The Total Man

The first question

Question 1:

Krishna Prem,

I TEACH THE TOTAL MAN. One of the greatest problems that humanity is facing today is the fragmentary man. For centuries we have divided life into compartments. We have tried to make those compartments absolutely separate, so much so that one expert, one specialist knows nothing about anything else. He becomes very much informed, knowledgeable about one aspect of life at the cost of the whole. His vision becomes lopsided.

They define science as knowing more and more about less and less. The problem now is how to make all these experts understand each other, how to create bridges, because man is not compartmentalized; man is one organic unity. Life is not divided, but we look at it AS IF it is divided; that "as if" is a fiction.

A man is not only a father; he is also a husband, he is also a son, he is also an uncle, he is also a brother. He is so many things! You cannot define him by labeling him as father, as son, as brother.

That will be absolutely unjustified and absurd. A man has a multi-dimensional being.

Religion, in fact, is not one-dimensional. Religion is a very comprehensive view of the whole of life.

I am not a politician, and I am sticking to my pursuit - but religion is multi-dimensional, religion HAS to be all-inclusive. A politician may not be able to make any statement about religion, because he is working in a one-dimensional pursuit. Politics is one-dimensional, science is one-dimensional, art is one-dimensional, philosophy is one-dimensional. That's where religion is totally different from all pursuits. It is not one of the pursuits; it is a vision that includes all. Hence a religious man has to be aware about the whole.

That's why sometimes I make statements about art, about science, about politics and about so many things. But up to now religious people have also thought that their pursuit is one-dimensional. After me they will have to redefine religion! I don't believe in that definition. And I would like to say that I am strictly sticking to my pursuit, but my pursuit is not ONE of the pursuits - it includes all.

Religion is like a bird's-eye view: the hills, the rivers, the trees, the people, all are included. That's the beauty of religion: it is not a specialized field.

And that's why there is great hope that religion will have to be revived to its true nature, resurrected, because now sciences, philosophy, politics, they have all become so fragmentary that nobody knows what is actually happening. The physicist is not aware of what the chemist is doing, the chemist is not aware of what the mathematician is doing, the mathematician is not aware of what the politician is doing. That's how the atom bomb happened: the physicists went on pursuing, and they were doing right as far as they were concerned. To know about atomic energy is one of the great revelations.

Albert Einstein, the man who was most responsible for making us know about atomic energy, wrote a letter to the American president, not knowing anything at all about politicians. And his whole life he felt great guilt; he felt himself responsible for all that happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course, whatsoever he did he was not aware of the consequences. He was not at all conscious about the politician, his mind, his cunningness. He wrote a letter himself, saying, "Why don't we make atom bombs? Now the secret is there, and America can use the energy in many creative ways. It can transform the whole scene on the earth. It can make man for the first time really rich, healthy; in every possible way atomic energy has the possibility to transform the whole earth into a paradise."

The American politicians immediately jumped on the secret, but what they did was totally different:

the earth has not been transformed into a paradise; it has become uglier than it was before.

In fact, there is no justification at all for dropping atom bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima in Japan, because Japan was already losing its fight, they were losing the war. It was only a question of days; maybe two weeks or four weeks more the war would have continued without dropping the atom bomb. And American politicians were in a hurry: before the war ended they had to throw the bomb to see what power they had gained through atomic energy, whether it was worthwhile or not.

Thousands of people died, innocent people. Even this justification was not true, that it was needed to end the war. The war was ending on its own; the German and the Japanese resources were finished. They were going to surrender; it was only a question of a few hours or at the most a few days. In a hurry the atom bomb was dropped on two cities and two cities were reduced to deserts, within seconds.

Albert Einstein felt the weight of the crime on his own heart his whole life; he remained sad. And when he was dying he was asked whether if he was born again he would like to be a physicist again.

He said, "Never, never again! I would like rather to be a plumber!"

Can you see the point of it all? The politician has taken over whatsoever science has discovered.

The same has been done in America, the same has been done in Russia. Now the politician has become so powerful that there is every possibility any madman - and they are all, almost all mad people - can destroy the whole earth.

A scientist himself delivered the secret; it could have been prevented. But the scientific pursuit is one-dimensional.

Now it is as if a man's hands are working on their own, his legs are working on their own, his head is working on its own; his heart is going towards the north, his head is going towards the south, his hands are going towards the east, his feet are going towards the west - and man is falling apart!

Who is going to keep man together?

Except for religion, nothing is capable of keeping man together. Hence every day the importance of religion will become greater and greater. And remember, when I say "religion" I don't mean Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism: I mean a quality of religiousness.

I am not a politician, but I can see what is happening in this country, and I can see better because I am not a politician. I have no vested interest in politics. I can observe more detachedly. I am just a witness. And because I have no vested interest, my vision is going to be more clear.

The more meditative you become, the more clarity is there and life is no more like a puzzle. Things which were not fitting before start fitting with each other like a jigsaw puzzle; all the parts start fitting with each other. A pattern arises, a gestalt arises.

I say many things about art; I am not an artist. Neither am I a cook, but I can say whether the food is worth eating or not, whether it is tasteful or not; one need not be a cook for that. I don't know even how to prepare tea! I have never done anything like that, but still I can say that this tea does not taste like tea at all. And you cannot say to me, "Stick to your own religious pursuit, Mr. Rajneesh!

You have no right to say anything about tea because you don't know how tea is made. You have no right to say anything about spaghetti!" I have not even tasted spaghetti ever. Only once it was brought to me - it was stinking! So I simply had to throw it away! That much I can do; for that I have absolute freedom.

I talk about music - not that I am a musician, but I have got ears, and sensitive ears, and that's enough. I can talk about art because I have got eyes and my eyes can see what is beautiful and what is not. I need not be a painter to see the ugliness of Picasso's paintings! I need not be a sculptor to see the beauty of Konarak, Khajuraho or the Taj Mahal. I can see the beauty of Michelangelo's work. I am not a novelist but I can see Dostoevsky's great work; I can appreciate Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky. Nobody will say, "You are not a novelist so you cannot appreciate a novel like BROTHERS KARAMAZOV."

I am not a politician, that is true, but I can see man in his totality because I am deep down utterly silent and clear. And I can see not only that which is happening but that which is going to happen. I can see in the seed the flower, I can see the child in the womb. I can almost visualize what is going to happen, and it is not imagination because I dropped imagination long long ago. It is not projection either because I have no desires left.

As far as I am concerned I am totally fulfilled. If I die this moment, herenow, there is no problem about it. You see? It always happens at the right moment! I can die absolutely blissfully, peacefully, because my life is fulfilled - the flower has released its perfume. So now any moment will be right because nothing is incomplete.

I would like to say emphatically that experts are good, but we need a new, comprehensive way of looking at things which can think of the whole man and which can make connections between sciences which are falling apart.

It is very strange that whenever I have made any statement about politics, the journalists have always condemned me saying that being a religious man I should not make such judgments. But they never condemn the politicians who go on making judgments about religion! This is strange.

Morarji Desai makes statements about religion every day. Just the other day he said, "I am serving the Almighty God." What does he know about God? And just a day before he had said, "I have not yet known God, I have not yet realized God." Then whom are you serving, and who is this Almighty?

If you have not known God, if you have not seen God, how can you serve him? You are serving your own ego, but you want your ego to be puffed up. Even with the idea of God you want to decorate your ego. You are not doing ordinary work - you are serving God, the Almighty.

What service has Morarji Desai done for the poor God? His whole life he has been ambitious for himself. Does his life in any way give ANY indication that he has served the Almighty? And he says, "I don't know, I have not yet realized."

But nobody will condemn him; they will appreciate him. They will say, "Look, our politicians are so religious!" And these politicians go to inaugurate religious conferences. What do they know about religion?

In fact, the politician is the lost person to know anything about religion, because religion needs simplicity, religion needs clarity, religion needs intelligence, and the politician lacks all these things.

He is simply cunning, he is not intelligent. He is not even clever, just cunning. He is not intelligent, he is stupid. Otherwise, why should one waste one's life in just becoming a prime minister or a president?

Morarji Desai says, "My first ambition was to be the prime minister. Now that that is fulfilled, only one more ambition is left: to know God. Now that is the last." The man who has wasted eighty-five years in becoming the prime minister, how can he suddenly know God? He will have to transform himself totally. And he is not yet out of politics.

For a few months he remained silent, seeing that now there was no possibility of his coming back into power. But as the riots started and as people started creating chaos in the country, he came out. Again a hope has arisen that maybe in the next elections he can regain power. By the next elections he will be reaching nearabout ninety, but the desire never dies. It seems stupidity grows as you grow; it becomes more and more thick.

Just three days ago he said, "Now I am going to be active again because the country needs me."

I have never come across a man who has said, "We need Morarji Desai." For what? What has he done? But whether you need him or not he is going to serve God Almighty - he is going to remain active in politics. Now he will be active in politics and still ambitious to realize God. He wants to have not only power here but power in the other world too; he wants to know God.

He said, "I have realized only a little bit of truth. I have not been able to know the truth in its totality."

Now, except for me nobody in the whole of the country has criticized him. The truth is always known in its totality; truth cannot be known in parts, in fragments. Truth is indivisible.

And just to prove that he is right he says that even Mahatma Gandhi had not known the truth in its totality. So he becomes parallel to Mahatma Gandhi; that is his great desire. Mahatma Gandhi was called 'Bapu', BAPU means father. And whenever somebody addresses Morarji Desai as Bapu, that is the only time he smiles. So those who want to buttress his ego, they address him as Bapu, and then he is just as joyous as one can be. That is his deepest desire, to be put alongside Mahatma Gandhi.

Mahatma Gandhi also never knew the truth, because he was on the wrong track, as much as Morarji Desai is, because truth cannot be known the way Mahatma Gandhi was trying to know it. To know truth one needs meditation, but to know meditation is to get out of your mind. And then you cannot be a politician. That is the trouble: the politician has to be in the mind, constantly in the mind. Mind is a cunning mechanism. Mahatma Gandhi never knew anything of meditation.

One man who knew meditation had written to him, but he felt offended and insulted. That man was also in Poona - Meher Baba. He had lived for thirty years in silence, in absolute silence, not uttering a single word. He was one of the greatest mystics of all the ages, but he was a condemned in Poona in the same way I am condemned.

Meher Baba, knowing that Mahatma Gandhi wanted to know truth, out of his compassion sent him a telegram. He was absolutely silent, but he used to make gestures, and the person, the one person who had remained with him for thirty years, had become capable of understanding his gestures.

There had developed a communication, a deep, heart-to-heart communication, between Meher Baba and his secretary, Adi Irani.

Adi Irani had come to see me once and I could see that this man had a beauty - such a beautiful space and such silence. It was bound to happen: to live with a Master like Meher Baba for thirty years, to drink his wine, his presence... And he was his interpreter. It was not from mind to mind, because Meher Baba's mind was put aside; it was a heart-to-heart message.

So he was given the message. He telegrammed Mahatma Gandhi: "If you really want to know truth, come here. Be here with Meher Baba for a few days. He feels great compassion for you because you are striving so hard to attain to truth, but that is not the right way, what you are doing."

Mahatma Gandhi felt offended, as anybody would feel offended. If I invite Morarji Desai, saying, "Come here!" he will feel offended. He felt very insulted. His secretary replied to the telegram, saying, "You stick to your own pursuits. I am trying to find truth my own way and I will find it in my own way. I don't want anybody's help."

The politician is so egoistic. Even if somebody is willing to help he will not take it. But these politicians go on talking about religion; Mahatma Gandhi went on talking about religion.

He wrote a commentary on Srimad Bhagavad Gita, the MOST childish commentary, because thousands of commentaries have been written on the Bhagavad Gita - Mahatma Gandhi's is the most childish. It is the only commentary which can be made a text in the primary schools.

Now Morarji Desai has become a great commentator on Srimad Bhagavad Gita, and nobody says, "What right do these politicians have to say anything about the Bhagavad Gita? What can they understand about it?" But when a man like me says anything about politics they are immediately ready to jump upon it. It seems there is a great fear. But they don't understand my vision, my approach.

My approach is total. I am going to talk about art and painting and music and poetry, politics, philosophy, theology. I am not going to leave any dimension untouched. I am not an expert about anything.

Just as science is defined as knowing more and more about less and less, religion is defined as knowing less and less about more and more. Religion is concerned with the whole. It cannot know as much as the expert knows, but it has a very inclusive view, a very organic view. It thinks of the whole; the religious man takes account of the whole, hence he is the only person who can guide humanity. The experts are dangerous.

A scientist was helping at the accouchement of his wife, holding the paraffin lamp. When the doctor had produced not one but three fine babies, the scientist disappeared with the lamp.

"Here, come back with the lamp. I think there is another!" called the doctor.

"I will not!" called back the scientist. "It is the light that attracts them!"

The live-wire salesman walked into the factory and demanded an interview with the manager. "Look here, sir," he began energetically, "I would like to talk to your men and sell them my correspondence course on how to put fire and sparkle into their work."

The manager turned pale. "Get out!" he yelled. "This is a dynamite factory, you idiot!"

On a plane flight there was a lively child who nearly drove everyone crazy. He was running up and down the aisle when the stewardess started serving coffee and he ran smack into her, knocking the cups of coffee to the floor.

As he stood watching her clean up the mess she glanced up at the boy and said, "Look, why don't you go out and play?"

A little house is up for sale and the owner is showing around the philosopher who is going to buy the house. "The house is small," he says to the philosopher, "but very comfortable and cozy - there is even an orchard. And the price is very low. There is only one inconvenience: every two hours there is a train which passes by just a few feet from this window. But I assure you, after a week you won't notice it any more."

"Well," says the philosopher, "it means that for the first week I will sleep somewhere else!"

The engineer was standing underneath some scaffolding where he had been working. Looking up, the boss noticed him and yelled, "What are you doing down there? Why aren't you up there working?"

"Well," said the engineer, "I was up there, but when I was winding my wristwatch it fell."

A little puzzled, the boss told the engineer that the watch was gone and he had better get back to work.

"Ah, no, boss, you don't understand. The watch was ten minutes slow, so I have still got another three minutes to find it!"

The expert knows only his line, his dimension, and that is a very narrow one and it is becoming narrower every day, and he loses all contact with the whole of life. That's why we have destroyed the whole ecology of the earth. Our expertise is responsible for it, because ecology means thinking about the whole.

The carpenter is interested in wood, he knows about wood; he does not know anything about what the trees are doing. He is not aware that they attract clouds and rain, that they keep the earth together, that without them the earth will become a desert, that clouds will not come any more or even if they come they will pass without showering their rainwater. He is interested in wood, he knows about wood - the texture of the wood, the beauty of the wood - but he is not interested in the WHOLE phenomenon.

So we went on cutting forests. Now we are suffering immensely, because trees are a must The whole climate is disturbed, not only the climate but the whole atmosphere, because trees breathe in the carbon dioxide that we breathe out and they breathe out oxygen which we breathe in. We need oxygen, they need carbon dioxide; we are interdependent. If trees disappear, oxygen disappears, and then the air becomes more and more polluted with carbon dioxide which is not needed by your hearts, by your lungs, by your bodies. Already there is too much carbon dioxide in the air, which is dangerous to health.

But the woodcutter or the carpenter has no vision; his whole interest is in the wood. The woodcutter is interested in how to find out more efficient ways to cut the wood. The person who knows about the oxygen and hydrogen and carbon dioxide knows nothing about wood and its texture; he knows nothing about the carpenter. He goes on working in HIS direction, the other goes on working in HIS direction, and they go on destroying the ecology.

Ecology means the interdependent cycle of existence. Everything depends on everything else; nothing is absolutely independent, cannot be. We are parts, very small parts, cogs in a wheel.

Somebody has to know about the wheel; of course, the man who knows about the wheel will not be able to compete with any expert because he will know less and less about more and more.

And the ultimate state of Buddhahood is knowing nothing about all. And what will the ultimate state of the scientist, the expert be? - knowing all about nothing. That is the logical consequence. If science is knowing more and more about less and less, then what will the ultimate result be? - knowing all about nothing! It is becoming narrower, narrower, narrower, and there iS only one point left: nothing, zero.

And religion is knowing less and less about more and more, and what will the ultimate state be? - knowing nothing about all. That's what Dionysius calls AGNOSIA. That's why Socrates says, "I know only one thing, that I know nothing." But that does not mean that Socrates did not make statements about politics. He did, and he suffered for that!

And I know that I will suffer, but now nothing can be taken away from me. Even if my life is taken away, nothing is taken away from me. So I AM going to make statements about everything, and that's really sticking to my own work. I am not entering into anybody's field. I am not an active politician and I am never going to be. I am not going to paint, I am not going to compose poetry, I am not going to write a novel. But I will go on making statements about every dimension so that I can give you a total vision of how it looks from far above, from the clouds, like when you sit on a cloud and look at the earth.

The first man who walked on the moon, his greatest surprise was not the moon: his greatest surprise was to look at the whole earth as one single unit. For a moment he forgot that "I am American." For a moment there was no America, no India, no Russia. He shouted, "My earth!" The earth was whole.

Of course, from that distance the earth is one; all political boundaries disappear because they are only on the maps.

In fact, every child should be taken to the moon and should be shown the whole earth as whole.

That will be real teaching of geography. What you are teaching in the name of geography is politics, not geography. India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, this is not geography; this has nothing to do with the earth, this has something to do with politics. You are just teaching them nonsense. Let them go to the moon and from the moon let them see the earth as one whole. Of course, they will not be knowing much about India or China. As they go higher above, farther away, they will be knowing less and less about more and more, but they will have a comprehensive view.

I am looking from the moon - my name means "moon." Mr. Rajneesh means Mr. Moon! And whatsoever I am saying I am going to continue because I have nothing to lose. I have no vested interest, so whatsoever happens is good.

The second question

Question 2:

Vadan,

MORAL CHARACTER simply means something imposed by others on you: it is not really religious.

It is a form of domination, a form of slavery, because you have not come to the understanding of what is right and what is wrong; you have been simply told by others. You don't know really whether what you are calling "moral" is moral or immoral. One thing is moral in one society and the same thing is immoral in another society.

Just look around the earth, have a little bigger vision, and you will be surprised: there are so many moralities. How can there be so many moralities? Right is right and wrong is wrong! There is no possibility of many moralities. There is no possibility of a Hindu morality or a Mohammedan morality or a Jaina morality, but there are different moralities. That simply shows all these moralities are inventions - inventions by different societies to dominate the individuals which make up those societies. It is a strategy for imprisoning the individual.

The whole process is a very subtle trick. Now we have even found a shortcut to it. One great scientist, Delgado, has found that electrodes can be put into the human brain and you will not know anything about it, because the brain is the most insensitive part in your body.

It happened once, a bullet was found in a man's skull - after eleven years. When he went for some other operation and an X-ray was taken, there was the bullet inside his skull. He had been in the army and for eleven years the bullet had been inside and he had not even been aware of it, because the brain has no sensitivity; it is absolutely - insensitive.

An electrode, a small electronic mechanism just like a small button can be put inside your head, and you will never know that it is there. And you can be controlled from far away; you can be controlled by anybody who knows about that electronic mechanism inside your brain. He can have a small remote control unit: he can push one button on it and you will be angry; he can push another button and you will be full of love; he can push a third button and you will become very quiet, and a fourth button and you will become utterly violent.

Delgado has proved it. He inserted one electrode in a bull's brain, and with his remote control unit he was standing there, the bull was let loose, and he pressed one button. The bull became so enraged that nobody had seen any bull so enraged, for no reason at all. And he charged towards Delgado.

Thousands of people had gathered to see the experiment, and they thought the bull was going to finish Delgado, that this experiment was over. Their breaths stopped. The bull reached so close, just one foot away; one second more and he would have killed Delgado, but he pushed another button and there was a sudden stop. The bull stopped as if frozen, became just a statue - just one foot away. All rage simply disappeared. He was standing there in a yoga posture, frozen, not moving at all!

And Delgado says the same can be done with man. Now Delgado, sooner or later, is going to deliver the secret to the politicians, just as Albert Einstein did, and then you need not wonder what will happen. Then it is absolutely certain that in countries like Russia and China, children when they are born will be immediately changed into slaves - just a small operation in the skull. And from the Kremlin, from Moscow or Peking, the president of the country or whosoever rules the country can control the whole country. He can send waves and there will be great peace, and he can send other waves if he wants the country to fight some other country and people will be so violent, so murderous that one single individual will prove to be like ten or a hundred murderers. This is going to happen because now the secret cannot be kept away from the politicians.

The same thing has been done by the so-called moralists down the ages, but their process was a bullock-cart process. This is a jet-set age. Delgado is saying that this is the way to control human behavior. There is no need to teach morality - for what? Simply insert one electrode and let everybody be controlled.

That's what the priests have been doing for centuries, but of course they were not aware of such a subtle mechanism. They were creating conscience in you; that is also an electrode. Every child was being told, "This is right, this is right, this is right..." continuously, and what is wrong: "You have to do this and you have not to do that." This creates a conscience, an auto-hypnotic state. By the time the child comes of age they have created a certain idea of good and bad in him. Now his whole life he will be in trouble. If he follows the morality he will become a hypocrite, because the morality has never taken any consideration of HIS nature, of HIS uniqueness, of his individuality. No account has ever been taken of him, he has not been considered at all.

Some guy, Manu, five thousand years ago, decided what is right and wrong for the Hindus; it is still valid - for the Hindus it is still valid. Still there are women who commit suicide by jumping into the fire at the funeral of their husbands, because Manu said that to be a SATI - to die with your husband - is the greatest virtue a woman can ever attain. STILL today, every day, almost every day, somewhere or other some woman commits suicide, burns herself alive. And these women are worshipped by the Hindus; they are worshipped like saints. And all that they have done is to commit suicide.

It is illegal, it is a crime, because the Britishers who ruled India for two centuries could not conceive any morality in it; they could see that it was just suicide. Their mind was not created by Manu; their mind was created by Moses. And in the Ten Commandments there is no commandment which says that the woman has to commit suicide, so they were very much against it. They made a law against it; the law is still there. But in spite of it, every day the crime happens. And the woman who is committing suicide believes she is doing something really great, something belonging to the high order of values.

The Mohammedan has his own morality. Just a few days ago in Moradabad a riot happened, because a pig, an INNOCENT pig, entered into the sacred prayer place - ID-GHAH - of the Mohammedans; while they were doing their prayer the pig entered. Now some stupid person somewhere in their history has said to them that the pig is the most unholy animal on the earth.

Pigs are just poor people, maybe a little bit Polack, but poor people and very innocent! How can a pig make the holy place unholy? That means the unholiness of the pig is far more powerful than thousands of Mohammedans praying in a holy place. Their prayer is not great enough to transform the pig! The pig changes their whole atmosphere.

They killed the pig and they killed the constable who was standing outside because they thought he had allowed the pig to enter - because he was a Hindu. And the riot broke. One hundred and thirty people died, immediately. And this is the official number; and whenever there is an official number given, multiply it by four - then you will have the right number. At least six hundred people must have died, or more.

The Hindus believe in the cow, that it is the holiest animal in the world, even holier than many human beings. The SUDRAS, the untouchables, who constitute the major part of the Hindu society, are not as important as the holy cow. To murder a SUDRA, says Manu, is not a big crime; to murder a cow is the greatest crime one can commit. You can commit hundreds of other crimes - it is nothing - but to kill a cow... Now that is Hindu morality, and every Hindu believes that the cow is his mother. This has become his conscience. And the same is true about everybody.

Morality is invented religion, not discovered religion. Discovered religion has to be your own, then certainly a great revolution happens in you. Then certainly your character has a virtue, but then it is not moral; it is religious, it is spiritual. Moral character has value to those who want to enslave you, but it is AGAINST YOU. You need a spiritual character, and spiritual character is not born out of moral education; it is born out of meditation. You need more awareness, not more moral education.

Vadan, that's why I am not emphasizing moral character at all; my whole emphasis is on the essential. If at the very center of your being some knowing, some clarity arises, your life will be different, totally different. It will have a beauty, a grace. It will not be Hindu because you will not live according to Manu; only stupid people do that. Living according to somebody else is stupidity.

YOU are not here to live according to me. I can only help you to find your own insight, that's all. I am not going to give you my insight - that would be moral character if whatsoever I think is right I impose upon you. But one man's nectar may prove poison to another; something which is a medicine to one man may kill somebody else. So what is right for me, what is true for me, is only true for me. But I can help you to discover the source from where you can also see.

For example, a blind man can be helped in two ways. One is that you can give him detailed information: "Go a hundred feet forward, then turn to the left ninety degrees, then go two hundred feet, then turn to the right a hundred feet again," and so on in this way, in detail. This is morality. The blind man remains blind, but he starts functioning, starts moving.

To give meditation is to give a blind man eyes. Then you need not give him this detailed information:

"First go right and then left and then this and that." There is no need; you have given him eyes. Now he can see where he has to go, where the path turns towards the left and where the path turns towards the right - because life is such a complexity.

YOU cannot guide the blind man forever. He is bound to stumble somewhere or other, he is bound to commit many mistakes, he is bound to forget many things. Every moment new situations go on arising, and he will be simply following your information that may not be true any more. Life goes on changing.

Chalecki, a traffic policeman, asked his friend Manzini if he knew of a bawdy house in town. Manzini gave Chalecki the address. The following day they met on the street.

"Well," asked Manzini, "did you enjoy yourself?"

"Nah," replied the Polack, "I find house okay, then I spend whole night waiting outside."

"Why didn't you go in?"

"I was waiting for the red light to change!"

Now a traffic policeman has become fixated! A red light means only one thing for him.

A smart New York career girl married Stefano, a handsome young Italian farmer. She was not too happy with his social manner and started trying to improve him immediately. Throughout the wedding reception she continuously corrected his mistakes, telling him what to say, which knife to use at the table and how to pass the butter.

Finally the celebrations were over and they were in bed at last. Stefano fidgeted between the sheets, unsure of himself, but finally he turned towards his new wife and stuttered, "Could you pass the pussy, please?"

That is bound to happen! That is inevitable.

A moral person remains stupid and unintelligent because he depends on others' guidance. And guidance that Manu gave five thousand years ago is no more relevant at all, the whole context has changed. The moral person lives according to the past and the meditator lives according to the present. The meditator responds to the real situation and the moral person only goes on reacting according to ready-made formulas.

These puritans and moralists have stuffed your minds and your beings with rubbish. They have made you junk-yards!

A housewife adorned with a head full of curlers, puffy eyes, no make-up, covered in a tatty old dressing-gown and worn-out furry slippers runs out of the house with the garbage just as the garbage truck is about to move on. She rushes up to the truck and, panting, asks the garbage man, "Am I too late?"

"No, ma'am, just jump right in!"

Drop conscience and create consciousness, and then you will be living an authentic life. And to be authentic is to be divine. To be authentic is to know what God is all about. To be authentic is to be true to Tao, the ultimate nature. AIS DHAMMO SANANTANO, Buddha says: This is the ultimate law.

Be conscious, be a light unto yourself.

The third question

Question 3:

Dayananda,

YOUR WIFE IS RIGHT as wives are always right.

Enrico Caruso was the matinee idol of the society opera world in the early 1900's. He was also privately one of the more active lovers of his time. The following remark is attributed to the great Italian tenor.

"I never make love in the morning," said Caruso. "It is bad for the voice, it is bad for the health, and, besides, you never know who you might meet in the afternoon!"

Listen to your wife - she is right!

The fourth question

Question 4:

Gyan Rasiko,

EVERY CHILD is born intelligent, and every grown-up person behaves like an unintelligent person.

This is one of the strangest things, because intelligence is a God-given gift and he is not a miser. He gives to everybody out of his abundance, out of his overflowing intelligence, bliss, love. Everybody comes so rich and everybody becomes so poor! What goes wrong?

The society does not want you to be intelligent. The wants you to be mediocre because it is easy for the society to enslave the mediocre person. It is easy for the manipulators, and they' are many - the priest, the politician, the pedagogue, the pundit, they are all manipulators - it is easy for them to manipulate you if you don't have intelligence, because you are bound to depend on them, you have to depend on them. You have to look up to them always for guidance. You will need leaders if you are unintelligent. You will need religious mediators between you and God if you are unintelligent.

And you will always be afraid of powerful people because they know more. You will be continuously in fear.

The society functions in such a way: the whole educational system is created not to serve you but to serve the vested interests. From the kindergarten to the university they are serving the vested interests; they are making you more and more stupid.

It is said that when Henry Thoreau came out of the university, Emerson gave a great party to celebrate the occasion. And he told the participants, "I am giving this party not because Thoreau has attained great knowledge in the university but because he has been able to come back from the university and he is still intelligent. The university has not been able to change his intelligence. The university has failed, that's why I am giving this party! I respect this young man for the simple reason that he has escaped from the whole cunning strategy that our education is."

Intelligence simply means ability to respond, because life is a flux. You have to be aware and to see what is demanded of you, what is the challenge of the situation. The intelligent person behaves according to the situation and the stupid behaves according to the ready-made answers. Whether they come from Buddha, Christ or Krishna, it does not matter. He always carries scriptures around himself; he is afraid to depend on himself. The intelligent person depends on his own insight; he trusts his own being. He loves and respects himself. The unintelligent person respects others.

And you can see the point. Why are the vested interests interested in creating stupidity? - because that is the way they will be getting respect. No parents really want their children to be intelligent, because if the children are intelligent they are rebellious too, they are disobedient too. Obedience has been imposed on you as a great value; it is not a great value. It is one of the basic causes of the destruction of your intelligence.

I am not saying be disobedient. I am simply saying when you feel like being obedient, be obedient; when you feel like being disobedient, be true to yourself. Your only responsibility is towards yourself and nobody else.

An intelligent person risks. He will be ready to die rather than to compromise. Of course, he will not fight, as the Desiderata says, with unnecessary things, with non-essentials, but as far as essentials are concerned he is not going to be obedient.

And you have obeyed even about the essentials. What is your belief in God? You have simply obeyed. What do you know about God? You have simply obeyed; you have followed your parents, they followed their parents. And parents are happy with unintelligent children because they are obedient they have to be obedient. They know one thing, that whatsoever they do is bound to be wrong, so it is better to listen to the parents' advice.

For thousands of years every society has been telling children, "Respect your parents," because they are afraid of children - they may not respect their parents. And I am not saying disrespect your parents. I am simply saying: the first respect has to be towards yourself. Out of that respect you can respect your parents, your teachers - you can respect everybody. But if you don't respect yourself your respect for anybody else is going to be pseudo; deep down there will be hatred. Each child hates... deep down he knows that "The parents are my enemies." He can see how his intelligence is being cut.

Just the other day Laxmi was telling me that a few of our sannyasins had made a small drama, and Veereshwar, who is a Ph.D., was quoting me - he was the chief actor. And Subhuti was there and he reported to Laxmi, "Of course he was quoting Osho, but when Osho says the same things they have a totally different flavor, and when Veereshwar was quoting, the words were the same, but the context was missing, and he made everything ugly." Subhuti felt almost sick; he felt like vomiting. What happened? Veereshwar was just quoting words, borrowed; of those words he has no experience.

Remember always: never be repetitive. Don't repeat anybody. Let your experience blossom.

And just the other night Vivek told me that the kids, the ashram kids, small sannyasins, did the same kind of drama and it was tremendously beautiful. Little Siddhartha was acting like Shiva, a samurai, and he did perfectly well. And they were absolutely unselfconscious; they were not worried about the audience. The place was packed, and the kids were enjoying themselves immensely.

A very proper English girl comes into the ashram - because the ashram was being enacted - and Siddhartha is standing outside like a samurai, and he stops her and says, "This is darshan time and you cannot go in! And first you have to leave your mind where the shoes are left!" And he was not worried about the audience, what was happening. He was enjoying himself. And the whole thing was far more intelligent.

And a reporter comes into the drama, a small kid with a camera, and he wants to take photographs of the Encounter Group and Leela and Tantra. And he says, "I am from the Times of India and I am going to write a beautiful article." And the samurais throw him out, and they enjoy the whole thing!

This was totally different. This has beauty.

A young mother says that after putting her two children to bed one night she changed into a floppy blouse and an old pair of slacks and proceeded to wash her hair. All during the shampoo she could hear the children growing wilder and noisier. Finishing as hurriedly as possible she wrapped a large towel around her head, stormed into their room and put them back to bed with a stern warning to stay there.

As she left she heard the two-year-old say to his sister in a trembling voice, "Who was that?"

This is intelligence!

But the society is not interested in intelligent people. It is not interested in sannyasins, it is interested in soldiers. It wants to create soldiers. Soldiers are the most stupid people; unless you are stupid you cannot be a good soldier. The greater you are in your stupidity the better, as far as being a soldier is concerned.

As the last soldier was about to jump from the airplane, he panicked, grabbed hold of his sergeant and said, "What happens if my second parachute doesn't open either?"

"Don't worry," said the sergeant with a smile. "Just come back and I will give you a new one!"

Intelligence can be rediscovered. The only method to rediscover it is meditation. Meditation only does one thing: it destroys all the barriers that the society has created to prevent you from being intelligent. It simply removes the blocks. Its function is negative: it removes the rocks that are preventing your waters from flowing, your springs from becoming alive. Everybody is carrying the great potential, but society has put great rocks to prevent it. It has created China Walls around you; it has imprisoned you.

If you are a Christian you are imprisoned by the Christian priests. If you are a Hindu you are imprisoned by Hindu priests. Your prisons are different; maybe their architecture is different, the rooms are made differently, with different material. And maybe a few prisons are more comfortable than others, more sophisticated than others. Of course the American prison is better than the Indian prison, far better, more comfortable: the radio is available, the TV is available to the prisoner. The Indian prison is bound to be Indian. Indians are living in such an uncomfortable way, how can they provide television and radio and comfort to the prisoners? Impossible. They are there to be punished; they cannot be allowed to enjoy.

Christianity may be a little better prison than Mohammedanism, but a prison is a prison. And in fact a better prison is far more dangerous because you may start clinging to it, you may not like to get out of it; you may start loving it as if it is your home. But these are all prisons.

And sometimes people get fed up with one prison and they change their prisons. The Hindu becomes the Christian, the Christian becomes the Hindu. Now there are many foolish Christians who have become Hare Krishna people - the same stupidity but masquerading in a new form. There are many Hindus who have become Christians, but the same superstitiousness persists; there is no difference at all. I have seen those Hindus who have become Christians - no change. I have seen those Christians who have become Hindus - no change. They have just changed the prison.

To come out of all prisons is intelligence - and never to get into another again. Intelligence can be discovered through meditation because all those prisons exist in your mind; they cannot reach your being, fortunately. They cannot pollute your being, they can only pollute your mind - they can only cover your mind. If you can get out of the mind you will get out of Christianity, Hinduism. Jainism, Buddhism, and all kinds of rubbish will be just finished. You can come to a full stop.

And when you are out of the mind, watching it, being aware of it, just being a witness, you are intelligent. Your intelligence is discovered. You have undone what the society has done to you. YOU have destroyed the mischief; you have destroyed the conspiracy of the priests and the politicians.

YOU have come out of it, you are a free man. In fact you are for the first time a real man, an authentic man. Now the whole sky is yours.

Intelligence brings freedom, intelligence brings spontaneity.

A little colored soldier tried to break out of camp and was stopped by the guard. Our hero challenged the guard with: "I've got a mother in Heaven, a father in Hell, and a girl in Harlem, and I'm gonna see one of them tonight!"

Must have been an intelligent person - as if the whole army training has failed! YOU see his response.

Annalisa and Roberta, two Rome hotel chambermaids, were talking when the bell rang and Annalisa had to go up to the room of an American tourist. He pushed her down on the bed, took his will, and in less than five minutes she was back downstairs.

"What did he want?" asked Roberta.

"I dunno. I think he must-a forgot-a himself!"

People go on living in such an unconscious way. They become accustomed to things, when they don't see. They become accustomed to certain rituals; their whole lives are ritualistic. They go on making empty gestures; they don't mean anything. A stupid person behaves mechanically: an intelligent person behaves consciously.

It is only through meditation that it will be possible for you to get back, to claim back your intelligence.

The society has repressed your greatest treasure; it has hidden your greatest energy from you. It has deprived you of your true being; it has perverted you. And it goes on saying that it is done for your sake. Man has been exploited, oppressed in every possible way.

The time is ripe now for a great rebellion to destroy all these walls, all these rocks, to destroy all this repressed structure, because whenever anything is repressed... If intelligence is repressed it becomes stupidity. If sex is repressed then it starts moving into directions of perversion: it may become homosexuality, it may take some other forms, it may become greed.

Greed means now you feel excited only, sexually excited, with money - money is your object of love. It may become politics; then power is your object of love. Then you are simply living an unnatural life, because power cannot fulfill your love, neither can money fulfill your love. But you have completely forgotten what has happened, why you have become so much interested in money.

Why do people cling to money so deeply? Use the money, but don't cling to it. Why do people become so ambitious? And why is there so much sexual perversion in the world? It is because of repression. Every repression destroys something in you.

Gino went to an optometrist and asked for a new pair of glasses.

"But you just got a new pair last week."

"I know," said Gino, "but I got them-a broken in an accident."

"How?" asked the optometrist.

"I was kissing my girl," said the Italian.

"How the hell could you break your glasses kissing a girl?"

"She crossed her legs!"

Fitzgerald went to a bar for five consecutive nights and watched Manzini sitting over in a corner booth. It was an incredible sight. Good-looking, wildly-shaped girls, alone or in groups of two or three, would wander in and soon make their way to the weird-looking Manzini.

"I don't understand it," grumbled Fitzgerald to the bartender. "I don't see how the Eye-talian does it."

"Me either," says the barkeep. "I been watching him for weeks. He certainly ain't handsome, he is a lousy dresser, and he hardly never says a word. The guy just sits there, licking his eyebrows!"

Meditation can bring you to your nature. It can help you to drop all the perversions. It can make you intelligent, it can make you loving, it can make you spontaneous, it can make you responsible. It can make you a benediction to yourself and to existence. Except meditation there is no other method which can help. This is the key, the master key.

Let me repeat: intelligence is your nature. All that is needed is to discover it, because it has been hidden from you for certain reasons by people who are powerful and who want to remain in power.

Of course they will not like it.

That's why they are against me. They CANNOT like it - I am creating trouble for them. The more people become meditators, the more people become sannyasins, the less is the possibility of oppressing them, of exploiting them. And the orange people are spreading all over the world. It is an atomic explosion! Within six years thousands of people around the world have been transformed to a new vision, to a new lifestyle. They have been given back their individuality, their authenticity, their intelligence. Now nobody can exploit them.

Hence it is certainly a rare phenomenon that I am condemned by Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jainas, Sikhs, Parsis, Jews, everybody - I am condemned by the religious, the so-called religious - AND by the politicians, by the journalists, by the so-called intelligentsia, the writers, the critics, because they are all part of a conspiracy against man.

And I want to destroy that conspiracy totally. Only then can a new man be introduced on the earth.

And the earth is waiting for the new man. The new man will be the salt of the earth. He will bring with him joy, dance, celebration.

The last question

Question 5:

Uttama,

Those dogs must have been in their past lives either politicians or poets. Politicians love to bark at any excuse. The moon is just an excuse. Dogs love to bark; even in the dark night when there is no moon they bark. They were politicians in their past lives; they have become so accustomed to barking that they cannot forget it; it is a hangover. Or they may have been poets who praised the moon too much in their past lives and are now taking revenge - with a vengeance.

And Prem Pantha has asked, "Osho, what about police dogs?" They are perfect Polacks! That's why they have stubbed noses - because they chase parked cars! Beware of dogs, and particularly Polacks - they are more dangerous dogs. To chase a car while it is moving is one thing - you can enjoy it. Just for the sake of running it is good exercise, but to chase a parked car is certainly far out!

The police dogs must be not ordinary politicians but great politicians - prime ministers, presidents, kings, queens, emperors, Alexanders, Napoleons, Hitlers, Stalins of the past lives.

No question is to be taken seriously. Uttama, I never take any question seriously, but each question has a certain meaning: it shows something about you. Howsoever ridiculous it is, howsoever absurd it is, it shows something about you. It shows something about your unconscious. Just because it has arisen in your mind it shows some quality of your mind. It shows your curiosity - and curiosity is not a great virtue.

Watch out! If you are here just being curious you will miss the real point. You have to be here for deep enquiry, not for curiosity. You have to be passionately here - it is a question of life and death.

What is happening here is not anything ordinary; it is going to decide your whole future, your eternity.

So don't ask just out of curiosity. Ask because there is something that is really a quest for you.

Unless it is a quest, don't make a question out of it. Only a quest can be allowed to become a question because then it has a certain essentiality about it.

I will answer any kind of question; I will try to make something essential out of it. If I condemn the dogs for barking I am really condemning you for barking. You also have a dog inside you and sometimes you like to bark. Of course you bark like a human being, not like a dog, but when you bark something of the dog comes up in you.

You have been all the animals in the past, all kinds of animals in the past. That's the beauty of the theory of many, many millions of lives: that means you contain the whole universe - the dogs, the lions, the horses, the donkeys. You contain all of them within you, and you can bring anybody to the surface. You can behave like a dog, and you do many times. You can behave like a donkey like an ass, and you do that many times! Watch all these animals within you - they constitute your mind.

And unless you get beyond them, unless you transcend them, you will not be truly a human being.

A human being is born only when all the animals, even the shadows of the animals within him disappear. And to be human is the beginning of being divine.

These are the three planes: the animal, the human, the divine. Ninety-nine point nine percent of people live on the animal level; only point one percent of people get to the second, the human, and only a few people out of millions reach the third. And that is the goal of being a sannyasin.

You have to be a Christ - not Jesus but Christ. Jesus you cannot be, but Christ you can be. Christ is a quality. You have to be a Buddha - not Gautam the Buddha. You cannot be Gautam; Gautam is a totally different individual. But you can be a Buddha. Buddha and Christ mean the same: it is a state of ultimate consciousness when one realizes oneness with the whole, when one feels "I have come home."