The word cannot be crucified

Question 1:

The most important need of humanity today is to be made aware that its past has betrayed it. There is no point in continuing the past, it will be suicidal.

A new humanity is absolutely and urgently needed.

The new humanity will not be a society in the old sense, where individuals are only parts of it. The new humanity will be a meeting of individuals, where individuals are the masters and society is to serve them. It will have many different aspects to it. It will not have so many religions, it will have only a religious consciousness. It will not have a despot God as a creator, because that implies the slavery of man. It will have godliness as a quality of ultimate achievement, a quality of enlightenment.

God will be spread all over - in everything, in every being.

The individual, for the first time, will not be programmed; he will be helped to be himself. He will not be given any ideals, any discipline, any certain pattern. He will be given only a tremendous love for freedom, so that he can sacrifice everything, even his own life, but he cannot sacrifice freedom. The new individual will not be repressive; he will be natural, with no inhibitions, expressive of everything that he has. Just the way plants express themselves in different colors, in different fragrances, each individual will be doing the same.

The new individual will not have the false idea that all human beings are equal. They are not. They are unique, which is a far higher concept than equality. Although the new individuals will not be equal, they will have equal opportunity to develop their potential, whatever it is.

There will be no marriage; love will be the only law. Children will be part of the commune, and only the commune will decide who is capable of being a mother and who is capable of being a father. It cannot be at random and accidental. And it will be according to the needs of the earth.

The new humanity will have an ecology in which nature is not to be conquered, but lived and loved.

We are part of it - how can we conquer it? It will not have any races, no distinctions between nations, between colors, castes. It will not have any nations, any states. It will have only a functional world government, and the world government will not be chosen by mediocre voters - because they necessarily chose people of their own category.

It will have a totally different pattern. Just as we don't allow anybody to vote before he is twenty-one years old - he has to be adult - in exactly the same way, unless everybody is well-educated and has at least a bachelor's degree, he will not be allowed to vote. And the people will vote, not for any party - because there will be no party at all, it will be a no-party system - people will vote directly for individuals.

An education minister, a foreign minister, an interior minister, a president - these people will stand on their individual merit. Just as no voter can have less than a bachelor's degree, nobody can stand for any post who does not have a doctorate in that particular subject. So all those who will be standing for the post will be experts on the same subject, and the choice will be by the educated, by the intelligent.

And the government will not be in the old sense a government. It won't have any power, it will be simply functional. It will be the servant of the society in the real sense, not only in words.

Life has so many dimensions, and politics has dominated them all. Looking at a newspaper, somebody on some other planet could not conceive what kind of people live on the earth - only politicians? murderers? suicides? rapists? criminals?... because your newspapers are full of these people, and on top of everything is the politician.

Every creative dimension of life will be brought out into the light, and the ugly aspects don't need to be advertised. If somebody has murdered, it should be brought to light - not to say that he was a criminal, but to show how the very psychology of the man, the upbringing of the man went wrong, and why he had to commit murder. In his place, with the same background, anybody would have done the same. So you are not condemning the person, you are condemning the training, the background, the upbringing; this is absolutely scientific.

Why does a man become a rapist? - because his background was creating the energy to be a rapist... although he was trying to be a Baptist, he ended up being a rapist! So the negative part should be brought out, but the individual should never be condemned because no action is equal to the whole individual. The action is a small part of his whole life.

The newspapers should be full of creativity, positivity. Ninety percent of a newspaper should give coverage to musicians, poets, sculptors, dancers, actors, philosophers and only ten percent should be given to the politicians and the negative elements. The negative elements should be analyzed so the individual is not condemned. And the politicians should only be given space as information, not more than that. If they are doing something good it should be said, if they are doing something not good it should be said - but they should not be dominating our whole life.

The new humanity will have to change the whole structure of its education. It will not be ambitious, it will not create a desperate desire in everybody to become somebody powerful. On the contrary, it will create creators. It will create people who know how to rejoice. Its basic function should be to teach people the art of living, loving, laughing, the capacity to sing, dance, paint.

There will be people who have to be trained for technology, science, but even those who are being trained for technology and science or medicine should not be kept completely unconscious of the beautiful side of life. They should not become robots - because what you do, you become. If you are continuously researching about objects, soon you forget that you are a subject; you become an object.

And each individual who enters a school, college, or university should have hypnotic sessions in which he can be encouraged to meditate - so meditation comes from within him, it is not imposed from the outside. It is not compulsory to meditate, but it becomes compulsory to meditate because it is coming from the inside.

And that is the beauty of hypnosis, that it can put the seed in your very heart, and when things come from there you never feel that something has been forced on you. And things like meditation cannot be forced; then there is resentment. But hypnosis is a great art: it can help man drop all kinds of resentment, all kinds of jealousies, hatred, competition. It can clean man's inner shrine so completely that everybody grows up and does not only grow old.

So when I said the word has to be spread, I meant that the new man is an absolute necessity. The old is dead or is dying... cannot survive long. And if we cannot produce a new human being, then humanity will disappear from the earth - and that will be ugly.

And I told you to spread the word because they are trying every hindrance to keep me from approaching people. But I will approach people. They are mediocre politicians: they cannot prevent me. They can delay me, but they cannot stop me unless some idiot goes absolutely mad and kills me.

In that case you have the word. And if I am not there, your responsibility becomes great. When I am here your responsibility is none; I can do it alone without any difficulty. But if I am not here then your responsibilities tremendously increase. Then each of you has to represent me, and we have to see how many people they can crucify.

But the word has to go out because the word cannot be crucified. Ways and means have to be found for the word to reach to every corner of the earth, to every human being who can understand.

Question 2:

It is. The walls that divide humanity are made of different belief systems, and all beliefs are false.

Man has been sacrificed for false beliefs. And these beliefs are political, social, religious, but basically one thing is in all of them, that they are repressing your enquiry into truth. They are forcing into your unconscious any doubt about the concepts that the society wants to propagate.

And it does not allow anybody to question it.

Any belief system that is afraid of questioning, enquiry, doubt, simply proves that it has no base in reality - and they are all afraid, greatly afraid. Nobody should touch the basic questions. You can ask questions about details, but you should not ask questions about their basic tenets, because they don't have any evidence for them. They are fictions.

It is a very strange thing to see that man has been fighting for fictions, different fictions - Hindu fictions, Christian fictions, Mohammedan fictions - and they are all of the same category. They do the same to the individual wherever he is: they destroy his integrity, they destroy his intelligence.

Their whole effort is to keep you as unintelligent as possible, so those who are in power are never questioned. Their intentions are never questioned, their orders are never questioned; otherwise it would be impossible for millions of people to be ready to die for stupid things. Catholics fighting Protestants - what is the difference between the two? The difference is so small, so negligible - and man's life is so valuable. But that negligible difference is more important: thousands can die for it.

And each religion is fighting with the other religion, knowing perfectly well that they both are standing on shifting sands. But both are pretending that their foundations are very deep, very ancient, that time cannot change them: they are unchangeable. Many religions have disappeared from the earth, and many new ones have come in their place; still the old mind goes on thinking that religions are something eternal.

Political ideologies go on changing like fashion; religious ideologies take a little time, but they also change. They have to change because man's enquiry into scientific fields goes on bringing new facts. Those new facts, you cannot deny.

At first religions tried to deny them, but that did not succeed; now they are trying to absorb them.

They are even ready to drop from the BIBLE anything that is against science and replace it with scientific facts. But they are clinging to the BIBLE and trying to decorate it with new facts so that it remains appealing, but that appeal is sheer danger, a danger for human beings and their life.

A man is needed who is brought up without any religious belief system, without any political ideology.

His education is only a sharpening of the intelligence so that one day he can find his own truth. And remember, if the truth is not your own, it is not truth.

To be truth it has to be your own, your own experience; you cannot borrow it. And all those belief systems have been borrowed for centuries. They have ugly things in them which may have been at one time acceptable because man's mind was not so alert, but now they cannot be accepted.

For example, in India you must have seen that everybody goes into the temple with a red-colored paste and puts a mark on the forehead of the statue of the god with the red paste, and breaks a coconut at his feet. The reality is that once the red color was the blood of the enemy and the coconut was the head of the enemy. The coconut has a similarity: it has two eyes, a beard, a mustache, a skull. In fact, in the Hindustani language the skull is called kopri and the coconut is called copra - the same words.

Once it was actually the head of the believer in some other system of thought and his blood which were to be sacrificed to the god. Everything has been sacrificed. In the ancient Hindu scripture there is ashvamedh yagna, which means a horse has to be sacrificed. And even though now they are making so much fuss about the cow, in the RIG VEDA there is gomedh yagna, which means a cow has to be sacrificed. And most amazing is narmedh yagna, in which a man is to be sacrificed.

Now, all that looks, even to the believers, a little too much, so only statues of a man, a cow, a horse are sacrificed symbolically.

But man goes on clinging. He will not see the point. To whom are you sacrificing? There is nobody there; no answer has come from the sky, it is absolutely silent. Neither it cares about your sacrifices nor does it care about your continuous fight of one religion with another religion. But those who are in power in a belief system cannot let go of it.

Just the other day, Anando had the information for me that the Catholic church in Europe is very vehemently trying to destroy all cults, which are becoming competitive - the Witnesses of Jehovah, the Moonies, the Hare Krishnas, and other small cults. And the reason why they want to is that they are cutting down eighteen percent of their business.

This is coming down to the ground - not talking about God and not talking about philosophy. Now this is the reality: they are cutting down eighteen percent of their business. And they are condemning them, saying that they send young women to lure new customers to these cults. Now this is a condemnation. And I know perfectly well ... because in India I have myself been approached by beautiful Catholic women, with pamphlets, who invited me to their church.

And I said, "You can take this rubbish with you. I can come to the church, but then make the police security department ready - because I will not be just listening! There is going to be a discussion with your priest - because if these pamphlets are your propaganda literature, it is enough proof of what the sermons will be like."

They became angry and I said, "That does not look good for beautiful women, and you have been sent because of your beauty. You have come to the wrong person. But there are many who will be lured and they will come to the church." The Catholics themselves have been doing that. And now they are condemning their own cults - they are Christian cults - the Moonies are a Christian cult, the Witnesses of Jehovah are a Christian cult.

And now the Catholic church has come out with a strong condemnation that cults are spreading prostitution, and through prostitution cults are disturbing their business. But they have always been doing the same up to now. In their condemnation they have exposed themselves.

The most ugly thing about the old society is that it lives on false beliefs, it lives on fear, it lives on greed. And man need not be afraid of anything. Man can rejoice in very small things; he just has to know the art of rejoicing. Then an ordinary, small house can be lived in the way an emperor lives in his palace. Then ordinary food can be eaten with so much joy that no king can manage to compete with you - his appetite is lost.

It is a strange world: the poor person has the appetite and the rich man has the food. He also had an appetite when he was poor, but just to gain more and more so that he could satisfy his many kinds of appetites... By the time he reaches the point where he can say, "Now I can start enjoying,"

he finds all his appetites are gone. In fact he has lost his whole life in accumulating things which he cannot use. There are people who are hungry, and there are people who are overeating and dying because of overeating.

The old society is simply stupid. We need a radical change and we need it soon, before the old society explodes into a nuclear war.

Question 3:

First, enlightenment has nothing to do with knowing anything. It is pure knowing; there is no object of that knowing. It is pure loving; there is no object as your beloved. It is pure rejoicing.

Remember, enlightenment is a freedom from duality - from the other, whatever the context may be.

It is a clarity - not that you are trying to know something, you are simply cleaning your glasses. You are trying to make your eyes perfect. You may know many things along the way, but that is never the goal.

Socrates says, "I know only one thing, that I know nothing," but he knows at least one thing: that he knows nothing. His knowing is clear, absolutely clear. There is no object, but the clarity is there.

I say, "To know oneself is to know everything." It is not different from what Socrates is saying, just a different way of saying it. To know oneself simply means to come to a pure state of knowing, of just being aware and conscious. In that very consciousness you become part of the whole. You don't know things from the outside, you know from the inside. You are no longer an outsider, you become an insider of existence.

And the joy of pure knowing is just like having a beautiful shower for no other purpose than the freshness of it, the cleanliness of it. Pure knowing is a constant shower of consciousness within you which keeps you fresh, young, alive, alert - and what more can one want? This is the last thing that one could have even imagined. It is utter silence. That is why Socrates says, "I know nothing."

But I know only one thing: he is aware of his clarity, aware of his awareness. The energy of being aware of other things has come back to itself. It now knows itself. I call it enlightenment.

To know the whole world is nothing when it is compared to knowing your own inner mystery of life.

Question 4:

First, the story is not Sufi, it is a Zen story. And I would like to tell you the whole story - perhaps you may find the answer for your question. And it is not a story but a real, historical incident.

One German professor of philosophy, Herrigel, became interested in Zen just by reading in the libraries. And he became so enchanted with it that he took three years' leave from the university and went to Japan to find a master. He had many acquaintances among professors in the universities, so he enquired and they all told him about one man, a very famous master archer. "Right now there is no one else of that quality. If that man can accept you as his disciple, it will be a great blessing."

He went. Humbly he said that he has come from Germany and he wants to be his disciple. "And I have come to learn Zen."

The master laughed. He said, "We don't know anything about Zen. I am an archer. I can teach you archery, and by the side, if Zen happens you are fortunate. It happens if you follow exactly what I say."

And he was saying, "Looking at the target, stretching your bow, let the arrow go by itself: you be relaxed."

This was absolutely absurd. How can the arrow go by itself if one is relaxed? One has to be very tense, one has to concentrate, and the man is saying nothing about concentration; he is talking about relaxation. Herrigel was a very good hunter, so it was not a difficult problem for him: one hundred percent of the time he was hitting the target.

But the master would always say, "No, the thing is missing. You don't listen to me. You are too concerned with hitting the target, you are too tense, afraid that you may miss the target. That target is not the real target; that is just a device. Stretch the bow, be relaxed, and let the arrow go by itself."

Three years of constant frustration... Every day it would begin, and every day the master would say, "It seems impossible... you cannot succeed. As far as being an archer, you are - you can compete with any archer - but you had come to know Zen. And I told you I don't know anything about Zen because I did not want you to be concerned about Zen, because even a concern about it becomes a tension.

"Now I want to say to you: if you can manage to let the arrow go by itself, and you remain relaxed and unconcerned, perhaps by the side you will have a taste of Zen."

After three years of constant failure Herrigel went to the master and said, "Tomorrow I have to leave.

You have been kind and compassionate, but I cannot do this; both together seems to be illogical to me. So tomorrow sometime I will be leaving. If I have time, then I will come just to see you for the last time."

And he came for the last time. The master was teaching another disciple, and Herrigel was sitting on the bank just looking, because now he was finished. He had decided, "It is not for me." He could not even understand the language of how it could be possible.

The master was teaching the disciple, and to show him how it should be, he took the bow and arrow in his hands; he stretched the bow. And Herrigel saw, with surprised eyes, that the master was absolutely relaxed, and the arrow reached to the target. And he could see that the arrow was going by itself. It did not have the tension of the master; the master was absolutely relaxed standing there.

He was not even worried whether it reached to the target or not.

Herrigel said, "My God! For three years he has been showing me: how could I manage not to see it? It is so apparent that he manages it. Logical or illogical, he is managing it!"

Spontaneously he stood up, went to the master, and took the bow and arrow from his hands. He had not come to try again, but just on the spur of the moment... He had seen for the first time, because for the first time he was unattached, for the first time he was unconcerned - he was leaving, he was finished. His eyes were clear, there was no desire.

He took the bow and arrow, stretched the bow, became relaxed and let the bow be released on its own. It hit the target. The master said, "You have done it! I knew one day you would be able to do it, but I never knew that it would be the last day. And today you had not come to do it. That's what I have been telling you - that it is a doing which is totally different from ordinary doing. It is action through inaction, doing through non-doing."

Herrigel said, "Now there is no problem: I have understood it; I have tasted what I had come for. I have tasted that relaxed moment. So that is Zen."

If you are trying, then you are trying against your own longing. Don't try. Here there is no bow, no arrow, no target. Here you have to do nothing. Here you can relax. At the most you may miss a few of my words - nothing to be worried about.

If you are relaxed, you cannot miss. It is just the worry that if you are relaxed, you may miss... and you don't want to miss anything. That creates tension. I don't want you to be attentive to me, to what I am saying. I want you to be utterly relaxed. Even if you miss what I am saying, you will get the thing I am talking about - you will get a taste of Zen.

Question 5:

Hypocrisy cannot become your reality. Howsoever you try, it is hypocrisy. America is a Christian country, and now you can see the hypocrisy - Jesus Christ and even God are not first on the list.

They are way down. Even Ronald Reagan is ahead of Jesus Christ, ahead of God.

This is an unconscious exposure of the hypocrisy: the country is not Christian, nobody there is a Christian. How could they forget Christ? Do they think Ronald Reagan has a better mind than Christ? But leave Christ aside... even God himself does not have a better mind than Ronald Reagan!

Now in America they should start worshipping Ronald Reagan, and they should start teaching in the schools that Ronald Reagan created the world, that he is the creator. This shows reality; it is an unconscious exposure.

Albert Einstein had a great mind, but he himself was no longer interested in it. Those people don't know that in his next life he wanted to be a plumber because he had seen that this great mind is of no use. It does not give you any truth about yourself; on the contrary, it goes on giving you lies about yourself. It is very efficient in lying. Yes, about objects of the world it has a great grasp, but what is the point? You know the whole world and you don't know yourself. You know the whole world and you have to ask others about yourself, who you are.

Einstein was fed up, and he was a very sincere man so he said, "I don't want to be a physicist, a scientist - nothing. I want to be something very simple like a plumber so I can have enough time to relax and to find out about myself. The most precious thing I have missed. And this mind is the cause of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

He could never forgive himself. If he had not been there, there would not have been any Nagasaki or Hiroshima. It was he who had written a letter to Roosevelt, saying, "I can prepare atom bombs which will transcend all old war methods, and victory is absolutely sure."

Once he had made the atom bombs and they were in the hands of the politicians, he started having second thoughts. He started writing letters: "Please don't use them. They will destroy millions of people who have done no harm to anybody - and I will be responsible."

But now nobody listened to him; his letters were not even answered. His first letter was received with great joy, and he was received with great joy in the United States. But his other letters went down the drain - nobody bothered about them. Now they had the bombs in their power.

If people had understood, they would not have asked for Albert Einstein's mind. Before dying, he donated his brain to the best brain surgeons because he wanted to know, "What is wrong with my brain that I missed knowing myself? - and I knew everything about faraway galaxies. There must be something wrong." The people who participated in the poll have only heard the name of Albert Einstein. They don't know his agony. They don't know that he was continuously feeling responsible for Hiroshima and Nagasaki and was unable to forgive himself.

And about John Kennedy... he was a good man but not a great mind. He has not left anything behind that proves he was a great mind. A courageous man... but that does not mean a great mind.

Their real choice seems to be Ronald Reagan - because the other two are dead - and I would not have conceived of anybody thinking that Ronald Reagan has a mind at all!

I am reminded of a story. Brain surgery was done on a politician. It was a big operation: they had to take his whole brain out and it took hours, so they sewed up his skull. They fixed his skull and left him in a deep freeze place. And they were working in another room on his brain. At that time somebody came running and shook the politician and asked, "What are you doing here sleeping?

You have been chosen the president of the country!"

The man said, "My God, and I am sleeping here!" He simply ran out with those people, and while he was leaving, one of the surgeons saw him.

The surgeon asked, "Where are you going? Your brain is still out!"

The man said, "I will not need it now: I have been chosen the president of the country. When I need it, I will come back. But now there is no point. Keep it safe."

Ronald Reagan? - but American politics... And Ronald Reagan has made it a very solid camp; it was not so solid before. Before, the world was not so clearly divided. Now it is our own experience that although the countries of Europe or Australia or the Far East pretend to be independent, it is only a pretension. There are only two countries now: the Soviet Union and America.

Ronald Reagan has proved to be the most war-oriented man, and he has made the whole world completely divided into two camps. He is simply waiting for the right moment to start the war. In Libya he was hoping the Soviet Union would come out in front, but I think the Soviet Union is more concerned now about the whole humanity than about communism.

And it is a simple fact that if the whole humanity disappears, communism will disappear. To save communism without humanity is not possible. So for the Soviet Union communism is no longer the first thing, the first thing is humanity. So it is the Soviet Union that has cooled down Libya so as not to make it turn into a third world war. But America is just searching for any small loophole from where the third world war can be created.

And for this man to be chosen as the third in the poll simply shows that the vast majority of Americans don't think at all. They are not even concerned that they are putting Jesus Christ fourth, and God fifth. They don't think that they are insulting their own religion; they don't think that they are betraying Christianity.

But the mediocre mind is just like that. It enjoys violence, it enjoys war. It is not interested in rejoicing, in dancing, in singing, in loving. It is not interested in being just silent, peaceful, blossoming. For the whole of history it has been for war - that's why it has chosen Ronald Reagan.

And perhaps Albert Einstein was not chosen for his great mind, but because he created atom bombs and started a new world, a new phase in war which has now culminated in nuclear weapons. And perhaps John Kennedy also for the same reason...

In India it is very rare that a book is banned, particularly a book written by Bertrand Russell. One was banned, but some friend of mine from England brought it. The reason for banning it was the Cuba situation: America was threatening Cuba - it wanted Cuba to be destroyed completely - and Cuba asked for help from Russia. A nuclear missile was sent on a ship, and John Kennedy said, "If the ship does not stop and return to the Soviet Union immediately, I will start bombarding Cuba." Khrushchev was a third-rate politician, but he proved far more of a humanitarian: seeing the situation, he turned the ship back.

The whole of America enjoyed it as a victory. But Bertrand Russell wrote a book in which he said that it was a victory for Khrushchev and the Soviet Union: they had thought of humanity, and they had avoided the war at the cost of being called cowards. And they were powerful enough to fight, so there was no reason for them to go back. But foreseeing an unnecessary massacre of millions of people... and it would not have remained confined to Cuba, it would have spread all over the world.

So a man like Bertrand Russell, a man of great genius, wrote the book in favor of Khrushchev. He was against communism, but he said, "That is beside the point. In this situation, Khrushchev has proved a far greater humanitarian than John Kennedy. John Kennedy was a warmonger."

And in the same book he has condemned Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru - that's why the book was banned - because Jawaharlal was continuously talking of peace and his army was bombing Pakistan! And he was not willing to agree to an election in Kashmir for Kashmir to decide where it wanted to go: to Pakistan or to India. Pakistan was absolutely ready.

Kashmiris certainly want to go to Pakistan, because ninety percent are Mohammedans, only ten percent are Hindus. So Jawaharlal could not agree to an election - which was a democratic way to solve the problem. The problem has remained unsolved even till now. For forty years the problem has been there. Both the armies, Pakistani and Indian, are standing on the borders, and U.N.

observers have their posts there. For forty years... you can remain there for four thousand years, but there will be no change because India is not willing to have an election - which is undemocratic.

And if Pakistan attacks then India is ready to attack in return.

Jawaharlal was talking about peace and nonviolence, and his armies were doing this. And he was talking about democracy, and in Kashmir he could not follow his own principle of democracy.

Because of this passage the book was banned, but because of the banning of the book, it sold more in India than anywhere else. It came by way of all kinds of smugglers into the country, and it was selling at a higher price, almost double the price.

So perhaps the Americans who have voted most for Albert Einstein have done so because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; for John Kennedy, because he was adamant and stubborn and was ready to start bombing Cuba, without any responsibility for the whole humanity getting involved in a third world war; and for Ronald Reagan - who is going to drag the world into a third world war. That will make him the greatest hero in history - although there will be nobody to write the history and nobody to remember who was the greatest hero!

And poor Jesus Christ... he is good for Sunday religion. And God... even though people believe in God, they know there is no God. And even if there is a God, I don't think people think that he has a brain. Seeing the mess in the world, it is clear that he has no brain; he himself may be retarded.

The poll is very significant. It shows the human mind - its violence, its animality, its barbarousness.

It is good that it exposes the hypocrisy.