Chapter 23

[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: BELOVED BHAGWAN, CAN A BUDDHA LIKE YOU BE IN PRISON? I AM NOT ABLE TO UNDERSTAND.

A: I can understand your difficulty. But it seems you are not aware of the history of human consciousness. Socrates is poisoned, and he is a Buddha. Gautam Buddha himself died out of food poisoning. Al-Hillaj-Mansoor, one of the greatest Sufi mystics, is killed by the fanatic Mohammedans. Sarmad, another man of immense experience of the ultimate truth, is killed again by the fanatic people, the orthodox, the traditional.

Many attempts were made on the life of Buddha to kill him. It is not a new thing.

It is as old as man himself. You have always treated your highest expressions with inhumanity. While they are alive, you try to kill them, and when you have killed them, then you start worshipping them. Your worship is nothing but to cover your guilt.

Many attempts have been made on my life; just seven years before in a morning discourse, ten thousand sannyasins were present, and the police was informed by some anonymous person that a group of fanatics is going to make an effort to kill Bhagwan. So twenty top police officers rushed to the place where I was speaking. In their presence, and in the presence of ten thousand sannyasins, a knife was thrown at me. The man missed the target. But the police caught him red-handed. Ten thousand eye witnesses, it is almost impossible to find for any attempt on life, and twenty police officers. They got hold of the knife, and it was a police case. Still the man was set free, and the magistrate gave the judgment that no attempt on life is being made.

But he must have felt guilty, because through a common friend, a doctor, he informed me that please forgive me. I am a poor magistrate. The pressure of political parties over me is too much. They want the man to be freed. I know the attempt has been made, and there cannot be more solid evidence -- ten thousand eye witnesses, and twenty top police officers also witnesses. But the politicians will destroy me. I have to listen to them. So just please forgive me.

What happened in America with me is nothing new. It has always been happening. You have to understand one thing, that whenever there is somebody who has a message for you, which goes against your traditional ways, your orthodoxy, your conditioning, then your whole priesthood, your politicians, the status quo, all the vested interests are against such a man. For the simple reason because he is a disturbance. If people listen to him there is going to be a revolution. And that revolution will change everything. It will throw those who are in power. It will throw those priests who are dominating you.

Naturally those who are in power would not like it. It is better to finish one man rather than to loose all their vested interests. Why they crucified Jesus? He has not committed any crime. He was a simple man. He has not done anything illegal. But why they insisted to kill him? For the simple reason he was upsetting the whole society. He was saying things which go against the past, which go against the old, which bring some new light, which take you into the unknown.

He is opening doors for progress. And there are people who don't want any progress. They want a static society, a dead society. And these people are in power.

Naturally, every Buddha has to go to jail, and every Buddha has to be killed or crucified. Twenty five centuries have passed since Socrates was poisoned, but nothing has changed. Against Socrates, there was no crime. They invented a bogus thing against him; that was that he corrupts the minds of young people.

He was giving the new people new insights. He was giving more intelligence to people. He was making them aware what is wrong in the old, rotten society, and how it can be changed. But the old society thinks this is corruption. He is dangerous. He should be removed, before it is too late.

I had not done any crime; my only crime in America was, what Christian missionaries have been doing for centuries all over the world. They have been converting people into Christianity. But the people they convert into Christianity are the orphans, the beggars, the poor, the starving, the aboriginals. They have not been successful to convert a single cultured, educated, high-class individual anywhere in the whole world.

Their problem was that I was attracting the cream of the society; the people who had become part of my commune were doctors, engineers, electronic engineers, scientists, professors, legal experts, surgeons, educationists. That was the shock to the fanatic Christians. They have not been successful in the world to change a single educated man to Christianity. And I have taken their best people out of their fold. This was my crime.

Ronald Reagan, the President of America, is a fanatic Christian. He is a fundamentalist Christian. And he wants America to be a Christian country, and the pressure of him and the Christian priests was that a man like me is dangerous; because I am influencing the highest intelligentsia of the country.

And if it goes on, it is going to destroy the very roots of Christian religion. That was the reason why they arrested me without any warrant. They could not show even what is the cause for which they are arresting me. It was simply a joint effort of the Christianity and the politicians to destroy a commune which was the first effort ever made, and it was so successful that anybody who had come to the commune was immediately convinced of its potentiality, of its power, of its future. It was almost a dream come true. The Christian priest was afraid about his Christianity, and the politician was afraid because I am not a politician. And the people who have joined me are not political.

I want human beings to be absolutely free of politics, and free of orthodox, traditional, dead religions. Each individual should find his own truth. There is no need for any priest to become a mediator between him and truth.

But they cannot prevent me. I am going on a world tour. In fact, they have allowed me more scope. I was working in America; they should have remained silent. That would have been more favorable to them. Now the whole world is available to me. I am going on a world tour to every country of the world. And the people in America who are interested in me can meet me anywhere. I will be around America, on every island. I cannot enter America, but Americans can come out. I have my own ways. It is not easy to defeat me.

But I can see your question has a point; the point is that you expect that a Buddha should be something superhuman. He cannot be jailed. He cannot be killed. He cannot be poisoned. These are your superstitions. No buddha is superhuman. Every buddha is as much human as you are. It is your potentiality.

You can become a Buddha any moment you decide. It is a question of decision.

But we have been told, and we have accepted it because it is very consoling, if somebody says to you, "You can become a buddha," you say, "How I can become a buddha. A buddha is a special superhuman being. I am an ordinary human being." And to create this idea, stupid stories have been invented. I will tell you few stories that can make it clear.

Buddha is born when his mother is standing; no mother gives birth to a child standing. Have you seen any woman giving birth to a child standing? And the story does not stop there. Buddha is born from the mother's womb, himself standing on the floor. And the story still does not end. He walks seven feet; just born baby walks seven feet, and declares to the whole world that I am the greatest buddha, the suprememost that has ever been or that will ever be. Now, this is all nonsense. No gynecologist will support this. And how a just-born baby can walk, and can talk. But this is just to create the idea in your mind that Buddha is special.

Mahavira does not perspire. He is a special human being. He is not just like you.

Now this is impossible unless, instead of skin he has plastic. Perspiration is an absolute necessity. You can ask any physiologist, that without perspiration you cannot live. It is a protection against death, because for life your temperature has to remain exactly the same. When it is too hot, and you don't perspire, your inner temperature will go on higher and higher; and your life span as far as temperature is concerned is not very big. From ninety-eight to one hundred ten, only twelve degrees; that is your life span, twelve degrees. And if the heat is too much, and you don't perspire, you will die out of your own inner heat.

Perspiration is a tremendous strategy of nature. It releases water from every pore of your body, so the heat of outside becomes involved in evaporating the perspiration. It does not reach to you. Perspiration prevents the heat from reaching to you. It keeps your temperature exactly the same -- whether it is cold or hot outside, your inner temperature has to remain the same. Now Mahavira does not perspire.

Why such stories are invented? Just to make you feel inferior, and to make these people feel superior; to create a gap. That gap is not helpful, that gap is dangerous, because that gap makes you remain what you are. You start thinking, what can I do? Mahavira is a special person, Buddha is a special person. Jesus is the only begotten son of God. You are not son of God. You are son of a poor man, just ordinary like you. Jesus is the son of a virgin woman. Now that is absolutely idiotic. Virgin girls don't give birth to people. But Jesus has to be separated from the ordinary humanity. This keeps him above, and it has kept humanity crawling on the ground, feeling that this is our faith, our destiny. We cannot go above where we are. We are not born of a virgin mother, we are not the only begotten son of God. We perspire, we need deodorant. We are ordinary human beings, mortals. We cannot become the awakened ones, the buddhas.

But I say to you, all these stories are false, they are invented. And they have cheated you for centuries, and you have to destroy all these stories. And remember one fact: that everybody was a human being just like you, so that you can also aspire to reach to the stars. There is no need for you to remain crawling on the earth. You can also become a buddha. You can also become a Socrates.

You can also become a Mohammed. Nobody is preventing you except your own ideas that you have collected from the society, from the priests; and all those ideas are poisonous. They are killing you, and they are preventing you from growing, expanding, attaining to higher states of consciousness.

I say unto you that to be a buddha is your potentiality. If you don't claim it, except you nobody else is responsible. And no special quality is needed to become a buddha. All that is needed is to be more alert, to be more conscious, to be more calm, to be more silent, to be more peaceful, to be more compassionate; and all these things are possible for you. Not to perspire is not possible for you, but to be compassionate is possible for you. To be kind and to be loving is possible for you.

I am bringing Buddha within your reach, and that hurts. That hurts every priest of every religion. Because he has made Krishna, Rama, Mahavira, Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, so special and so far away from you, so superhuman, it is a need for the priest to make the ideals far away from you, so he can settle in between you and the buddha; he can become the mediator, the agent.

If there is no difference between you and buddha, then the priest and his profession is finished. Then there is no need for popes, bishops, ministers, Shankaracharyas. What is the need? You can manage it yourself. And they have not been of any help. Twenty five centuries have passed since Buddha and there have been almost half of the humanity buddhist. How many buddhas they have created? Now half the humanity is Christian. How many Christs they have created in two thousand years? Can't you see the failure of your priesthood, your churches, your temples, your mosques? They have utterly failed. Five thousand years have passed since Krishna; and all the Hindu priests and all their rituals have been gone down the drain. They have not been able to produce another Krishna. So what is the point? This priesthood is an unnecessary load. These people are exploiting your blood. They are parasites, not priests.

But when you say any truth like that, you endanger yourself. As I entered Nepal, my friends told me immediately, "Don't say anything against Hinduism."

I said, "Why?"

They said, "This is a Hindu kingdom."

To them I said, "Okay." But to myself I said, if this is a Hindu kingdom then I have to say something against Hindu priests. Because what is the point of saying something against the Christian priests. For that I am going to Italy from here directly, to encounter the Pope in his own land. I have been challenging him for a public debate, and he has been like a coward, remained silent. Now I am going exactly to Rome, and challenge him there in his own country.

These people are all around, in different names, and whenever there will be someone who can create a rebellion, and change the deadness in which the society has fallen, and make people alive again, they are bound to be angry. They would like such a man to be jailed, to be poisoned, to be killed, to be removed.

His presence is too dangerous.

But I want these people to remember that you can kill me. But you cannot kill my spirit. Jesus is crucified, but his spirit became more solid a phenomenon through crucifixion, crucifixion has not finished Jesus. In fact, crucifixion made Jesus a historical event, a milestone. So I am not worried about when I am going on a world tour, it can turn out to be a world tour in different jails. I would love it. It will be a great experience to see different countries, their different ways of harassment, cruelties, inhumanities. I will be enriched by it.

Your question is simply because you expect something from people like Buddha, something superhuman. For example, the story is if Buddha sits under a tree, and it is not the season for the tree to blossom in flowers, but when Buddha sits under the tree, the tree blossoms immediately into flowers. I don't believe. I have tried sitting under trees. They don't blossom. Do you think trees are more intelligent than man?

It is said that a serpent bites on Mahavira's feet, and instead of blood milk flows out. I was speaking with a Jaina monk, who spoke before me, and he prays that Mahavira was a superhuman being. Even when a snake bites him, blood does not come out of his feet, but milk. After him I had to speak. I said this is possible only in two ways: one that in Mahavira's body there is no blood, it is filled with milk. But that milk would have turned into curd long before. He will be stinking of curd. Second possibility is that Mahavira's feet has the same kind of mechanism that a mother's breast has. Then it is possible that milk can come out.

But to think that his feet has a breast in it does not make Mahavira special. It makes the snake very intelligent. He finds the right place.

(Tape side B) Just your expectations. Otherwise, they are all human beings. Just like me and you. The only difference is, they are awakened and you are asleep. But you can become awakened any moment.

Q: BHAGWAN, DO YOU TAKE A SPECIAL PLEASURE IN BEING MISUNDERSTOOD BY THE UNTHINKING CROWD OF JOURNALISTS, POLITICIANS, AND THE LIKE? DO YOU MIND YOU ARE THE MOST MISUNDERSTOOD PERSON IN THE HISTORY OF A SPIRITUAL REVOLUTION?

FOR THE LAST FIFTEEN YEARS THAT YOU ARE AN INFINITE SOURCE OF INTELLECTUAL DEPTH. YOU HAVE BEEN USING LOGIC, TO DEMASTER LOGIC, USING INTELLECT TO GO BEYOND INTELLECT, IS NOT IT AN UNACCEPTABLE PARROT? YOUR FRIENDS ARE LESS ATTRACTED BY YOUR BOOKS THAN YOUR ENEMIES; YOUR ENEMIES OPPOSE YOU IN PUBLIC BUT THEY BECOME LEARNED PEOPLE BY STEALING YOU, AND MAKE A DECENT A BUSINESS OUT OF THEIR OUTFIT. THAT IS, THE RADIO IN NEPAL DEPENDS SIXTY PERCENTS ON YOU ON ITS RELIGIOUS PROGRAMS, AND YET THE PEOPLE DON'T HESITATE TO SAY THAT RAJNEESH IS A DANGER TO SANATHAN(*).

NUMBER THREE, WHY BHAGWAN, WHY IS IT THAT PEOPLE KNOW YOU ONLY AS A SEX GURU TO THE EXCLUSION OF OTHER THINGS YOU HAVE EXPRESSED IN ABOUT FOUR HUNDRED BOOKS?

A: I certainly enjoy to disturb people, because there is no other way to help them.

When somebody is asleep, the only way to wake him up is to disturb him, shake him, throw cold water into his eyes. Of course, he will be angry, he may be seeing a beautiful dream, and you are disturbing him.

I enjoy disturbing people for the simple reason if they are disturbed, then there is a possibility of changing their minds. They have started thinking. It does not matter, they may start thinking against me. But if they start thinking, sooner or later, they will have to come closer to me. The danger is the non-thinking person.

To think against me is not a problem. I am reminded of a beautiful anecdote.

In Judaism there is a revolutionary tradition called Hassidism. The founder of Hassidism, Baal Shemtov, wrote a beautiful book and sent the first copy of the book to the chief priest of the Jews, as a present. One of his disciples carried the book. He told the disciple that "You have to give the book in the hands of the rabbi himself. Don't give it to anyone else. And remember whatever is the response of the rabbi, what he says, what he does, what shows in his eyes, on his face, everything you have to note it. And you have to report me immediately, so that you don't forget."

The disciple went to the chief rabbi. He was sitting in the garden with his wife, taking his morning breakfast. The disciple presented the book. He took the book in his hands and he said, "What it is? Who has written it?"

And he said, "It is my master, Baal Shemtov, it is his first book, and he wanted it to be presented to you."

And the rabbi became mad. He threw the book out of the garden into the street.

And he said, "Never dare again to bring that man's books in my house." He was just furious.

The wife said to him, "This is not right. You could have thrown the book when the person had gone. Or you could have put it in your library where there are thousands of books. You need not read it. You have not read many of those books. This also can be put there. But there was no need to become so furious, so angry; this is below you. You are the chief rabbi of the Jews. This does not suit you."

The disciple went to his master, Baal Shem, and told him that "The rabbi is a dangerous fellow. He threw the book out in the street. He was furious with anger. He hates you. But his wife is very nice. She told that it was not right of him. He could have kept the book in the library, or even if he wanted to throw it he should have thrown it when I had left."

You will be surprised to know what was the response of Baal Shem, and Baal Shem is one of the buddhas of a very unique quality. Baal Shem said to the disciple, "You don't understand. That rabbi will read the book, that rabbi will become one day my disciple. But that woman which you think is nice will never read the book, will never be interested in me." And that's what happened finally.

The chief rabbi turned a disciple to Baal Shem, but his wife remained an orthodox Jew.

The disciple said, "But how you figured it out? The situation was just the opposite."

Baal Shem said, "You don't understand human psychology. I had touched the emotions of the rabbi, and when you touch the emotions of somebody, you have disturbed his heart. He will cool down, he cannot remain disturbed forever. He will start thinking that he has done wrong. He will go out and take the book back, and would like to see what this man has written, but the woman will never look in the book. She was suggesting a nicer, mannerly way to dispose it of. She was not touched. The rabbi was disturbed, she was not disturbed.

And this is my experience. If I can disturb you, there is a chance to find a friend in you. I have touched your emotions. If I cannot disturb you, there is no chance.

You have remained a stone statue. I have not been able to reach to your heart.

The enemy and the friend are not very different people.

One of the great political thinkers of the West, Machiavelli, has written in his masterpiece book "Prince", that you should not say anything to your friend which you would not like to say to your enemy. Because who is your friend today may become your enemy tomorrow. And you should not say anything against your enemy, because today he is your enemy; tomorrow he may be your friend. Then it will be very embarrassing. Keep balanced. And he is right, deeply right about human psychology.

I have seen people disturbed, I have seen people angry, and I have seen those same people changing. They have become my friends, because they started thinking about it. They could not sleep unless they had found some solution.

Certainly they could not go back, they could not settle back into their old mind. It has been disturbed. They have to find something new.

So I certainly enjoy. You have said that perhaps I am the most misunderstood man in the whole history of consciousness. That is true, for the simple reason because Gautam Buddha never left Bihar. The name Bihar comes from Gautam Buddha, because he was travelling in this province; Bihar means travel. Because he travelled continuously in the same province, it became Buddha's bihar, his travelling space. Naturally, he could not reach the vast humanity when he was alive.

Jesus lived in Judea, an unknown country, a small country; nobody has heard about it; not a single reference about Jesus is found in any contemporary book of any other country. Naturally he could not disturb anybody else than Jews. The same is true about all the old spiritual masters.

Now, the world has shrunken very small. Even sitting in one place, I can disturb the whole world. Science and technology has made it possible. Jesus has no idea that there are other people than Jews. He was born a Jew, he lived as a Jew. He died as a Jew. He had never heard even the name Christian. The Christian came three hundred years afterwards; when his statements were translated into Greek, then the Jewish word Messiah became Christ, and the followers of Christ became Christians. Poor Jesus never knew that his followers will be called Christians.

The world was big, approach was impossible.

Now it is different; the world is small, approach is very simple. I can disturb the whole world without any difficulty. And I am going to do it, because I am a very fair person. I cannot disturb only you. I will disturb everybody equally. And I don't feel worried about being misunderstood. That is the beginning of understanding. First you have to misunderstand. The misunderstanding comes because you have a certain prejudice, you have a certain mind, a certain ideology. And when I say something, it conflicts with it.

Naturally, you favor with your own conditioning. Whether it is right or wrong is not the question. It is your conditioning, it is your religion. It is your holy book.

In America the first day when I was in jail, the sheriff of the jail was a very gentle man; and seeing me that I have nothing to do there, he brought a BIBLE and he said, "This is my present to you."

I said, "Have you read it yourself, from the first page to the last?" And I said, "Be honest, you are keeping holy BIBLE in your hands. Don't lie!"

He became a little nervous, then he said, "You are right. I have not read it from the first page to the last."

I said, "That's why you have brought it to me. Because in this BIBLE there are five hundred pages which are nothing but rotten pornography. I have read it from the first page to the last. This book should be banned. This book should not be in any church, in any library, in any university. Because it is sheer pornography, and not one or two pages, five hundred pages."

He said, "My God, I had never thought about it."

And I showed him few pages, and I told him, "Read it. Can you read this page before your daughter?"

And he had to confess, "I cannot. This is ugly."

But this is holy BIBLE. He said no more. "You have disturbed me. Now I cannot sleep. My whole life's idea was that this is God's word. But how can God write such pornographic passages?"

Naturally, first one gets a shock, first one tries to defend, tries in every way to find that "I am not right, he is right." That is what creates misunderstanding. But truth has always been misunderstood, because the whole majority of humanity lives in lies. So whenever a truth is said, it hurts.

And there is a misunderstanding. But truth has a quality. You cannot deny it.

You can try denying, but sooner or later you will have to accept it. So every confusion, every misunderstanding, is just temporary. It cannot remain forever.

If I am saying something which is true, then your misunderstanding will be dispelled. So I am not worried about misunderstanding. Please misunderstand me as much as you can, because that is the only way that you will come to some understanding.

You have also asked that there are people who go on stealing from my statements, my books. This is happening all over the world, not only in Nepal. It is happening in the films, it is happening in televisions, it is happening on radio, it is happening in newspapers, magazines, all kinds of people are trying to steal.

But, I am not worried about it. Truth is truth. It need not be necessarily concerned with my name. Let them steal. They are stealing truth. Let them present it in their own name. No harm. Because I am not interested in my name; I am interested in my truth.

If the truth reaches to the people, just as you said in your question that sixty percent of the radio in Nepal is stealing from my books, help them to steal hundred percent. My name is irrelevant. What is relevant is truth. And truth is nobody's property -- neither mine nor yours. So why think in terms of stealing?

Perhaps they are not stealing; they are impressed but they are cowards, they cannot say my name. But still they are doing my work. So far so good. Help them. Find out more passages for them to steal. Anyway, the message has to reach to the people. In whose name it reaches is not my concern at all. Just it should reach.

Truth is universal. It is not mine, it is not yours. So the question of stealing does not arise.

You have also asked, that I have four hundred books in my name. Still people only read one book, which is about sex. That too they don't read the way I have written it. The name of the book will make it clear. The name of the book is "From Sex to Superconsciousness." It is a book of a scientific methodology, how you can transform your sex energy into consciousness, superconsciousness. How your sex energy can become your samadhi. But nobody talks about samadhi or superconsciousness. They think the book is about sex. The book is not about sex.

The book is against sex. It is anti sex. Because it is an effort to show you the technique, how sexual energy can be purified. How it can start not going downwards, and taking you downwards, but can start moving upwards, uplifting you higher.

When sex moves down, it creates children, it becomes a biological force. When it moves upwards, it does not create children; it is no more biological. It moves into a different realm. It becomes a spiritual force. It recreates you. It gives you a rebirth. It creates a new man in you. It makes a child of you, so innocent, so utterly pure; it is a spiritual rebirth.

But people are sexually repressed, so much so that anything, just the word sex, immediately triggers their repressions. I have heard about a psychoanalyst. A man was brought to him by his family, and they said, "Something has to be done.

This man is going mad."

The psychoanalyst said, "Wait, let me examine him."

He drew a line on a paper and asked the man, "Do you see what this line reminds you?"

He said, "What? It reminds me of sex."

The psychoanalyst was a little shocked. Just a line, reminds him of sex? So he made a triangle. Seeing the triangle, the man simply closed his eyes. He said, "Don't make that. You are so filthy. Just stop! Sex, sex. Are you a psychologist, or what?"

The psychologist tried one more effort. He drew a circle. And the man hit the psychologist and he said, "You idiot. You are not a psychologist. You are a sex maniac. This is all pornography."

The psychoanalyst said, "Cool down, sit down. Just I have one question to ask you. Does anything remind you of anything else?"

He said, "No. Everything reminds me of sex."

Repression is one of the greatest problems for man to face. All the religions have repressed sex. They have told you, it is sin. They have told you it is against religion. It is against God. Celibacy is spiritual. Now all these things are absurd.

Sex is a natural phenomenon. It is not against nature, not against life, not against God. Because if it is against God, then why he goes on creating people with sexual energy? On the one hand you say God creates everything. Then who has created sex? It must have been God. And if God is not against sex, then how it can be sin. And if it is sin, then God is the greatest sinner in the world because he has given sex to millions of people, millions of animals, millions of insects, millions of birds, millions of trees. This whole existence has sexual energy, because that is the only reproductive energy. This whole creation is full of sexuality. God cannot be against it.

The priest is against it, and why the priest is against it? He is against it because he wants to create guilt in you. That is the secret of torturing you, of enslaving you. If you feel guilty, you are bound to go to the priest, to confess, to ask for a prayer, to ask for some repentance, to ask how to get rid of this guilt -- fasting, austerities. And the priest goes on telling you how you can get rid of it. You are in the grip of the priest because he has made sex a sin.

But this is not true religion. In the VEDAS the seers were all married people; they were not celibate. The Rishis, the poetry of the VEDAS is written not be celibate people. It is written by people who were married, they had children, they lived a normal life. The UPANISHADS were written by married people, not by celibates.

(Tape side C) Up to the time of Buddha and Mahavira, there was a very life affirmative religion in this country. There was no denial of any life energy. There was total acceptance, and how to transform it. It was those days when Vatsyayana wrote his KAMASUTRAS; and have you forgotten that we have called Vatsyayana one of the greatest rishis of this country? A man who writes a book on sex, the first book in the whole history of man, has been called by us one of our greatest seers.

Now those were the days of life affirmation. With Buddha and Mahavira, things changed. They were both from the warrior race. And their rebellion was against the brahmins. So whatever brahmins have been doing up to that time, they reversed the whole thing; because brahmins were allowing marriage, sex, children, even to the seers, Jainas and Buddhists denied it to their monks. It is a very strange thing that because Jainas denied sex to their monks, people started feeling that Jaina and Buddhist monks are higher, more spiritual, than Hindu seers. Shankaracharya had to follow Buddha and Mahavir, and made celibacy the central point of all people who renounce life, who want to grow spiritually.

I am simply trying to bring you the original religion back. I want you to understand that the true religion cannot be against life, it can be only against death. The true religion is for more life, for eternal life; it is an alchemical process -- how to transcend death. And that's what I have written in that book.

But just the title has attracted people. And you will be surprised, the people who have been reading it are the monks, and the nuns; it has gone into many editions in almost all the languages of the world. You will find it in every monastery.

Strange! Three hundred and ninety nine books, nobody bothers, which are purely spiritual. This book attracts them because of their own repression. It shows something about them. It is not a healthy thing. It is very sick.

Q: BELOVED BHAGWAN, HOW CAN AN INTELLECTUAL UNDERSTANDING BE TRANSFORMED INTO AN EXPERIENCE OF HEART(*)?

A: The intellectual understanding cannot be changed, cannot be transformed, into a spiritual experience. In fact, the intellect has to be put aside if you want a spiritual experience. Intellect is a barrier, not a bridge. Intellect can think, but it cannot see.

I am reminded of a small story. Gautam Buddha is staying in a village. In that village there was a blind man, who was a great intellectual, a giant. He has defeated the whole village, on the point that light does not exist. The whole village tried to convince him that light exists, you are blind. But the man said, "If lights exists, then let me touch it. I want to touch it and feel it."

They said, "Light cannot be touched."

He said, "Then I can hear it. You can hit it by something, so I can hear the sound."

They said, "That is not possible."

He said, "Then it bring it close to my nose, I can smell it." That too was not possible. He said, "I can taste it. These are the four possibilities with me, and you go on saying 'No, no' to every possibility. You simply want me to condemn as a blind man. When I am ready to explore the experience of light with all the senses that I have got, you deny it. I say to you that light does not exist."

When Buddha came to the town, the people brought the blind man to Gautam Buddha, and they said, "We have tried hard, but he does not listen. On the contrary we feel defeated; we know light is. But how to convince this man who is blind? But he is a great logician. He gives great arguments. He is a very intellectual man."

Buddha said, "You have brought him to a wrong person. He does not need a philosopher. He needs a physician. I have a physician, my own personal physician. You take him to my physician. His eyes perhaps can be treated. You cannot convince him about light, but you can treat his eyes. And the day he will open his eyes, there will be no need to convince him intellectually. He will see the light himself."

It took six months to treat his eyes. Buddha moved to another place. He came running the day he could see light, he fell into the feet of Buddha crying out of joy, and he said, "Forgive me. All my intellectuality was absolutely useless. It is an experience for which eyes are needed, not argument, not logic, not intellect."

Spirituality needs eyes. It does not need intellectuality. And you are asking how to transform intellectuality, to have the transformation. It cannot be done. You will have to put your intellectuality aside; you will have to become as innocent as a child, with no argument, with no intellect, with no reasoning. Just a simplicity, a silence, and you will attain to those eyes I am talking about. You will be able to see the transformation happening.

Through intellect, you can gather knowledge, but you cannot become a seer. And all knowledge that is gathered, is borrowed, is meaningless. Unless the truth is discovered by you, it is not truth. Others may have discovered, you cannot just go on repeating their words. It will be simply like a parrot.

That's what people are doing all around the world. Like parrots they go on repeating the VEDAS, the UPANISHADS, the BIBLE, the KORAN. They don't understand what they are doing. They don't have any experience of their own.

And it is a question of individual experience; and the basic necessity is to put aside everything that you have borrowed from others, all your scholarship, all your knowledge.

Can't you drop that which is not yours? And you will be surprised that when you start dropping that which is not yours, you will be left with nothing. And in that purity, in that silence, when there is nothing borrowed, burdening you, when you are unburdened, you can open your wings and fly to the highest star.

That is the only transformation possible.

Q: BELOVED BHAGWAN, CAN LIFE BE HELPFUL IN FINDING THE WAY TO TRUTH?

A: Only life can be helpful in finding the truth. Those who have been teaching to you, "Renounce life", are taking you away from truth. Life contains truth as its center. You have to live life with totality, with intensity, with awareness, with gratitude to existence; and life itself will take you to the innermost shrine of the ultimate.

I am not against life. All the religions have been teaching you life- negative things, renounce this, renounce that, renounce your family, your children, your wife. Renounce everything, and escape to the mountains. It is fortunate that you have not listened to them, otherwise there would be no life left. All people would have escaped to the mountains. Who will feed them?

It is a very strange thing. The people renounce life, but they depend on the people whom they have renounced. They give them food, they give them clothes, they give them shelter. It is strange. They should not accept these things.

If you have renounced life, then you should not have any concern with people who have not renounced.

Millions of people have renounced life under the impact of life negative religions. And do you know what has been the effect of it? Millions of women have become widows, and their husbands are alive; millions of children have become orphans, and their fathers are alive; millions of people have become poor, because there is nobody to help them to earn livelihood for them. And we have worshipped these people. These people to me are criminals. They have hurt so many people; they are violent. And what they have gained. They have not made life more beautiful, they have not made life more loveable, they have not made life any contribution. They have not created anything. They have been just a burden to other people. And if you look into their eyes, you will not find any spirituality.

I have been wandering and looking into the eyes of different religions, monks and nuns, and I simply see a kind of deadness, not intelligence, not sharpness, not aliveness. They have forgotten to sing, they have forgotten to dance. They are living corpses. I don't see it as spirituality. Spirituality should be richer, multi- dimensionally richer. Wherever you are, you can start growing spiritually there.

Your wife is not a hindrance, your children are not a hindrance. Your business is not a hindrance; in fact these are all opportunities for you. These are tests for you. If you can remain silent, loving, compassionate, joyful, in all these situations; if you can manage a tranquility, an equilibrium, in failure, in success, in sickness, in health, in richness, in poverty. If you can remain the same, undisturbed, this is spirituality.

To become the center of the cyclone is spirituality. Don't escape from the cyclone, otherwise you will miss the center. This whole life is a cyclone; and you have to become the center of the cyclone. The whole cyclone moves. But the center remains unmoving. It remains silent, undisturbed, undistracted.

Yes, life is the only way to truth. There is no other way.

Q: BELOVED BHAGWAN, WHY IS IT THAT A SANDALWOOD TREE IS ALWAYS SURROUNDED BY SNAKES?

A: First, literally, the sandalwood tree is an unique tree. Its fragrance is a magnetic force, and the snake -- you have always thought that the snake listens to music, and you have seen it, that the snake dances, sways with the music. But you will be surprised to know that the snakes don't have ears. It is now an established scientific fact that snakes don't have ears. Even the scientists were very much puzzled, because they can see that snakes are affected by music; but they don't have ears. They have dissected their whole body, there is nothing like ears in their whole body. And finally they have found recently that, although they don't have any ears, their whole skin is sensitive to sounds. That's why they sway. Without ears, their whole body listens. And because they don't have ears, the energy that goes to ears is available to their nose.

There is a certain division. You may have observed that blind people are very clear about sounds. Blind people are beautiful musicians, blind people can remember sounds very easily than people who have eyes, for the simple reason because the energy that is involved in the eyes moves to the ears. Now the snake has no ears, its energy moves to the nose. It has a tremendously sensitive nose.

And the sandalwood tree attracts it. This is the literally meaning of your question.

But I understand that you are not asking the literal meaning. You are asking the symbolic meaning. And there is a great symbolic meaning.

In the biblical story, Eve and Adam are seduced by the snake, who tells to Eve that if you eat from the tree of knowledge you will become like gods. That's why God has prevented you from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Now this is a great temptation. She persuades Adam and they both eat from the tree of knowledge. Who is this snake? Snake don't speak.

This snake is symbolic, and the tree of knowledge is symbolic. The tree of knowledge is not the tree of wisdom. Remember the distinction. Wisdom comes out of your own innocence. Wisdom means your innocence becoming mature, your innocence coming of age, your innocence flowering, releasing its fragrance.

It comes from within you. Knowledge comes from somewhere else, from a tree.

This is symbolic. It is borrowed knowledge. Then the snake is the priest, who is telling you to read the GITA, read the KORAN, read the holy BIBLE, because this will make you knowledgeable.

But no book can make you knowledgeable. It will burden you with information.

But it will be always borrowed, not authentic, not yours. The snake in the biblical story is the first priest of the world. There is a story that one day a newly recruited devil came running to the old devil, the master devil and said to him, "Do something immediately, because one man on the earth has found the truth.

And if he spreads the truth into people, what will happen to our business?"

The old devil said, "You are a new recruit. Don't be worried. My people have already reached there."

But he said, "I am coming from there, I have not seen any of your people."

He said, "You cannot see that way. All those priests, pundits, scholars who are surrounding the man who has found the truth are my people. They won't let the masses reach the man of truth. They won't let the man of truth reach the masses.

They will become the mediators. They will represent the master to the masses.

They will become the interpreters, and that's how we manage to distort every truth. It has been found many times before, you don't be worried. We have experts, how to distort it, interpretation. We have scholars, we have pundits, we have rabbis, we have popes, we have all kinds of snakes. They will do the job."

And this has been happening. This is not only a story. You will be surprised to know that Mahavira rebelled against Brahmins. But his chief disciples, eleven disciples, were all Brahmins. That is strange. He was fighting against Brahminism, and his chief disciples are all Brahmins. Mahavira has not written a single word. All that is written is written by those eleven Brahmins. Naturally it is distorted. It is not what he has said. It cannot be what he has said.

The same happened with Gautam Buddha. He was also from the race of the warriors, Kshatriyas; and he was also rebelling against the priesthood of Brahmins. But his most closest disciples are all Brahmins. He has not written a single word. When he died, all the Brahmins gathered together and they wrote all Buddhist scriptures. Now they don't represent the reality. They represent the Brahmin interpretation. Naturally, it is very protective of Brahminism against which Buddha was fighting his whole life.

These are the snakes. If Buddha is a sandalwood tree, then these scholars and pundits, these are the snakes. And naturally, before anybody else, they smell who has found it. And it is very difficult because of these snakes to reach to the sandal tree directly.

I am trying my best to reach you directly. I am not allowing any snakes between me and you. I am a walking sandal tree.