The first question
Question 1:
Krishna Prem,
THE MOST OUTDATED THING is the family. It has done its work, it is no more needed. In fact, now it is the most hindering phenomenon for human progress. The family is the unit of the nations, of the state, of the church - of all that is ugly.
The Pope is right in a way - that there is no future for the church if the family disappears - because without the family and its conditioning, from where are you going to get Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans?
That's why I say the family HAS to disappear. Without the disappearance of the family all these ugly monsters will continue. The family is the root cause of all our neurosis. We have to understand the psychological structure of the family, what it does to human consciousness.
The first thing is: it conditions the child to a certain religious ideology, political dogma, some philosophy, some theology. And the child is so innocent and so accepting, so vulnerable that he can be exploited. He cannot yet say no, he has no idea of saying no, and even if he could say no he would not say it because he is utterly dependent on the family, absolutely dependent. He is so helpless that he has to agree with the family, with whatever nonsense the family wants him to agree.
The family does not help the child to inquire; it gives beliefs and beliefs are poisons. Once the child becomes burdened with beliefs his inquiry is crippled, paralyzed, his wings are cut. By the time he is able to inquire he will be so conditioned that he will move into every investigation with a certain prejudice - and with a prejudice your inquiry is not authentic. You are already carrying an A PRIORI conclusion; you are simply looking for proofs to support your unconscious conclusion. You become incapable of discovering the truth.
That's why there are so few Buddhas in the world: the root cause is the family. Otherwise every child is born Buddha, comes with the potential to reach the ultimate consciousness, to discover the truth, to live a life of bliss. But the family destroys all these dimensions; it makes him utterly flat.
Each child comes with a tremendous intelligence but the family makes him mediocre, because to live with an intelligent child is troublesome. He doubts, he is skeptical, he inquires, he is disobedient, he is rebellious - and the family wants somebody who is obedient, ready to follow, imitate. Hence from the very beginning the seed of intelligence has to be destroyed, almost completely burnt, so there is no possibility of any sprouts coming out of it.
It is a miracle that a few people like Zarathustra, Jesus, Lao Tzu, Buddha, escaped from the social structure, from the family conditioning. They seem to be great peaks of consciousness, but in fact every child is born with the same quality, with the same potential.
Ninety-nine point nine percent of people can become Buddhas - just the family has to disappear.
Otherwise there will be Christians and Mohammedans and Hindus and Jainas and Buddhists, but not Buddhas, not Mahaviras, not Mohammeds; that will not be possible. Mohammed rebelled against HIS background, Buddha rebelled against HIS background, Jesus rebelled against HIS background.
These are all rebels - and the family is absolutely against the rebellious spirit.
The Pope is right, in a sense, that the future of the church depends on the family, but he is wrong to say that the future of the world and the future of the church lies in the family. The future of the church certainly lies in the family, but not the future of the world. They are not synonymous, in fact they are opposites.
If we want to save the future of humanity then all these churches have to be destroyed, only then can humanity be one. All these religions have to go, only then can man create a universal brotherhood.
Mohammedans, Hindus and Christians have been talking about brotherhood, love, humanity, but that is mere talk, phony talk; what they have done is just the opposite. Their hands are full of blood. They have been the cause of more violence on the earth than anybody else. They have killed, murdered, raped; they have committed all kinds of crimes in the name of religion. And these murderers have been promised that they will have a special privilege in paradise because they are killing or being killed in the name of religion. These are the people who have been creating JIHADS - religious wars, crusades. On the one hand they talk about love, brotherhood, humanity, God, but that is only talk. That gives a beautiful cover to all the cruelty, to all the destructiveness that they are carrying within themselves.
I am not in favor of teaching Hindus to be brothers to the Mohammedans, because that is not possible. Five thousand years of experience is enough proof that that is not possible. Unless a Hindu gets out of his conditioning and the Mohammedan gets out of his conditioning there is no possibility of brotherhood. I am not in favor of synthesizing all these religions. That will be synthesizing all kinds of diseases - cancer and tuberculosis.... That will not help, that will be far more dangerous.
Humanity is passing through a very critical phase. It has to be decided whether we want to live according to the past or we want to live a new style of life. It is enough! We have tried the past and its patterns and they have all failed. It is time, ripe time, to get out of the grip of the past and to create a new style of life on the earth.
That's what is happening here with my sannyasins. Here are Christians, Mohammedans, Hindus, Buddhists who are no more Hindus, no more Christians, no more Buddhists, no more Mohammedans, who have again become innocent like children. Great courage is needed for that - to get rid of the family conditioning - because one feels guilty, as if one is betraying one's parents.
But if the parents are mad then it is perfectly right to get out of their possessiveness. And they ARE mad, they ARE neurotic! In fact, to condition a child with any ideology is inhuman, but inhumanity is practised with such beautiful labels that unless you dig very deep you will not find the reality.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta has been serving poor orphans and she has been respected for that all over the world, but just a few days ago a Protestant family from America came to Mother Teresa's place; they wanted to adopt a child. And that's what she has been doing: she raises the orphans and then those orphans are given to families where they can be adopted and they can live in a better way. But the Protestant family was refused for the simple reason that they were not Catholics. So the whole purpose of serving the orphans is not the orphans; the purpose is to increase the number of Catholics. That is the true purpose, and the Nobel prize is given for something else: serving poor children. The real purpose is political.
Giving the Nobel prize to Mother Teresa has degraded the whole value of the Nobel prize; it is no more of any worth. Now deceivers, charlatans, hypocrites will be getting the Nobel prize.
The future of the world and the future of the church are two different things - not only different but diametrically opposite.
I teach the commune, not the family. The commune is the alternative to the family. The family conditions the child in the first place. Secondly, it is the cause of all kinds of insanities.
A child is brought up by one woman, the mother, by one man, the father. If the child is a boy he becomes obsessed with the mother; if the child is a girl she becomes obsessed with the father.
Now these are proven psychological facts. The boy's consciousness becomes imprinted with the mother's figure, qualities.... Now his whole life he will be searching for a woman who is an exact replica of his mother. And the same is true about the girl: she will be trying to find a lover who exactly represents her father. Now this is not possible - they will never succeed.
That's why all love affairs fail, they are BOUND to fail. From the very beginning we have managed everything in such a way that love cannot succeed. Where can you find your mother or your father?
It is impossible, because there are no two persons who are exactly alike, but this remains the unconscious search. Every time you fall in love with a man or a woman you are again hoping that this woman is going to prove to be your mother. This is not conscious, of course, it is a deep, unconscious imprint. But soon you will discover that she does not fit with your unconscious imprint - and the conflict starts, and you start falling apart. No man can be your father, no woman can be your mother.
Now if THIS so-called family continues, then love cannot succeed in the world. And without love there can be no bliss, without love misery is our fate. We have chosen misery if we choose the family.
A commune is a totally different phenomenon. In a commune there will be no obsessions with particular people. Here there are at least three hundred little sannyasins, boys and girls. Many small boys and girls never turn up in the night to stay with the father and the mother - they have so many uncles and aunts. The whole commune is theirs! And small children in this commune start having an individuality of their own, they start moving on their own. They are not attached to the mother, to the father, to the family; they go on moving with different people. And their fathers and mothers are not obsessed with each other either.
Just the other day Teertha's daughter, Soma, wrote to me: "Osho, I am going to England for one month to be with my mother, Poonam. Of course I will miss you, I will miss Teertha, and I will miss my stepmother, Krishna...." This is beautiful, to miss the stepmother!
Parents are changing, they are in a flux. The child will come across many stepmothers, many stepfathers. He will never become obsessed with one person. That will give him scope, freedom, multi-dimensionality. He will never be tethered. He will be able to experience many women as mothers, many men as fathers, and he will live in a flux, in a moving riverlike phenomenon. He will not live in a pond, he will float in a river where scenes go on changing. That will help him to have the capacity to love many people, and he will have a more composite view of what kind of a woman or man he would like to have in his life. All his mothers will give him a synthetic vision. There will be no single woman in it but many women, many qualities all mingled into one, all merged into one. He will be able to succeed in finding love in his life because there is no obsession with any person, with any personality. He will be more concerned with qualities and less concerned with personalities.
And he will know that there is no need to be possessive because he has known the parents were not possessive; everything was shifting and changing, lifelike.
Marriage is dead. It is a fixed entity, it is a commodity, it is like a thing - it is furniture. It is not like a rosebush growing: today it is full of flowers, tomorrow all the flowers are gone; today it is so green, and tomorrow the leaves start getting yellow and they start falling. He will see all the seasons, all the moods, all the conflicts, all the agonies, all the ecstasies, and he will become more centered, grounded. He will know that life is not a fixed phenomenon. He will not expect anything because life is not fixed. He will be available to all kinds of changes. He will be able to change with life, he will never fall out of step. He will be always in tune with life.
And that's what is needed to make humanity more wholesome, more healthy, more loveful, more blissful. Of course the church will disappear, nations will disappear, races will disappear, but they NEED to disappear - they have already lived too long. They are living a posthumous kind of existence; they need to be burnt and buried. We are carrying corpses, and those corpses are stinking. You can go on sprinkling perfume on them and somehow trying to manage to live with the corpses in the house. And I know that they DID have some purpose in the past; of course, when your father was alive it was one thing, but now the father is dead. So cry and weep a little, but get rid of whelm! And if you are my sannyasins, then there is no need even to cry and weep - celebrate a little and get rid of whelm! But there is no need to carry the corpse on your shoulders your whole life. And there is not only one corpse but many corpses; there are so many dead people in your house that there is no space for the living ones to live. The living ones are living outside the house and the dead are keeping the whole place full. We need space!
The family is a dead thing, but we somehow go on patching it up. What is a divorce? It is a patching- up. People go on living in misery thinking that "Next life I will find another woman - or another husband - but this life nothing can be done. It is better to accept." So people remain somehow satisfied, whatsoever the situation is, and they call it contentment - it is only consolation. And they have rationalized all these ugly things in many ways.
The Pope must be afraid - once the family is dead, the church is dead. The word'pope' means the father; it is the same as'papa'. And the Christians even call God'the Father'; it is just an extension of the family. The whole idea of religion is rooted in the concept of the family: God the father, Jesus the son... and who is this stupid guy, the holy ghost? They could not even put a woman there, a mother, which would have been more logical; but God living with a woman looks unsaintly! And then who knows? - he may fall in love, something may go wrong... and you cannot trust women: she may seduce the old fellow. So to protect him, a holy ghost! But see the stupidity: the father is there, the son is there, without the mother. Then who got pregnant?the holy ghost? This seems to be a more dangerous thing - God making love to the holy ghost! But the whole idea is a projection of the same structure, and because the extension and the projection was done by male chauvinist pigs, the woman has been discarded.
The Pope must be afraid - he is against pre-marital relationships. Now this is so illogical. Unless a man or a woman has lived in many pre-marital relationships there is no possibility of choosing a right partner. This is such a simple phenomenal! Unless you have experienced many women and men in your life, how can you choose who is going to be the right person to live with? But they don't allow any pre-marital relationships, so people start falling in love at first sight - which is nonsense.
Then, of course, the same people say love is blind. First they throw acid in your eyes and then they say love is blind! You see the strategy? Don't allow boys and girls to meet and mingle with each other so that they can experience many people before they decide - don't allow them. Suffocate their sexual energy!
Boys and girls become sexually mature at thirteen and fourteen, but they will get married after their twenty-fifth year, near about thirty. For these fifteen, sixteen years, when they have been sexually the MOST potent... because the boy is the most sexually powerful at the age of seventeen and eighteen.
Never again will he have the same power, never again will he have the same youthful vigor. By the time he gets married he is already old; then you start calling him a dirty old man. Strange logic!
When he is young you don't allow him; because you don't allow him his whole sexuality starts getting into his head, it becomes cerebral. Then he is dirty - because the head is the only little space where the sexuality can go, otherwise where does it have to go? You don't allow any outlet so it starts accumulating in the head. That is the only place - the basement, where you go on throwing anything which is not allowed. It is in the unconscious part of the mind that it accumulates.
By the time you allow, he is so obsessed with sex that he falls in love at first sight. Just keep anybody hungry for fifteen years, and then do you think he will think,'What food to chose?" Any food, any rotten banana... and love at first sight! And then you call love blind: "Look at this fool - he has fallen in love with a rotten banana!" And you are the cause of it - just keeping him hungry for so many days....
Just try one week's fast and then see what happens. Your whole mind will be full of food - spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti... I And the brain looks almost like spaghetti! And then you fall in love - you see spaghetti and you fall in love immediately! There is no time. Who bothers about what it is? "First eat and then we will see!
Pre-marital relationship is a very scientific phenomenon. It has to be allowed, it has to become part of human rights. It should be one of the basic rights of every human being to have love relationships before one decides for some intimacy, to live with somebody for a longer period. I will not say for your whole life, because who knows? - life is a big thing! - but for a longer period. Tomorrow you may find a far more beautiful woman, a far more beautiful man, then your intelligence will say that it is better to choose. Then why go on being tortured by your past? Remain free for the future, open to the future. So I say only for a longer period, when you decide.
When you have enjoyed many relationships you will be able to choose, you will be able to judge what kind of woman or man suits you, what kind of woman or man is a nourishment.
I am all for pre-marital relationships. Without them man will remain insane.
And he says he is also against extra-marital relationships. That is a little more complicated, but it has to be understood. That too is one of the latest psychological findings, that extra-marital relationships help marriage, they don't destroy it. It is always good to have a little change, just at the weekend.
It does not harm at all. That idea - that if a man starts having a little love affair with some woman other than his wife it will destroy the marriage - is absolutely wrong. It will help, it will renew the relationship, because one gets tired. Man is, after all, human. Don't ask impossible things! One gets tired - the same woman, the same man. One loses all taste.
If you have to eat the same food every day, like I do, you will get fed up. Even my kitchen people who prepare the food, they are utterly fed up with it. Except me, everybody is fed up. My gardeners are fed up because they have to grow the SAME vegetables. Vivek, Astha, Nirgun, Pragya - they are ALL fed up - they have to prepare exactly the same every morning, every evening. There is no difference between my lunch and supper. And there is no dinner ever. Dinners don't exist in my life at all - just supper and lunch, the same, exactly the same. And I can understand they get fed up preparing, preparing the same thing every day.
Unless you are enlightened you are bound to get fed up. 1, of course, enjoy it every time - because I go on forgetting about the morning, so I am again tremendously excited. When Vivek brings the food I immediately look: "What have you prepared?" And she looks very embarrassed. And I don't miss a single moment, I start eating. Because who cares what I had eaten yesterday and the day before yesterday? I don't carry all these psychological memories, so each time it is new.
Unless you are enlightened, extra-marital relationships ARE good. So please have as many as you can have before you become enlightened, because once you are enlightened I cannot help! Then you are finished.
Once in a while just a little taste of a new woman, a new man revives your interest in the old woman and the old man. You start thinking, "After all, she is not so bad." A little change is always good.
I am not against extra-marital relationships. The people who are against them are really teaching you possessiveness in an indirect way. When I say I am not against extra-marital relationships I am teaching you non-possessiveness. Just see the point: if I talk about non-possessiveness people think, "That's spiritual, that's religious - that's great!" But if I talk about extramarital relationships, the spiritual and the religious are immediately offended.
But I am saying the SAME thing. Talking about nonpossessiveness is abstract, talking about extra- marital relationship is concrete. And you cannot live with abstractions, you have to live with concrete life. And what wrong can it do? If a man is tired of the same woman - the same contours, the same geography, the same topography - once in a while a little bit different geography, a little bit different landscape... and he comes home again interested in exploring the old map. It gives a break - a coffee break. And after each coffee break you can again get involved in the same work, the same files, and you open them and you start working.... The coffee break helps you.
I don't want people to be interested in impossible ideals. I am not an idealist at all. I am down-to- earth, a pragmatist, a realist.
If people want to live together in a deep intimacy, they should not be possessive. They should allow freedom. And that's what extra-marital relationship is - freedom. But people are very strange.
Just a few days ago, Divya said she wants to give Hamid absolute freedom, she wants to work it out, she does not want to be possessive. Just to see whether she really meant it I inquired, "Then let Hamid be removed to another room." She said, "No!" What kind of absolute freedom is this if Hamid cannot be allowed to go to another room, to live separately - what KIND of freedom is this? And she was calling it absolute freedom! And Hamid WANTS to go! Even in front of Divya he goes on saying, "I want to live separately." And she says, "You keep quiet, you don't understand." And of course he keeps quiet because he is an Iranian and he can't understand much. Who has ever heard about Iranians understanding? So he keeps quiet. But how long can he keep quiet? Again and again he says, "But I want to live separately." And Divya says, "Don't get emotional. Keep cool and let me try to give you total freedom."
Now this total freedom, absolute freedom, what does it mean?
Nobody wants to give freedom to anybody else. People say beautiful words, sweet nothings. This sounds so good: total freedom, unconditional love, non-possessive intimacy. lust the sound is good, just like AUM.... It sounds good, but what else can you do with it?
Extra-marital relationships are very significant, immensely helpful to psychological growth and maturity, because when you start moving with another woman or man for a day or two, or a few days, a distance is created between you and your old lover. And that distance is very helpful. When you are exactly at the same distance as you were before you fell in love with each other, again a honeymoon is possible. That space will allow a new honeymoon. Again you will become interested, again you will start reconsidering, rethinking the whole matter.
And being with the new man and the new woman you will see that after all they are not so different.
So what is the point of destroying a certain intimacy that has developed? What is the point of destroying it? And intimacy is far more fulfilling than any sexual relationship can ever be.
If two persons are really intimate they will allow absolute freedom, because they know that intimacy is far MORE beautiful, far MORE significant - they have experienced it. So any sexual relationship is just a little diversion, nothing can go wrong just because of it.
But the old idea of marriage is of possessiveness, and the whole church has depended upon possessiveness in everything - possess! They talk about non-possession, but that too is out of greed: greed for the other world. If they talk about renouncing the world, it is to gain the pleasures of paradise. It is greed, pure greed, simple greed, and nothing else.
And he is against contraception. He is bound to be because ALL religions are against contraceptive methods - for the simple reason that their numbers will be reduced. It is a political game: who has got more numbers - Catholics or Protestants, Hindus or Jainas or Mohammedans? Hindus are against contraceptives for the simple reason that Mohammedans will go on increasing, and sooner or later again India will have to be divided into two parts. The Mohammedans will make demands if they start growing in numbers, and they can grow more in numbers because Mohammedans are allowed by their religion to marry four women. Now that is also a strategy. If you have four women....
One man is capable of making four or forty women pregnant. But vice versa is not true: if four men are married to one woman, only one child will come out of it. But if four women are married to one man, then four children will come out of it.
Mohammed himself married nine women. So, of course, when the prophet himself married nine, the followers should be allowed at least four. That seems logical, rational. So Mohammedans are allowed four women. And if you stop it you are interfering with their religion, and nobody should interfere with anybody's religion.
Now I am interfering with their religion. Soon there will be protests that I am interfering with their religion, and I am talking against Mohammed, that I am talking against their religion and the idea of marrying four women. That is allowed by their religion, nobody can stop it.
Hindus are afraid that if this goes on, naturally they will grow in number, and if Hindus are forced to use contraceptive methods they will be reduced in number. The whole politics is of numbers, particularly because of democracy. Each single person brings a vote: the more children you have the more votes you have. And whosoever has more votes will rule the country, will rule the world.
So all religious heads, all religious institutions, all religious propagandists are against contraception.
But, in fact, contraception is one of the greatest blessings that has happened to humanity in the whole of human history. It is the greatest revolution. No revolution is so great compared to the invention of contraceptives, because it is through contraceptives that women can become equal to men. It is only through contraceptives that the woman can have all the rights that man has always claimed for himself. Otherwise she was almost always pregnant.
She cannot work in the factory, she cannot work in the office, she cannot be a doctor, she cannot be a professor. At the most she can only be a housewife, and that simply means a house-servant. And her whole life is wasted in giving birth to children. She cannot do anything else - she cannot paint, she cannot compose poetry, she cannot play music, she cannot dance. How can you dance if you are continuously pregnant? It is so sickening, so nauseating.
But her whole work in the past was just like that of a factory - to go on giving birth to children. It started nearabout the age of fourteen and it continued as long as the man was potent enough to go on procreating. Two dozen children was not an exception, one dozen was a very normal thing. Now a woman giving one dozen children to the world or two dozen children to the world will not have time for anything else.
That was the root cause of woman's slavery. And when she was continuously pregnant and ill and sick because of pregnancy, she had to depend on man - economically depend on man. And if you depend on man economically you cannot be free. Economics is one of the most fundamental factors. If the money comes from the man, then the money comes with conditions.
If we need a humanity where man and woman are equal, then contraceptives should be used as widely as possible; they should become normal. And only then will extra-marital relationships, pre- marital relationships become very simple. The whole problem was that if you were moving in a pre- marital relationship and the woman got pregnant, there would be great trouble. The contraceptive has eradicated that trouble completely.
The Pope is afraid that if contraceptives are used then pre-marital relationships cannot be prevented.
That was a tragedy to prevent them: the woman was so afraid that she would lose all honor, all respect if she got pregnant; the man was so afraid that if he made a woman pregnant then he would have to get married to the woman. He may not be ready for that; it may have been just a momentary affair. It may have been just fun! But it has become now a great responsibility, a whole life's responsibility.
Contraceptives have transformed the very quality of sex: sex becomes fun. Sex is no more such a serious thing as it used to be. It becomes just a playfulness - two bodies playing with each other, that's all. There is nothing wrong in it. You play football - what is wrong in that? You play volleyball - what is wrong in that? Two body energies are involved.
Sex is also a game, but it was not a game before. Before contraceptives it was a serious thing.
Contraceptives have eradicated that whole seriousness about it. Now the religions are bound to be afraid, because their whole edifice can collapse because of contraceptives. What the atheists could not do in centuries, contraceptives can do within decades. They have already done it: contraceptives have made man free of the priest.
Contraceptives are a blessing, but the Pope cannot be in favor of them because his power is at stake - and not only the Pope but all other religious heads, the shankaracharyas and the ayatollahs and the imams, they will all be against contraceptives. Their whole business is at risk.
And I am all for contraceptives. They should be widely used. Children should be taught by parents, by the schools, how to use contraceptives so sex becomes just fun, it loses all seriousness. And then only can woman be liberated. Without contraceptives the woman is bound to remain a slave, half humanity living in slavery is not a good scene to look at.
And he is against abortion. Why should these people be against abortion? On the one hand they go on talking about the immortality of the soul. Then why be afraid of abortion? - the soul is immortal so there is no sin in it. All that you have done by abortion is you have prevented the soul getting into this body. The soul will find another body, if not on this earth, then on some other earth, because scientists say there are least fifty thousand planets - at least. That is the minimum which have life on them. There may be more but fifty thousand is almost a certainty. So if not on this planet then on some other planet.... And it is good to shift people - what is wrong in it? If this planet is getting too crowded, just shifting a few people to some other planets.... That's what abortion is. The soul says, "May I come in, madam?" and you say, "No, the place is too crowded. Knock at some other door."
And there are other possibilities, so you are not destroying anything. These same people on the one hand say life is immortal, the soul is immortal, and on the other hand they make you afraid that you are killing a soul, that you are killing a life, they make you feel guilty.
Now Hindus worship Krishna and his Srimad Bhagavad Gita. And he says in the Srimad Bhagavad Gita that even if you cut the body the soul is not cut, if you burn the body the soul is not burnt.... NA HANYATE HANYAMANE SHAREERE: destroy the body nothing is destroyed - NAINAM CHHINDANTI SHASTRANI: neither you can cut it with the sword - NAINAM DAHAIT PAVAKAH: nor can you burn it in fire. And Hindus are against abortion. Why? - because you are killing a life.
Nothing is killed, nothing can be killed. There are only two possibilities: either the soul is immortal, then nothing is killed; or the soul is mortal, then too nothing is killed. And these are the only two possibilities. Either you believe in the immortality of the soul, then nothing is killed because nothing CAN be killed - or you believe in the mortality of the soul, then there is nothing to kill; there is no soul really, there is only body.
And we have to decide how many people can joyously live on this planet. But there is also a hidden strategy behind it: the religious priests, the popes and others, would not like man to live joyously for the simple reason that if people started living joyfully, cheerfully, blissfully, who will bother about their paradise and their heaven? People have to live in utter misery, only then can they teach "Look, this life is miserable. Search for the other life, the life beyond. This life is hell, so don't waste your time in living it. Use your time in finding some other life, life divine."
It is to their advantage if the world remains in misery. And psychologically they have managed to keep you in misery, physiolesogically they are trying to keep you in misery, biologically - in every possible way they are making you so miserable that you have to go for their advice, that you have to look up to them as your saviours.
My whole vision is different.
You ask me, Krishna Prem:
WHAT DO YOU SAY?
I support the idea that this life, herenow, has the capacity of becoming heavenly. There is no need to hanker for any other heaven, for any other paradise. We can transform this life into such a beautiful phenomenon And I know there is a beyond, but if you live herenow beautifully, only then will you be able to live the beyond also beautifully. This is a training place, this is really a school. Life is a discipline, a preparation, for the other life. If you live here miserably, even in heaven you will live miserably, you will not be able to drop your habits. It will be impossible for you.
Live now and here and create this planet in such a way that there is no misery left, that love is overflowing, that people are flowering, that people become lotuses. And then of course life is eternal.
But when you move to another plane you will be able to carry some of the fragrance of this life with you. Then even if you go to hell you will be able to create a heaven out of it.
So don't ask God to send my people to heaven. I ask God every day... this is my only prayer: "Let me and my people go to hell" - because hell needs much help. It needs great transformation, and we can do it! Let the saints go to heaven, we are bound for hell, we are going to make hell orange.
And I tell you that your saints will be jealous of hell!
The second question
Question 2:
Dhyan Almuth,
YES, ALMASTA HAS EXACTLY ten questions again! First:
How many gay men does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Almasta, two: one to buy an art deco bulb, and one to shriek, "Marvelous, darling!"
Second:
How many lesbians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Almasta, five: one to screw in the light bulb, and four to discuss how it is more gratifying than a man!
Third:
How many Zen Masters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Almasta, two: one to screw in the light bulb and one not to screw in the light bulb.
Fourth:
How many Chinese does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Almasta, ten thousand... to give the light bulb a cultural revolution.
Fifth:
How many anarchists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Almasta, all of them!
Sixth:
How many negroes does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Almasta, none - there are not any - any more!
Seventh:
How many Polacks does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Almasta, one, but he needs a lot of light bulbs!
Eighth:
How many neurotics in therapy does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Almasta, one - three hours a week for five years!
Ninth:
How many psychotherapists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Almasta, ask Teertha. Every possibility is that he will encounter you and ask, "When did you start this fantasy?"
Tenth:
How many philosophers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Almasta, this is a question for J. Krishnamurti, not for me. Ask him and he will go into deep meditation and then ask you, "Do you mean, how does a light bulb screw you?"