Chapter 12

The first question

Question 1:

Tiko,

FIRST try to understand the difference between a teacher and a Master, then the difference between a teacher and a perfect teacher. Only then will you be able to understand the difference between a Master and a perfect Master.

The teacher is one who teaches borrowed knowledge. He knows nothing, he has not experienced anything - it has not happened to him - but he has heard it, read it. He is skillful in transmitting it verbally, intellectually: he is capable of communication.

The perfect teacher is one who knows this: that he does not know. The teacher forgets it, tends to forget it. He starts believing in whatsoever he is teaching others. He is not only a deceiver, he is also deceived. He starts living in a deep auto-hypnotic sleep. First he convinces others, and when others are convinced, seeing their conviction he becomes convinced himself.

Sometimes it happens that even though he is only a teacher he may get a perfect disciple and he will see miracles happening in the disciple. Then the temptation is great to believe that he must be somebody special, extraordinary.

It happened in Marpa's life: Marpa went to a teacher. He was well known for his scholarship. a great pundit. and many followers, many students, many disciples were gathering around him. Marpa was in search. He went to the teacher, he surrendered to the teacher, and from that moment miracles started happening.

The other students were very jealous, obviously. They told everything to the teacher. The teacher himself watched him; he could not believe his eyes - Marpa was able to walk on water. He asked Marpa, "What is your secret?"

He said, "YOU are my secret. I just take your name and that's enough. I say within my heart, 'My Master, take me to the other shore.'" His trust was so total that he was capable of walking on water, walking through fire.

Marpa's teacher tried to test him. He told him to jump from the mountain into a deep abyss. The moment he said, "Jump!" Marpa jumped. It was absolutely certain that he would die, that not even pieces of his body would be found. And when the teacher and the crowd that was watching came down, Marpa was sitting there in deep meditation, unhurt, unscratched.

Again the teacher asked, "What is your secret?"

He said, "YOU are my secret. And each time things like this happen my surrender to you goes on deepening, it goes on becoming more perfect than it was before. It was perfect before too, but there are possibilities, dimensions of even perfection becoming more perfect."

Seeing this, the teacher became convinced that he had some tremendous power of which he was not aware. He tried to walk on water. He said to himself, "I am the != teacher, the great teacher of Marpa, and I want to go to the other shore!" And he had to be saved because he was drowning. He could not believe his eyes! But from that moment, Marpa's own miracles disappeared. Seeing the Master drowning in the water, the power that he had created through trust evaporated.

It happens many times through teachers that many people start experiencing spiritual revelations.

But if the teacher becomes deceived, auto-hypnotized, then he is only a teacher, a very ordinary person.

Vedant and Kamal have just come from the West. They had a great desire to travel to the West, and they have come with many experiences. Particularly in California, California-land. they were thought to be great Masters, and things started happening to people. They themselves have not done a single group here, and they became great group leaders there, Tantra Masters! And people were worshipping them and begging them to stay there.

That's what has happened to people like Muktananda; it is not different. Kamal and Vedant have far more intelligence than Muktananda. Kamal was surprised when for the first time it started happening. In one of our centers they were leading a group and Kamal just went there and sat.

A few people's kundalini started arising and they started swaying, and of course, the only visible cause was Kamal's presence. They must have fallen at his feet: "A great Master has come from the East!"

I have heard that Yogi Bhajan, who is a very famous teacher in America, was just a porter at Delhi Airport. Seeing Muktananda coming with seven hundred American disciples to Delhi Airport and looking at Muktananda, he thought, "Why am I wasting my life here, carrying luggage and people's bags?" And certainly Yogi Bhajan has a far more beautiful personality: he is a Sikh, tall, healthy, looking beautiful, impressive, presentable. Muktananda is just ugly, a duckling! Yogi Bhajan resigned from his post immediately and went to America. His name was Sardar Bhajan Singh; there he became Yogi Bhajan. And now he is the suprememost commander of the Sikh religion in the Western hemisphere and he has thousands of followers.

When others become convinced - and there are gullible people everywhere who are ready to believe, who are really desperately in need to believe, who cannot stand on their own feet, who want a father figure so that they can throw all their responsibility on his shoulders, so that they can be unburdened... They are ready to believe. Then of course the law of economics works: wherever there is demand there is supply.

Now it will be difficult for Kamal and Vedant to start working here again. Vedant going back to Vrindavan will find it difficult, Kamal going back to driving will find it difficult - they have tasted something of the ego. The only thing that can prevent them is that they became tired of the whole speedy life in the West, utterly tired. And the second thing that can keep them here is their deep love for me; otherwise they can be great Masters themselves in the West.

The teacher becomes auto-hypnotized. The great teacher is one who teaches, but knowing that "It is not my own." Not only does he know it, he makes it clear to everybody that "I am just an interpreter, a commentator," that "I have studied, I am a scholar, a professor. I am teaching things about which I have no experience of my own," and who is capable of so much awareness that he never becomes deceived. Even though others start believing in him, he never believes in himself unless he starts experiencing.

The moment a person starts experiencing he becomes a Master. Then it is not borrowed; then it is his own authentic knowing, it is his wisdom. But not every Master is capable of bringing his wisdom to people, to those who are utterly ignorant, of bringing his light to those who are blind, who are living in darkness. The Master is one who has experienced. He is greater than the perfect teacher, but he is an arhata, in Buddhist terminology: he knows, but he cannot make it known to others.

If he has been a perfect teacher before, only then is it possible that he may be able to impart something of his revelation. If he has not been a perfect teacher before then it is impossible, and there is no necessity. A person can move into the world of being a Master directly; there is no necessity that he should come via being a perfect teacher. But if he has been a perfect teacher, then it will not be long before he becomes a perfect Master.

Out of a hundred Masters only one is a perfect Master. Ninety-nine know and in certain ways try to help people, but their ways are haphazard, their devices are primitive; what they teach looks childish.

Their skill as far as teaching is concerned is very limited. They know more, far more than they are capable of teaching. The perfect Master is one who is capable of communion.

The perfect teacher is one who is capable of communication. the perfect Master is one who is capable of communion. He can help you through intellectual understanding, but that is not the only

way and not the whole way and not necessarily successful. But he is also capable of imparting his energy to you, he is capable of imparting his flame to you. Just being with him, being in his presence, something can transpire in you. Just being close to him is enough, and whatsoever he does has a perfection about it. His devices...

For example, Gautam Buddha's device of vipassana is a perfect device. Twenty-five centuries have passed, but nothing has been added to it. Thousands of enlightened people have passed through it, but nobody has been able to improve upon it. k is absolutely perfect; nothing is missing. Hence Buddha is a perfect Master.

Patanjali is a perfect Master. Whatsoever he has done as far as Yoga is concerned seems to be the crescendo. Five thousand years have passed but his Sutras are as fresh as this morning's rose flowers. They don't become old, they can't become old. Nothing has been able to supercede his Sutras. And thousands of books on Yoga have been written in these five thousand years, but no other book has been able to impart that glow, that aliveness, that perfection. Patanjali is a perfect Master; others are only apprentices. No book reaches that perfection.

The same is true about Lao Tzu: his Tao, his approach to the ultimate truth seems to be impossible to improve upon. It very rarely happens that a person gives you the total perfection of a thing, but it happens.

It happens in other arts: Michelangelo cannot be improved upon, Leonardo da Vinci cannot be improved upon, Shakespeare cannot be improved upon. Kalidas cannot be improved upon - these are perfect Masters There are thousands of painters, but there is something which makes Vincent van Gogh a perfect painter. Nobody comes close to him; they lag far behind. What is it that makes him perfect? It is impossible to improve upon him. Whatsoever you do will destroy its beauty, it will bring it, lower; as if the whole dimension has become exhausted and you have come to a full point.

There have been only very few perfect Masters. Hindus call them avataras, Jainas call them teerthankaras, Buddhists call them Buddhas. In the Western world, Jesus is a perfect Master, Moses is a perfect Master, Eckhart is a perfect Master, Francis is a perfect Master. Whatsoever they have done, they have done it so totally that they have reached to the very end of that dimension.

Now there is nothing more to do about it, everything is complete.

The teacher is dangerous because not only can he deceive others, he can become deceived himself.

I am tremendously happy that Kamal and Vedant were not deceived. They proved more intelligent than Satprem or Somendra - they are getting deceived. Because something starts happening in other people, you need not presume that it is because of you; it may be just their faith. You may not be a part of it at all; it may be just their own auto-hypnotic state.

The great teacher has a beauty because he himself is aware and makes others always aware that "Nothing can happen through me because nothing has happened to me. Learn as much as you can learn from me as a student, but I am not a Master and you are not a disciple." Great courage is needed to be a great Master, and only if a great teacher becomes a Master is he capable of helping, because he has learned all the techniques to help. Now the experience is there; he can pour out that experience and use all his old techniques.

Otherwise there are many enlightened people who simply become Masters That's the difference between the ARHATAS and the bodhisattvas. Arhatas are just Masters, enlightened people. Nothing is lacking in them as far as their experience is concerned; it is the same as the experience of the bodhisattva. The only thing that is different is that the bodhisattva is capable of accepting disciples, the arhata is not capable.

In Buddhism there are two schools: Hinayana and Mahayana. Hinayana belongs to the world of the arhatas. Hinayana means a small boat, so small that only you can go to the farther shore; you cannot accept anybody else, otherwise not only he will be drowned, you will be drowned with him.

The boat is so small...

Mahayana means a big ship; that is the way of the of the bodhisattva. He goes on inviting people: he creates a Noah's Ark and he goes on inviting all kinds of people to become part of his commune, his sangha, because the ship is going to leave soon. He collects thousands of people and then moves towards the farther shore. He is the great Master.

Question 2:

Anand Jerry,

I LOVE these two men immensely: Friedrich Nietzsche and D.H. Lawrence. Both had the capacity to become enlightened Masters, but both missed. Still, they had glimpses - glimpses of great insight.

D. H. Lawrence is a great poet and has something of the mystic in him too, but the only unfortunate thing is that he never became interested in meditation as such, he never tried to seek and search for his innermost core. And he was very close to it, so close that even not knowing about it something of it has penetrated into his words.

Both these insights are tremendously true. To know a thing certainly means to reduce it to something dead. Life as such is instrinsically mysterious: it cannot be known the way physics knows, it can be known only the way poetry knows. The poet also knows about the roseflower, but his knowing is absolutely different from the knowing of a chemist, of a biologist. of a physicist.

If the physicist tries to know the roseflower he will think in terms of electrons, neutrons, positrons.

If the chemist tries to know about the roseflower, then the roseflower is nothing but chemistry, chemicals. The poet does not look at the roseflower in terms of physics or chemistry; in fact, he does not observe the roseflower the way a scientist observes a thing. The scientist remains aloof, detached. He does not enter into the experiment himself - he is just a watcher; he simply takes notes about what is happening. But the poet becomes a participant.

In the world of poetry, knowing happens not through detachment but through sympathy - or it will be even better if we use the word "empathy." Empathy is the highest peak of sympathy. In sympathy you feel how the other is feeling. The other is in pain, in misery, sad or joyous; you feel it. Your heart gets in tune with the other; that is sympathy. It is a kind of symphony. But in empathy you become one with the other; it is not only a question of getting in tune, it is merging, it is melting.

The real poet melts into the rose. The observer and the observed become one; they are no more separate. There is no poet standing aloof, away from the rose; there is no roseflower separate from the poet. They have merged into a deep dance. The poet is the roseflower, the rose flower has become the poet. There is no distinction left; they have trespassed each other. Then a totally different kind of knowing happens: that knowing cannot be called knowledge.

Science is knowledge; the very word "science" means knowledge. But poetry is not knowledge. Of course, it is a kind of knowing, but so different, so qualitatively different, that even to call it knowing looks a little unjustified. But we don't have any other word.

In Sanskrit we have two words: knowledge is called gyan, and knowing is called pragyan. In English we can say that knowing is experiencing - not experience. mind you, but experiencing. It is a deep merger. When the poet comes back to himself he has brought a beautiful diamond.

Vincent van Gogh has painted trees which reach above the stars. Now nobody has ever seen such trees - such trees don't exist - but when he was asked he said, "That's how I feel. Whenever I become one with a tree I feel the ambition of the whole earth to reach beyond the stars in every fiber of the tree. I have felt it, I have experienced it, and not once but always, without any exception.

Whenever I see a beautiful tree and I become one with it, I feel the urge of the earth to transcend the stars. My paintings are paintings of that immense urge, that longing, that thirst of the earth."

Of course, scientists cannot know anything about it.

Tennyson has said, "If I could understand a single flower in its totality, then I would have known the whole existence" - because a single flower contains the whole universe. The whole universe has joined hands together to create this single flower. This flower does not exist as an independent unit, it exists as an expression of the whole universe.

The poet merges with the whole universe, and he reaches the flower in this subjective way. He knows an inner way, a secret path: his approach is intuitive. The scientist observes everything as an object.

The word "object" has to be understood. "Object" means that which stands as an obstruction. It is like a wall confronting you - it has to be conquered. That's why science speaks in terms of conquering the world. Even a man like Bertrand Russell wrote a book called The Conquest of Nature.

The poet can never speak about conquest; there is no question of it because there is no conqueror and nothing to be conquered. All is one, one organic unity. But the poet knows these moments only once in a while.

D.H. Lawrence was a poet and had the quality of a mystic, but only once m a while; otherwise he was very intellectual, very argumentative. Even Bertrand Russell was very much irritated by him.

Bernard Russell himself was one of the greatest intellectuals of this age, but the way D. H. Lawrence argued made him angry. He was very argumentative, very much in the head, but once in a while he slipped out of the head and then there were great insights.

This must have been such an insight:

IT IS EASY, HE SAYS, TO SEE WHY MAN KILLS THE THING HE LOVES...

because when you love someone, some deep instinct in you starts hankering to know the person.

And remember, knowledge is always an effort to conquer, to possess. Because you want to possess the person you love you want to know all the secrets, because that is the only way to possess. If something of the person remains unknown, that unknown part is not in your possession.

That's why husbands and wives and lovers go on playing detective with each other: they want to know everything. They go on goading each other, "Open your heart. Say it, whatsoever it is. Bring it out!" That is really ugly because you may be able to know a little more about the person, but at the same time the love is dying because love can exist only between two mysteries - two persons who are mysteries to each other.

IT IS EASY TO SEE WHY MAN KILLS THE THING HE LOVES. TO KNOW A LIVING THING IS TO KILL IT.

If you really want to know you have to dissect. If the chemist wants to know the rose he has to dissect it; he has to reduce it to the basic elements from which it has arisen. The earth has to be separated, every chemical has to be separated the water has to be separated; only then will he

be able to know it. He has to decompose it so that he can know how it was composed in the first place. The poet does not even touch the flower. There is no question of dissection, analysis; he simply loves. He can dance around it, he can sing a song to the rose, he can put his cheek close to it. Sometimes he may even close his eyes while looking at the rose; that will be impossible for the scientist to understand. "What is going on? If you want to know the rose you have to keep your eyes open!" But the poet's way is totally different: it is not the way of knowledge, it is the way of love. And love enhances life just as knowledge kills it.

ONE SHOULD BE SUFFICIENTLY INTELLIGENT AND INTERESTED TO KNOW A GOOD DEAL ABOUT ANY PERSON ONE COMES IN CLOSE CONTACT WITH.

It does not mean that you should not be acquainted with the person; if you want to live with a person you have to be acquainted. But acquaintance is totally different. Acquaintance is a must of every relationship.

ABOUT HER. ABOUT HIM. BUT TO TRY TO KNOW ANY LIVING BEING IS TO SUCK THE LIFE OUT OF THAT BEING.

Never try to know. Never try to penetrate the ultimate secret of the person; leave it free. Love gives freedom - it is not a question of conquering. And the more freedom you give the more knowing happen - but it is not knowledge. It is a feeling, it is intuitive.

ABOVE ALL THINGS, WITH THE WOMAN ONE LOVES...

because the woman is far more mysterious than the man, in fact the most mysterious phenomenon in the whole existence, and very delicate, very fragile. Love is always very fragile - handle it with care.

EVERY SACRED INSTINCT TEACHES ONE THAT ONE MUST LEAVE HER UNKNOWN.

Never try to know the woman you love, because the moment you start the effort to know her you have already started destroying her. Soon she will be reduced to a wife, but then she is not the woman you had loved in the first place. The mystery has disappeared - and you are the cause of it.

YOU KNOW YOUR WOMAN DARKLY, IN THE BLOOD.

IN THE BONES, IN THE MARROW.

TO TRY TO KNOW HER MENTALLY IS TO KILL HER. BEWARE, O WOMAN, OF THE MAN WHO WANTS TO FIND OUT WHAT YOU ARE. AND, O MAN, BEWARE A THOUSAND TIMES MORE OF THE WOMAN WHO WANTS TO KNOW YOU, OR GET YOU, WHAT YOU ARE.

Why a thousand times more? - because the woman's way of knowing is far deeper than the man's way of knowing. The man's way of knowing is scientific and superficial objective; the woman's way of knowing is intuitive, subjective. She can penetrate to the deeper realms of the man, and that's why she is capable of killing the love more easily than the man is. Hence a deep fear in every man of the woman he loves - a certain intuitive feeling that the woman represents not only life but death also.

In the East, particularly in India, we have the image of the goddess Kali, the mother goddess, Kali.

She is both a great lover and a great destroyer. If you have seen the image or any picture you will be puzzled - particularly people coming from the West are very much puzzled - but it has a great psychological insight in it.

Kali is dancing on the chest of her lover, Shiva. In Sanskrit Shiva means one aspect of God, and Shiva - just a little difference in spelling - Shiva means God, Shiva means corpse. She is dancing on the chest of Shiva, destroying him, making him into a corpse. Shiva is becoming a Shiva! She has a garland of human skulls around her neck and in one hand she holds a freshly cut head, blood coming out from it.

Why this strange image? It is not strange, it is tremendously psychological: the woman has great power because she is intuitive. Hence Lawrence is right when he says:

... BEWARE A THOUSAND TIMES MORE OF THE WOMAN WHO WANTS TO KNOW YOU, OR GET YOU, WHAT YOU ARE...

because you may know or may try to know the woman, but your effort is going to remain superficial; but if she starts penetrating you she can reach to the very core. It is not surprising why almost all husbands become henpecked: the woman reduces them to slaves.

MAN DOES SO HORRIBLY WANT TO MASTER THE SECRET OF LIFE AND OF INDIVIDUALITY WITH HIS MIND. KEEP KNOWLEDGE FOR THE WORLD OF MATTER, FORCE AND FUNCTION.

IT HAS GOT NOTHING TO DO WITH BEING.

And the second insight is also of tremendous importance:

LOVE OUGHT NOT TO BE PERFECT...

because the moment anything is perfect it dies. Perfection means death.

IT OUGHT TO HAVE PERFECT MOMENTS AND WILDERNESSES OF THORN BUSHES, WHICH IT HAS. A PERFECT RELATIONSHIP OUGHT NOT TO BE POSSIBLE...

because once a relationship is perfect, nothing is left - nothing is left to explore. All mystery is gone, evaporated.

Every relationship should have its absolute limits, essential to the soul of each individual. A truly perfect relationship is one in which each party leave great tracts of the other unknown.

Jerry, to give freedom is the most essential part of love; to make the other absolutely free is the ultimate of love. Only those who give freedom know what love is, and only those who love know what freedom is.

The third question

Question 3:

Nandan,

NOT ONLY sometimes but every day! But there is a problem...

It was the first day of the term and Mrs. Jones marched into her son's bedroom determined to get him to school on time. She shook him by the shoulder and said, "Good morning. Thomas, time to go to school! Up you get - we don't want to be late, do we?"

Thomas pulled the sheets over his head and refused to get up.

"Come on, Tommy, you have to get your books ready. Don't be silly!"

"No, I'm not going! I won't go there ever again. I hate the place!"

"Well, Tommy," said his mother sternly, "it's no use arguing about it, you just have to go."

"Give me three good reasons why I should!" muttered Tommy from under the bedcover.

"Well, my son, you are the Principal, you know!"

And that one reason, Nandan, is enough!

Vivek reminds me every morning. She shakes me and says, "Get up! You are the Principal, you know. You have to go!" So here I am!

The fourth question

Question 4:

Virendra,

IT HAS been one of the obsessions of Indians for centuries, and the only result of it all has been that they are the most greedy people on the earth, and the most angry and the most sexual. For centuries they have been fighting against these three - greed, anger, sex - and what is the outcome? Do you see so much greed in anyone else anywhere on earth?

Indians go on calling Western people materialists without ever seeing the fact that to possess is not to be a materialist but that the desire to possess is the foundation of materialism. The West possesses; that does not mean that it is materialist. It simply means it is scientific, it is technological,

it knows how to create things. It has penetrated deeply into the world of objects and has come to know its secrets. It has worked hard. It is not materialist, it is simply technologically more developed.

But Indians have a great desire to possess. You may not have anything, and still you will be a materialist if the desire to possess is there. You may possess only a small hut or only a begging bowl, but that is enough for your whole possessiveness to be focused on. And you will be a materialist, not a spiritualist.

Materialism has nothing to do with greed; materialism is a way of living your life, just as spiritualism is. If you are constantly thinking of things and there is nothing more in your being, no desire for anything more, then you have chosen materialism as your way of life.

Here you see people from all countries, and the question is asked again and again by Indians: "Why are there so few Indians?" There are so few Indians because only very few Indians are interested in spiritualism as a way of life. Yes, they can talk about it, they can brag about it - it fulfills their ego - but they are not really ready to live it. Even if they come here they come with the specific purpose that I can help them to go to the West through some Western sannyasins, to be educated at Cambridge, at Oxford, at Harvard, so that they can become capable of earning more.

So many letters come to me saying: "You have so many disciples all over the world. Can't you help us poor Indians to get scholarships, some support from foundations like the Ford Foundation or the Rockefeller Foundation?" Their whole interest is in how to possess more power, more things, more money, more prestige. They are not interested in meditation at all.

And what is the reason? What has happened? What has gone wrong? For five thousand years they have been thinking of fighting with greed, anger, sex, and the total result is that the Indian mind is absolutely full of sexuality. They talk about spirituality, but if you look in their minds, if we could make small windows into Indian minds, you would be surprised... In their films even kissing is not allowed.

The government even decides how close the lips of the lovers can come: six inches - more than that is obscene. And if you could make small windows into Indian minds you would see such obscene scenes that all your Playboy magazines will be nothing compared to them! And this is proved by the whole history of India.

The first book on sexual postures was written by Indians - Vatsyayana's Kama Sutras - very obscene, ugly. Then the second book also was written by a Kashmiri brahmin scholar, Pundit Koka, Koka Shastra. I sometimes suspect he may be the discoverer of Coca-Cola too - his name is Koka.

His book is one of the dirtiest in the whole world!

You can go to see Khajuraho, Konarak and Puri - and there are many other temples like them. And you cannot even imagine - even your fantasy will fail when you see the sculpture of Khajuraho. What imagination! And for hundreds of years they must have worked, thousands of sculptors must have worked to create so many temples. It is a whole city of temples - only temples, because now the city is deserted. Hundreds of temples have disappeared, but hundreds of temples are still intact; a few are absolutely intact.

Do you think group sex is something discovered by the Americans? You are wrong! On the Khajuraho temples there are scenes of group sex. You cannot imagine - Khajuraho shocks

everybody. The woman is standing on her head and the man is making love to her - headstand love! The man is standing on his head and the woman is making love to him. All kinds of obscene, stupid, silly ideas! And India is a spiritual country!

And anger you can see every day in communal riots. Everywhere people are ready to kill so easily, and just a moment before they were praying, they were doing their namaz, they were doing their prayer. But it is very strange that people go to do namaz with weapons, because immediately after the namaz the killing starts - as if they were ready! And Hindus go to the temples with weapons!

All the political leaders of India go on talking of non-violence, and all these murders, killings, riots...

! Houses are being burnt, post offices are being burnt, police stations are being burnt. People are being burnt alive! There are so many rapes all over the country, and still the leaders go on talking about non-violence.

And the miracle of miracles is that all these things are provoked and managed by the opposition parties. All these communal riots are being done, inspired, triggered by the same people who had come to rule with Morarji Desai for three years. The same people, the same communalists, the same Hindu chauvinists are behind the whole scene - because they have tasted once the joys of power and now they cannot remain powerless. Now by any means they have to reach to power.

First they will create a state of chaos in the whole country. And of course if the government cannot control the chaos, "the government is impotent." Then there are only two alternatives left for the government. One alternative is to just stand by the side and watch because "it is a democracy and everybody has freedom of expression..."

And in India people have only these repressed things to express: anger, violence, greed, sex. The moment a riot happens, immediately there are rapes, immediately shops are looted - immediately these things start happening - all three things together. This seems to be the innermost trinity in the Indian mind: sex, anger, greed; they all come simultaneously.

And the whole thing is managed by the opposition parties, so they have left only two alternatives for Indira Gandhi. One is: don't do anything, just watch, try to manage somehow - which they will make impossible. The second thing is: be strict, impose something like the Emergency again. Then they will say, "Look, we have been telling you that if you bring this woman back to power she will bring the Emergency back immediately. Democracy will be destroyed. Had we not said that bringing Indira Gandhi back to power would mean the end of democracy? Look!" Now these two alternatives are left for Indira Gandhi; there is no other alternative. And this is how they are hoping to come back to power.

If you stand by without doing anything, then the chaos will make it absolutely clear to the country that the government is impotent, that it cannot do anything - it has to be changed. Or if you do something, that means you are destroying democracy, you are taking people's freedom away, and that is enough cause to pull you down from power.

My own suggestion to Indira Gandhi is: impose a stricter Emergency than before, and for fifteen years no elections in this country. For fifteen years this country needs no democracy! This country is not capable of having democracy - it has not that much intelligence. It has lived for two thousand

years in slavery; it only knows how to live peacefully in slavery. If it has freedom it does not know how to cope with it. And in those fifteen years try forcibly to teach this country how to live independently.

Nobody has taught this country how to live independently.

And you are asking me: These are the three great temptations of the Devil. How to conquer them?

This is the question Indians have been asking for five thousand years, Virendra, and the result is total anarchy. I cannot suggest to you any method of conquering because there is none. Understanding is possible, victory is not possible. Through understanding, victory also is possible, but trying to be victorious even understanding becomes impossible.

And the more you try to escape from these temptations of the Devil, the more you will be in their grip, because every temptation becomes more appealing the farther you escape from it.

A beautiful woman went to see an old and experienced doctor. During the examination he noticed two strange green spots on the inside of her thighs and he asked, "Are you married?"

"Engaged," replied the woman.

"What is your fiance's profession?"

"Well, doctor, he doesn't really have a profession. He is a gypsy "A real one?"

"Yes, doctor, a real gypsy."

"Look, lady," said the doctor, "he may be real, but his earrings are not!"

For five thousand years you have practiced a religion which is false. The outcome shows this absolutely clearly, and still you are asking the same question.

A woman returns from a shopping trip wearing a very chic new dress. Her husband, appalled at the cost of the dress, tells her angrily that they cannot afford to spend money that way.

"Well," says his wife, "I'm afraid the Devil tempted me!"

"Don't you know," fumes the husband, "that when the Devil tempts you you are supposed to say, 'Get thee behind me'?"

"Yes," she replies, "I did that, but then he said, 'My dear, it fits you so beautifully at the back!' "

No old strategies will help anymore. It is better to go through all these experiences of greed, anger and sex.

Don't be a coward, Virendra. Your name means courageous, brave, and what you are asking is cowardly. Go through these experiences. Accept them as part of life, as God given gifts - there must be something in them. There is! If you go through greed, sharing arises. If you go through

anger totally, in deep awareness, meditativeness, love arises, compassion arises. If you go through sex consciously, meditatively, you will have the first glimpses of samadhi, you will know the first windows opening into the divine.

The old man is showing his son the family album. The boy sees a photograph where his father is sitting in a chair with his legs crossed while his mother is standing by his side with a pained expression on her face.

"Hey, dad, what is this?" asks the son.

"What, son?"

"This photo," says the boy. "Why are you making mother stand while you are sitting down? That's not being a gentleman!"

"Ah, son," explains the father, "this photograph was taken on our honeymoon. At that time your mother could not sit down and I could not stand up!"

Virendra, you need experience, you need understanding. And through understanding is transformation.