The failure of revolution

Question 1:

Devaprem, Camus' book, MAN IN REVOLT has many great insights in it, but he still remains a philosopher. He preaches, but he does not practice. You are asking me that in this book, MAN IN REVOLT, "he comes to the conclusion that all attempts to abolish injustice through revolutions are bound to fail." That's a great insight.

It seems there is something intrinsic in the very mechanism of revolution that makes it bound to fail.

First, the revolutionary is created by the old society against which he is revolting; his values, his ideals are not much different from the old. The only difference for him is that the right people are not in power; otherwise, everything is right. Only the right people have to be in power, the wrong people have to be removed, and the revolution will be accomplished in all dimensions of life.

This is a basic fallacy. It is not a question of right or wrong people. The whole society has been conditioned to live in a reactionary way, not in a revolutionary way; it has been conditioned to be slaves not masters. Hence, when a few people revolt against the powers - to change the power structure, and replace the old establishment with themselves - only then do they find that what the old establishment was doing, they, too, have to do; otherwise, there will be immense chaos.

But then it is too late to understand. And slowly slowly, they themselves turn into the same kind of people that they have thrown out - in fact, worse, because now they know the taste of power, and they also know how they have thrown out the people who were in power before them. Soon there will be a new generation coming, which will start talking about revolution - because nothing has been changed. They are more alert to repress any possibility of revolution because they know how they threw out the old power structure; they are not going to be thrown out in the same way. They will not allow freedom of speech, which is a basis for any revolution to happen, and they will crush every individual who does not follow their structure.

For sixty years in the Soviet Union, the communist regime has proved far worse than the regime of the czars that it had revolted against. At least in the regime of czars, it was possible to create a revolution; but under a communist regime it is almost impossible. They don't allow it from the very beginning. All publications are government owned, radio is government owned, television is government owned. In fact, now, in the name of communism, private property has been taken over by the state. So to call the Soviet Union a communist country is not right - it is state capitalism.

In America, there are many capitalists, and their large number gives a certain feeling of movement and change, and the possibility of revolution. In the Soviet Union, there is only one communist, and that is the state itself. All power, all wealth, all land, everything belongs to the state; man has been denuded completely of all ownership.

The educational institutions are all run by the government. You read only what the government wants you to read, you listen only to government radio stations, and on the television you see only what the government wants you to see.

You cannot have another political party in opposition to the Communist Party because it is not a democracy - it is a dictatorship of the proletariat. It is just a name, dictatorship of the proletariat; but in the name of the proletariat, it is the Communist Party which is the dictator. It is the same small group of people who have been ruling for sixty years, and total power is in their hands.

Joseph Stalin, who established communist rule in Russia, killed at least one million people in his own land. These were the same people for whom the revolution was preached; and of these million people, most of them were revolutionaries. He had to kill them because now those revolutionaries were a risk. To let them live was dangerous because they were asking continually, "What happened to the revolution?" Only the people in power had changed, but the revolution seemed to be happening nowhere; all was the same. Instead of many capitalists, now there was only one capitalist, the state, which certainly made it immensely powerful; and there was no opposition party, there was no question of any opposition.

It is well known - there is no evidence to prove it, but there is every possibility of its being true - that as the revolution succeeded, Lenin, the leader of the revolution, and Trotsky, his second in command, his right hand, Commeneau, Zinoviev, and other great communist revolutionaries were killed one by one.

Lenin was given small doses of poison every day, under the pretext of giving him medicine. It was his wife who confessed it - that Stalin never allowed any other doctor except his own to take care of Lenin; and his condition went on worsening. Stalin did not want him to die immediately because, in Lenin's name, he first wanted to establish himself securely. Stalin was only the secretary of the party; his contribution to the revolution was not much, he was not a well-known figure in the nation or internationally.

Lenin was the founder of the revolution, and Trotsky was the most influential leader - even Lenin was not such a charismatic leader. Stalin kept Lenin alive, but at most half-alive. While slowly slowly poisoning him on the one hand, on the other hand he went on taking more and more power into his own hands. When Stalin was completely in control, Lenin was finished.

Lenin never ruled over Russia. After the revolution he was continuously sick; he was kept sick. Then Commeneau was caught, Zinoviev was assassinated, and Trotsky, who was the defense minister, escaped Russia fearing that now Lenin was dead his number was going to be up.

And you cannot conceive the inhumanity of man to man. The day Stalin's assassins reached Trotsky's house... he had already left the Soviet Union just a few hours before. They found only his dog in the house, and it seems almost unbelievable, but Stalin ordered the dog to be assassinated immediately - just a mad mind corrupted by power. And he sent professional murderers to find where Trotsky was, he had to be killed - he could not be left alive anywhere in the world.

And Trotsky had escaped to an unknown part of Mexico, far away from the Soviet Union, at the other end of the world. But they finally found him, and he was brutally murdered by being hit on his head repeatedly with a hammer. His whole skull was broken into pieces.

He was writing a biography of Joseph Stalin so future generations would know that just to change the people in power is not enough - Stalin had proved to be far worse than the Czars. It is a big volume, almost one thousand pages; and a rare biography written by an enemy, so sincere, so truthful. When he was hit on his head from behind with a hammer, he was just finishing the last line of the biography. His blood is on the last pages of the book. The book is still kept in some museum in Mexico, his handwritten book with his blood on it.

All the other leaders who had been the great revolutionaries were killed, one after another, because these people were dangerous. They were still talking about revolution, and Stalin recognized the fact that no revolution was possible. It was good to talk about it before the revolution, but now that the responsibility has fallen on your own shoulders, you have to forget all about revolution. You have to establish yourself and your party in power with such force that nobody can destroy your power.

There is a beautiful story.... When Stalin died and Khrushchev became the prime minister, his first speech was to the highest inner circle of the Communist Party, called the Presidium. While he was speaking, he said, "Now I have to confess that Stalin was one of the greatest criminals. He knew only one thing: either you are for him or you are his enemy. And for the enemy, there is nothing other than death."

Somebody in the back of the auditorium shouted, "You have been with him for all these forty years.

Why did you remain silent?" Khrushchev laughed and said, "I would like the honorable comrade to stand up, so that I can see who is raising the question."

Nobody stood up, and Khrushchev said, "Do you understand? If anybody stands, tomorrow he will be dead. After tomorrow, he will never be heard of again anywhere in the universe. I was also in a similar position."

The whole country became a concentration camp. And they have used methods against human beings which have never been used by any other government or any other power. First, they would make an arrest if there was any suspicion... if a man had talked to someone against the Communist Party, against the government; or he had written a letter to someone indicating a slight difference with the Communist Party - he would be arrested immediately.

And these procedures would be followed: for fifteen days he would be in police custody, and the police would not allow him to sleep; they would inject him so that he could not sleep, not even a wink. They would inject chemicals to disturb his mind, to erase his memory; they would create a false madness in the man. And then after fifteen days, the man would be produced before the court.

The government attorney would say, "He has been arrested because he is not in his right senses - he is insane."

Such a beautiful facade... and then the court would go through its procedures: the judge would ask the man, "What is your name?" And the man would look all around, because he has forgotten everything, his memory has been erased. And naturally, the judge has to declare him mad. He has to be sent into a madhouse where he will be killed; nobody will ever know what happened to him in the madhouse. Or people will be sent to Siberia where life is worse than death. Death is a rest...

Siberia is not a place to live, it is a place to suffer.

This has continued up to now; the revolution has utterly failed. And this was the greatest revolution as far as history is concerned; the greatest experiment, on the largest scale, with a profound philosophy to support it.

The same happened to the French Revolution and to the Chinese Revolution. The very mechanism of revolution is such that its success is almost impossible.

If you want to remain in power, you have to be violent, destructive - particularly destructive of those people who have revolutionary ideas. Those ideas were great and good against the older regime, but they are not good against the new regime in which you are powerful.

And all the promises have to be forgotten completely because they prove to be utopian. For example, the Russian revolutionaries had promised that they would dissolve marriage, but they never did it because the Communist Party saw that if marriage is dissolved... it is the basic unit of the nation. It would become impossible to keep the nation together, and they wanted their nation to dominate the whole world.

They were against nationalism before the revolution, but afterwards Soviet Russia became a holy land. Now they wanted their power to become more and more spread all over the world. They were now imperialists, no longer against nationalism, although they continued to speak beautiful revolutionary language. They were very articulate; before the revolution they had learned all that language. Now they started talking about an international communism; but "international communism" was to be nothing but a Soviet imperialist state.

Before the revolution in China, Mao Zedong, the leader of the revolution, was a follower - very intimate follower - of Joseph Stalin. But once Mao came into power, there was immediately a conflict because Stalin wanted China also to be part of one communist block. That meant Mao's own lust for power had no place - China would also become one of the republics of the Soviet Union. Mao resisted it and they became enemies. China and the Soviet Union, both communist countries, became so antagonistic to one another that one can see why it is difficult to have an international government. Some nation will try, in the name of international government, to exert its own lust for power and rule over the whole world.

Camus was right that all attempts to abolish injustice through revolutions are bound to fail; and he was also right when he said, "The only way to create justice is through living it." That comes very close to my idea of the new man, the rebel: each individual living in a revolutionary way, on his own, having no power over others, because power certainly corrupts.

But the difference is that Camus was only a philosopher; he himself never lived the life of a rebel. He lived the life of a very respectable man, honored by the society with a Nobel Prize, honored around the world as a great thinker, novelist, a creative genius. If he had lived the life of a rebel he would have been on the cross. Can you ever conceive of Jesus Christ receiving a Nobel Prize? His prize will always be crucifixion.

One of my sannyasins got the Nobel Prize for economic theories; he is also the secretary of the Nobel Prize committee. Being my sannyasin, listening to me and reading my books, he spoke with the king of Sweden, who is the president of the Nobel Prize committee. He said to him, "You have given me a Nobel Prize - what about my master?"

And the king said, "Never, never again mention his name, because that will destroy your credibility with the Nobel Prize committee - they will throw you out as its secretary."

And when he informed me of what happened - that they are not even ready to listen to my name - I said, "That's perfectly right, I don't belong to these people who get Nobel Prizes; I belong to those people who get crucifixions. If there is any committee that crucifies people, then my name will be on the top of the list."

It is not only the case with Camus but with all philosophers. They come very close to great insights, but they never practice them; hence they remain beautiful ideas in their books - people enjoy them.

One of my sannyasins in Australia is trying to publish three of my books. He had come to see me to get my approval for his plan. His plan is very diplomatic. The book is called THE FIRST GOLD NUGGETS, and he does not have my name in the author's place, but just "The Master." The second book is called MORE GOLD NUGGETS BY THE MASTER; and the third book is called THE GOLD MINE, and then he reveals my name.

He said, "I have given these first two books to a few of my friends and they were simply overwhelmed - they said they are going to be bestsellers. But when I mentioned your name, their faces immediately changed. They said, 'Don't create unnecessary trouble.'"

And he had come to ask me, "Can I do it? So when people have read the first two books, they will purchase the third and then they will come to know whose books they are."

I said, "This kind of deception may be a good business strategy" - he is a great salesman, he has earned millions just selling things in the marketplace - "it is a good way to market the product, but I would not like that to be done at all."

And since then, I have not heard anything from him, or what happened to those books, because they were going to be published in time for Christmas - which has passed many months ago. Perhaps he has dropped the idea: to put so much money into publication, and then because of my name those books will not get the profit that he had visualized.... It is a strange world. People are ready to appreciate what is written in those books if it is written only by a philosopher or by an anonymous entity, "The Master." But if they know it is written by me... they know I mean business.

Father and son, both great philosophers and both as lazy as possible, were sprawled in their chairs one day. The father said, "Simon, go out and see if it is raining."

"Pa," said Simon, "can't you call in the dog and see if he is wet?"

But nobody is ready to go out, even to see whether it is raining or not.

As a philosopher, Camus had many insights which may look similar to mine - they are, but he is only a philosopher. I am a rebel, not a philosopher, and that makes such a difference - exactly the difference between a Nobel Prize and crucifixion.

Question 2:

Azima, I love Bakunin and his philosophy of anarchism, but he too, is an impractical, unpragmatic philosopher. He simply goes on praising the beauties of anarchism: no government, no armies, no police, no courts. And I absolutely agree with him. But he had no idea and no plan for how this dream could be made into a reality.

Looking at man, you will need the government; looking at man, you will need the police. Otherwise there will be a multiplication of murders, rapes, thefts... life will be a chaos. Anarchism would not come, only a chaos. People would start making gangs, those gangs would exploit the weaker people and life would not become better, it would become worse.

Bakunin's anarchism is a utopia, a great dream. I don't talk about anarchism. My own understanding is if we can transform man, if we can bring more and more people to meditation, if we can make more and more people unrepressed, living an authentic, natural life, sharing their love, having a great compassion for everything living, a reverence for life itself....

These individual revolutionaries, these individual rebels are not just political rebels, they are also rebelling against all the past conditionings. Mostly they are religious rebels; they are finding their own center of being. There are more and more people who are becoming individuals who can rejoice, and who are not going to betray the earth; who are not in favor of any unnatural way of life preached by all the religions. If these individuals spread around the world like a wildfire, then anarchism will be a by-product, not the goal.

For Bakunin it is the goal. He hates governments so much - and he is perfectly right in his hate, because governments have been doing so much harm to the individuality of people. He is against all laws, courts and judges, because these are not to protect justice, not to protect the weak, not to protect the victim - they are there to protect the power, the establishment, the rich. Behind the name of justice, they are enacting a tremendous conspiracy against man.

And Bakunin has no idea why men become rapists, he is not a psychologist. He is a great philosopher of anarchism. The future will owe tremendous respect to people like Bakunin, Bukharin, Tolstoy, Camus, because although they were not very scientific thinkers at least they created the idea. Without providing the foundation, they started talking about the temple.

My whole effort is not to bother about the temple but to make a great foundation; then, to raise the temple is not difficult. Anarchism will be a by-product of a society which is free from religions and religious superstitions; which is psychologically healthy, non-repressive, which is spiritually healthy, not schizophrenic, which knows the beauties of the outside world and also the inner treasures of consciousness, awareness. Unless these people exist first, anarchism is not possible; it can come only as a by-product.

In America, they are so afraid of the anarchist that when they interviewed me for my immigration into America, this was also a question, that I should commit, in writing, that I am not an anarchist. I said to the man who was doing the interview, "I am not an anarchist of the category of Bakunin, Bukharin and Tolstoy, but I have my own anarchism. And you need not be afraid about it, because anarchism is not my goal; my goal is to create individual rebels."

The idea of rebellion is not new, but the idea of rebellion combined with enlightenment is absolutely new - it is my contribution. And if we can make the majority of humanity more conscious, more aware, with a few individuals reaching to the highest peak of enlightenment, then their rebellion will bring anarchism just like a shadow, following on its own accord.

Vimal, Anando certainly has fallen into a deep respect and love for the ghost. She has not fallen in love with the ghost as a girlfriend, she is a married woman. But I have heard this morning that she has found a ghost girlfriend for the old gentleman and the girlfriend is sitting here. Don't be deceived by the mustaches, those are false. She is also persuading the ghost to come to the discourses, but she thought it would be easier this way. If the girlfriend comes first, then the old man will also think that there is no harm.... "These people are harmless and I can go and read my newspaper."

Anando is certainly no longer afraid. At first she was freaked out, but now if the ghost is not there, she misses him. It is a far nicer ghost than the holy ghost of the Christians, because he is a Hindu ghost, and a Hindu ghost respects the virgins very much... although Anando is married she is still virgin. So the ghost respects her very much.

I have heard a question: "How do you know Christ was not born in Italy?" And the answer to the question I have found is: "They could not find three wise men and a virgin in Italy!"

But Anando is now getting more and more involved. She has found a ghost girlfriend and is hiding her with the mustache, just by the side of Kaveesha Devi - who is a black magician, who knows more about ghosts than anybody else here. She is doing her best to keep the old man in her room.

Once the girlfriend is there, perhaps he will not try to escape by sitting in the Mercedes or in the Rolls Royce. Perhaps he thought about me and did not enter into the Rolls Royce. Otherwise both cars were there... he is certainly a great gentleman.

The lady of the house was shocked. "Mary," she said, "I find your bra hanging from the light, your petticoat in the fridge and your knickers on the sofa. Is it true that while I was absent you entertained my son here last night?"

"Well," Mary replied, "I hope so, I did my best."

And Anando is also doing her best. Last night when I passed through her room, all these things were there: a beautiful, lady's high-heeled shoe on the table, with a bra sitting on the shoe, knickers and everything else; she must be preparing for the girlfriend, she is doing hard work.

This is a good religious attitude, to be respectful. Even though the body is gone, the consciousness is there; the body is gone but the life is there. And not all ghosts are bad people. Most of them are ghosts because they don't fit in heaven and they don't fit in hell: they are rebels, so they remain in between.

This old man seems to be a rebel, and as Anando becomes more acquainted with him she may inform us more and more because now they are on talking terms - the dialogue has started. Now we have to see where it leads, and many people are interested to know; her room has become the most mysterious place in the whole commune.

Just a joke for Anando's ghosts - now there are two, that's why I am saying ghosts.

Old Tom, Dick and Harry are sitting in the park, discussing whose memory goes back the farthest.

"I remember," says Harry, "I remember being taken to the church and someone splashing water on me."

"Ah," says old Tom, "that's nothing, I can remember being squeezed something terrible and coming out into this bright room and being spanked."

"I got you both beat," says Dick, "I remember going to a picnic with my father and coming back with my mother."

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.