, from Mandi the Bar Association, and from other sources representations have been made to the chief minister that every facility should be given to me.

The people of Himachal Pradesh are simple-hearted, very loving, but immensely poor. Their lovingness and their simpleness and their innocence recognize something in me which they call a spiritual master. And they can understand without even knowing the ABC's of economics that if I am here, thousands of tourists will be coming here.

In America in one year there were fifty thousand tourists from all over the world.

Here the number will be double because America was too costly for people to visit. If one hundred thousand people come and stay in Himachal Pradesh for two or three months certainly the economy of Himachal Pradesh will have a tremendous upsurge. And if the government is courageous enough to allow me to have a commune here, the people of Himachal Pradesh also can learn that poverty is not something destined by God, that it is our own creation. They can see that the commune can create wealth, can create richness. They can learn from the commune and they can apply what they learn to their own lives and their own economic endeavors. Within ten years we can change the whole shape of Himachal Pradesh. It can really become a valley of gods.

But the crucial question is, will the politicians like it to become a valley of gods? I don't think so. They don't want it to happen anywhere, because it is easy to rule over the poor, it is easy to purchase the vote of the poor. It will be more difficult if the people are richer and if the commune can become a university for the poor, teaching crafts. The politician will find that he has fallen by the wayside, somebody else has taken his place.

So I don't think that the government will allow me to have a commune here. And I cannot do anything alone without a commune. I need my people who can do everything and change things.

The local people have approached the chief minister and I have received the information that he has shown his willingness, but just in a political way. He said, "It all depends on central government. Unless I get a green signal from the center I cannot do anything."

The American government is putting pressure on the Indian government that I should not be allowed to make a commune. The American senate has sent a message to the Indian government that they can let me live here, but, "don't allow foreigners to be there and don't allow the people who can create a commune to be there -- otherwise you will be in the same difficulty that we were in.

So my feeling is that Indian politicians don't have the guts to allow me to stay.

Otherwise I am ready and I am willing to change this whole valley and its shape.

It is really a sad sight when you enter and you see the poor houses, the poor shops, as if you are entering something five thousand years old. It does not show any contemporariness. When you see the poor people they are nice, they are simple, but they are suffering. But the politician wants things to remain exactly as they are; they want to maintain the status quo because that has given them power. If something changes in the country it is bound to be reflected sooner or later in their power.

PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT IS YOUR TEACHING. WHY DOES IT SEEM TO APPEAL MOST TO WESTERN PEOPLE AND HOW DO YOU ENVISAGE THE DEVELOPMENT OF YOUR WORK IN THE NEXT TWENTY YEARS?

It appeals to the Western people for the simple reason that I am not basing my teaching on faith, on any kind of belief. It is a purely intelligent approach towards reality.

The Eastern mind is accustomed to belief. Faith has been emphasized for centuries; to doubt is a sin and to believe is a virtue. To me the reverse is the case:

to doubt is virtue and to believe is sin.

It is appealing to the Western intelligentsia, particularly the young generation which is completely fed up with all kinds of beliefs -- political, religious, social -- because they have seen that those beliefs are nothing but systems of exploitation, methods of creating spiritual slavery in man.

Eastern intelligence is lagging far behind but those who are intelligent in the East are certainly influenced by them. Then there is no difference between the East and the West. The question is, are you intelligent enough to drop believing, are you intelligent enough to search on your own without any prejudice, without being a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian?

I simply don't give them any catechism to cling to, I don't give them any discipline. I don't say to them, "This has to be done and this has not to be done."

My whole approach is different. I simply explain to them how you can be in a peaceful, non-tense, blissful state of mind and out of that state of mind it is impossible to do anything wrong. So you will be decisive in what you want to do. If this basic state of mind is created in you then you will do only the right, then you will behave as a human being is expected to behave.

Certainly people who have already accepted that there is a God have stopped searching. They are no more seekers; their seeking has stopped. They have come to a conclusion, and the conclusion is borrowed.

I don't tell them there is a God or a heaven or hell, I simply tell them that they have a potential to be in a hell or to be in a heaven. These are not geographical places but psychological states. And if you are in heaven you cannot do anything wrong, that is just impossible -- your very peace will become compassion, your very silence will become love, your actions will show your inner being.

So my teaching is basically individual -- the transformation of individual consciousness to more silent, blissful spaces. Then whatever happens to you, through you, from that space is virtue, is religiousness. Surely these teachings need intelligent people to understand them. I cannot go to villagers and talk about these things; it will be simply wasting their time and my time.

So whosoever is capable of understanding things of the highest order of consciousness, whether Eastern or Western, is bound to be attracted. Of course, more Western people will be attracted because more Western people are educated, know the taste of freedom, have a certain individuality, have a certain courage....

Everest is Indian, but it had to be conquered by Edmund Hillary. Nine hundred million Indians, only one Everest, but a man had to come from the West to conquer it. And he was not the first Western man; for fifty years continuously Western young people had been coming and many, almost all of them, died in the effort. But that did not prevent them, they kept on coming, and finally one managed it.

You don't ask why an Indian did not reach the moon first, except in jokes. I have heard that when for the first time the American landed on the moon he was surprised to see a few Indians sitting there, smoking beedies. He asked them, "My God, how did you manage to get here?"

They said, "It is a simple matter. One Indian stands on another Indian, then another Indian, and this way we reached here. The question is, "How did you manage to get here?"

Except in jokes, you never ask why -- why not an Indian?

It is simple. For two thousand years we have been slaves. We have learned the ways of slavery. We have been conditioned to believe, and science starts with doubt; that is a gap which is unbridgeable -- you will have to drop believing and you will have to drop your slave mentality; you will have to come out of your past. Every Indian is carrying his load of past which is tremendous. He is dying under its weight but he thinks it is his treasure. He may be killed by it but he will not drop it.

The west for three hundred years has moved away into a totally new dimension.

The day Gallileo declared that the earth is round and not flat as stated in the Holy Bible, was a turning point for the whole Western intelligence. Then Copernicus declared that the sun does not go around the earth but the earth goes around the sun. Whatever your religious scriptures say it does not matter, we will have to change the scriptures according to existence. We are going to listen to reality and not to all your old beliefs. It gave a turn to the whole Western mind.

Not a single Indian has spoken against the -- VEDAS or Rama or Krishna except me. And I am condemned because I have spoken against these people. Whatever I have said is so simple and so logical that there is no way to argue against it.

You can throw stones and knives at me but those are not arguments.

In a public meeting in Nagpur, I said that I cannot accept Krishna as a perfect incarnation of God for the simple reason that he is a man who propagates a philosophy of violence. The whole GITA is a philosophy of violence. I am absolutely astounded that Gandhi went on reading Gita every morning, calling Gita his mother, and his philosophy was nonviolence. Gita is the purest philosophy of violence. If Gita has any connection it has connection with Friedrich Nietzsche and Adolf Hitler. Krishna, Friedrich Nietzsche, Adolf Hitler - - that is the trinity. Not a single Gandhian has answered it and not a single follower of Krishna has answered it.

I said in the same talk that Krishna behaved very inhumanely. He had sixteen thousand wives and these were not virgin girls that he had married, these were married women who had husbands, children, families, and he simply snatched away any woman that he liked, any woman that was beautiful -- he simply forced that woman to his palace without bothering what happened to her family.

And this man you call God? Then whom are you going to call devil?

The West has done its homework in these last three hundred years, they are ready for me. The East has not done its homework. It is not my fault; I am trying hard. And from the East the people who have intelligence and who have understanding and courage are joining me.