The Last
Testament Volume 6 - Chapter 6
I have seen the questions for
today and they make me feel ashamed - ashamed that Indian genius has fallen so
low. It cannot even ask significant questions; to find significant answers is
absolutely impossible. All the questions that have been shown to me are simply
rubbish: yellow journalism fulfilling the demands of the third class humanity
in which I am not interested.
This is a country of tremendous
intelligence. This country reached to the highest peak in the history of
mankind, the Himalayan peaks of consciousness. And now it seems we have fallen
so low that unless a question is concerned with something inhuman, ugly, nobody
is interested in the answer.
I am not a politician, so
whoever dares to ask me a question should remember that I am not here to
console you or to give you answers which you want. You may get hammered on the
head. Because I don't have anything to get from you in response.
My whole effort is to create a
little flame of intelligence, a little scent of humanness, so before you ask
your questions, be aware! I am not only answering your questions, I am
answering the whole mind of a certain continuity. This continuity is of Gautam
Buddha, Kabir, Nanak - and your questions belong to the gutter. You should ask
these questions to the politicians, don't waste my time.
This is just to indicate to you
that if you don't want to be hammered badly then be alert. The questioner in
the introduction says that he is my old lover; he has been writing against me
for years. I can understand - old lovers are dangerous - love can change into
hate very easily. And what kind of love did you have? You have not written a
single word for me, you have been exploiting me and my name, and in such ugly
ways that I feel it below myself even to answer you. So remember it, and ask
your questions.
Most humbly, my first question:
we were all excited about your experiment in rajneeshpuram. Unfortunately, that
failed. Keeping aside the u.s. government and christian blackmail who is
responsible for this failure?
You, and your kind.
First, the experiment never
failed. The experiment has been absolutely successful. That was the problem,
that it was successful.
Who cares about experiments
which should have failed? Why should the American government or Christianity or
anybody be interested in an experiment which has failed? It was absolutely
successful, beyond their comprehension. Its success was the problem, so please
drop that word `failure'; it does not exist in my vocabulary.
Whatever we wanted to do, we
did it! A small commune of five thousand people against the greatest world
power in history survived for five years and created the commune. And the
commune was created in a desert which had never been cultivated, had never seen
flowers, had never seen birds.
Within five years it became an
oasis; we made houses for five thousand people with every modern comfort. We
made roads which are better than any government's, America included.
The desert blossomed, it became
green. We cultivated it, we made dams, created lakes; thousands of birds
started coming. It was a miracle to see that thousands of deer from all over
Oregon assembled in that desert of one hundred and twenty-six square miles.
That said everything, because
anywhere except Rajneeshpuram their life was in danger, they were going to be
hunted. In America, for ten days each year, people are given total freedom to
kill deer. In Rajneeshpuram they were standing on the road; you could go on
honking your horn and they would not move. They knew you, that you were not
going to harm them; you would have to come down and push them to the side.
Swans appeared, in a desert.
There were three hundred peacocks from all over America. It seems that birds
and animals are more intelligent than journalists.
There was a tremendous harmony
between the animals, the birds, the trees, the flowers. We created an
ecological system.
We were self-sufficient and we
never begged a single dollar from America. We never asked for any help from
America.
You cannot live as a country
without American help. You are a failure, you are beggars. Your country was at
one time a golden bird and you have brought it to this condition.
American politicians were
tremendously hurt that their help was not needed, because that is their way to
create slavery. Help is simply a cover-up. If you take help in money you become
enslaved, without knowing. We never asked for anything.
This was hurting the American
politicians - the success. And each year there was a world festival; twenty
thousand sannyasins were coming from all over the world. That time was a golden
dream come true: twenty thousand people meditating, singing, playing on their
musical instruments, dancing, rejoicing.
Twenty thousand people had one
kitchen! Just conceive of twenty thousand people eating together, while there
was dancing, singing, rejoicing, because that is my basic message: not
renunciation, but rejoicing.
Sannyas became degraded because
it became associated with renunciation. It was not so in the beginning. In the
days of Upanishad, the days of Vedas, sannyas was not a renunciation. All your
seers had their communes in forests, rich communes. Poverty has never been
praised in the Vedas or in the Upanishads.
And renunciation is against
God. The Sanskrit word for god is `ishwar', and ishwar means richness,
abundance.
Just look at Ram without Sita
and you will see something is missing, something tremendously important is
missing. Perhaps the heart is missing, only the dead corpse of Ram is there.
Just think of Krishna without those beautiful girls dancing around him. His
flute will lose its song.
I was trying, in the commune,
to bring back the original sannyas. Not of renouncing the world, but living the
world as a gift of god; it is a gift.
This became a problem because
American spectators, American television, American news media started coming
every day - planes started coming to see the commune, to see what is happening.
And the whole of America was agog to see that these people have turned the
desert into a paradise.
We were not politicians. There
was no political party, no political ideology. We were neither communists nor
capitalists, and yet we were living the best life possible - of love, of
friendship.
We became a wound to the
American politician. The only way was to destroy the commune, so that the very
question would be removed and there would be no need to answer. The commune was
destroyed by the American government and fanatic Christians because it was the
first time that Christians had moved out of their fold without getting into
another fold.
A Hindu becomes a Christian: he
leaves one prison and enters another. A Christian becomes a Hindu: he leaves
one bondage and accepts another. For the first time they saw that you can leave
the prison and there is no need to enter another prison. You can be a free man.
A sannyasin is religious but
has no religion. A sannyasin is a spiritualist but he is not a Hindu, not a
Mohammedan, not a Christian. And by coincidence the American president, Ronald
Reagan, is both a third-rate politician and a fundamentalist Christian.
They tried every means to
destroy us. Poor Sheela had nothing to do with it. She certainly became a
victim; I have all compassion for her. It has to be understood how you can
become entangled. All the telephones from the commune were taped. I was in
isolation and silence; Sheela was my secretary and the president of the
foundation. Seeing that all the telephones were taped , she started taping the
incoming calls to find that the government, F.B.I., C.I.A.,and other government
agencies, had their agents in the commune hiding as sannyasins, who went on
giving information.
Sheela was not a criminal. When
I chose her as my secretary she was an innocent woman of great intelligence,
but the American politicians destroyed her innocence. Whatever they were doing,
she had to do as a counterattack, as a defence. All her crimes are basically
the crimes of American politicians which she repeated - just to save the
commune.
I have nothing but compassion
and sadness for her. She is not a criminal and whatever she did, there was no
bad intention in it. She even bugged my own room; she bugged two hundred
houses. Naturally, logically, it seems that she was even trying to find out
what I do in my privacy, what I say in my privacy.
That is not true. The truth is
that she wanted to be alert because I lived in a house alone. If in the night
anybody opened the doors, which were of glass, her bugging would inform her
immediately and she could reach there. It was for my protection, not against
me. She never did anything against me or against the commune.
I know she would have died for
me, she loved me - not the kind of love that you have shown me. Your love is
simply cunning. You say you are my lover, old lover, but all these years you
have been writing articles so ugly and obscene that you should be behind the
bars, not asking questions to me.
So drop the idea of failure. We
succeeded - it was the first commune in the whole history of man which
succeeded. And remember one thing about human jealousy: it is never jealous of failure.
Have you seen anybody jealous of failure?
Jealousy is always of success.
Seeing a beggar on the street, do you feel jealous?
But seeing a rich man's
skyscraper you feel jealous.
It is a strange mind,
undeveloped, retarded. If the same building catches fire you will feel
sympathetic, you will say to the man, "We all have sympathy for you. It
was bad, it should not have happened." And all the time, when the building
was there, every day you had thoughts against the building and against the man
who had made it.
Who is jealous of India? I have
been around the world, I have not found anybody jealous of India. But I have
found people who are jealous of Gautam Buddha, who are jealous of Krishna, who
are jealous of Nanak, who are jealous of Kabir.
Because these diamonds that we
created, their countries have not been able to produce, even to imitate. In all
the languages of the world there are not words which can be compared to Nanak
or Kabir. There are not scriptures which can be compared to Dhammapada and Gita.
If the commune was a failure it
would have been still alive, but it became a success and nobody can tolerate a
success.
In the press conference
yesterday you said you are disillusioned and you want the third world war. But
some people like you and me and millions of others are not evildoers. We want
to survive. What is the way? What is the sort of new creation you envisage?
First, you hear only what you
want to hear. You don't hear me. I have not even used the word 'evildoers'. I
have not used the word `evil' at all. How have you heard it?
I have not said that I am not
an evildoer and certainly I have not said that you are not an evildoer! You
must be! This idea is arising out of your own heart. I had said that I would
like meditators, sannyasins, people who are interested in raising their
consciousness, to work hard before the world disappears in nuclear destruction.
I said that you are not only a body; your body will be destroyed but your being
will be transplanted to another planet. There are fifty thousand planets in the
whole span of the universe where life exists. This tiny earth is nothing. But
you never heard this; you have made the question out of your own mind.
As far as the second part of
your question is concerned: when you were not born were you worried about the
world? Were you worried about what is happening in the world, whether people
are living peacefully, lovingly? If before your birth you were not concerned
with the world, after your death you will not be concerned. Where were you before
your birth? - you must have been somewhere because nothing is destructible. So
even if this whole earth is destroyed you will be somewhere. I am not concerned
about that. My concern is that while you are here use this time - which is very
short - perhaps five years, ten years, at the most fifteen years.
This world cannot be saved, but
you can be saved. And that is a totally different thing. If you can achieve a
realization of your consciousness, then your being is saved. Then wherever you
are you are in bliss, whatever the planet.
This is the experience of
centuries, that a man who becomes enlightened like Buddha, Mahavira,
Bodhidharma is not born again anywhere. Their soul becomes part of the
universal soul. You can call it God, you can call it Brahma, you can call it
the Absolute, the Ultimate. This has been the search of this country, its
intensive search for almost ninety thousand years: how not to be imprisoned
into a body again, because the body is a prison, a very strange prison - it
moves with you. Wherever you go you take your prison with you.
Our whole religious development
is how to get rid of this prison and how to be in a state of splendor,
universality, how to become one with existence. That is the real aim of life.
So what I had said was, I am
going to work for those who are really concerned with their being. I am not
going to waste my breath on the dead, blind, unconscious humanity which is
simply preparing its own suicide. Let them succeed - they will be born on some
planet, in some form. They cannot be worse than they are right now. Can you
think of anything worse than yourself?
A rosebush is far better than
you - at least it has its perfume. A bird on the wing is far better than you -
at least it has the freedom of the whole sky, needs no passport, no entry visa.
It does not belong to any church; is not Christian, is not Hindu. Wherever you
will be you cannot fall below where you have already fallen.
What I had said was totally
different. I had said that looking around the world, seeing the real faces of
people, not their masks, I am no more interested in humanity and I am no more
interested in this planet earth. I am interested only in those few individuals
who want to achieve to universal consciousness.
Where the body disappears you
are simply a consciousness, a pure consciousness, satchitanand, you are truth,
you are consciousness, you are bliss.
I said to you that for ninety
thousand years this country has been persistently searching for only one goal.
It is Christianity that has given the wrong idea to the educated people of the
country. The uneducated people of course don't have any idea, but the educated
people have been told that your Vedas are only five thousand years old. This is
a great lie. Christianity believes that God created the world only six thousand
years ago, so they have to fix the whole evolution within a six thousand year
framework. That is absolute stupidity.
In the Rigveda we have evidence
that there were certain stars in the sky ninety thousand years ago. They are
described in detail. Since then, they have disappeared. Now science accepts
that these stars were there ninety thousand years ago. Now how can a man five
thousand years ago, without any scientific instruments, write about these stars
in such detail unless they were seen?
RIGVEDA is at least ninety
thousand years old, perhaps more. And for these ninety thousand years our only
search has been how to get out of this prison.
What are you in your body? -
just go to a medical college to see the bones that you are hiding under the
skin. The skin is only a cover, under the skin there are only bones. Even a
doctor, a friend of mine, was afraid to keep the whole inner structure of bones
in his clinic. He said, "It makes people afraid to come." So he was
hiding it at his house. That created another trouble, his wife was against it.
But I told him, "Whether
you keep it in the house or not, you are keeping it within yourself, your wife is
keeping it, everybody is keeping it."
We have never been interested
in that, our interest is totally different. Our interest is in finding who is
hidden behind these bones - the intelligence, the consciousness. So if the
world disappears into the smoke of a nuclear war nothing is lost, just skin and
bones - which are going to be lost anyway.
Right now you lose them
individually. Politicians, out of compassion, are preparing a collective death.
Why bother to die individually when we can die altogether?
There are already so many
nuclear weapons that every man can be killed seventy times, and they are going
on piling them up. Sooner or later it is all going to explode, it cannot be
avoided.
I have been trying my whole
life that it should be avoided, but seeing the politicians around the world I
have changed my position. I say it should not be avoided, it is better to get
through it once and for all, to be finished with it.
Those who can experience their
inner self will dissolve into the universal self; those who cannot, will find
in fifty thousand planets some other cage, some other imprisonment - but I
don't see that there is any trouble.
Jail is a terrible thing. You
have never spoken on the psychology of the jails. In the jails did you feel
better mentally, or miserable?
Every person is in a jail, not
only in one jail but many jails. First your body is a jail, then your ideology
is a jail, your politics is a jail, your church is a jail. Chains upon chains;
it does not matter that a few more chains are added.
In my twelve days in American
jails, one day in an English jail, one day in a Greek jail, I loved it. I loved
it for the simple reason that it was not affecting me at all. I was as blissful
as ever; that gave me a tremendous confirmation that my bliss cannot be taken
away from me.
If an American jail cannot take
it away from me, then no hell can take it from me - that's what I said to the
American jailer in whose jail I was for the first three days. He was surprised
that I was not worried; in fact I had never had such a time - twenty-four hours
of meditation, no disturbance.
I said, "Why should I be
disturbed? Just because chains are on my hands, chains are on my legs, chains
are on my waist - why should I be disturbed? My body is a jail, on that jail
you have put a few more ornaments. I am perfectly happy." My bliss was
absolutely confirmed, because an American jail is the most refined way of
torturing people.
I said, "You have freed me
from the idea that if I fall into hell there will be a problem. If I can manage
an American jail there is no reason why I cannot manage an old, out-of-date
bullock cart type hell where no improvement has happened since the beginning. I
would love to visit it."
I was perfectly happy, but I
was certainly not happy about millions of people who are in jail and suffering
for no reason except that they are black.
Now the difference between a
black man and a white man is so small. In the old days the difference used to
be near about four anas. Now prices have gone high - - it may be a difference
of one rupee. And remember, that difference is in favor of the black man. The
black man has a pigment of color which makes him worth one rupee more than the
white man. That black pigment of color protects him from the sun, the white man
is unprotected. God seems to be more concerned to protect the black man than
the white. The white man's body is weaker, the black man's body is stronger.
It was a surprise to me,
whenever I entered a jail in America there were black people behind bars who
had seen me on the television, because in every jail there are televisions. And
they were showing me the two fingers of victory. They were talking in their own
languages which I don't understand, but this language I can understand. They
were saying,"Your victory is our victory and we are going to be
victorious," because all the sins are on the white man. He has tortured
the whole human earth for three hundred years, sucked its blood, has been a
parasite. He should understand it, confess his guilt, be humble and help these
people whom he has made poor.
These black people in American
jails filled me with tears; those tears were for their freedom. We have done
enough harm to them, it is time they should be compensated.
But as far as I am concerned I
was absolutely blissful; just as I am blissful here, I was blissful there.
Space makes no difference in your state of being, nor does time make any
difference, nor life, nor death.
There has been so much
disappointment with so many spiritual leaders over so many years. We have still
hope in you. What is your solution to this thing?
Worship creativity, worship
those who are making this world a little more beautiful, worship those who are
filling the world with a little more music, a little more song, a little more
dance.
I want to change the definition
of sannyas from renunciation to rejoicing. We have forgotten even to laugh,
because no saint laughs - have you seen any statue of Jesus laughing? Mahavira
laughing? No. Saints are not allowed to laugh. The whole country has become
sad.
I preach life, I preach love, I
preach laughter and I preach creativity. I am against renunciation of anything
except stupidities, superstitions.
I teach one humanity - together
we can make this country its old self again. We have to make it! Otherwise, by
the end of this century fifty percent of your people will be dying and hungry
all around you. You will be in a graveyard, not in a country. And just think:
if fifty percent of the people are dying around you, what kind of life can you
have?
Solutions are simple. Just your
minds are old, they are not contemporary. So I end my answer: I want you to
become contemporary.