Words cannot contain it

The first question:

Question 1:

Majida, enlightenment, the very idea of enlightenment, is the greatest joke there is. It is a joke because it is trying to get something which is already there. It is trying to reach somewhere where you are already. It is trying to get rid of something which is not there at all. It is an effort which is ridiculous.

You are enlightened from the very beginning. Enlightenment is your nature. Enlightenment is not something that has to be achieved; it is not a goal, it is your source. It is your very energy.

But once you start thinking about enlightenment as a goal, you will become serious. You will be in tremendous trouble - and absolutely unnecessarily - of your own creation. And you will never succeed either, because to think of enlightenment as a goal is to already miss the whole point. It is not there to be sought, it is in the seeker. The seeker cannot seek it! If the seeker tries to seek it, he will never find it. It is as if somebody is trying to find his glasses and the glasses are on his nose; he's trying to find the glasses with the help of the glasses, and he is not aware. It is ridiculous!

YOU are creating a serious trip for yourself. You are making it a goal and it is your source. You are making it your ambition and it is already the case! From the very beginning, nobody is unenlightened.

Then what has happened to people? Why are they searching? Why do they go on searching? Why do they make a goal out of it?

In life, everything else has to be found - except enlightenment. If you want money, it has to be a goal; otherwise you will not find it. You have to work hard for it, you have to put your whole energy into the ambition; then only will you find. Then too, it is not absolutely certain - you may find, you may not find. If you want power you will have to seek and search in every possible way, legal, illegal, right, wrong. In life, everything has to be found because you don't bring money with you, and you don't bring power with you, and you don't bring palaces with you. You come naked, empty-handed, and you go naked and empty-handed. You don't bring a thing of this world, and all those things are needed; and you rush and you try to achieve this and that.

Slowly, slowly the idea arises in you that all these things will be taken away from you. Death will come and will annihilate everything: you become frightened, fear arises. Out of fear, you start thinking to search for something which will not be taken away from you: God, truth, enlightenment, NIRVANA, or you can give it any name. Now you start seeking NIRVANA, enlightenment, God, SAMADHI in the same way as you have been seeking money, power, fame. Because you have learned a logic, you have Learned a program; now the program says, "You cannot get money without seeking for it, how can you get enlightenment without seeking for it? So seek, search, fight, struggle." And there is the whole crux of the matter - and you become ridiculous.

Money has to be sought if you want to have more money, but enlightenment is already there. You bring it with you. It is your original face. It is your emptiness, your consciousness. It is your being. When you die, everything else will die except your enlightenment, except your consciousness.

Nobody can take it away from you.

But the logic that you have learned in the world drives you crazy. It is very logical to search, seek money, power, name, fame; it is very illogical to seek enlightenment. And then it becomes a heavy trip, very serious. That's why religious people look so serious.

Religious people cannot think somebody is religious if he is not serious. Seriousness has become almost synonymous with religiousness - sad, long faces. Do you see your saints laughing? That's why the so-called Indian saints are against me: they cannot believe that an enlightened person can tell jokes. They cannot believe!

My own experience is that only an enlightened person can tell jokes. What else is left? He has seen the greatest joke of it all: he has seen the whole absurdity of searching for enlightenment. One finds enlightenment not by searching, but by one day coming to such a point of desperation that one drops all effort. In that very moment one becomes aware of it. When searching stops, desiring disappears, you are left alone with your being; nowhere to go, you are in. The inward journey is not really a journey. When all journeys disappear - nowhere to go, no interest in going, you have searched in every direction and every direction has failed you - in UTTER desperation you simply stop, you collapse, but that very collapse is the moment of the transformation. Nowhere-going, you are in. Not seeking anything, only the seeker is left. Not trying to catch anything, you suddenly become aware of the catcher. Not being interested in any object - money OR enlightenment OR God - only subjectivity is there. You are back home... and a great laughter, because you have always been there.

It is said that when Bodhidharma became enlightened he did not stop laughing for seven years.

There is another story, in Japan, of the laughing Buddha, Hotei. His whole teaching was just laughter. He would move from one place to another, from one marketplace to another marketplace.

He would stand in the middle of the market and start laughing - that was his sermon. His laughter was catching, infectious; a REAL laughter, his whole belly pulsating with the laughter, shaking with laughter. He would roll on the ground with laughter. People who would collect together, they would start laughing, and then the laughter would spread, and tidal waves of laughter, and the whole village would be overwhelmed with laughter. People used to wait for Hotei to come to their village because he brought such joy, such blessings. He never uttered a single word, never. You asked about Buddha and he would laugh; you asked about enlightenment and he would laugh; you asked about truth and he would laugh.

Laughter was his only message. Now on the opposite extreme, Christians say Jesus never laughed.

Christians must be misrepresenting Jesus. If Christians are right, then Jesus was not enlightened - and I would rather prefer Jesus to be enlightened than Christians to be right. So I say to you, he laughed! He MUST have laughed. Only such people can laugh. Their whole energy becomes a bubbling joy. Their whole being wells up into celebration. Laughter is celebration. Jesus must have laughed.

My own feeling is that his laughter must have offended the serious so-called rabbis of his day. He must have told beautiful jokes. He was a Jew, and Jews have the best jokes in the world. And he was not a man who could be believed to be so serious that he never laughed. A wrong impression has been created by Christianity. Jesus is painted as crucified: that gives the wrong impression.

He was not on the cross for his whole life. My own understanding is that on his cross also he must have laughed, because only a man of great laughter can say to God, "Father, forgive these people, because they don't know what they are doing." He was not serious, he was not sad; even the cross was a celebration.

Animals can play, at the most, but no animal can celebrate. It is given only to human beings. It is their privilege, prerogative, to celebrate. And laughter is the best celebration. To laugh is your fundamental human quality. If you came across a buffalo laughing, you would go mad. No other animal can laugh, only man; it is something special, a gift of God. And naturally, when one becomes enlightened, one will be able to have a total laugh. You need reasons to laugh; he will not need any reasons to laugh. Laughter will be just his natural quality.

That is the meaning of the story that Bodhidharma never stopped laughing for seven years. There was no reason - just the whole ridiculousness of the thing: so many Buddhas and everybody believing that he is not a Buddha and trying to attain Buddhahood.

You are all Buddhas. Whether you know it or not, it doesn't matter - your Buddhahood is not affected by it, you still remain a Buddha. You can believe that you are not a Buddha; your belief is not going to transform your nature. You can believe anything! Your belief remains superficial. At the very core of your soul, you are a Buddha. The moment you are not in desire, you will become aware of your innermost center. Desire takes you away from yourself.

And that is the problem, Majida: you must be too desirous of enlightenment, hence you are becoming serious. Otherwise there is nothing serious about enlightenment.

The second question:

Question 2:

Truth is an experience of thoughtlessness. Truth is an experience of wordlessness. You come to experience truth only in utter silence. It is utter silence, hence it is impossible to reduce it to sound, to word, to thought. Its intrinsic nature is without thought. To express truth in words would be like expressing the sky through the clouds. The sky is not expressed through the clouds. The sky, covered with clouds, disappears, you cannot see it. The more clouds are there the less the sky is available; the less clouds are there the more sky is available; no clouds, and the whole sky is available. You cannot express the sky through the clouds, they are the hindrances.

So are thoughts: truth is your consciousness, thoughts are clouds in the sky of consciousness. You cannot express through thoughts. Your thoughts can, at the most, indicate, like fingers pointing to the moon. But remember, fingers are not the moon; don't start worshipping the fingers. That's what has happened in the world. Somebody is worshipping one finger, somebody else some other finger - Christians, Mohammedans, Hindus, Buddhists. What are Buddhists doing? - worshipping Buddha. This is just a finger pointing to the moon. Where is the moon? They are sucking the finger and have completely forgotten the moon. That's why I say to you: Don't start biting MY finger! Don't become too interested in what is said. That which is said is only pointing a finger to that which cannot be said.

So all words are, at the most, arrows. That's why they can be misunderstood, easily misunderstood:

fingers you are acquainted with, the moon you have never seen. And when I show the moon with the finger it is more possible to become interested in the finger than to look away from the finger and see the moon. To see the moon you will have to look away from the finger. You will have to become completely oblivious to the finger.

"To tell the truth," said Oscar Wilde, "you have to wear a mask." All words are masks; all theories, dogmas, philosophies are masks. All religions, all theologies are masks.

He's right! To tell the truth, you have to wear a mask. You cannot tell it straight, there is no way.

To bring the word in simply means: now you cannot be straight, a medium has come in. Now the expression is through the medium; the medium will bring its own distortions into it. If you have a colored glass before your eyes, you will see the world in the same color. Now words will become like glasses on your eyes: they will color your world. That's why different people look at the world in different ways - because they have been conditioned differently.

A Hindu looks at the world differently from the Christian. A Hindu can worship the tree and the Christian will think, "What nonsense! Worshipping a tree?" The Christian will think, "This man has to be brought to his senses, converted. This man is a pagan. Make efforts to bring him to the true religion. This man is primitive" - because the Christian has a different upbringing, a different conditioning. Ask the Hindu: he has a different mind. He says, "The whole existence is divine. The tree is also divine. And the question is not what you are worshipping, the question is that you are worshipping. What you worship makes no difference." And the Hindu will say, "You go on worshipping a dead cross - it is made of wood - and I am worshipping an alive tree, and you think I am foolish?

Who is foolish? The tree is alive and life is flowing, and the tree is green and the tree is in blossom.

God is still flowing in it as green juice. Your cross is dead. It is better to worship the tree, the Hindu will say, than to worship the cross."

The Hindu worships Krishna - dancing, playing on his flute - and the Christian cannot believe it because the world is in suffering: "And how can this man be so cruel that he is playing on his flute?

The world needs to be redeemed and he is dancing with girls! What is he doing? What kind of religion is this?" He has a conditioning that the man of God has to die for the world so that the world can be redeemed. The man of God has to become a sacrifice. He has to be a martyr; not a singer, not a musician, not a dancer, but a martyr.

A Hindu has a different conditioning: he thinks if Jesus is crucified then he must have been suffering from bad karma from his past life - otherwise why should he be crucified? Crucifixion is not a good thing: it means he must have committed some bad things in his past life, because 'as you sow, so you reap'. "He cannot be the man of God. If he is the man of God then crucifixion is simply impossible." They have a different vision and different conditioning: the man of God has to sing the song of God, the celestial song, Bhagavad-Gita. He has to dance and sing in praise of God. The world need not be redeemed, the world has only to be enlightened, helped - to laugh, to love, to be.

Now it depends, it is according to your conditioning. Once you drop all conditionings you will be able to understand all kinds of minds very easily, and you will be able to see their benefits and their harms. You will be able to see what is beautiful in a certain conditioning and what is ugly. Yes, the Hindu has something beautiful to say: "God is there and we have to praise God." Right! But the world is suffering too, and something has to be done for the world, for its sufferings. And the Christian is not absolutely wrong: just the flute won't do. It has not done much for India. India is terribly poor, starving. Life is ugly. People are somehow pulling, dragging themselves. It has not been helped by the flute, something more is needed. Just dancing won't do: schools will be needed and hospitals will be needed and food will be needed.

Christianity is not all wrong, but again it makes only a half-statement. When the food is there, when the house is there, when the medicine is there, when the education is there, then what? Then just crucify yourself? What else is left? Where is the flute?

The West is suffering from affluence: all is there, but nobody knows what to do now. They have worked for three hundred years, hard work, to make everything right. Now everything is right: the house is ready, food is available, technology has provided for all needs. Now what to do - except commit suicide? Life seems meaningless because the flute is missing.

In the East man has lived with a half-vision: God is beautiful, and life is beautiful; but then he has been avoiding the ugly part of it and not trying to transform it at all. The East has lived in a very unrevolutionary way, an ANTI-revolutionary way. It has lived a very reactionary life, orthodox, conventional, conformist. Revolution is something Western, revolution is something Christian.

The world has to be transformed as much as the consciousness has to be transformed.

But when you put ALL conditionings aside you will be able to see that the world needs a totally different kind of vision. It needs a TOTAL vision - neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan.

It needs a total vision. All these are aspects of that total vision: Mohammed is one door, Christ is another, Krishna is still another, and Buddha too. All are different doors to the same temple, and all the doors are needed; only then will the temple be rich. And even if all the doors are accepted, then too truth has not been told in its fullness, because it is infinite. You can put Buddha, Christ, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu, Mahavir, Mohammed together, still truth has not been told in its totality. It can never be told. It is infinite.

All words are small. All human efforts are limited. And then, it cannot be told straight. It can be communicated straight, but it cannot be told straight - and that is the difference between a thinker and a meditator. The thinker goes roundabout because he has to go through thought. He searches for the sky through the clouds and gets lost in the clouds, may never reach the sky. The thinker gets lost in thoughts. The meditator starts by dropping thoughts. He starts by dropping thinking itself, and a moment comes when there is no thought: then there is immediacy. Then there is nothing between you and that which is. Then there is nothing at all - you are bridged with reality. But that is an experience. Whenever you would like to tell that experience to somebody else you will have to use words, out of necessity, and words cannot contain it.

For certain purposes you can say the truth straight - for certain purposes. 'The cat sat on the mat':

either the cat did it, he did sit there, or he did not. But there are other kinds of truths which you cannot catch hold of so easily. This is a fact, not a truth. So remember the difference: if some truth can be said through language, then it is a fact - 'the cat sat on the mat' Now there is an objective way of knowing whether this is true or not. If it is true it is a fact. If it is untrue it is not a fact, it is a fiction.

But there are other kinds of truth which cannot be said so easily. You cannot catch hold of them.

Language is riddled with all kinds of ambiguity. If anyone says God, love or freedom, you need to know exactly what he means when he is saying it. These are big words - God: now a Hindu means something, a Mohammedan means something else, a Christian means something else. There are three hundred religions in the world, so there are three hundred meanings to the word 'God'. Even those three hundred meanings don't exhaust it because new religions are being created every day, and they will go on being created. There can be as many religions as there are people in the world.

Each man can have his own religion.

Then what is the meaning of the word 'God'? It becomes vaguer and vaguer and vaguer. It becomes a chaos. You cannot pinpoint anything about it, and if you try to pinpoint you destroy its beauty - because you destroy its unlimitedness. If you fix it, you have killed it.

A butterfly on the wing is one thing, and a butterfly killed and pinned down in an album is a totally different thing. It is not the same butterfly. Where is the life? The moment you pin the butterfly down in an album, it is just a corpse.

When Buddha says, "God", it is a butterfly on the wing. You catch hold of the word, you pin it down in a book; you think you know, you think you have understood. All that you have got is just a corpse, the life has flown away. The life is an experience! Words cannot carry the experience. When I say something... unsaid, when it is throbbing in my heart, it is alive. The moment it has left my lips it is no more the same thing: life is left behind. It goes on throbbing there in my heart, and only the word, dead, corpse-like, moves into the air. Just a sound, a ripple, reaches to you. It is not the same thing as it was unsaid.

And then more complexities arise: the moment the sound reaches your mind you start giving your meaning to it - and your meaning may be just the opposite of my meaning because it will depend on your experience. If you meditate, then maybe your meaning will come closer and closer to me. If you have come to a point where you can stop all thinking and get in tune so deeply with yourself that there is absolute silence, then you will come closest to the meaning of what has been said to you. In fact, then there will be no need to even say it. I can just look into your eyes and you will understand.

I can just sit by your side and hold your hand and you will understand.

Then understanding is a transfer, a transmission beyond words, beyond scriptures.

The higher up you go, the thicker grows the mystery. The lower kinds of facts can be relayed through words because we have all experienced them. When I say 'a tree' you understand exactly what I mean, but when I say 'nirvana' you only hear the word, you don't understand what I mean - because as far as the tree is concerned, it is a common experience, my experience, your experience. If I say 'a rock', immediately it is understood, it is a mundane fact. But when I say 'love', it is a little more difficult; and when I say 'nirvana', even more difficult - because the higher the truth, the fewer are those who will be able to understand it.

Jesus was misunderstood. Out of misunderstanding he was killed. He was talking of the Kingdom of God, and the Roman rulers became suspicious. They started thinking that he was a politician and he wanted to rule the world, he wanted to create his own kingdom. He was talking continuously and saying to people, "I have come to establish the Kingdom of God." He was saying something, the politicians were interpreting something else. He was not talking of the kingdom of this world, he was talking of the kingdom of the other world, the invisible. He was not concerned with politics at all.

It has always happened: the higher you go, the more dumb you feel. And whatsoever you say, you can IMMEDIATELY see it has been misunderstood.

Lao Tzu has said, "If I say something and people understand it, then I know it was not worth saying.

If I say something and people don't understand, then I know that there must have been some truth in it."

We must learn to live with this, this mystery of higher truths. Music is one way of doing it, far better than language. Because music has no words it cannot tell anything, truth, untruth; so it can't tell no-truth or lies. It says nothing, it simply shows - and that is the beauty of music. You don't think whether music is true or untrue; that is irrelevant. You simply listen to it. You become overwhelmed by it, you are possessed by it. You fall in tune with it. You are transported to some other realm, to some other vision of reality. You are not in the mundane world. Music takes you to the higher peaks of life and existence. It simply takes your hand and leads you, very politely, very lovingly, into the mysterious.

Music was born as part of religion: music was born in temples, music was born in the mystery schools, in the esoteric schools of seekers of truth. It was born as an effort to convey something which cannot be conveyed through words. Music can bear witness to the mystery, and that is all.

If you love a Master, you start hearing his music, the music of his being. Even through his words you start hearing the wordless message, you start hearing... listening to the gaps between the words.

You start reading between the lines. Slowly slowly words become transparent; then they don't hide, they reveal. But for that, trust and love are needed. For that, disciplehood is needed.

Just the other night a new sannyasin was here, Kavio, a beautiful man with great potential. He has come here with his beloved; she's also a beautiful woman. She wants to look into my eyes, and she is not a sannyasin yet. Kavio asked me about it, and I had to say that unless she is a sannyasin, even if she looks into my eyes she will not be able to see anything. To be a sannyasin means to be ready to receive. I will be giving, but she will not be able to receive - because she is not ready to pay anything to receive it. She should take the jump into sannyas. Sannyas means surrender; surrender creates receptivity. Surrender means you become vulnerable, open, you don't defend. Surrender means now you put your arms away, now you drop your armor. Now even if the Master wants to kill you, you will be happy to be killed by the Master.

I have heard...

One day Hassan of Busra and Malik, son of Dinar, and Sakik of Bulk, came to see Rabiya el-Adawiya when she was ill.

Rabiya is one of the greatest woman mystics of the world, and these three saints came to see her because she was ill.

Hassan said, "None is sincere in his claim to the love of God unless he patiently endure the blows of his Lord."

Rabiya said, "This smells of egoism."

Sakik said, "None is sincere in his claim unless he give thanks for the blows of his Lord."

Rabiya said, "This must be still bettered. Still something of egoism is there."

Malik, son of Dinar, said, "None is sincere in his claim unless he delight in the blows of his Lord."

Rabiya said, "Good, but still needs to be improved. A very subtle ego is still hiding there like a shadow."

Then they all said, "Please do speak. You yourself say."

She said, "None is sincere in his claim unless he forgets the blows in beholding his Lord."

Let me repeat it: none is sincere in his claim unless he forgets the blows in beholding his Lord.

Even when the Master hits, you feel tremendously happy. And the Master has to hit to make openings in your being; you have grown a hard crust around yourself. That was necessary for survival, otherwise you would not have survived at all. You had to protect yourself against so many dangerous situations in life. You have become afraid, frightened; you have created a China Wall around yourself. When you come to a Master you have to drop that armor. And the armor may have gone so deep that you cannot drop it. Then the Master has to hit you, the Master has to use a sledge-hammer. He has to cut many chunks of your being because they are not really part of you.

They are part of the armor which has become too much identified with your being. And when those chunks are removed and cut, it is painful, it hurts - but only then can the Master pour himself into you. One has to pay for it. And by paying I mean one has to be ready to drop all defenses. That's what sannyas is all about.

Only in a Master-disciple relationship can truth be conveyed, because only in that relationship are words not needed.

I use words to persuade you to become a disciple. Words cannot convey the truth, but words can convey this approach: that there is a possibility of being in a certain love-relationship with a Master; there is a possibility of coming closer to somebody who has seen who he is. You are also that, but you have not seen it yet. Coming closer to somebody who has known, one day his vibe starts triggering a process of knowing in your being. That is the transfer.

Kavio's woman has some longing to be connected with me, to be related with me, but still wants to be related to me as an outsider, is afraid of getting involved, is afraid of being committed. But that very fear will not allow her to receive what I want to give. I am ready to give to anybody! It is not a condition from MY side that you have to be a sannyasin, that only then will my energy be flowing towards you. This is my observation and experience: that only a sannyasin receives it. The others are not ready to receive.

The music of silence, the music of a loving surrender, the music of the being of a Master - that is the way to relate, to convey.

Music, in a sense, is absolutely silent. Sounds are there but those sounds only make the silence deeper. They help the silence, they are not against silence. That is the difference between noise and music: noise is just sound which does not lead you to silence, music is sound that becomes a door to silence. Modern music is not much of a music, it is noise; it does not lead you to silence. Classical music is real music. The definition of real music is: that sound which leads you into silence.

Music, in a sense, is absolutely silent. Even song is not pure music, because a song has words in it.

It is a compromise with language, it is halfway to music. It is better than ordinary language. Poetry is better than prose, poetry is a little closer to music; and the closer the poetry is to music the more poetic it is. Hence the highest form of poetry comes very close to music. It does not have much meaning but it contains much silence; it provokes silence.

The being of a Master is the being of music, poetry, song. But they all lead to silence, and truth can only be conveyed in silence. Have you not observed the fact that whenever you are in love you can be silent easily? You need not talk, you can just sit together with the person you love. There is nothing to say. Just to be together is more than enough, more than one can ask. Just to be together is such a contentment. There is no need to even say that "I love you". That would be a kind of disturbance. That would be utterly superfluous, that would not say much. In love, you can be silent.

Sannyas is a love affair. And you can be silent only as the love deepens; and then the truth can be transferred. But it is a transfer of energy, of music, of love. It is not verbal, it is not a philosophy.

The third question:

Question 3:

It is difficult for me to leave India. India has something tremendously valuable: it has the longest, deepest search for truth. Many Buddhas have walked on this land, under these trees; the very earth has become sacred. To be here is totally different than to be anywhere else, and what I am trying to bring you is more easily possible here than anywhere else.

India has fallen from its peaks. It is no longer in its past glory. It is one of the ugliest spots now on the earth, but still, because a Gautam Buddha walked, and a Mahavir and a Krishna, and millions of others...

No other country can claim this. Jesus is very alone in Jerusalem; Mohammed is very very alone in the Arabian countries; Lao Tzu has a very small company, Chuang Tzu and a few others. They tried hard to create something. But India has the longest spiritual vibe: for at least five thousand years the search has been deepening, and still the waters are flowing.

Indians themselves have forgotten about them. In fact they are no longer interested in their own heritage. They are no longer interested in those living waters they have deserted them. But for whomsoever wants to seek and search and be, India still provides the best climate - spiritual climate, I mean.

Indians have become very materialistic, that is true, but with so many Buddhas the release of their energy still pulsates in spite of the Indian materialism. Indians have become REALLY materialistic, far more materialistic than any country in the world. And great hypocrisy exists, because they go on claiming to be religious, and they are no more. My own observation is that now the Indian mind is more and more materialistic, more gross than any other mind. Their whole interest is in money, in power-politics, in material things.

Just a few days ago I told Laxmi to purchase the most costly car possible in the country. One thing good about Laxmi: she never asks why. She purchased it. It worked - it was a device. Laxmi was knocking on the doors of the banks to get money for the new commune. We need much money; nearabout five crore rupees will be needed. Who is going to lend that much money to me? The day she purchased the car, seeing that we have the money, banks started coming to her office, offering, "Take as much money as you want." Now she is puzzled: from whom to take? Everybody wants to give on better terms, and they are after her.

I have been working in India for twenty years continuously. Thousands of people have been transformed, millions have listened to me and many more have been reading what I am saying, but the Times of India, the most conventional newspaper of India, still the most British, has not published a single article about me or my work. But the day Laxmi purchased the car there was a big article - on the car, not on me!

Now they are all interested. The news of the car has been published all over the country, in all the newspapers, in all the languages. Now what kind of people are these? Their interest is not in me, not in meditation, not in the thousands of people who are meditating here. They are completely unaware of what is happening here, but they became interested in the car.

They come here. Many people come to the office not to see me or to see you: they inquire, "Can we see the car?" Laxmi says to them, "You can come to the early morning discourse, and you can see the car too." And poor fellows - they have to come and listen for ninety minutes just to see the car.

What a torture! And these are rich people, educated people. Can you think of a more materialistic country?

And they are very worried, and editorials have been written on the car: they ask, "Why? Why can't you live a simple life?" My life is absolutely simple: so simple really, that I am always satisfied with the best kinds of things. It is absolutely simple. What more simplicity is possible? In a single sentence it can be said: the best kinds of things. There is no complexity about it. I like quality. I'm not interested in how much it costs but in the quality. I like quality in people, not quantity. I like quality in everything, not quantity. We could have purchased thirty Indian cars instead of this one, but that would have been quantity - and even thirty wouldn't have been of any use.

But their puzzle, why they can't understand it, is that they pretend to be religious, but deep down their whole obsession is materialistic. They carry a hypocrisy, and to fulfill their hypocrisy the whole Indian religious world has to compromise. If somebody wants to become a saint he has to live in utter poverty. It is almost a kind of masochism; he has to torture himself. The more he tortures himself, the more people think he is religious: "See how religiously he is living!"

To live religiously means to live joyously. To live religiously means to live meditatively. To live religiously means to live this world as a gift of God, but their minds are obsessed and they can't understand. Once the purpose of the car is served, it will be gone. The purpose is almost served, but it can show you.

I can even come in a bullock cart. It would be even more colorful, and I would enjoy the ride more.

They come here and they look, and their whole point is "Why such a beautiful ashram?" They want something dirty, shabby, a sloppy place, and then it is an ashram. They cannot believe that the ashram can be clean, beautiful, with trees and flowers, and comfortable. They cannot believe it.

And not that they don't want comfort for themselves; they are hankering for it. They are, in fact, jealous. The Indian mind has become materialistic, grossly materialistic.

A spiritual mind makes no distinctions between matter and spirit; it is undivided. The whole existence is one: that is the spiritual mind. The materialist, even if he loves a woman, reduces her to a thing.

Then who is a spiritualist? A spiritualist is a person who, even if he touches a thing, transforms it into a person.

You will be surprised by my definition. A spiritual person is one who, even if he drives a car, the car becomes a person. He feels for the car, he listens for its humming sound. He has all affection and care for it. Even a thing starts becoming a person, alive; he has communion with the thing too.

And a materialistic person is one who, even if he loves a man or a woman, a person, immediately reduces them into a thing. The woman becomes a wife - the wife is a thing. The man becomes a husband - the husband is a thing, an institution. And all institutions are ugly, dead.

You ask me, "Why won't you leave India?"

THIS India that you see in the newspapers, this lndia I have already left. The India that you know, I have already Left. Have you ever seen me going out of the gate? I live in my room. Whether this room is here or anywhere else, I will live in the room; it will be the same. I have left this India already.

I am not concerned with this India that you come to know through radio, television, newspapers - the India of the politicians, of the hypocrites, of the masochistic mahatmas. I have Left it already.

But I cannot leave. There is a hidden India too, an esoteric India too, where Buddhas are still alive, where you can contact Mahavir more easily than anywhere else, where the whole tradition of the awakened ones is like an undercurrent. I can't leave that. For me, there is no problem; I can leave, I will be the same anywhere. But for you it will not be the same.

I want to use that undercurrent for your transformation; it will be easier. Unknowingly, unawares, you will be surrounded by the Buddha-vibe. And once the new commune is established, you will see miracles happening, because I can make that undercurrent available to you in its totality. That would not be possible anywhere else.

Nowhere else has religion lived so tremendously as it has lived in this country. Just as science is a western by-product, religion is an eastern by-product. If you want to learn science you have to go to the West, because the sources are there. The whole western mind is such that science comes out of it very easily. That was the case, as far as religion is concerned, in the East, and the East is synonymous with India.

You are not aware, you cannot be aware of what I am intending to do. These are all devices, so never start making a conclusion when you see something. You may not be aware of its background, you may not be aware of the intention, you may not be aware of what is going to happen through it.

Now Laxmi knows that the car has helped her tremendously. Once its work is finished it can be gone. Never take anything on its face value here, things have hidden meanings; they are devices.

The new commune is going to become a river of all the Buddhas. You will be able to use all that great energy easily. We will make a great reservoir of it. You will be able to live and breathe in it, and you can ride on those tidal waves and move to the unknown.

So I cannot leave India.

And you say: "Those dim-witted politicians in New Delhi will be the last people in the world to understand what is going on here."

Politicians are politicians. They are all alike everywhere; maybe a little bit different on the surface, but deep down they are the same people because politics is politics. I know Indian politics has become the dirtiest in the world; that too is part of Indian hypocrisy. Even Indian politicians try to prove that they are mahatmas; even Morarji Desai tries to prove that he is a super-mahatma. A politician and a mahatma? Because of this hypocrisy Indian politics has become the most dirty game.

If things are clear: if somebody says, "I am ambitious and I want to be on the top," at least he is sincere. But in India the politician says, "I am the humblest man, and I don't want to be on the top.

What is there? There is nothing. My search is for God, but just to serve people I have to go. I am obliging you by becoming the Prime Minister of the country." Now this hypocrisy is making things very dirty.

Just a few days ago Indian politics took a change, and it was hoped that it would be for the better.

But it is proving just the opposite: the change has been for the worse. And now it seems clear that the man who has been responsible for this change, J. Prakash Narayan, will not be forgiven by the future, because he has given power to the most reactionary section of the country. He has given power to a bunch of power-hungry wolves, and now he himself is feeling impotent and cannot do anything. Once they are in power they don't care anything about him. Now the whole Indian scene is nothing but politics: how to reach power and how to exploit, how to have more money and how to have more power, and how to remain in power longer.

But this is so everywhere, more or less. And politicians will create trouble everywhere for me and for my people, because I stand for a totally new vision of life. I stand for a revolution in human consciousness. Politics always supports the vested interest - it has to support it - so everywhere the trouble will be the same.

One thing more will be difficult: from any other country I can be thrown out immediately, here they cannot do that. And it is not that this has only been so with me, it has always been so.

Gurdjieff was not allowed to enter England; he was not allowed to settle in many countries. For his whole life he was moving from one country to another. He could not do his work. How could he do the work? The work needs a kind of settlement. He would gather his disciples and then the country had to be left and the disciples would be scattered again. Again he would gather, he would spend a few years in gathering, and by the time the disciples had gathered, the politicians were against him and he had to leave the country, and again everything was disturbed.

This continued for his whole life. He could not help; not a single person could become enlightened through him. And many would have become - he had the potential, he was a rare genius, a rare Master - but the situations wouldn't allow.

If I leave India that will be the situation again and again. Whenever my people will gather in one country, there will be trouble. And here they can create trouble for you - that can be managed easily - but they cannot create trouble for me. At least they cannot throw me out of the country. They would like me to go; they will do everything so that I leave, because my presence is becoming more and more difficult for them. The more I am here and the more my people are growing and the more the commune will become an established fact, the more I am going to shatter all their values, all their hypocrisies.

So I cannot leave India. And I know the Indian politicians will be the last people in the world to understand what is going on here. They will not even be the last - they will never understand.

The politician cannot understand religion; it is impossible. The language of politics is just the opposite of the language of religion. Religion is non-desiring, non-ambitiousness, nonpossessiveness. Religion is living herenow. Politics is ambition, desire, always in the future, tomorrow. Religion is to accept oneself, to accept whatsoever one is and to relax with it.

Politics arises out of inferiority complex, out of comparison. Compare yourself with others and you are always feeling inferior: somebody is more beautiful, somebody is more knowledgeable, somebody is more intelligent - and you are suffering from an inferiority complex. You want to prove yourself. Now, if you are not intelligent, what can you do to become intelligent? It is impossible. If you don't have a musical genius, what can you do? There is no way to do anything about it. If you are not beautiful, you are not beautiful. But then only one thing is left: you can become a politician. That is the last resort of all the people who suffer from an inferiority complex: there, anybody, whosoever has violence enough, brutality enough, whosoever has the animal alive in him, can rush. No other talent is needed, no kind of genius is needed. In fact the less intelligence you have, the better will be your chances of succeeding.

I have heard...

Mulla Nasruddin suffered very much because people thought he was an idiot. Finally he decided to go to the brain surgeon and let him transplant another brain. So he went to the surgeon, and the surgeon said, "Mulla, there are brains and brains. You come in and you see." And there were many brains.

Mulla said, "What is the difference - because I see different prices written on every case? On one case the price is only twenty-five rupees and on another it is twenty-five thousand rupees. What is the difference?"

The surgeon said, "Mulla, the first, which is priced at only twenty-five rupees, belongs to a great scientist. And the second, which is twenty-five thousand rupees, belongs to a politician." Mulla said, "Do you mean to say that the politician's brain is far more superior to the scientist's?"

The surgeon said, "No, don't misunderstand me. It is priced more because it has never been used.

It is absolutely unused, brand new. The scientist's has been used too much. It is finished, it is burnt out."

In politics you don't need brains, you don't need intelligence, you don't need sensitivity, you don't need awareness, you don't need love, you don't need compassion. These are all barriers! In politics you need just the opposite qualities. Disqualifications everywhere else are qualifications in politics.

All that is needed is a mad hunger for power - and that is created by an inferiority complex.

The religious man has no inferiority complex. Only the religious man has no inferiority complex because he never compares, and without comparison you cannot be superior or inferior. So the religious man is neither superior nor inferior; he is simply himself. He accepts the way God has made him and he enjoys the way God has made him. He's utterly happy. Just because he is, he is grateful. His every moment is one of gratitude. He does not want to become anybody else, he is utterly contented. He knows he is unique - neither inferior nor superior. He knows everybody is unique, because two persons are not alike.

So politicians can never understand what religion is. They never understood Buddha, they never understood Christ, they never understood any religious phenomenon that has happened on the earth. They were always against it. The presence of the religious person is a danger to the politician.

And I know you are right: 'Those dim-witted politicians in New Delhi' will never understand me.

That's true... but we are not worried. I am not in any way concerned that they should understand me; they need not. All that I am concerned with is that they leave me and my work alone. That's enough. And sooner or later they will have to leave it alone, because they cannot argue with me.

They have nothing to say. They have not answered me. I have been criticizing them for twenty years; they have not answered. They CANNOT answer. What I am saying, deep down, they also feel is right.

Politicians come to me personally and they say, "Osho, whatsoever you say is absolutely right, but we cannot confess to it publicly. It is what is happening there in New Delhi."

Privately they always say, "You are right," but publicly they cannot say it, because if I am right, if they say it publicly, the crowd, the mob will go against them. They have to depend on the crowd, they have to continuously depend on it for votes. They have to go on supporting all kinds of stupid ideas and superstitions of the mob. Their dependence is tremendous.

For twenty years I have criticized Mahatma Gandhi and his philosophy. No Gandhian has answered.

Many Gandhians have come to me and they say, "Whatsoever you say is right, but we cannot say it in public, because if we say that whatsoever you say about Mahatma Gandhi is right, we will lose."

The public believes in Mahatma Gandhi. so utter nonsense has to be supported because Gandhi was anti-technological. Now this country will remain poor if this country remains anti-technological; this country will never be in a state of wellbeing. And there is no need for technology always to be anti-ecology; there is no need. A technology can be developed which can be in tune with ecology A technology can be developed which can help people and will not destroy nature - but Gandhi was against technology.

He was against the railway, he was against the post office, he was against electricity, he was against machines of all kinds. They know this is stupid, because if this continues... But they go on saying so, and they go on paying homage to Mahatma Gandhi because they have to get the votes from the people. And the people worship the Mahatma because the Mahatma fits with their ideas of how a mahatma should be.

Mahatma Gandhi fits with the Indian mob; the Indian mob worships him. The politician has to follow the mob. Remember always: in politics the leader follows the followers. He has to! He only pretends that he is leading; deep down he has to follow the followers. Once the followers leave him, he is nowhere. He cannot stand on his own, he has no ground of his own.

Gandhi worshipped poverty. Now if you worship poverty you will remain poor. Poverty has to be hated.

I hate poverty! I cannot say to worship it; that would be a crime. And I don't see any religious quality in just being poor. But Gandhi talked much about poverty and its beauty - it helps the poor man's ego, it buttresses his ego; he feels good. It is a consolation that he is religious, simple - he is poor. He may not have riches but he has some spiritual richness. Poverty in itself is not a spiritual richness; no, not at all. Poverty is ugly and poverty has to be destroyed. And to destroy poverty, technology has to be brought in.

Mahatma Gandhi was against birth control. Now if you are against birth control this country will become poorer and poorer every day. Then there is no possibility.

One day Mulla Nasruddin was saying to me, "Osho, it seems that soon everybody will be reduced to beggars. All will be begging!"

I asked him, "Nasruddin, from whom?"

The country is going to such poverty that even to exist as beggars will not be possible, because from whom will you beg? And when there is poverty there is crime. Poverty is the source of all crime - not the source of religiousness, not the source of spirituality. Richness is the source of spirituality and religiousness, because religion is the ultimate luxury. It is the highest art, the greatest music, the profoundest dance.

When you have everything else, only then do you start looking for God. When you are finished with everything else, when you have seen everything and you have found that you are not satisfied, you start searching for God. A poor man has no idea of God. His God is nothing but a support: he clings, leans upon the idea of God.

This happens every day: when a poor man comes to me he never comes with the problems which are religious. He says, "My wife is ill. Osho, can you bless her? My son is not getting employment.

Can you help?" Now these things have nothing to do with religion at all. But he never comes with the problem of meditation or love; those are not his problems at all. His problem is bread, shelter.

Life is in such a state that he is trying to survive somehow.

When a man is drowning in the river, will he ask "What is meditation?" or "What is love?" He wants to be helped to come out of his situation first. He is drowning, life is disappearing - who bothers about meditation? A hungry man cannot be interested in meditation. But Gandhi thinks that poverty has something spiritual in it. It is just ugly. It is the most unspiritual thing in the world, because it is the source of all crime and sin.

I have heard...

There were reports of people claiming to have seen the spirit of Diogenes stalking the streets of many capitals of the world again. The learned Greek was first spotted in Paris. Some people approached the lamp-bearing philosopher: "Diogenes, what are you doing in Paris?"

Diogenes laughed a hearty laugh, he was very very happy, and he said, "Messieurs, I am searching for truth."

There was joy, there was dance, there was hope in his eyes. And then it was heard that he was seen walking in London. Some bobbies again found him with his lamp: "Diogenes, what are you doing in London?"

Now he was not so joyous. He tried to smile but it came only with an effort. He said, "Gentlemen, I am searching for truth." Hope was disappearing from his eyes, sadness was settling.

And then he was seen in New York. Hope had completely disappeared, he was utterly sad, but he still repeated, almost mechanically, parrot-like, "I am searching for truth."

And then inevitably he was reported to have been seen in New Delhi. One Gandhian politician, clad in pure white khadi, approached him and asked, "Diogenes, what are you doing in New Delhi?"

And he was very angry, almost in a rage, and he said, "Netarji, I am searching for my lamp!"

In New Delhi you cannot save your lamp.

The country is falling into deeper and deeper misery every day. The misery is creating more misery - it always happens. If you have, you get more; if you don't have, even that which you have starts disappearing.

And the Indian politician is responsible for all this nonsense because he goes on preaching high ideals. The Indian politician only talks, promises - nothing is ever fulfilled. He cannot fulfill because his beliefs are stupid; or maybe he has to believe in those stupid superstitions. For example, they still talk about celibacy; not birth control but celibacy: people should be celibate so that the population can be reduced. Now this is nonsense. How many people can be celibate? And this is not a way to reduce the population. And they still think in terms of no-technology, no-machines. The whole country is becoming like a wound, a cancer.

I see all this. That's also why I don't want to leave this country. I want to create a small oasis, my commune, which will be absolutely technological and still ecological. It has to be a model so that we can say to the whole country that if this can happen with five thousand sannyasins in a small place, why can't it happen on a higher scale, a greater scale, to the whole country?

My commune can become an example. It will be simple and rich. It will be technological and not against ecology. It will be ABSOLUTELY scientific and yet human. It will be a totally different kind of communism. It will be a commune not for something from the outside or from the top, but because people love each other, they have created a family, they want to live together. We will be doing farming, collective farming, with all the technology possible. We will make the commune absolutely independent. There will be no need to go outside. And my effort is that we will not be bringing anything inside; we will produce everything. It can become a great oasis in this desert country. It can be of much help, it can create great inspiration.

So I am not going to leave it. The country will need me, and you too.