Truth cannot be humiliated

Question 1:

It is not a question of Western society. Basically the poor are always attracted towards the rich. They desire to be rich. They can drop any culture, any civilization if they can find a way to riches.

The first thing is that their ancient culture and civilization looks to us very beautiful because we don't know the details of their whole culture - just facets, fragments. If you know the whole culture and its implications, it won't be difficult to see why these people dropped their heritage so easily, without resistance.

For example, in India the same has been happening for hundreds of years. Aboriginal people are becoming Christians. They have a beautiful culture seen from the outside and a highly developed sensitivity. So much so that in one culture which I have been visiting continually in central India, Bastar - the whole mountains are full of aboriginals whose culture must be at least ten thousand years old - there is no police station, there are no police, there is no court, there is no law; yet no theft happens, no murder happens.

And if sometimes a murder happens, then a very rare thing happens - which is inconceivable to the outsider. The murderer goes hundreds of miles to the capital to surrender to the police, confessing that he has murdered a fellow man and he needs to be punished. Unless he is punished, he will not find peace of mind.

These things look beautiful - nice people - but they are hungry, starving. They don't have clothes.

They live naked. They don't have any of the facilities that science has made available to man - no comforts, no entertainment. Their life is boring from inside - no education....

And the culture that looks to us beautiful, to them is simply taken for granted, they don't see its beauty. They have been born in it, brought up in it. They have not suddenly come across it, they have grown slowly into it.

Things look good to us - that there is nobody who is a thief; but the truth is there is nothing to steal.

People are so poor. The same fact can be looked at from two viewpoints. Somebody can say people are so moral that locks are not needed on the houses, and people don't use locks; but the reality is that there is nothing in the house that needs to be locked. Secondly, the lock itself is a highly technological thing for them, they cannot make locks. They are so far behind.

Gautam Buddha, his whole life, was teaching people not to steal. Mahavira was teaching not to steal. One of Mahatma Gandhi's successors, Vinoba Bhave, spoke in a meeting. I was only a student then. He said that at that time people were so educated, so moral, so cultured that no locks were used.

I was just graduating from the university; I wrote a note to him and I told him, "You should tell the whole truth. Was there anything in their houses that had to be locked? Were they capable of making locks? And moreover, you will have to give a second thought to why Gautam Buddha and Mahavira - the great teachers of that time - were telling people every day not to steal.

"How do you manage both the facts together? Either Buddha and Mahavira were mad - nobody was stealing and they were continuously preaching to people not to steal - or your story that people did not lock their houses simply means that the vast mass of people had nothing to lock. Those who had something to lock, they had guards with weapons. They also had no need of locks."

So when you look from the outside it is one thing; when you look only at one facet, it is one thing.

Their nakedness is not their innocence, it is simply their incapacity to produce clothes. Clothes are the second category of the basic necessities. The first thing is food. If there is no food, what you are going to do with clothes - making beautiful dresses for the corpses? They don't have enough food. One meal a day - if you can manage it, you are very fortunate. No hospitals. No schools. If somebody falls sick, there is no way for them to help him to recover.

When Western civilization reached to these aboriginals, it was not their culture that impressed them.

It was not their holy BIBLE that impressed them. It was simply a question of survival: it was their capacity to give food, clothes, education, medicine, hospitals, doctors, teachers. They made the first roads so people had not to walk hundreds of miles for small things. They could use the public transport. They laid down the railway lines.

And if you look into the life of the aboriginal people in even more detail you will be surprised. They don't murder the way we murder, but that does not mean they are not cruel. They are far more cruel.

In an aboriginal tribe, if somebody behaves in a way which is not in tune with the tribe, he is boycotted, completely boycotted. Nobody will speak to him. He cannot draw water from the tribe's well; he may have to go miles to fetch water for himself. He is left completely alone and isolated. He cannot ask for any help in any trouble. If his hut catches fire, nobody from the tribe will come to help him to put the fire out. Once they have boycotted somebody, he does not exist for them.

This is psychological murder - far more dangerous than sitting in an electric chair and within a second you are transported into another world. That is the simplest way, the most kind way.

But this man will be in constant trouble. No job can he find. No other tribe will accept him. And what was his crime? Small crimes. For example, he has fallen in love with a girl who belongs to another tribe. And this is not allowed; you should marry into your own tribe. And your parents should decide on the marriage, not you.

Now his crime was that he loved, and what is being done to him will be done to the girl too by the other tribe. And in those mountains and forests, you cannot live alone. Life is so interwoven that everybody is dependent on everybody else for everything.

In aboriginal tribes there is nothing like freedom, no concept of freedom of speech. The elders decide everything. No younger person can even raise a question - that is disrespectful, and he will be punished for it. And you know their punishments.

Just the other day Anando brought me the news. The chief minister of Punjab, under the pressure from the central government, took over the Sikh holy temple - the Golden Temple of Amritsar - just a few weeks ago. This was the second time that the army has taken it over. Immediately the high priest of the temple expelled the chief minister - because he is also a Sikh.

Then he was in a dilemma. If he does not follow the central government's orders he will be thrown out of power. If he follows their orders, he is going against his own religion and they will punish him.

So he had to choose between the two. He thought perhaps the religious people would be more humane. But what happened was that the whole Punjab was in uproar against the chief minister, that he should resign immediately, or he should go to the Golden Temple, touch the feet of the high priest, confess his crime and accept whatsoever punishment is given.

Resignation was difficult because if he resigns from the chief ministership, he will be killed immediately - the Sikhs will kill him; his own people will kill him because he has trespassed their holy place. And he was one of them.

So he went to touch the feet of the priest and the priest said, "I forgive you, but you will have to do a penance. For seven days in Delhi" - they have a big Sikh temple in Delhi - "you sit outside the gate where people leave their shoes." And he has been doing that for seven days, cleaning the people's shoes outside the temple in New Delhi. And everybody is looking and a crowd is watching and people are laughing and people are joking and making a fool of him.

This kind of punishment reminds one of very old traditions. Otherwise it was enough that he was asking to be forgiven. He should have been forgiven. But no, he has to be humiliated. And what kind of humiliation? The ancient methods of humiliating people, the inner workings of the tribal mind, were really ugly. And on top of it all, they were poor.

So it was very easy for Western civilization - particularly Christianity - to open hospitals, schools, to give these people clothes, food. And naturally, when these people were helped in such a way they started imitating those who were helping them. So in the wake of that came transistor radios, army caps - they started dressing like army people. They looked foolish. Naked they were more beautiful, their bodies were more proportionate.

Their life was difficult; Western civilization made their life very easy, and provided all these things - second-hand clothes which have been rejected by the army, and small toys like transistor radios.

And for them it was something miraculous, that somebody is speaking in New Delhi - thousands of miles away - and they can listen to what he is saying. This was a miracle - because they had no idea of the technology, no understanding of what was happening.

Christianity was certainly bringing miracles. Now television has reached. People cannot believe their own eyes, that they are seeing people who are thousands of miles away. Through television and radio, cars, small mechanical things, they proved to these poor people that Jesus walked on water, turned water into wine, raised the dead to life.

And seeing all these miracles - for them these are miracles - they could not deny that if these people, who are just followers of Jesus, can do such great miracles, Jesus must have done them.

It is very simple to understand the process - that within two years any older civilization will collapse if Western civilization approaches it. The basic things are that the older civilizations should be starving, should not have clothes, shelter, jobs, education, and then certainly the missionary becomes their prototype. They have to become like the missionary.

Even if they get second-hand things - used and thrown away - they are perfectly happy with those shoes and caps and dresses. They don't fit them because they are not made for them - some are longer, some are shorter - but still they enjoy it, it is better than to be naked and cold.

They have tasted for the first time something of the man-made world, and they are grateful; and to show that gratefulness they become Christians. In India all the aboriginals are turning Christian by and by. And power functions like a magnet.

When there was the British Empire all around the earth, the British missionary was part of the power machine. So anybody who has been humiliated for centuries became an imitator. He could not become Western, but he could at least imitate.

It is ugly to look at from outside. They have now got bicycles, they can move far and wide, now they are smoking cigarettes, going to see the movies. Their whole structure has collapsed. Now the elders cannot dominate them, they have lost all their power. They are feeling more free. They can fall in love with a girl of another tribe and both can escape to the city. They are educated. They can find a job.

Naked they could not come to the city, and even had they come, they had nothing to do except begging. They were not capable of doing any job or any skill; they were never taught.

So the mechanics of the change are very simple; but if we look at the whole thing with a humanitarian vision, it is ugly of Western civilization to exploit these people. You could have given them hospitals, you could have given them schools, you could have given them skills, craftsmanship trainings. There was no need to convert them - as a payment for all your services - to Christianity; that's where the West has been ugly.

Otherwise, whatever has been done is perfectly good. But they were not doing all these things to help these people, they were doing all these things to convert these people - to make their numbers greater. Now in India Christianity is the third biggest religion.

They are asking in Nagaland, "We want to have an independent country." And Christianity, from the outside, is supporting them. Their leaders have been given refuge in London. They are being supplied arms. Their leaders are protected in London because it is now a question of Christians - they are no longer aboriginals - the whole of Christianity will stand behind them.

To help the poor is not bad, but to exploit the poor is certainly evil - and in the name of helping them, converting them to your religion. They don't understand anything about religion, but because you have helped them so much they feel so obliged that whatever you say must be right. This is a very cunning device.

In India I have been trying to find a single high-caste brahmin who has been converted to Christianity.

I have not been able to find one - and I have toured India many times for years.

Not a single high-caste Hindu has been converted to Christianity, because what do you have to give to him? He does not need clothes, he does not need education - he has enough, he can educate you. If anybody is going to learn anything, the Hindu has a long tradition of learning; he can teach you. What do you have to give to him? Naturally no high-caste people have been converted - just the very lowest of the low.

It is not a credit to Christianity.

It is a discredit.

Question 2:

One can be humiliated only if one is thinking of oneself as higher than another, holier-than-thou - such a person can be pulled down.

You cannot humiliate a humble person.

There is no way at all.

America has done everything - and is continuing to do it. That simply shows utter foolishness. If they could not humiliate me in their jails, how can they humiliate me outside America? I will turn all their efforts of humiliation upon themselves because there is no other way. I simply don't accept it.

I have told you many times the story of Gautam Buddha. He was passing by the side of a village.

His enemies had gathered, and they wanted to humiliate him - they were shouting ugly words, four- letter words at him. He remained silent. They looked a little awkward because he was not saying anything.

And finally he said, "If you are finished, can I move on because I have to reach the other village before sunset. And if you are not finished, I will be coming again after few days - I will inform you - on the same route; then I will have enough time for you. Then you can do as much as you want, say as many things as you ever wanted to."

One of the men in the crowd said, "We are not just saying things, we are insulting you."

Gautam Buddha said, "You can insult me, but if I don't accept it, that is not in your power. You can try to humiliate me, but I simply don't accept these things. You should have come ten years before when I used to get caught in anybody's net - somebody would insult me and I would feel insulted. At that time I was a slave to anybody; now I am a free man. I choose: whatever is right I take, whatever is not right I give it back.

"In the last village people had brought sweets, flowers, to present to me. I said, 'We eat only once a day and we have taken our meal. So please - we don't store things, we cannot keep them. We are sorry. You will have to take them back.' I ask you, what could they do with all those sweets and flowers and fruits that they had brought?"

Somebody said from the crowd, "They could have distributed it in the village."

Buddha said, "You are intelligent. Do the same. Whatever you have brought - for ten years I have stopped accepting such things. Now go back home and distribute these things to whomsoever you want."

Humiliation is impossible when you are not living as an ego. It is the ego that is humiliated.

And America had to take its humiliation back. That's why they are still angry and still trying their hardest to harm me in every possible way. They have not learned a simple lesson.

I was in chains - they had done everything illegally - without an arrest warrant. At the point of a gun they arrested me, without even showing the cause, with handcuffs, with chains on my legs, another chain on my waist - exactly arranged because they knew my whole medical history.

We had presented my medical history to the government - that my back is bad. So the chain was kept on continually, because it was chained on every time I changed jails: five jails in twelve days.

But it remained exactly on the point where it hurts. It was absolutely not accidental, because not even a single time was it in another place - and it could have been. I told them, "Just keep it loose."

They said, "No. We will keep it the way we have been ordered."

And they were worried that I would wave to people, even with handcuffs, so they tied my handcuffs with the chain on my waist so I could not move my hands either.

And the cars... the way they took me - I have never seen cars driven in such a way. Suddenly they would take speed, and suddenly they would stop, just to hurt my back.

The first time Devaraj was with me and he was telling them, "This is not right. There is just no need to do this." They wouldn't listen. And this continued for twelve days. Everywhere there were instructions, it seems, how the car should be driven: for no reason, suddenly the car would take speed to a hundred miles an hour, and suddenly it would stop; then again it would speed and stop just to give me as much of a jolt as possible, to hit the painful back with the thick chain they had put on it.

But it does not humiliate me. It was simply showing their stupidity. They could not prevent me from smiling. Everywhere people were standing by the side of the road to greet me. It doesn't matter that I could not wave my hand to them, but I smiled at them.

In the court when the magistrate comes, they declare that the magistrate is coming, "Stand up" - so everybody stands up. When the magistrate sits on the chair, then everybody is allowed to sit. When I was coming into the court, people were standing up on their own. There was no declaration - you don't declare for a prisoner.

And that was a clear humiliation of the magistrate and all the police officials and all the court people, that all the people... even those who were not sannyasins, even those who had never seen me, had never heard of me except that just then they had seen me on the television and seen the brutality of the American government.

They tried in every way. They were thinking that I would be humiliated; but whenever the press inquired of me, I said, "I am feeling great. As far as I am concerned, I am feeling perfectly great.

They can torture my body, but they cannot touch me."

And because I exposed their whole thing ... and they are not even capable of replying to it, to all the facts that I have told to the world news press. They have not been able to reply to a single point because I have simply described the story as it was. They are feeling humiliated, and they are trying to harass me - but they are again wrong.

They have arranged a world travel for me. I may not have traveled around the world without their help! I may not have been able to see all my people in their own countries, and I may not have been able to expose that political imperialism has ended, but its place has been taken by economic imperialism - which is far more dangerous. Now, as with themselves, they are arranging humiliation for other countries.

I was in Ireland for fifteen days. The man who gave the visa must have taken too much beer - just the Irish way of living - so he did not look whose visa it was, whose passport it was. He simply stamped it. We were asking for only a one night stay. He stamped it with a seven-day seal - perhaps it was the closest to his hand! We said, "That's good."

We moved into a hotel; and as America's information reached them, that our plane had landed in Ireland, immediately the police went to the airport and found that we had already entered the country.

So next morning the police officers came and canceled all the visas for seven days. But we said, "You can cancel it; we are not going to go. We have been here only one night. What crime have we committed that you are canceling them?"

They said, "No crime." They were afraid - because the first man had made the mistake of giving us seven days. "You can live here silently and leave silently." This is the police. Without our having a visa, they were allowing us to live in the country silently and to leave silently, just to hide their mistake.

We lived there for fifteen days, and after fifteen days, when we left, the minister concerned said, in the parliament, that I had never been in Ireland, that it was just gossip. He knew perfectly well that for fifteen days my group had been there.

And the day we moved, the press was there, the photographers were there; they took my photograph in front of the hotel. Perhaps they took away all those photographs and all that material from the press before declaring in the parliament that I had never been here. So now America is degrading every country.

In Greece, within fifteen days, they arrested me - and the passport and the visa was given to me by the son of the president, who is a minister. He had issued the visa for four weeks himself, and he himself canceled it.

And they wouldn't allow me even to stay in the hotel for the night. But at the airport the whole news media was there - all the television channels and newspapers and magazines and the radio - and at least forty top police officers. I cannot understand what they were afraid of - I don't carry nuclear weapons with me.

And when I was talking to the press, the chief of the police stepped in front of me to stop me. And I said to him, "Shut up and go back and stand in your place!"

Perhaps in his whole life nobody has said that. And he was wise enough to simply move back and stand in his place - because he saw the situation, that if he said something, I was going to hammer him then and there. And everything would be in the reports, on the television, on the radio; it was better just to....

But this much was on the television, that he came up to prevent me because I was talking against the police, that they wanted to dynamite the house, to burn me alive, that they were threatening my people.

Because I was asleep, John came to me; and when he woke me up, I said, "Just tell them to sit and wait five minutes so I can change my clothes and get ready to get arrested again."

Now I am an experienced man, there is no problem.

But they wouldn't listen. They started throwing rocks at the windows, at the doors. From my bathroom I heard explosions as if somebody was throwing bombs. I said, "This is strange." And when I came down I was informed that they were threatening that if I didn't come down they would dynamite the house. And I had not left the house for the whole fifteen days I was there.

And after I left Athens, the same minister who had given me the visa and who canceled the visa, lied before the parliament again. So it has been a tremendous experience. What I have been saying about politicians has proved one hundred percent correct.

Hasya, my secretary, had been with that minister for one hour, and he denied in parliament that he had seen my secretary at all. He said that he had been deceived, and that somebody else managed to arrange the visa and his signature.

These are your leaders upon which the whole destiny of humanity depends.

We are going to sue every politician. For example, this minister we are going to sue. And Hasya has to be in the court to testify that she has been with the minister for one hour explaining about me, everything that he asked, and he had given the visa only after being fully satisfied. And he simply denies that he has ever seen my secretary.

And the same thing has been happening all around the whole civilized world of the West. A few countries are so afraid that I have not even applied for visa and they have decided already that the visa should not be given. I have not even applied... the visa should not be given.

They have informed all their embassies that I am a dangerous man and no visa should be granted.

If my application comes then it should be rejected immediately. They are so afraid that almost all the parliaments of Europe have discussed me, and on strange things.

The Dutch minister for foreign affairs has said that I have been denied entry into Holland because I have spoken against homosexuality, I have spoken against Mother Teresa, the pope, the Catholic religion. And each democracy contends that it is secular.

The pope can criticize any religion and he is welcome - I cannot criticize the pope. If he has any guts he should reply to my criticism rather than pulling the strings of these politicians - he has a Catholic majority in these countries so the politicians are afraid of losing votes.

I can understand catholicism, the pope, Mother Teresa; but homosexuality is a totally new thing.

I was not aware that homosexuality is Holland's official religion - criticize homosexuality and you cannot enter Holland. That minister has condemned the whole of Holland as homosexual. If the people of Holland have any sense, they should force that minister and his ministry to resign, because he's abusing the whole country.

And I am dangerous because I have criticized homosexuality. I am criticizing every perversion, and I will continue to criticize them.

And America is trying in every way.... It is a humiliation for America. Now they are trying to make every other country also feel humiliated. All the countries which are with America will be humiliated in the same way. And a single individual can put the whole world against himself, and still you cannot humiliate him.

The truth is simple. If one is humble, humiliation is impossible. Truth cannot be humiliated. You can crucify it, but you cannot humiliate it.