Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind

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Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind

Talks given from 30/01/89 pm to 05/02/89 pm English Discourse series

7 Chapters

Year published: 1989

Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind Chapter #1

Chapter title: Marx and buddha hand in hand

30 January 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium Archive

code: 8901305

ShortTitle: FIRE01

Audio: Yes Video: Yes Length: 140

mins

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

YAKUSAN ASKED A MONK, "WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?" "FROM NANSEN," WAS THE REPLY.

"HOW LONG WERE YOU THERE?" YAKUSAN CONTINUED. "FROM LAST WINTER TO SUMMER," REPLIED THE MONK.

"THEN YOU MUST HAVE BECOME A GOOD OX," COMMENTED YAKUSAN.

THE MONK SAID, "THE THING IS, I WAS THERE, BUT I DIDN'T EVEN GO TO

THE DINING HALL."

"BUT YOU CANNOT GET BY JUST THROUGH BREATHING THE WIND!" YAKUSAN COMMENTED.

"IT WAS NOT THAT BAD, OSHO," SAID THE MONK. "THERE IS SURELY A MAN WHO WILL HOLD A SPOON FOR ME."

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, YAKUSAN WAS RETURNING TO HIS TEMPLE

WITH A BUNDLE OF FIREWOOD WHEN A MONK ASKED HIM, "WHERE HAVE

YOU BEEN?"

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "I'VE GOT FIREWOOD."

THE MONK POINTED TO YAKUSAN'S SWORD AND SAID, "IT MAKES THE

SOUND `TAP-TAP'. WHAT IN THE WORLD IS IT?"

AT THIS THE MASTER UNSHEATHED THE SWORD AND ASSUMED A

WARRIOR'S STANCE.

Friends,

There is a group of Soviet comrades present here today. They have a few very beautiful and simple questions. First I am going to answer them.

Question 1

The first question:

YOU HAVE DEDICATED A BOOK TO GORBACHEV. SINCE YOU ARE AGAINST

POLITICIANS, IS THIS A CONTRADICTION?

Not at all, because Gorbachev is not a politician. His every act proves that he is a man in politics but not a politician. My dedication to Gorbachev and the academic scientist Sakharov was for this simple reason, that he is not a politician and is immensely interested in having peace in the world. He is for friendship in the world, not for war.

The politician's mind is always concerned with war. Adolf Hitler in his autobiography, MY STRUGGLE, says that if a politician wants to remain in politics he has to continue creating enemies. If there are no real enemies, create fictions that somebody is going to attack you, that you are surrounded by enemies. Only that will keep you in power -- not peace.

And it is a factual thing to know; your whole history is filled with heroes who were nothing but warmongers, people who massacred millions of people. Your history does not consist of a single name who was a peacemaker.

I have dedicated my book with deep love to Gorbachev and Sakharov because they are both working for world peace. That is not the way of the politician, that is the way of a humanitarian. That is the way of one who loves humanity, who loves this beautiful planet and wants to save it at any cost. And all his actions prove what I am saying.

Question 2

Their second question is:

AS A RELIGIOUS LEADER, YOU ARE ABOVE HUMAN HURTS, BUT DO YOU

CRITICIZE AMERICA AND CHRISTIANITY SO MUCH BECAUSE YOU FEEL

HURT?

In the first place I am not a religious leader. I am a religious man. A leader is fundamentally a politician. Whether or not his politics is hidden behind religion does not matter; the very word `leader' comes from politics.

I don't have any followers here; these are all my friends. So please don't call me a religious leader -- I am just religious.

Secondly, I am not criticizing America and Christianity because they have tried to destroy my body. That does not matter to me. It does not hurt me, because I know something which is indestructible; no poison, no bombs, no nuclear weapons can destroy it. My being, my spirituality is beyond any destruction. It is eternal and immortal. So it is not a question of hurting me.

My criticism of America and Christianity has nothing to do with my personal attitude. I am against all religions, not only Christianity. I am against God because I am against all fictions. I am against hell and against heaven because I don't want to create a schizophrenia in humanity. I don't want human beings to live in fear of hell and greed for heaven.

And I don't want people to have any kind of belief system. Whether it is Christianity or Hinduism or Buddhism, it does not matter. To me, any organized religion -- and Christianity is the most organized religion in the world -- is a danger to human beings.

Their individuality, their freedom, their dignity is destroyed.

Jesus goes on saying to people, "You are sheep, and I am the shepherd." That is the attitude of all so-called religions: "You don't know -- I know. And you have simply to believe in me and all your sins will be forgiven." Just believing in Jesus, or in Krishna, or in Buddha, cannot erase anybody's crimes and sins.

Every action has its reaction: if you have done something wrong, you will have some bitter experiences following it. If you are doing something good, you will have flowers showering on you, a deep peace, a deep silence, and a growth of your inner consciousness.

I have criticized America because I have been there for five years and seen with my own eyes that this is the most hypocritical country in the world. Talking about democracy, talking about freedom, talking about freedom of speech -- and none of these things exist there.

Because they were against me they could not follow their own constitution concerning freedom of speech. They had no argument against me. Naturally, they became absolutely mad: how to destroy me, how to destroy the commune?

The commune was a far superior version of communism. No dictatorship, no money --

in the commune there was no need for money. People donated to the commune, but as far as their needs were concerned, the commune was responsible to fulfill their needs. And the commune was living at a far better, higher standard than any American. The richest American was jealous of the commune.

The commune was in the midst of a capitalist world. And when they deported me the representative of the attorney general of America, Ed Meese, admitted in a press conference that I had not committed any crime. The reason he gave for deporting me was:

"We wanted to destroy the commune. That was our priority." And without deporting me, it was impossible to destroy the commune.

But why? Why did you want to destroy the commune? Our commune was not at all concerned with America. The commune was located in a desert, one hundred twenty-six square miles of desert which had been for sale for forty years. And nobody had purchased it, at any price, because what will you do with a desert?

But my people converted the desert into an oasis. That hurt America very much. My people were living with such joy, such laughter, and they were working hard. All their needs were fulfilled. They had the whole commune centrally air- conditioned; they had everything that they wanted, and there was no exchange of money in the commune. This made the American government completely mad.

They arrested me without any arrest warrant, and without showing me any reason for arresting me. Just a piece of paper on which there were a few names -- "We have been ordered from above that these people should be immediately arrested."

I said, "But you should look at our passports! My name is not on this paper; neither are the names of the six people who are with me on this paper. You are absolutely absurd.

Just look at our passports and compare with your names; you are arresting the wrong people." Still, we were arrested.

In fact, they had no evidence at all to arrest me. But they did not give me bail for twelve days. They arrested me in North Carolina, and the flight from North Carolina to Oregon, where the commune was located, was only five hours. It took twelve days for me to reach Portland, and they dragged me from jail to jail; in twelve days I was dragged to six jails.

Only later on I became aware of it, when the British experts in poisoning looked into my symptoms and gave the verdict, that I was given a certain poison, thallium. It is not detectable either from blood or from urine; it simply disappears. I had all the symptoms -

- when the poison disappears, it leaves certain kinds of sicknesses in the body. This poison has been used against political prisoners. But if you give it in a bigger dose, the person dies immediately. That's why they wanted twelve days, to give it to me in small doses so I would not die in their jails -- they would be condemned by the whole world.

And when they released me, I was ordered to leave America immediately, within fifteen minutes. My car was in front of the courthouse, and my jet plane was kept with its engine running at the airport; I should leave immediately. They were afraid that if I stayed one day more, I might appeal to the Supreme Court. And there was every reason for me to win the case, because none of their charges... thirty-four charges against a man who was in silence, had never moved out of his house. How can he commit thirty-four crimes?

And they had no evidence of any crime.

When I saw democracy, American style, at work... it was absolute nonsense to

talk about democracy. Their constitution is just a showpiece for the world. The country consists of criminals talking about freedom.

I raised the question that they are all foreigners. I said, "All Americans are foreigners in America. It belongs to the Red Indians whom you have killed, whom you have forced into deep forests which you call reservations. In fact, they are the same as the concentration camps of Adolf Hitler. You are occupying the land of somebody else and you talk about freedom?"

Looking at American crime... when I moved through those six jails I could not believe my eyes. Every jail had at least six hundred, seven hundred criminals -- all were black!

Not a single white man did I come across in six jails. It seems only black people commit crimes. And these black people are all young people. America is very much afraid of a black revolution, so all these young people have been forced into jail, without any trial.

Whenever I arrived in a jail, the prisoners shouted to me... because they had been seeing my face on television continually. They were rejoiced to see me, and they said, "You will be going out of jail soon. The whole world has been alerted about your arrest; thousands of telegrams from the most prominent people around the world -- painters, poets, actors, film producers, mystics, Nobel Prize winners..."

In the first jail so many telegrams came that the jailer came to me saying that "We don't have space for so many telegrams, and we don't have space for so many flowers, and we don't have enough personnel to receive all the telephone calls that are coming from all over the world! What do you suppose? What should we do?"

I said, "It is your problem. Why have you arrested me?"

Because they were afraid of my death -- that may create great opposition around the world, particularly among the intellectuals, intelligentsia, artists; all kinds of creative people will be opposed to it -- they gave me the poison in small doses. And still they were afraid that perhaps those small doses were not going to kill me, so finally they put a bomb under my chair. It is by the courtesy of the bomb that I am alive; it did not go off at the right time. I had left the chair. I heard it at the airport from the journalists that the bomb did not go off, something went wrong.

I am not against the American people. I love them as I love all the people of the earth, and I have received much love from the American population. But I am absolutely against the American politicians and the American bureaucracy. It is absolutely against humanity. It is suicidal, murderous -- it is preparing to destroy this world.

Every day, more and more nuclear weapons are gathering. They have spent trillions of dollars on nuclear weapons. And Ronald Reagan has left the post of president, but he has given a budget of one and half trillion dollars to create more weapons. Now George Bush is at a loss -- from where to get this money?

My criticism of American politicians is based not on my personal hurts -- they don't matter. At least to me they don't matter. But I am certainly hurt because of America's anti-human attitude. There are three million street people and this winter they are dying in thousands. America goes on sending aid to poor countries, and it cannot save its own poor.

Karl Marx had never an idea that communism would happen in the Soviet Union. His idea was that communism would happen first in America, where exploitation of the poor has reached its climax.

Russia was a poor country with a small group of rich people, the czar and a few other rich people. The whole country was poor; there were not yet class distinctions. It was a feudal country, it had not yet become capitalist. According to Karl Marx's analysis, only a capitalist country can move towards communism; a feudal country first has to become capitalist. Capitalism means a clear-cut division of the poor and the rich, and the middle class simply disappears. A few move into the rich, most of them fall back into the poor, and when one country is divided clearly into the poor and the rich, revolution is possible.

Russia was not in such a position. It was a feudal country. The czar was a feudal lord.

But existence does not work according to logic. It was a certain situation that made Russia communist. The situation was the first world war. The czar's own soldiers did not have sufficient clothes, boots, food. They turned against czar -- his own army -- and it was a great strategy of Lenin to ride on the wave. It was not really a conflict between the poor and the rich; it was a conflict between the czar and his own armies. And Lenin took advantage of the opportunity. He

rushed back -- he was in Germany -- he rushed back immediately. And he was a man of immense clarity. He immediately rode on the wave of the armies. And when the czar had no armies, his own armies were against him.…

Communism happened as an accident in Russia. It was not according to the economic analysis by Karl Marx. But whatever the cause, it happened. It is the first communist country in the world, the only hope.

And I am not against only Christianity. I am against all religions except Zen, because Zen is not a religion but only religiousness. I have to make it clear to you that religion is a doctrine, an organized church, a belief system, a fictitious God, heaven and hell, and a great priesthood which functions as a mediator between you and God and exploits you in the name of religion, in the name of God.

Zen is the only religious phenomenon in the world which has no doctrine, no scripture, which has no God, no belief system, no organized church. It is an individual phenomenon, just like love. You don't have a church of love. You don't have a political party for love. It is an individual freedom.

Just as love is individual, so is meditation. And to me, religion only means one thing: meditation, going inwards and exploring your consciousness. Just the way science explores matter, meditation is the science of the inner; it explores consciousness.

I have my points of agreement with Karl Marx, with Engels, with Lenin, with Gorbachev.

I have my points of disagreement.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were aware only of two religions, Judaism and Christianity, which are both just so-so religions. Marx and Engels were not aware of Zen, they were not aware of Tao, they were not aware of meditation. It is not their fault; their whole concern was how to make society economically equal. So they said that man is only matter, and consciousness is a by-product of matter. When the man dies, the consciousness also dies. On that point I am in absolute disagreement.

I am against all religions because they have been exploiting humanity, and they are exactly what Karl Marx called the "opium of the people." They are giving the

poor consolation, that "Your poverty is a fire test. Just listen to the words of Jesus. He says,

`Blessed are the poor, for they shall inherit the earth.'"

If blessed are the poor, then there is no need to remove poverty. In fact, make more poor people so they can become more blessed people and can inherit the kingdom of God!

Spread poverty, breed like animals, as many children as you can. These all will be the inheritors of God's kingdom.

Such consolation has been given by all religions in different ways. The Bible says, "Don't change anything, because God has made it so, and he is wiser than you." So don't change any structure of the society, don't change the family. But God never made the family. In fact, God is the greatest lie in existence. And from one central lie, thousands of lies go on growing.

I am against not only Christianity, I am against Hinduism, I am against Buddhism, I am against Mohammedanism, because they are functioning in the same way -- only their names are different.

It is not that Christianity has hurt me so I am against it. Judaism has not hurt me, Mohammedanism has not hurt me, Buddhism has not hurt me, but I am against them on principle. These are the people who have been exploiting humanity and protecting the vested interests.

Hinduism says that you are poor because of your past life's bad actions, and you are rich because of your past life's good actions. They distract the mind from the reality. The reality is that you are poor because you are being exploited by the rich continuously. You are sucked, your blood is continuously being taken out of you; your very life is at the minimum so that you can function as a slave. You are allowed to live just because without you, who is going to be able to create a vast army of slaves?

And all religions are in favor of the rich because the rich are donating to the churches, to the temples, to the religions, a small part, not even one percent, of their exploitation. But they keep the priests rich, comfortable, because the priests are protecting the status quo.

I am against the status quo. I want to change the whole society, its structure. I want a classless society, a world without boundaries, without nations. A world which is one, neither black nor white, neither Indian nor Russian nor American.

This small planet can live in peace.

In three thousand years the politicians have dragged humanity into five thousand wars, but you will be surprised: even in five thousand wars politicians have not been able to kill more people than religions have killed. They have their religions wars: crusades, jihad.…

Jesus says, "Whoever is not with me is against me." Now these are the words of a politician -- not the words of a religious man, not the words of a man who is meditative, who can see things. The person who is not with me may be just indifferent; it is not necessary that he should be against me. The person who is with me can be against me any day, and the person who is against me can be in favor of me any day. And there is a third category which Jesus completely forgets: the indifferent, the agnostic who is neither theist nor atheist, who does not believe in any ìsm', who simply wants to inquire into truth.

I am against Christianity and other religions because they are preventing people from finding out the truth of their own being.

To me, religiousness is acceptable. It is a quality -- a quality which brings grace to you, which brings blissfulness to you, which brings a silence to your mind, which brings an encounter with your original being. It is absolutely a science -- a science of the inner space, just as there is a science of the objective world. It is not a belief system. You don't have to believe in any savior, in any messiah, in any prophet, in any reincarnation of God

-- these are all arch-egoists who are pretending to save you. Question 3

Their third question is:

YOU ONCE SAID IN A DISCOURSE THAT LENIN WAS AGAINST MARRIAGE

AND WANTED TO DISSOLVE THE FAMILY.

IN REALITY, LENIN ALWAYS FOLLOWED ENGELS IN SAYING THAT THE

FAMILY IS THE NUCLEUS.

Nucleus of what? Nucleus of the capitalist society!

Both Marx and Engels, in their analysis of the economic structure, are very clear about it: the family came into being only with private property. Before private property there was no family; hence it follows logically that if private property is dissolved, marriage will be dissolved automatically. It is a logical conclusion; whether Lenin agrees with it or not, does not matter. I don't care about anybody -

- I care about intelligence. It is not a question whether Engels contradicts himself.

The family has been the nucleus of all the organized religions; it has been the nucleus of all the feudal and capitalist societies; it has been the nucleus of all exploitation and war.

That nucleus has to be completely withdrawn. Without the family dying out, you cannot have a real humanity arising, of individuals.

I have not said that Lenin was against marriage. I have said that it is the logical conclusion from Marx and Engels' analysis of society. They say that the family came into being with private property. Why did it come into being with private property? --

because every father wanted his property to be inherited by his son. Hence, he had to guard his wife so that she would not get pregnant with somebody else.

The family became an imprisonment of the woman, so that the child would certainly be the son of the father. The father has no other evidence; only the mother knows exactly to whom the child belongs. So keep the mother completely out of society: no education, no economic freedom, no financial status. In Mohammedan countries she cannot even show her face to anybody. Keep the woman completely imprisoned -- that is the only security you have that your son is your son, and the property that you have gathered will be inherited by your son.

But in a communist society, when the property is not private, there is no need for

any family to protect it. The property belongs to everyone. Then why bother about it, that

"My son has to be my son." In fact, I had said that this was the logical conclusion.

I have read all the communist literature that has been published from Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and I have read all the literature that has been published against communism. I would like my Soviet comrades to look at my library, and they will find all the communist literature and all the anti-communist literature there.

It is my understanding that marriage cannot exist in a communist society. A commune will take the place of marriage. And I have read somewhere... because for fifteen years I have not been reading at all. I have read somewhere that when the revolution happened in 1917 in Russia, in the beginning they had tried for three, four, or five years to dissolve marriage, to dissolve the family. But they found it very difficult.

It is one of the most ancient institutions. Emotionally, sentimentally, psychologically, it is very difficult to dissolve it. It was difficult to dissolve private ownership of property and make it public -- Stalin had to kill at least one million Russians just to make a classless society possible. They found it was difficult: "It can be taken care of later on when communism becomes more established; don't take on too many problems."

The whole world was against Russia when it went through its revolution. The whole world wanted to destroy communism. If communism succeeded, that would be a danger for other nations; then the poor in other nations would start rising up and asking for the same equality.

After five years of failure, they could not dissolve the family. But my understanding is that they could not dissolve the family unit because they themselves have betrayed Karl Marx and Engels. The Soviet Union has become another class society: the bureaucrats have become a class and the non- bureaucrats, the public, are another class. So the bureaucrats, who are the communists, have replaced the capitalists. The Soviet Union is still not classless; it has created a new class friction. Because it is not classless, it could not dissolve the family; otherwise there would be no problem to dissolve marriage

and the family. Now the family has become the nucleus of communism, which is a contradiction.

I follow my own intelligence, and my conclusions don't have to be in agreement with anybody else's. But anybody who is intelligent enough can see the problem.

Question 4

Their fourth question is:

WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WENT TO THE SOVIET UNION?

A revolution!

It has been too long since the Soviet Union has seen revolution. Of course, my revolution will be of spirituality. I want the Soviet Union to add something more to its dignity: meditation. Just economic equality is not enough -- a spiritual equality is needed.

Just being a body is so poor. I want the Soviet Union to become richer -- not only richer in objects but richer in consciousness, in enlightenment. I want the Soviet Union also to have awakened people like Gautam Buddha, or Lao Tzu, or Chuang Tzu.

I would like to introduce Zen to the Soviet Union. That is my revolution.

One of the most famous spiritualists of Europe, Francis Israel Regardie, a famous occult magician who was regarded as a great magus and scholar of the Golden Dawn Society, stated just prior to his death: "If I were to choose in what form I would come back in terms of reincarnation, I would like to continue the great work until I become a Rajneesh."

Just today I received his book, and I could not believe what kind of spiritualist this fellow Francis Israel Regardie was.

A spiritualist, in the first place, knows he is not going to be born again. If he has not come to that point, he has no right to call himself a spiritualist. A person who has known his spirituality has no need to come back to any body, in any reincarnation. This imprisonment in the body is only up to the point when you become a buddha. When you become a buddha, you have learned everything that

life could teach you, and you have not only learned the outside world, you have learned your inner world also. Now there is nothing left.

What happens to a Gautam Buddha? He simply dissolves into the universal life, into the eternal life. He does not come back to the earth in a body.

This man Francis Israel Regardie knows nothing of spirituality. But in the West it is very easy to befool people, because the West has no understanding of the inner world. So any idiot can manage to deceive them -- occultism, esotericism, spiritualism, just big words without any experience supporting them.

Because if this man was really spiritual, he would not... at the point of death he wants a reincarnation! But he has a condition also: "I would like to continue the work until I become a Rajneesh." I was alive, he was alive, he could have come here. Rather than having the courage and guts to come here, he is thinking of becoming a Rajneesh after death -- if there is a reincarnation. That is a big if!

He could have come here. Thousands of people come and go every day, and ten thousand people remain around me continuously. And I am not a leader, and I am not a priest, and I am not teaching any philosophy or any doctrine. I am simply helping them to enter inwards -- how to turn your eyes inwards so you can see yourself. Once you have seen it, you are the buddha.

Then there is no birth, no death. You have gone beyond the circle of birth and death.

This is the only spirituality, the only religiousness that I would like to teach to my Soviet friends.

I have already in the Soviet Union at least three hundred sannyasins, underground.

Because I was in America, the KGB was thinking that I was an American agent. They were harassing my people in the Soviet Union; they burned my books, they took away all the books, and my people were meeting underground, writing and typing my books by hand.

I would like, through my comrades here, to help my people. I am not against communism. I am a far bigger communist than you have ever known, because I am a spiritual communist!

Marx and Engels are out-of-date. The Soviet Union needs a new revolution, a spiritual revolution, and I think Gorbachev is making a great mistake in allowing the old priests back in the name of opening the doors of the Soviet Union.

Perhaps he does not understand these old priests -- Catholic and Protestant, or old Russian Orthodox. They belonged to a certain society; they belonged to a feudal society.

They cannot belong to a communist society.

Opening the doors of Russia is beautiful. Open the doors for science, open the doors for art, open the doors for meditation. But that does not mean that you have to open the doors to all kinds of diseases.

Christianity is a disease, and if you open the doors for the pope you are going against Karl Marx, you are going against communism. You don't understand the implications: these are the people who are the real agents of capitalism. They are against any revolution.

You can see it in India. In India, for five thousand years, as far back as history can approach... India is far more ancient than five thousand years, but for five thousand years we have not known anything like revolution against the social structure. And India is one of the poorest countries, but the poor are given the opium continuously, that "You are poor because of your past evil acts. It has nothing to do with the capitalist people; they have money because they did good deeds in the past."

Now do you want shankaracharyas from India to be imported to the Soviet Union? They will teach reincarnation, they will teach that "You are poor because of your past actions, it has nothing to do with the capitalists. And the capitalist is a capitalist because he has done good deeds in the past, it is a reward from God."

Please tell Gorbachev from me: allow everything, but don't allow Christianity again!

Christianity will bring homosexuality, it will bring sodomy, it will bring bestiality, it will bring AIDS to the Soviet Union. Are you opening the door for all this?

Be careful, and very alert. It has taken seventy years to preserve a communist

country against the whole world. Don't take any risk. Opening the door is good, but be on guard that the Pope the Polack does not enter Russia, and that Christianity has no revival in Russia.

Communism can be at ease with Zen, because Zen has nothing to do with your social structure. Zen has nothing to do with your poverty or with your richness. Zen has nothing to do with the outside world. Zen is a science to explore the inner. Invite Zen masters, Zen mystics; that will be inviting health and wholeness.

A man who believes only in the body is half, and a man who believes only in the spirit is also half. I have called Gautam Buddha only half, because he denies the body, he renounces the body. I am not in absolute favor of Gautam Buddha -- only fifty percent.

And that is my situation with Karl Marx also: I am in agreement only with fifty percent.

His acceptance of the body is good, but his denial of the spirit is wrong.

Buddha and Marx have to join hands -- that is my revolution. Bring Buddha and Marx both together, hand in hand, dancing in the Soviet Union!

If you cannot find Gautam Buddha and Karl Marx -- because both are dead -- I can bring my ten thousand buddhas you see all around! These people are living a whole life -

- of the body and of the soul in absolute synchronicity. I can bring all my ten thousand buddhas to reach to every nook and corner of the Soviet Union.

And these are not the only people with me; there are two million people around the earth.

If you have a real opening, I can even bring two million people to the Soviet Union, to bring a new revolution, a fresh revolution which will make the Soviet citizen a complete citizen, body and soul together.

We have to live outside and we have to live inside, in deep balance, in harmony. This man Regardie must have been a hocus-pocus. At least I hope that he does

not become a Rajneesh! He can have reincarnation as whatever he wants. He can become a buffalo, he can become a donkey, there are so many species available -

- just please don't think about me! If you had courage, then... at the moment of death you talked about me; in your whole life you never talked about me. Such chickens! Talking about occultism, spiritualism... I have been here, he could have come. I could have turned him into a meditator.

And if your meditation starts blossoming you will not have any other birth in the body.

You will simply disappear, like incense disappearing into the blue sky, or fragrance of roses disappearing into the blue sky. You will become part of the cosmos.

And as far as I am concerned, unless you are a meditator you cannot be truly a communist. Because as far as the body is concerned, no two persons are exactly equal. In their talents, in their intelligence, in their body, physical strength -- no two persons are equal as far as the body is concerned. You can give equal opportunity for growth, but the growth will bring unequal persons. Somebody will become a scientist and somebody will become a shoemaker; somebody will become a great novelist like Tolstoy, or Turgenev, or Chekhov, or Dostoevsky, or Gorky, and somebody may become just a flutist.

Everybody needs equal opportunity to grow unequal! But as far as spirituality is concerned, everybody can be equally a buddha. That is true communism -- deeper, higher, more authentic. And if we can create a situation, an education for people to understand their inner being, they will come out of it with great compassion, with love for every being. They will have a tremendous reverence for life. They cannot exploit. In fact, spiritual communism should be first; only then can the economic communism follow it as a shadow.

Just tell Comrade Gorbachev: I am ready to come any moment. Just gather courage, because I am not in absolute agreement... Marx is now old-fashioned, and I don't know any communist who ever reads DAS KAPITAL. It gathers dust just like the Holy Bible. I have never come across any communist in India who has read DAS KAPITAL. It is complicated, it is old, it is out-of-date. In its own time it was a great phenomenon, but time goes on changing. Now neither Engels nor Lenin nor Stalin are relevant. They were very relevant in their own time.

Now Gorbachev can open the door because for seventy years Lenin kept it closed, Stalin kept it closed, to protect communism. Now communism is strong enough to open the doors. But be careful -- don't open the doors to old diseases. They are just lurking by the side, and very anxious to enter in.

Mohammedan priests, because you have so many Mohammedan countries in the Soviet Union, are ready to go in. And that is a third-rate religion. Christians are very anxious, and Christianity is also not worthy to be called a religion. It is just an old cult.

I suggest there is only religiousness, which has come as a crossbreed between Buddha and Lao Tzu. And the crossbreed is always better than both the parents. That crossbreed is Zen. Its Sanskrit name is dhyan; its Pali name, which Buddha used, is zhan. When it reached China with Bodhidharma it became ch'an. When it reached Japan with Rinzai it became Zen. Now I am bringing it back to the land of Buddha -- the circle is going to be complete.

It went out of India because of the brahmin priests. You will be surprised to know that for two thousand years India has had no Buddhists. At the time of Buddha almost the whole country was impressed by the man. But what happened? The moment Buddha died -- he was against the caste system, he was against the rituals of the brahmins, he was against exploitation by the priesthood

-- the moment he died, the whole priesthood started killing Buddhists, burning them alive, destroying their scriptures. Those who could save themselves rushed all over Asia, to Tibet, to Ladakh, to Nepal, to Thailand, to China, to Korea, to Taiwan, to Japan, to Sri Lanka -- the whole of Asia became Buddhist EXCEPT India.

This is a strange phenomenon. Buddha was born here; here he used to teach meditation, and this country simply rejected him.

Beware! Don't allow any priests of any religion in the Soviet Union if you want to save communism. Otherwise, these priests will prove just like a cancer. They will destroy the whole of communism and they will bring all the old rotten ideologies back into people's minds. Beware of so-called religions.

This is my message to the Soviet people. I love them. I would love to bring meditation into their life, because meditation brings grace, peace, silence, blissfulness... a freedom which nobody can take away from you.

The new series begins today: COMMUNISM AND ZEN FIRE, ZEN WIND. OUR BELOVED MASTER,

YAKUSAN ASKED A MONK, "WHERE DO YOU COME FROM?" "FROM NANSEN..."

Nansen was one of the great masters of Zen. The monk's reply is that he is coming from Nansen, and Yakusan immediately asks,

"HOW LONG WERE YOU THERE?"

"FROM LAST WINTER TO SUMMER," REPLIED THE MONK.

"THEN YOU MUST HAVE BECOME A GOOD OX," COMMENTED YAKUSAN.

I have to tell you about the ox -- I have told you about it before.

In ancient China, there used to be ten cards, ten beautiful pictures about ox- herding, mastering the ox.

In the first picture, the ox has escaped from its owner into the deep forest. The owner is looking all around, but he can see only trees and trees and trees, and no ox.

In the second picture, he finds the footprints of the ox. Now there is some hope he may find the ox -- he follows the footprints. In the third picture, he finds that the ox is hiding behind a bush; just his tail and the backside he can see. But he is immediately happy --

"He is trying to deceive me!"

In the fourth picture he has seen the whole ox. In the fifth picture, he takes hold of the ox by the horns. It is a difficult struggle; the ox is far more powerful an animal than man.

With difficulty he manages. In the sixth picture, he is riding on the ox. In the seventh he is moving towards home.

In the eighth, he has put the ox in its stable. In the ninth picture, he is sitting before his cottage, playing a flute.

When these pictures came to Japan, the tenth picture was dropped out, thinking that it might be dangerous, particularly for people who are very new and don't know the whole world of Zen.

The tenth picture shows that the man is so happy... he takes a bottle of wine and rushes towards the marketplace, perhaps towards the pub, to enjoy with his friends. He has found his ox -- now this is a celebration.

Being afraid that this will mean that you can drink wine -- and this will go against Buddha -- they dropped the tenth picture.

But I love the tenth picture, because it does not represent wine; wine is only a symbol of being drunk with the divine. Wine is only a symbol of being utterly at ease with existence

-- relaxed, in tune, in harmony, in accord. And his rushing towards the pub is also symbolic. It is rushing towards your own juices of life, to the very center of your being, where you will get drunk.

This kind of getting drunk is unending. Once you have tasted it, you have tasted it; it is not going to fade way. It is going to overwhelm your whole life. Your whole life will become a festival of lights; your whole life will become a ceremony of laughter, of dance, of song, of music.

The tenth picture was dropped out of fear, but I want to bring that tenth picture back --

even to Japan.

Ishida is here, sitting. She has come from Japan, from a Shinto temple. I will make her my ambassador in Japan -- I have my ambassadors all over the world. Soon I will appoint an ambassador to the Soviet Union.

I would like to tell Ishida that the tenth picture has to be added to the nine pictures, because those nine pictures are incomplete.

This is the story of the ox.

So when Yakusan said, "THEN YOU MUST HAVE BECOME A GOOD OX," the monk said:

"THE THING IS, I WAS THERE, BUT I DID NOT EVEN GO TO THE DINING

HALL."

"BUT YOU CANNOT GET BY JUST THROUGH BREATHING THE WIND!" YAKUSAN COMMENTED.

"IT WAS NOT THAT BAD, OSHO..."

Osho is a very beautiful word. It should be added to every language. Just the sound is beautiful in the first place: Osho. It shows respect, it shows love, it shows gratitude. It is not just a dry word like "Reverend." It is a very loving and friendly word, almost having the sense of "The Beloved."

The man said, "IT WAS NOT THAT BAD, OSHO." -- Yakusan was also a great master

-- "THERE IS SURELY A MAN WHO WILL HOLD A SPOON FOR ME."

Zen talks in symbols; that's why it has remained a very small stream of great mystics but it has never became a mass phenomenon. Perhaps it is good that it never became a mass phenomenon. Everything that becomes a mass phenomenon becomes degraded, because the majority of the people consist of idiots. And every second, one idiot is born in the world. They go on increasing.

When I was in America, I just made a comment to a television interviewer, that "All Oregonians" -- where I was -- "are retarded people." Obviously, Oregonians were very furious, particularly the attorney general of Oregon, David Frohnmeyer. And the governor, and the all the politicians were absolutely angry that I had called the whole of Oregon "retarded."

But the University of Oregon took the case in hand. They surveyed a cross section of Oregon society, and they surveyed my commune. And their results silenced the governor, the attorney general and all the politicians. The results were that the average mental age of Oregonians is seven years -- that is the age

of retarded persons. And the age of the commune people was fourteen -- double that of the Oregonians.

But the idiots destroyed the most intelligent commune in the world. It had great surgeons, doctors, professors; almost everybody was a postgraduate in some subject, hundreds were Ph.Ds, hundreds were D.Litts. It was absolutely an utterly intelligent group of people.

Zen has remained a small, thin line, but immensely rich. It deals in symbols. If you don't understand the symbols, the story is meaningless.

What is the symbolism of what the monk said? -- "It was not that bad, Osho. Don't think that I was hungry because I never went into the kitchen. There was always a man who would hold a spoon for me. That was Nansen, who was my nourishment. Seeing that I would not enter the dining hall, he was always -- and he was the master! -- always bringing food for me. Not only physical food, he was also my nourishment spiritually."

"Holding a spoon for me" means nourishment. "There was someone who took care of me: my master, Nansen. I simply waited outside the dining room just to see whether the master takes care of everybody, whether he will look out of the window and see one monk standing outside, not coming in.

"So it was not so bad that I was hungry and starving; Nansen was always holding out nourishment for me, through the window. And it was not only nourishment for my body; his attention, his care for me was also nourishment. I am nobody, and he took so much care. Every day he remembered me, that I would be standing outside.

"Leaving his dining table, he would come and give me food, and he never asked,

`Why do you go on standing outside?'" -- because that is one of the fundamentals of Zen: don't interfere into anybody's life. Everybody has a territorial imperative, a certain area. Don't enter into it; that is his dignity, that is his pride. Leave it to his intelligence.

"And he was not only giving me food, he was giving me spiritual nourishment. It was not bad, Osho. Don't misunderstand me, and don't misunderstand my master, Nansen."

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, YAKUSAN WAS RETURNING TO HIS

TEMPLE

WITH A BUNDLE OF FIREWOOD WHEN A MONK ASKED HIM, "WHERE HAVE

YOU BEEN?"

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "I HAVE GOT FIREWOOD."

THE MONK POINTED TO YAKUSAN'S SWORD AND SAID, "IT MAKES THE

SOUND `TAP-TAP'."

Perhaps because he was carrying the firewood, and the sword was hanging around his waist... it may have been hitting the firewood and making the sound

`tap-tap'. He said,

"What is that which makes the sound `tap-tap'?"

AT THIS THE MASTER UNSHEATHED THE SWORD AND ASSUMED A WARRIOR'S STANCE.

He stood like a warrior.

What is Yakusan intending to show to the monk?

First, the monk has asked, "Where have you been?" He has not answered that, because what is past is past, and what is future is future. They are not the concern of Zen.

The concern of Zen is the present moment. You can ask a question about the past, but you cannot distract the master from the present. So he did not answer where he had been; on the contrary, he simply said, "I HAVE GOT FIREWOOD. Just in the present, right now, you can see the firewood and you can understand where I must have been --

collecting firewood. But that has not to be said. That is a past thing. I simply show you the present. And the present implies the past, and in a subtle way it

implies the future, but nothing can be said about that. That which is gone, is gone, and that which has not come yet, has not come yet."

We can live only in the present moment. That is our only time. One never knows what is going to happen in the next moment.

Just three days ago, a Canadian sannyasin who had been here for only three days, was meditating. And before meditating he had expressed the desire that, "I want to become a sannyasin this evening." While meditating, he died. The evening never came.

People thought, for two and a half hours, that he was meditating. But when he did not move at all, somebody shook him and found that he was dead. But as far as I am concerned, because he was intending to become a sannyasin in the evening it is enough.

He has become a sannyasin.

Sannyas is not something outward, it is something that arises in you, an urge, a deep longing. And he died in meditation -- what better initiation can there be? He died as a sannyasin. In utter silence, in absolute peace, he disappeared into the beyond.

Zen does not talk about past and future. Its whole concentration is in the now and here.

I always love to tell a small story.…

A great atheist advocate had written in his sitting room, on the wall, in capital letters: GOD IS NOWHERE. Of course, everybody who came to see him had to read it; it was in such big letters, just in front of their eyes.

His first child was born, and one day he was playing with the child. The child was learning the language slowly, so he started reading the sentence on the wall. He could read, "God is nowhere," but "nowhere" was such a big word, the child could not manage to read it in one go. He cut it in two. He read, "GOD IS NOW HERE." The word

`nowhere' has been cut into two pieces.

For the first time the father looked at the sentence, and he said, "My God! This child has made me aware. Now I can never read that sentence completely; I will always remember

"Now Here."

It was a moment of transformation for the advocate. For the first time he started thinking,

"Do I know really that God is nowhere? Have I explored the whole space? Have I explored my inner being?"

Just as the theists are blind, so are the atheists. Both are believers. The only right person is an agnostic, who is neither theist nor atheist, who is simply in search of the truth. He has no belief system, no prejudice, no ideology already programmed.

I don't see much difference in the atheism of the Soviet Union and the theism of the Vatican. The theism of the Vatican is based on a belief. DAS KAPITAL is the bible for the Soviet Union -- because Marx says there is no God, it has become a program for every child. In seventy years the old generation has disappeared. Now every child believes there is no God. In India every child believes there is God. Both are beliefs: one is positive belief, one is negative belief, but belief is belief. Neither the Soviet Union knows, nor the Vatican.

The people who know, say it is impossible to say anything about the ultimate reality. It cannot be brought into language; it remains mysterious. You can enter into it, but you cannot say anything about it. You can enjoy it, you can rejoice it, you can dance it, but language is too poor.

This is the real poverty of philosophy, that it cannot express the ultimate experience of meditators.

Only the agnostic can be a meditator. He puts aside all programming, whether the programming is from the theist or from the atheist does not matter. All programming, the whole mind, has to be put aside, and you have to enter into a space of no-mind.

In that no-mind there is no time,

just the present moment and utter silence, and great clarity,

and you are a luminous being, Now, Here.

That's why Yakusan said, "I have got firewood. The rest you can understand. But don't ask me about the past."

THE MONK THEN POINTED TO YAKUSAN'S SWORD AND SAID, "IT MAKES

THE SOUND `TAP-TAP'. WHAT IN THE WORLD IS IT?"

Have you ever thought about it? -- even small things cannot be defined. If somebody asks you, "What is yellow?" what will you do? You can point to the color yellow, but you cannot give any definition. What is yellow? What is red? You will say, "Red is red." But that is not giving the answer. This is tautology; you are simply repeating "A rose is a rose is a rose," but you have gone nowhere. You have not defined what is rose. You can only indicate -- "This is." No definition is possible -- only indication.

So when the man asked, "What is that which is making the sound `tap-tap'?" the master did not answer, "It is a sword," because Zen does not believe in language; it believes in existence.

He took out the sword and showed the man a warrior's stance, the way the warrior stands with his sword: "This is it! If you have eyes you can see. If you don't have eyes I am helpless." But no dialogue, just existential indications.

Shiro wrote:

IN SNOW-WHITE MIST

WHERE SEA AND SKY ARE ONE,

A SINGLE DISK OF RED -- THE RISING SUN.

Haikus are pictures, visualize them. They are not poetries in the ordinary sense. Just visualize:

IN SNOW-WHITE MIST

WHERE SEA AND SKY ARE ONE,

A SINGLE DISK OF RED -- THE RISING SUN.

These haikus have come out of meditation.

Perhaps Shiro was meditating by the seaside, and as he opened his eyes IN SNOW-WHITE MIST WHERE SEA AND SKY ARE ONE,

on the horizon, suddenly

A SINGLE DISK OF RED -- THE RISING SUN.

And utter silence on his part, he is no more there. He is completely absorbed in the ocean, in the mist, in the rising sun.

It happened to Picasso -- it will help you to understand.

He was painting. One man was watching continuously for one and a half hours. Finally he could not resist the temptation -- because he could not understand what Picasso was painting. Just colors, colors, but no idea what he was painting. Finally he shook Picasso and asked, "What are you painting?"

As if from a trance, Picasso was awakened. He said, "What...? I was not there. Just the painting was happening, I was not painting. I don't know what. When the painting is complete, the critics will find out what I have painted, because I am not. I am simply my brush, my colors, my canvas. Something is happening, something is cooking, but I don't know exactly."

A rich young woman, very super-rich, asked him, "You have never made any portrait..."

He has never made any portrait, because who will ask him to make a portrait? Just look at his paintings!

He said, "I have never done any portrait."

The woman said, "I am willing to pay any amount of money. Don't bother about money, money does not matter." She was a widow of a super-rich American.

Just to avoid the woman, Picasso said, "It will cost one million dollars." She said,

"Agreed, start!"

He started painting her portrait. When the portrait was complete, the woman was completely in amazement! She said, "Just one question. Where is my nose in this portrait? Because from the nose I can find out where my eyes are, where my mouth is, where my ears are. A central point... Just one question, I will not ask anything more."

Picasso said, "I told you before, I don't do portraits! I knew perfectly well where it was, but now I don't know. I was so lost in painting it -- who cares about your nose? You can take it to the critics, art connoisseurs. Show them; perhaps they can find it."

When a meditator is in deep meditation, he is no more. And the morning, early morning, when it is still dark and the sun is still under the horizon, is the best time, the most cool.

And if you are near the sea... the cool crisp salty breeze

and the silence surrounding you

and the continuous sound of the waves creating a certain vibration of music...

It works almost like a lullaby. Just as your mother moves you in her arms and sings a song... continuous waves, making the same sound again and again and again... it creates a lullaby. It helps you to relax. Now people are using that sound for sleep.

Shiro must be sitting on the sea beach, utterly relaxed, and then he opened his eyes, clean and clear, just like mirrors, and there is a reflection: the mist meeting the sea. And suddenly out of the mist and out of the sea rises a red disk -- the rising sun.

These haikus are word-pictures. The necessity of a meditative mind as a background is absolute. No one except a meditator can write haiku.

Now many Westerners are writing haiku. They don't understand that without meditation you cannot write haiku. You can compose a poem, you know how many syllables are in a haiku. You can compose, but that composition is from the mind, and haiku is from the no-mind, from the utter silence when you are nothing but a mirror -- not out of thought, but from no thought.

Question 5

Maneesha has asked a question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

IS NOT THE URGE TO UNDERSTAND, ACTUALLY THE URGE TO BECOME

ONE -- BOTH INWARDLY AND WITH OUR OUTER WORLD?

Yes, Maneesha. It is a very complicated question that you have asked -- it looks simple.

I have to bring Sigmund Freud in.

Sigmund Freud was the first man in the world who said that the whole urge for finding the truth, liberation, salvation, is arising out of nothing but a deprivation. The child lived in the mother's womb for nine months, one with the mother. That was his whole world, his whole cosmos; he knew nothing else.

The womb was the whole universe, and it was so beautiful, so relaxed. He had no worries of going bankrupt, he had no worries about the wife, and the children becoming hippies.

He had no worries at all. All nourishment was given by mother, all oxygen was

given by the mother -- everything was supplied without asking. He had lived for nine months in paradise.

But after nine months he is thrown out of paradise, just the way Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden. Then he encounters the whole world -- such a helpless child -- and the world is too big, and every day brings new problems. Every day he has to learn new things, problem upon problem.

Soon he will be going to school -- and there are so many subjects. Soon he will be getting married -- and there are so many troubles. Soon he will be in business, or in service... and all kinds of masks he will have to wear: before the wife, before the girlfriend, before the boss, before the servant. He will have to change his mask continually. A tremendous desire is to go back to the womb.

According to Sigmund Freud -- and I agree with him -- the desire to know the truth, the desire to be liberated, the desire to become one with existence, is an extension of the experience in the womb of the mother. The whole cosmos becomes your womb the moment you enter into deep meditation.

At the very center of your being you are connected with the cosmos; otherwise you cannot live even for a single moment. Your life is not your life, it is the life that the cosmos is pouring in you continuously. Your breath is not your breath, it is the cosmos that is continuously pouring oxygen in the exact proportion needed by you. If it were left to you to breathe, I don't think anybody would survive. You will forget. Somebody insults you and you will forget breathing -- first things first! You see a beautiful woman and you will forget that the heart has to continue beating; it stops. It will be so difficult.…

Existence has taken care to keep every essential thing in its own hands. What is given to you is trivia; all essential things that are absolutely necessary for life are still in the hands of existence.

When you reach in deep meditation to your roots, you will find that a door opens into the beyond and you know that every moment life is rushing into you. The more you become open, at the center, the more life you have -- abundance of life, so much that you would like to share with the whole world; still it is inexhaustible.

Yes, Maneesha, the desire, the urge to understand is really the urge to become one with the cosmos. Then there is no birth; then there is no death. The cosmos

is eternal. It has never been created, as Christians have been telling you, and other religions also. It is evolving from eternity to eternity.

I am against America, Christianity, I am against President Ronald Reagan, not because of personal hurts that they have done to me and to my commune. I am against them because Ronald Reagan made a tremendous wound in the whole intelligentsia of the world by trying to burn all Charles Darwin's books -- in every library, in every college, in every school, in every university -- because it teaches evolution, and Christianity teaches creation.

These are two contradictory concepts. Creation means once and forever complete.

Evolution means never complete, always going on and on. Always the goal is just nearby

-- but as you move on, the goal also moves on. It is just like the horizon: it looks just a few miles away. You drive, and as you drive the horizon goes on moving, further and further. The distance between you and the horizon will remain exactly the same -- you can go around the earth -- because the horizon is just an illusion.

The goal, every goal, is an illusion. The man of understanding lives without any goal. He simply loves to live, he simply loves to love. He simply loves to sing and dance and enjoy the moment, the opportunity that existence has given to him.

In that total dance, you become one. In that total singing, when the singer disappears, you become one.

I have told you about Nijinsky, one of the greatest dancers the world has ever known. His greatness was not just his dance. His greatness was that once in a while, while dancing, he would jump so high... which is not possible according to scientists. Because gravitation is pulling you down, there is a limit, but he always transcended the limit so much that it was a miracle -- what happens? What happens to gravitation?

And not only this, when he would come back down... Gravitation pulls with force; you will fall on the stage with a thump! But Nijinsky would fall down like a feather, just slowly moving. That too is against gravitation.

He was asked again and again, "What is the secret?" He said, "The secret I don't know.

All that I know is, whenever I try to do it I never succeed. In my aloneness I try to do it -

- I never succeed. When I forget myself completely in the dance, when there is no Nijinsky, only the dance, suddenly it happens. It is a surprise to you, it is a surprise to me.

It is not my doing."

Meditation is not your doing. You simply make the effort, but it is not your doing. Your effort is needed to prepare the ground. As the ground is ready, immediately you see you are no more; the whole cosmos is. You have entered a greater womb, an eternal womb of tremendous peace and ecstasy.

Now it is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh.

("SARDARJI," AS HE IS AFFECTIONATELY KNOWN, HAS EARNED THE

DISTINCTION OF BEING "THE ONLY MAN WHO LAUGHS BEFORE THE JOKE

IS TOLD," AND THE HONOR OF HAVING THIS PART OF THE DISCOURSE

ANNOUNCED AS HIS SPECIAL TIME. TONIGHT, HIS HEARTY AND INFECTIOUS LAUGHTER IS NOT HEARD )

Where is Sardar?! Absent? Perhaps in deep meditation.…

That old dried-up prune, Mother Teresa, invites that old rotten fruitcake, Pope the Polack, to come and visit her Bleeding Hearts Home for the Dead and Dying in Calcutta.

The Polack is thrilled to receive the invitation, so he gets Cardinal Catzass to pack their bags, and they fly off to India.

Their first day is spent touring Mother Teresa's Bleeding Hearts Home, blessing all the half-dead Christian converts.

The next morning, the two Catholic cowboys from Rome go out into the streets of Calcutta, to wave at the crowds of starving Hindus. But all day long, Pope the Polack has been acting very strangely.

Cardinal Catzass is worried about the old Polack and asks him, "Your Holiness, what is the matter?"

"Listen," says the old fruitcake, "as soon as we get back to that Bleeding Hearts Home, the first thing I want to do is rip off Mother Teresa's knickers!"

"Really?" replies the shocked cardinal. "Why do you want to do that?" "Because," says the pope with a groan, "they are much too tight for me!"

"How much for a roast beef sandwich?" asks Little Feenie Finkelstein, standing in Chicken Chopper's Sandwich Shop.

"Two dollars," replies Chicken Chopper, from behind the counter. "How much for a cheese sandwich?" asks the little Jew.

"One dollar," replies Chicken.

"What about a ham sandwich?" asks Feenie. But before Chicken Chopper can reply there is a loud clap of thunder in the sky overhead.

Feenie Finkelstein falls to his knees, looks up at the sky and prays out loud, "Okay!

Okay! -- I was only asking!"

Dimmel Himmel, a nice Jewish boy from Berlin, goes to live in America to make his fortune, and ends up in L.A., California.

After a few years, he comes back to Berlin to visit his old mother, Mrs. Hattie Himmel.

He walks through the door in his stone-washed Levi jeans, alligator tennis shirt,

and Reebok sneakers.

"Oy, veh!" cries Mamma Himmel, "but where are your beautiful long whiskers?" "Ah, Mamma!" replies Dimmel. "Nobody wears a beard in L.A."

"Oy, my baby!" cries Hettie Himmel. "But tell me, you have at least been keeping the Sabbath?"

"Look, Mamma," says Himmel. "Business is business! In America, people work on the Sabbath."

"Ah, God!" cries Mamma Himmel. "But kosher food you still eat?"

"Listen, Mamma," replies Himmel, "I am an American now. It is very difficult to keep kosher in America."

The old lady looks at her son in shock. She hesitates for a moment and then goes up to him and whispers, "Dimmel, my son, tell me one thing -- are you still circumcised?"

Nivedano... (Gibberish) Nivedano... Be silent...

Close your eyes... and feel your body to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to look inwards. With your whole life energy, rush towards the center of your being.

Your total consciousness is needed to become just an arrow,

forcing itself deeper and deeper, faster and faster,

with an urgency as if this is going to be your last moment on the earth.

Without this urgency you will never be able to reach to the center of your being.

That is the point from where you are connected with the cosmos. And that is also the point which transforms you into a buddha, into an awakened one. That is also the point when you learn you are immortal: you have been here always, and you will be here always -- whether in body or no body.

As you are coming closer and closer to your being, a great silence descends over you, and a great peace arises within your being.

The moment you reach to the very center you are no more,

the buddha is.

The only quality that buddha has is pure awareness

consciousness witnessing.

Witnessing is a key word for all meditators. Witness that you are not the body...

Witness that you are not the mind... Witness that you are only a witness. Suddenly, great bliss arises in you out of nowhere

flowers of invisible ecstasy

start showering on you.

You are at the very source of your life juices. To make the witnessing clear, Nivedano...

Relax.

Let go... but keep on witnessing.

That is the only thing you have to remember -- you are a witness -- and everything else will happen on its own.

I can see ten thousand buddhas utterly relaxed in their center. Gautam the Buddha Auditorium is changing into an ocean of consciousness, because you are all melting, dissolving your separation from existence.

The ocean of consciousness is without any waves, without any ripples.

It is utterly calm and quiet.

This moment you are the most blessed people on the earth, because everybody is concerned only with the trivia -- money, prestige, power. Nobody seems to be concerned to know themselves, and nobody seems to be concerned to know their eternity.

This moment, now and here, you are experiencing the most intimate, the most ultimate experience that is possible to man.

This experience is going to become your Zen Fire, Zen Wind. The fire will burn everything that is false in you, and the wind will take away all that is only a personality.

Out of this fire and wind will arise your pure gold.

You will need to understand the transformation that happens in this moment. You have lived your whole life horizontally, in a line, from the cradle to the

graveyard. In meditation the transformation happens: you are no more a horizontal line, you become vertical. You reach to the highest peak of your consciousness, and you reach to the deepest point of your consciousness.

The height and the depth reveal you

your godliness.

There is no God, but there is certainly a quality I call godliness. It comprises compassion, love, friendship, joy, creativity. It brings you new songs, it brings you new dances. It brings you the truth, and the immersion of you into the truth.

Collect as much experience you can collect, because you have to bring it with you. It has to become part of your day-to-day routine life.

Chopping wood, you should be as silent as you are now. Drawing water from the well, you should be as blissful and ecstatic as you are now.

Sitting silently, doing nothing, you should be as blissful as you are now.

And persuade the buddha, which is your eternal nature, to come along with you.

First, the buddha will come as a shadow to you, following you -- but even that shadow will bring great grace and abundance of life, great benediction you can shower all over the world. But this is only the beginning -- buddha as a shadow. Soon, buddha will be ahead of you, and you will become the shadow. That is the second step.

And the third step... you merge into the buddha; even the shadow disappears, only buddha is, only pure awareness is.

You have entered into the cosmic womb. Nivedano...

Come back, but come as a buddha, with the same grace, with the same silence,

with the same bliss.

Sit down for a few moments just to recollect the golden path that you have followed.

And feel -- the presence of buddha is just behind you.

Remember -- in every activity, howsoever ordinary, the buddha is present behind you.

His presence transforms every ordinary action into an extraordinary act. Every word becomes so rich and so full of poetry, so full of truth, so full of silence. Every silence is as deep as the Pacific Ocean. Every moment in your life you are just moving upward in consciousness, as if you are moving on the greatest peak of the Himalayas, the Everest.

I teach you this Fire of Zen. I teach you this Wind of Zen.

That is going to burn everything that is wrong, that is going to take away everything that is wrong in you and leave only the truth, the ultimate truth.

That ultimate truth brings freedom. This is the only spirituality,

the only religion.

It is individual -- it has nothing to do with any church, with any organized religion. It has nothing to do with any scripture. It has to do only with your inner search and finding your authentic nature -- what Zen people call "the original face."

The buddha is your original face. Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind

Chapter #2

Chapter title: Raise the temple of consciousness

31 January 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium Archive

code:

8901315

ShortTitle:

FIRE02

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

171

mins

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

THE MONK IN CHARGE OF THE MONASTERY ONCE SAID TO YAKUSAN, "I HAVE RUNG THE BELL; PLEASE, OSHO, IT IS TIME FOR THE REGULAR

DISCOURSE."

YAKUSAN SAID, "OKAY. YOU COME AND FOLLOW ME, HOLDING UP MY

BOWL."

THE MONK DIDN'T UNDERSTAND THE MASTER'S MEANING, AND UNGAN --

WHO WAS ALSO PRESENT -- ASKED, "MASTER, WHEN DID YOU LOSE YOUR ARMS AND LEGS?"

YAKUSAN SAID, "YOU ARE SIMPLY WEARING THE MONK'S HABIT."

UNGAN REPLIED, "I AM NOT OTHER THAN THIS. WHAT ABOUT YOU, MASTER?"

"I DON'T HAVE SUCH A FAMILY," COMMENTED YAKUSAN.

ONCE YAKUSAN CALLED A BOY MONK TO HIM. DOGO ASKED, "WHY DO

YOU CALL SUCH PEOPLE?"

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "BECAUSE OF THIS."

DOGO ASKED, "WHY DON'T YOU THROW IT AWAY?"

"BECAUSE I HAVE USED IT FOR A LONG TIME," REPLIED YAKUSAN.

Friends, Question 1

One of the sannyasins has asked a question:

WHAT IS MISSING IN COMMUNISM?

Zen Fire and Zen Wind -- that is what is missing in communism. I have to go into a deeper analysis...

Karl Marx was an intellectual giant, but he had no idea of religiousness other than Judaism and Christianity. Both are religions of prayer. Both believe in God,

which is a fiction. Both believe in things which are irrational. For example, Moses passing through the sea, and the sea giving way -- nature makes no exceptions. And Jesus pretending to be the only begotten son of God is absolutely absurd to any rational man like Karl Marx.

Jesus' miracles are mythological. He made Lazarus come out of his grave, raised him back to life -- and he could not do anything when he was on the cross! He could not even produce a little water -- he was thirsty, it was a hot day, and he was asking continuously for water. And this man has touched people and restored their eyes; even by touching his robe people have lost their paralysis. He has walked on water, and this man could not fly with the cross towards God, his father? He was utterly helpless on the cross.

That shows all those miracles are simply invented by the Christians to befool the world.

Even Christian scholars are being embarrassed by all these miracles, by his virgin birth, by his shouting towards God on the cross, "Have you forsaken me?"

Karl Marx was aware only of Judaism -- he was a Jew, just as Jesus was a Jew -- and he was aware of Christianity and all its crimes against humanity. Burning millions of women alive, forcing them to confess that they are having intercourse with the devil, continuous torture to any woman -- beating, not letting her sleep, not giving her food, putting ice on her chest for hours.…

These were the people who, by chance, invented the traction machine, because they were putting women on a traction machine which pulled the legs from one side and the head and the arms from the other side. One woman was suffering from backache -- suddenly her backache disappeared. Now that traction machine has been transferred from the churches to the medical colleges, to hospitals. I know it from my personal experience!

And when they were torturing those people on the traction machine, sometimes the legs would come out, sometimes the arms would be broken. Sometimes the head would be stretched so much that the woman would start saying, "I confess that I have been having sex with the devil." And once she confessed, then they told her how to describe the devil: that he has two horns, that his sexual machinery is forked -- all the details that she had to confess in a special court appointed by the pope, the grand jury. The poor woman has to accept it;

otherwise they will torture her to death. So what is the point? She knows that confessing it means being burnt, but death seems to be more peaceful than this life of continuous torture.

More people have been killed by the Christian church than by anybody else.

Karl Marx was reacting to these two religions, which are not religions at all but fictions, superstitions, cults. He was not aware of Taoism, he was not aware of Lao Tzu, he was not aware of Gautam Buddha and Mahavira. He was not aware that there are religions in the world which don't believe in God, which don't believe in prayer, which don't believe in heaven and hell. Because of this unawareness of the whole Eastern phenomenon, he created communism as materialism, dialectical materialism.

It was out of ignorance. Otherwise I have absolute trust that if he had been aware of the Eastern research into the interior space of man... Karl Marx was not an ordinary being, but a very extraordinarily intelligent person. He would have understood that Christianity and Judaism are not the only religions in the world.

Buddhism has not killed a single person, and converted the whole of Asia just by simple dialogue, just by intellectual conversation, just by leading people into meditation.

Karl Marx was right in his reaction against Christianity and Judaism. There is certainly no God as a creator. And because he denied God, as a corollary -- a logical corollary --

he denied the human soul. It was not his experience, it was simply a logical thing. To accept the human soul, which is not material, would be self- contradictory in his philosophy.

By vocation I am a logician, and by mistake I am a mystic. But my mistake has paid me tremendously. Now I know that logic is just mental gymnastics.

All the conclusions derived by Marx were based on logic, were based on thinking, philosophizing. He was not aware at all that there is something like meditation, that there is some way to go inwards.

And the human soul, the human spirit, is not a by-product of matter. It has its own existence. The matter in the body seems to be alive, only because of the

presence of consciousness in it. Once the consciousness leaves the body, the body is simply dead, a corpse.

But because Karl Marx had no experience of meditation... And the West was not the right place for meditation; the whole Western mind was objective, and both Judaism and Christianity are objective -- their God is outside.

There is no God outside, it is fiction.

Karl Marx was denying fiction, not religiousness, but he thought this fiction was the only religiousness. Based on Karl Marx's logic, the Soviet Union -- the first communist country, the greatest experiment in the whole history of mankind -- has remained hollow within. There is a deep urge for significance, for meaning, for eternity.

A life which is just material has no meaning. You are just a machine, a robot. At birth you start breathing, mechanically, and at death you stop breathing. If this is the only life, between the cradle and the grave, then this life has no meaning. What meaning can it have?

And then there is no good and no bad. Even killing a person you are not committing a murder, because it is only matter. If you kill your chair I don't think any court is going to take action against you, that you murdered the chair.

In China, because they believed that women have no souls, husbands used to kill their wives. In China there was no law against murdering your wife, because she is just like furniture. You use it, and when you think it is useless, just finish with it! Find some new furniture. The same is the situation in Thailand. The woman has no soul and no rights; she is not human.

But in accordance with Karl Marx, the Soviet Union was based on materialism. It was good in the beginning because it destroyed all the orthodox Christians and their monasteries and their monks. It turned the churches into hospitals, into schools, into colleges. Big monasteries -- because the Russian Orthodox church is one of the oldest churches, older than the Vatican, and much more orthodox than any other church in the world.

You will not believe that in the name of celibacy, the Russian Orthodox church allowed men to cut off their genitals. Every year when Christmas came, hundreds of people would cut off their genitals in the name of becoming

celibate. Women were not left behind: they would cut off their breasts. But neither by cutting off your breasts do you become celibate, nor by cutting off your genitals do you become celibate, because the sex center exists in the brain, not in the genitals. The genitals are an extension of a center in the brain.

That's why if you start just imagining about a beautiful woman, immediately your genitals start moving. You are only thinking -- you can do it right now! The thought is in the mind. It is immediately transferred to the genitals, but it always begins in the mind.

The genitals don't have any thinking power. They don't have eyes to see which woman is beautiful. It is your eyes which see and inform the brain, and then the genitals start functioning.

If you really want celibate people, then they need a brain operation. The center of sex should be removed. But then you will be simply impotent -- not celibate.

Karl Marx was right, that such religions should be finished. They are against humanity.

They protect poverty and they protect the rich. They are against revolution, they are against any change -- obviously, he was right to call them the opium of the people, the hope of the hopeless. If Christianity and Judaism were the only religions, then the Soviet Union would not have any need, any urge to find the inner world!

But just think about it. You cannot have the outside world without having the inside world; they exist together like two sides of the coin.

And there are scientific methods available. Zen is the most scientific method to inquire into your consciousness. It takes you beyond mind into a space called no- mind. No self, but pure awareness, and you have a taste of eternity and immortality. This is what is missing in Soviet communism.

And the danger is that Gorbachev is opening the doors and all those Christians will immediately come back. All those cockroaches and rats who have been thrown out in seventy years' time will be the first to enter. Just this Christmas thousands and thousands of Christians entered to celebrate Christmas in the Soviet Union.

Today I received the news One of the most idiotic cults is the cult of HARE

KRISHNA, HARE RAMA. I have come across every kind of idiot, but these two cults, the Witnesses of Jehovah and this movement of HARE KRISHNA, HARE RAMA --

these are the worst idiots in the whole world! Now the Soviet Union has allotted them land to make a temple for Krishna.

Now, these idiots... who are mostly American; not a single Hindu is involved in the Krishna movement. It is only the Americans, ex-hippies. I have even talked with their founder, Prabhupad, and he was such a senile idiot! But he managed to find other idiots to be followers. Now giving them space on Soviet land, allowing them to make a temple for Krishna, and allowing them to translate SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA into Russian, is bringing poison into the country.

Gorbachev is not aware what SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA'S message is. It is war.

This is the only religious scripture in the world which teaches war, violence, destruction.

Now allowing these idiots to translate SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA into Russian...

And on the other hand, Gorbachev is trying to make a peaceful world. It is contradictory.

But these people will rush in from all sides -- all kinds of cults which have no base in reality, which don't have any logic, which don't have any rationale, which don't have any scientific approach -- they will destroy the whole Soviet Union's mind. Whatever has been achieved in seventy years is in immense danger. Again monks will be living as parasites, because they don't work. Again these people -- HARE KRISHNA, HARE

RAMA -- will be parasites. They don't work.

The danger is great, because the Soviet people who are present today have no idea of the revolution. They are almost all born after the revolution, or when they were very small children the revolution happened. They don't have any memory

of it.

I don't think Gorbachev has any idea what happened in that revolution and how difficult it was to destroy these stupid religions, superstitions. It took tremendous labor to clean the whole of the Soviet land from the past, the hangover of primitive, barbarious fears, greed, possessiveness.

Now calling these people back again, opening the doors for all kinds of diseases... And the Soviet people are feeling a certain hollowness within themselves. Something is missing, because Karl Marx cannot provide any spirituality to them. But these bogus preachers will talk about spirituality, and it is pure talk. They don't know anything about spirituality either, but they can manage to fill the vacuum in the Soviet heart with all their belief systems, with all their superstitions.

It is going backwards, not forwards.

I warn the Soviet people: please be careful. Whatever Gorbachev is doing, he is doing with great and good intentions. But he is not aware that once you open the doors, all the CIA agents and FBI agents, all the detectives from all over the world, will be entering into the country -- as monks, as priests, as bishops, as archbishops.

Just now, a few Soviet states which have never raised their voices, are raising their voices that "We want independence; we want to separate from the Soviet Union."

In one of the Soviet countries they have tried experimental elections, democratic elections. The Soviet Union has been a dictatorship of the proletariat -- only one party, the party of the proletariat, the Communist Party. So there was no question of any election. Although elections were held, there was only one candidate to vote for.

Under Gorbachev's direction they have tried in one or two places to have the Communist Party's candidate -- which is decided by the central bureau in Kremlin -- and to allow the people of that state to have their own candidates. Of course, they are also communists. But it should be a warning, that those people of the locality have won the election against the centrally nominated candidates. Now nationalism is coming up.

Mohammedans would like to separate -- there are a few Mohammedan countries in the Soviet Union. And every state which constitutes the Union is bound to become more and more nationalistic, which is a disease. So without knowing the consequences, Gorbachev is going ahead. He can spoil the whole great experiment of seventy years.

Once the Soviet Union is destroyed, there is no hope for other communist countries either. They are small countries, they can be destroyed without difficulty. The Soviet Union is the central force of the whole of communism in the world. It has to survive!

But the trouble is, the idiots will rush in, the vested interests will rush in. No right person, no Gautam Buddha is going to go there unless Gorbachev and the Soviet Union invite him. Nobody like that is going there. Those who will be rushing there on their own have their motivations.

If Gorbachev really wants peace in the world at the cost of communism, that peace is not worth it. Communism is one of the greatest experiments in human evolution. It has laid the foundation of a new temple for humanity. But it has only laid the foundation; the pillars are missing, the roof is missing.

That can be done only by people who are fully awakened, people whom I am calling the buddhas -- not Buddhists. Buddhists are as superstitious as any other organized religion.

But the awakened people should be invited from all over the world. There are a few people still, in the same space as Gautam Buddha. They should be invited to teach meditation in the universities, to teach meditation in the colleges, to teach meditation to the public -- and meditation has nothing against communism.

Meditation will use communism as the base, and will put the pillars and the roof on the base. The Soviet citizen needs something of meditative experience that will fill his hollowness. Otherwise just work, and death... there seems to be no meaning and significance. If you had not been born there would be no harm; if you die nobody is going to miss you, you will be replaced.

Soviet citizens need dignity and individuality and a certain sense of direction into eternity. That is what is missing. And the danger is, before the right people can be invited, the wrong people will rush in and start destroying the seventy years' great experiment.

I would prefer a third world war rather than the destruction of the Soviet Union. In the name of peace Gorbachev can go beyond the limits -- he is already going.

The death of the Soviet Union will be the death of all evolution, of all possibilities of a world without boundaries, of a world without classes, of a world richer in every sense of the word -- not only money but consciousness too; not only power but art and music and dance.

Have you ever observed? -- there is a simple phenomenon that will give you the right direction.

Before the revolution, the Soviet Union produced people like Leo Tolstoy, Gorky, Turgenev, Chekhov, Dostoevsky. These five names are so great, as far as literature is concerned, that if you want to find ten great names in the whole world, these five will be the first five. The other five will be sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth. But these five cannot be dropped in any calculation, their creation is so great. Just a single man, Fyodor Dostoevsky, is enough to defeat all the creative novelists of the world.

But what happened? After the revolution, no Gorky, no Turgenev, no Dostoevsky, no Tolstoy -- what happened? In these seventy years the Soviet Union has not been able to create a single person of that quality.

The reason is clear. The Soviet citizen has lost his soul, has lost his consciousness, has believed in Karl Marx blindly, that the soul of man is only a by-product of matter. If the soul is just a by-product of matter, then there is no possibility of haikus, no possibility for poetry.

I have read the poetry written before the revolution and after the revolution. In fact, after the revolution the poetry should have risen higher, but that is not the case.

Before the revolution when Russia was the poorest of countries... it was not even a capitalist country, it was a feudal country. Karl Marx had never expected that the Soviet Union was going to be born out of the poorest country, the most traditional, backward in every sense. He never expected that it was going to become the first communist country.

It was not even capitalist.

According to Karl Marx's calculation, a feudal society cannot move directly to communism. It has to move through capitalism. Only capitalism creates classes clearly, the proletariat and the bourgeois.

But I told you, logic is not everything. Life has its own ways. It happened in Russia. But because the philosophy of Karl Marx has been the foundation, it has destroyed all flowers of consciousness. No literature of great status... even Tolstoy's son was just a poor novelist after the revolution. And before the revolution, in a poor country, such great literature was born.

It shows something. It shows that unless you have a fulfillment, a certain contentment inside you, you cannot share it in poetry, in music. From where will you bring it? It has to flow from you -- you cannot share it because you don't have it.

The Soviet citizen is the poorest, as far as consciousness is concerned.

But Karl Marx has given it a right foundation. That foundation is missing in the East.

This has been the dilemma of the whole of humanity.…

In the East people have condemned the body, condemned matter, called matter "illusory,"

maya -- it does not really exist, it only appears to exist; it is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. They denied the world, and that is the reason for the East remaining poor, sick, in starvation.

Half of humanity has been accepting the inner world but denying the outer world. The other half of humanity has been accepting the material world and denying the inner world. Both are half, and no man who is half can be contented.

You have to be whole: rich in the body, rich in science; rich in meditation, rich in consciousness. Only a whole person is a holy person, according to me.

I want Zorba and Buddha to meet together. Zorba alone is hollow. His dance has not an eternal significance, it is momentary pleasure. Soon he will be tired of it. Unless you have inexhaustible sources, available to you from the cosmos itself... unless you become existential, you cannot become whole.

This is my contribution to humanity: THE WHOLE PERSON.

The East has denied the body and the outside world, and the West has denied the soul and the inner world; both have lived half. And just as there is no half-circle in the world... a circle means a complete circle. A half-circle is only an arc, it is not a circle. So the West has remained half, an arc; the East has remained half, an arc. And a man like Lord Kipling wrote, "East is East, West is West, and the twain shall never meet." Just bullshit!

They are meeting here, now. And unless they meet there is no hope for humanity.

Russia has the foundation. It needs right pillars and a roof. What will you do with the foundation alone? It needs to fill its hollowness with light, with blissfulness, with ecstasy, with a new luminousness. Ask the awakened ones of the world to enter into Russia and teach people a scientific religiousness -- not Christianity, not Hinduism, not SHRIMAD

BHAGAVADGITA or the Holy Bible.

The Holy Bible has three hundred eighty-eight pages of pornography, sheer pornography.

And SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA is a sermon by Lord Krishna of the Hindus, the perfect incarnation of God, in favor of war.

A great war happened because of SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA. It happened five thousand years ago and it broke India's backbone. After that war, India has never risen beyond poverty, beyond small things. It cannot look up to the stars and the blue sky.

When you are hungry.…

It will be interesting for you to know that there are biblical scholars who have been prohibited by the pope. The pope has said that no priests should listen to these biblical scholars -- and they are really the great scholars of the Bible, how it was born, how the gospels were created, what has been left out.…

The four gospels in the New Testament are not the only gospels. There were other gospels which have been denied and destroyed. Only one gospel has survived, because it was written in India. One of the direct disciples of Jesus,

Thomas, immediately moved to India and he remained in South India, learned all the arts of yoga and meditation.

And you will be surprised: he is the only person in the whole world whose body is still intact... it is in Goa. Every year the body is taken out and you can see it -- it is as if he has just died. And it is not by any scientific method that it has been preserved. Scientists have been observing it, watching it with amazement: two thousand years ago, how did those people manage? Because there is no sign of anything, and the body seems to be still flushed with blood. After two thousand years it has not deteriorated.

The body usually starts deteriorating immediately; within three days it is stinking. But every year the body of Thomas is taken out -- this is a real miracle

-- and it is the only body in the whole world which has been preserved and scientists cannot figure out how.

It has been preserved by yoga and meditation, not by any scientific method from the outside. There was no science in those days. But Thomas became almost a sannyasin in India. He forgot all about Jesus and his miracles and all his teachings. He became almost a man of the East; he started wearing the robe of a sannyasin, the ochre robe. He started using the sannyasins' ancient sandals, made of wood -- it was very difficult to walk on them. He was even using the thread that Hindus wear around their neck and waist. He shaved his head, just like any yogi, and he was well respected. He was allowed into the Buddhist monasteries of Nalanda and Takshashila.

Both these monasteries Jesus had also visited, but not for a long time. So he could not get into meditation. He heard about things -- which he repeats in the Bible, which are really Buddha's statements.

The biblical scholars who are the authentic scholars -- and they are all Christians

-- say there is every possibility there was no Jesus at all. It is a myth and it is simply Krishna whose name has become Christ.

The Sanskrit namèKrishna' in Bengali becomes `Kristo'. If it can become Kristo, there is not much to do to make it Christ -- from Krishna to Kristo and from Kristo to Christ.

These biblical scholars have found many things which are amazing. It is possible that it is a myth, traveling, that has created Jesus Christ.

But Gorbachev knows nothing, and to allow SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA to be translated into Russian will be one of the most dangerous steps against peace.

Five thousand years ago, the great warrior Arjuna, seeing millions of people ready to fight -- because it was a family fight.…

Arjuna and Duryodhana were cousin-brothers. Duryodhana's father was blind -- in fact, he was the elder brother of the father of Arjuna. He was supposed to be the king but he was blind, so naturally the second oldest son, Dhritrashtra, was made king when the father died. But the older man, who could not get into power, was very ambitious that his son should get into power.

He had one hundred sons, because he had many wives. And a blind man... nothing else to do! He knows neither day nor night, and no other work was allotted to him, so he had one hundred sons. And the father of Arjuna had only five sons.

Arjuna was a great archer, perhaps the greatest the world has ever known. The whole thing depended on Arjuna: if he refused to fight with his own brothers... And all the relatives were divided between the two sides. The teacher of Arjuna, who had taught him archery, was on the other side. And there was every possibility that the other side would win; they were one hundred brothers and these were only five. But they had many relatives -- they had all come from all over the world.

You will be surprised that Arjuna's wife had come from Mexico. In Sanskrit the name of Mexico is Makshika. It is from Makshika that `Mexico' is derived. So even the Mexican princes had come to fight for Arjuna. These five brothers had only one wife, because all five were interested in this woman, who was Krishna's sister. So it was a dangerous problem! All the five brothers -- and the eldest was Yudhishthir, second was Bhima, third was Arjuna, and then two other brothers. So obviously, Yudhishthir had the first right to her.…

But Arjuna was the most beautiful and the most important person in all those millions of soldiers who had gathered.

It was a strange war, because on both sides there were relatives of relatives, friends --

even Krishna.

When Krishna was asleep, Duryodhana, the head of the other side, and Arjuna, both approached him. And of course, Arjuna was Krishna's sister's husband. But Arjuna was a humble man, as all great men are humble. He sat by the side of Krishna's feet -- he was asleep -- and Duryodhana was an arch-egoist; he sat just by the side of Krishna's head.

So when Krishna opened his eyes, first he saw Arjuna. And he asked, "For what have you come?"

Arjuna said, "Look behind you, my cousin-brother is also present. We have both come for the same purpose: With whom are you going to fight in the war? The preparations are going on and we want you to decide on which side you are going to be."

Krishna was a great politician, a very great politician. He said, "Because Duryodhana is older than you, let him decide first. I will divide: on one side I will be, and on the other side my whole army. You are both my friends. So let Duryodhana choose."

Duryodhana certainly chose the army, because what to do with one man? And Krishna had the greatest army in the country. And Arjuna said, "That's exactly what I wanted!

You be my charioteer."

So on that first day of the war, both the armies are standing face to face and Krishna brings the chariot of Arjuna to confront the enemy. But seeing all the faces of the friends on both sides, all relatives in some way or other, seeing his own teacher on the other side, seeing his own great-granduncle, who loved Arjuna very much but was considerate of the blind man who had missed the kingdom which was his right... he was there. Arjuna became puzzled.

He said, "What will I gain if I kill all these people? Just sitting on a golden throne with all these people dead? I don't see any point in this war. Take my chariot away from the front, I am going to the Himalayas to meditate. This world is not for me. If I have to kill so many people just to be here, it is better to renounce it."

It was Krishna who forced him. In eighteen chapters of SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA is his continuous argument in favor of war. And when finally

he could not convince him, at last he took the same step as all religions have taken: "It is God's will! You cannot go out of the war. What God has chosen has to happen."

That's what the Bible says: "Don't change anything. Whatever is God's will is going to happen."

Now if I had been in place of Arjuna, I would have said to Krishna, "That's okay. This is what God has chosen, I am going to the Himalayas."

But Krishna has been respected as the incarnation of God. Not only incarnation -

-

Hindus have many incarnations of God -- Krishna is the only "perfect" incarnation. He was so powerful that the brahmins simply praised him. It is always power that is praised.

A man who has captured sixteen thousand women from all over his kingdom, all the beautiful women... whether married, unmarried, it did not matter. His army would just catch any woman who was seen by Krishna, and he simply gave the indication, "Take her to the palace." He collected sixteen thousand women -- you cannot even remember their names! -- and he was married only to one woman. All these women had their children, their husbands, their old parents to take care of. Sixteen thousand families were destroyed by this man. And he forced Arjuna, saying, "This is God's will -- you have to fight! You cannot go against God's will."

God has been used for all kinds of crimes. The war happened. It was a massacre, millions of people died. And the backbone of India was broken. India became so afraid of war, because from every family somebody was killed -- the husband, the father, the son, every family was deprived of somebody. The whole country was sad, and that sadness has become so deeply settled in India's mind that when small tribes, primitive tribes of Turks, of Mongols, of Hunas, of Moguls, of British, came to India, India simply gave way. They had no desire to fight.

Whoever came was accepted without any difficulty -- small groups! Turks came with only five hundred people, and India was a country of thirty-three million people at that time, two thousand years ago. Still India simply accepted them; it was not ready to fight.

It had seen the war, it had seen its destructiveness.

And who was responsible for all this? Krishna was responsible for all this. To me, he is not even a human being, nothing to say about an incarnation of God.

When I saw today that they are giving a place to him in the Soviet Union, making a temple for Krishna and allowing these hippies from America... that means all kinds of idiots and stupids and superstitious people will enter into the Soviet Union. This opening can be dangerous.

Certainly the Soviet Union needs spirituality. It has materialism -- that is the base. It needs spirituality -- that will raise the temple of the soul. Just as you need scientists for material wealth, technology, you need buddhas, enlightened people, to help you become also a buddha.

But this kind of people will not come on their own. You will have to persuade them, you will have to invite them. Only then they can help you. To a welcoming heart, they will pour all that they know.

And Marxism will become a complete philosophy if it can be joined with Zen. That's why I say, "What is missing? Zen Fire, Zen Wind."

But Christianity should be prohibited. Judaism should be prohibited. Hinduism should be prohibited. Islam should be prohibited. These people have been the cause of the trouble.

Again you are falling back. Seventy years of struggle to create a new society, and then one single man who knows nothing of the revolution, who knows nothing of how hard it was to preserve the country amongst all the anti- communist countries... they were all ready, like vultures all around, to destroy the Soviet Union and its communism. Because if even one country becomes communist, it is dangerous. It is dangerous to all the capitalist countries because that fragrance will start spreading.

The Soviet Union is a hope for humanity.

Gorbachev should not take the responsibility of destroying the Soviet Union. But by opening it, he is being praised by the capitalist press, by the capitalist news media all over the world. That is very cunning. They are making him a great hero, and by becoming a hero he will completely forget the implications that will

follow the opening of the doors of the Soviet Union to all and sundry, to Tom, and Dick, and Harry.

It is a scientific experiment. The Soviet Union has done half the work, with great difficulty, with tremendous sacrifice. The new generation is not aware. I have gone to the deepest roots of the revolution, and I can see how much the Soviet Union has suffered to be a communist country, how much it has sacrificed. And it has lived in constant danger of being destroyed, but now it has come to a point where it is one of the biggest world powers. It should not be reduced from its power.

It is good to be a peacemaker, and perhaps soon Gorbachev will receive a Nobel Prize.…

That is not very noble. I call it The "Ignoble" Prize, because the man who created the Nobel Prize -- it was his name, Nobel. But his function was -- in the first world war and before that -- that he was the biggest manufacturer of arms. He was supplying arms to the whole world. Every war was fought with his weapons, both sides would be using his arms, and through these arms he collected great richness.

Then his Christian guilt came over him at the time of his death, that "I am the greatest creator of war material -- and all the people who have died because of my weapons...

everybody who has died, has died because of my arms."

In any country, anywhere, both the parties were using his weapons. He was the only person who was refining and refining, and making better and better war material. He became afraid of hellfire. He donated all his money and created a trust, so that every year, just out of the interest, Nobel Prizes should be given to different branches of science, art, literature, music... any contribution to humanity. It was simply trying to erase his guilt.

And this Nobel Prize committee... the chairman of the committee is the King of Sweden.

One of my sannyasins, who is a Nobel Prize winner, asked the king -- because only a Nobel Prize winner can nominate somebody else's name to the committee which decides to whom the Nobel Prizes should go. He told the King of Sweden,

"What about this man?" -- and he mentioned my name. The king said, "Never utter that name again! My suggestion for you is, don't bring that name to the Nobel committee, because you will feel embarrassed. It is impossible for us to give this man a Nobel Prize."

But in the same way, Leo Tolstoy was denied. Every fifty years the Nobel committee opens its records for the public to view. Last time when they opened their public records, the people found that Leo Tolstoy had been nominated for a Nobel Prize, but was denied on the grounds that he was not an orthodox Christian. He was a Christian, but he was not orthodox, he was very flexible. On these grounds -- and the question was literature, not Christianity! They did not even talk about his literature.

The man has created the greatest novels in the world: ANNA KARENINA... or WAR

AND PEACE, which is such a vast world that the man must have been the greatest mind of his century. But the literature was not discussed. The man who nominated him, had nominated him for a literary prize, for literature, but he was denied on the grounds that he was not an orthodox Christian.

That is strange -- is this prize only for orthodox Christians? And this Nobel Prize has been used as a political weapon. They always give Nobel Prizes to Soviet scientists. It is tricky game, because the Soviet government up to now would prohibit the person from accepting this prize from the capitalist world, and prohibit the person from going to the Nobel Prize convention to accept the prize...

Because from there, the man becomes persuaded by the capitalists. The Nobel Prize comes with almost two hundred thousand dollars. The man for the first time... In the Soviet Union you don't have private property; for the first time he sees two hundred thousand dollars, and for the first time he is out of the Soviet Union. He can escape and ask for refuge in any capitalist country, and he can release the secrets of Soviet scientists to the capitalists and gain prestige, awards, money and everything.

So the Soviet government up to now has been preventing people like Sakharov and others. It was a very dangerous thing. If you prevent, then the scientist becomes angry with the Soviet government. He freaks out, he wants to accept

the prize. Because he freaks out, the Soviet government has to take measures to prevent him from escaping out of the country.

Even Sakharov's insistence that he would accept the Nobel Prize... immediately the Soviet government had to take action. He was removed as the director general of the science academy, his car was taken back... because nobody possesses anything, everything belongs to the nation. The government allots things to people. And he was reduced to being an ordinary member of the academy.

But his wife, who is also a scientist, was having an operation in Paris. From Paris she managed to go to the Nobel Prize convention, and on behalf of her husband she accepted the Nobel Prize.

So either the Nobel Prize is a kind of bribe to take secrets out of the Soviet Union, or it creates a trouble for the scientist. If the government prevents him, and if he wants to go out, then he has to be jailed. In some way, one scientist's life and his contribution to the Soviet Union is destroyed.

Now the Nobel Prize has been given to politicians -- even a man like Kissinger gets a Nobel Prize! And what is his contribution to humanity?

I call it the Ignoble Prize because it is full of blood, the blood of millions of people who were massacred by Nobel's weapons. No man of dignity should accept it.

I told my sannyasin, "You should not have mentioned my name. I will reject the Nobel Prize if they give it to me. It is a bribe and nothing else, a bribe to shut people's mouths who speak against capitalism, a bribe to take secrets from the Soviet Union."

Now opening the doors of the Soviet Union is really dangerous -- and I am saying it as a friend. The Soviet Union has done half the work; the base is completely solid. All that it needs is a few pillars and a roof, and the shrine for the human soul will be ready.

The new man can come only out of the Soviet Union. But what is happening makes me suspicious. Soon Gorbachev will have the Nobel Prize, I predict it. He is being praised by all the capitalist press for the simple reason so that this praise gets into his head and he forgets all the implications of what he is doing that may

destroy the Soviet Union.

A seventy-year great experiment in changing the structure of the society... and they have succeeded! Now the second step is to change the consciousness of man. You have changed the structure of the society, it was an economic revolution. That's why I said yesterday that if I come to Soviet Union, I am bringing another revolution, a revolution which will be spiritual. That is what is missing: a spiritual revolution. If that revolution happens, the Soviet Union will be the pride of humanity.

I see both sides of Gorbachev. He is doing good in bringing freedom, but he is also taking a risk -- which he will not be able to prevent once all these people enter in. Then he will have to start from ABC; it will take another seventy years to bring back this same situation.

I would like him open the door for scientists, open the door for poets, open the door for mystics, open the door for musicians, dancers, painters. Open the door for novelists, open the door for all creative people, open the door for meditators -

- but not for all and sundry; particularly not for any organized religion, and not for any stupid and idiotic ideology.

He does not know anything about BHAGAVADGITA, and he has allowed these Hare Krishna people to translate it into Russian. He does not know that this is the only scripture in the whole world devoted completely to war. It was perfectly good for Adolf Hitler, it was perfectly good for Benito Mussolini. It is not good for people who want peace, for people who want this earth to drop its boundaries of nations, of religions. It is not good for those who want one world, one earth, one humanity.

Question 2

The second question is from another sannyasin. He has asked: WHY DO YOU NOT WANT TO ALLOW CHRISTIANITY TO ENTER THE SOVIET

UNION?

Because I love the Soviet Union, and I would not like a poisonous snake, a cobra hiding inside the pope, to enter the Soviet Union. He can come to India, there is no problem. He can go around in any capitalist country, there is no problem. But not the Soviet Union, because I consider Christianity to be the most criminal

religion in the world.

In seventy years they have with great difficulty been erasing the programming of Christianity from the Soviet mind. Now the Soviet mind at least is free of Christianity, free of God, free of heaven, free of hell. This is perfectly good. Don't introduce all these things again.

But one thing certainly the Soviet Union needs, which Christianity cannot provide. That can be provided only by Zen.

Zen is pure meditation. It has nothing to do with hell, heaven, God. Jesus' miracles, it has nothing to do with. It does not even talk about any of these things. It simply talks about the science, step by step, of how to enter your own inner world and see the life eternal.

Once you have seen your life as eternity -- from eternity to eternity -- you are a totally different man.

Your life becomes of great significance. Thousands of blossoms start arising in you. Your life becomes creative. You know that existence cares for you.

You know that existence never creates a carbon copy, that existence always comes up with absolutely original faces. Nobody is dispensable. Once you are gone, your place will remain empty forever. This gives significance, this gives meaning, this gives you a feeling you are needed by existence. Without you, something will be missing; some place will remain empty and nobody else can fill it.

That's why yesterday I argued against Regardie, because he wanted to be a "Rajneesh" in his next incarnation. Existence never repeats, and you cannot be anybody else than yourself.

That is authentic religiousness. Every individual has his own uniqueness, and that gives him dignity and grace.

I don't want Christianity or Hinduism or Mohammedanism to enter the Soviet Union because all these religions are of prayer. Prayer is extrovert; meditation is introvert. If you want to allow people, then allow the people whose religion is based on meditation, not on prayer. That should be the clear-cut distinction, a criterion that can be followed without any fear.

Allow Lao Tzu, allow people of Tao, allow people of Zen, allow people who belong to Sufism, allow people who belong to Hassidism. These are all people who in some way or other are meditative.

But Zen comes to the very highest peak -- the purest meditation, refined by centuries of mystics in India, mystics in China, mystics in Japan. It has moved through so much refinement, sharpening -- continuous sharpening -- that there is nothing else compared to it.

What will the poor pope do in the Soviet Union? -- just kiss the land! So he can kiss in the Vatican, he has enough land -- eight square miles, a sovereign country. Eight square miles is not enough for him to kiss? Go on kissing!

He wastes so much money in kissing different lands. He came to India and kissed the New Delhi airport. I was in Kathmandu -- I immediately gave a press conference and told them, "If he wanted to kiss cow dung, we could have sent him a parcel full of cow dung! Why waste eight million dollars in visiting India just to kiss the cow dung?" But cow dung gives you a taste of Hinduism.…

What has Christianity done for the whole world? It has created more poverty by preventing people from using birth control methods. Now birth control methods are a hundred percent effective; at first they were not. The pill had to be taken before you made love. Now there is another pill that you can take afterwards; there is no need to take it beforehand. This is far safer. And sometimes the pill disturbs the hormonal system of the woman, so a third pill has come into being which the man can take. The woman need not take anything. Now things are so simple, why go on increasing unnecessary population?

And all Christian priests are insisting for more poverty, for more orphans. The reason is that they need more Catholics, more Christians -- from these orphans, from these poor people, they can get new converts. Already the Catholic church has six hundred million people in its fold; still there is no satisfaction. It wants more and more people, at the risk of the whole planet committing suicide! It is because of Christianity -- and they have influenced all the religions because it is the greatest religion as far as membership is concerned, the most powerful. Other religions have also followed the same ideas.

Mohammed married nine wives. He was absolutely uneducated; he used to have epileptic fits and he married a woman just for money. The woman was forty

years old and he was only twenty-six, but the woman was a widow and had an immense amount of money. She was the first Mohammedan! She turned Mohammed's epileptic fits into "trances." In his epileptic fit, he would tremble and foam would come out of his mouth, and he would feel so much trembling that all the blankets in the house could be put over him; still he was trembling. And whatever he uttered in that unconscious state, his wife would write.

Khadija -- the woman, who was well educated, super-rich -- it is she who has written the Koran, it is not Mohammed. He could not even sign his name. And the Koran has been written over thirty years' time, because you have to wait for the epileptic fit to come again. Then nobody knows whether Khadija was writing what Mohammed was saying or she was inventing, because it is a very poor scripture. There is nothing much in it.

Mohammedan friends have asked me. "Talk about the holy Koran!" They have been sending me copies, the latest editions, most beautifully printed. I looked into them many times, but I could not find a single sentence worthy to be commented upon. I can criticize, but then all the Mohammedans will be just ready to burn my community!

That's what the Greek church threatened to do to me. When I was in Greece it was only for a four-week tourist visa. After two weeks... and I had not gone out of the house. The house was on a small island; it belonged to the best film producer in Greece, he was my host. It was just on a hilltop, a direct drop to the ocean -- a very beautiful place, a beautiful garden, and I had never gone out of the gate.

But friends from all over Europe came running to Greece and the archbishop of the Greek Orthodox church... which is the oldest church in the world. It is the Greek church which has changed Christianity completely, according to itself. The archbishop threatened the president of the country, the prime minister of the country, and threatened me: "If the government does not deport him immediately I am going to dynamite the house and burn all the people inside -- alive." This is religion!

And I have nothing to do with Greeks. There were at the most ten or twelve Greek friends, whom I have already corrupted, so there was no problem; they were my sannyasins. And he was threatening the government and saying that my stay in Greece would corrupt the morality, destroy the religion.

I said when they deported me, to the world press representatives who had gathered at the airport to take my interview, "This country has the weakest religion and the weakest morality. They have had two thousand years to condition the mind of the country to a certain kind of morality which they think is virtuous, to certain superstitions that they think are religion -- and they are afraid of a tourist who is going to be here only two weeks more! If a religion two thousand years old can be corrupted by a tourist in two weeks, it is worth corrupting. It should be corrupted."

He was threatening me: "I will organize a procession against you." I informed him, "I will enjoy it!" I enjoy all kinds of things.…

But the procession never came, so I asked Amrito, my ambassador in Greece -- a beautiful woman, used to be a model, once was chosen to be the beauty queen of Greece.

I love beauty. I love everything that is beautiful in this world. The flowers, the faces, the stars, the moon, the ocean -- everything. Beauty is my religion.

I asked Amrito, "How many people here are Christians?" She said, "Almost ninety percent."

And I asked her: "How many attend the church?" She said, "Not more than four percent!"

I said, "Who are those four percent people?"

She laughed, she said, "You won't believe -- they are the oldest women, ancient women, those whose one foot is in the grave and one foot in the church."

I said, "How many women listen to this archbishop?"

She counted. She went there -- only six women were listening to his thundering sermon!

Of course he could not bring a procession of six old women, it would have been really a great circus. I had told my people, "When he comes, we should join the

procession!"

That old idiot wanted to burn all my people who were living with me -- just for two weeks! What has Christianity done for the world that you are asking me why I don't want to allow Christianity to enter the Soviet Union?

I love the Soviet Union because it is a great experiment. It is a milestone in the history of man. Of course it is only half, but still -- half is better than nothing. The other half can be raised on top of it.

What Lenin and Stalin have produced has given a good foundation for anybody to raise the temple of consciousness. And this temple will not belong to any religion; it will belong to all individuals who want to enter into initiation, who want to enter on the path.

The buddhas don't lead you, they simply indicate the way. You have to follow your way alone, because nobody can go inside you. The buddhas can point to the place, but you have to go there. And it is good that nobody can go inside you; otherwise politicians would have reached before any buddha! It is your privilege, your absolute privilege and freedom -- nobody else can enter there.

But if you go, you will start growing in a new dimension -- vertical. Just as all animals move horizontally... at a certain point in history some animals, according to Charles Darwin, stood up vertically. That's how man was born: from the horizontal animal, walking on all fours, he started walking on two feet, and two hands were free for the first time. These two hands have created all science, all technology -- the houses, the roads, the electricity, the television. Everything that you enjoy, everything that is needed for humanity has been created because these two hands were free. No animal can do these things: all four legs are engaged in walking.

This is one revolution: the gorilla becomes man -- from horizontal to vertical.

A similar kind of state exists inside. Your consciousness is still horizontal. Your body is vertical; your consciousness is still moving in time -- horizontally. The function of meditation is to turn your consciousness also in a vertical direction. When your body and consciousness are together, vertical, you are an enlightened one. The vertical consciousness knows the ultimate truth, the beauty, the good, the godliness of existence.

The sutras:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

THE MONK IN CHARGE OF THE MONASTERY ONCE SAID TO YAKUSAN, "I HAVE RUNG THE BELL; PLEASE, OSHO, IT IS TIME FOR THE REGULAR

DISCOURSE."

You should understand one thing about Zen as a foundation: nothing is regular.

Everything is spontaneous. The whole emphasis is not on routine but on spontaneity. If the master feels like speaking, if existence wants to become through him a song, then he sings the song -- otherwise not. There is no question of regularity.

Spontaneity... it has happened thousands of times that the master will come to the podium, stand there for a few minutes, and nothing is coming. He will bow down to the assembly and return to his room. This is how Zen was born.…

Buddha had never come to his morning discourse with anything in his hand. One day he came with a lotus flower -- so strange! People who had lived with him for years had never seen him carrying anything. And more strange was his silence. He just went on looking at the lotus flower. The minutes started becoming longer and longer and longer; one hour passed, and it seemed almost as if a whole life had passed. Ten thousand sannyasins waiting, watching, and Buddha is completely silent, looking at the lotus flower.

Then Mahakashyapa, for the first time... He had been for twenty years a disciple of Buddha; he had not spoken a single word, he had not even taken initiation. He never asked Buddha to initiate him, he simply got initiated on his own. He shaved his head, brought yellow robes, became a monk, gave himself a name, sat under a tree -- the same tree where he continued to sit year after year. Everybody was wondering -- "This fellow is strange, he seems to be insane!" They would ask him something and he would simply say, "Keep quiet."

But that day, when they were all silent, he simply started laughing out loud. Everybody looked at him. "What happened to this man? He has been insane for twenty years, and suddenly he has become sane? Or vice versa?"

Buddha looked at him and beckoned him with his hand: "Come close to me." This was for the first time in twenty years that Buddha had called him. Mahakashyapa came, and Buddha told the assembly of the sannyasins, "What I could say in words I have said to you. What I could not say in words I am transferring to Mahakashyapa."

And he gave the lotus flower to Mahakashyapa.

This is how Zen was born. This was the beginning of the river of Zen -- no word, just something invisible. People just watched in awe -- what is happening? And for the first time Mahakashyapa touched Buddha's feet -- but did not say a single word.

In Buddhist scriptures there is no other mention of Mahakashyapa, simply this mention.

But Mahakashyapa is the first Zen master.

From one master to another master, Zen has been coming down -- up to me. If Mahakashyapa is the beginning, I am perhaps at the very end of a long, long heritage --

twenty-five centuries, hundreds of masters, transferring in deep silence and meditation what cannot be said in words.

So the monk asked Yakusan... Yakusan is a great master, without any doubt: "I HAVE RUNG THE BELL..."

The bell is rung to call all the sannyasins together in the assembly hall. "PLEASE, OSHO, IT IS TIME FOR THE REGULAR DISCOURSE."

He used the word `regular' wrongly. With a master things are spontaneous -- nothing is regular. Even when you see regularity, it is only in your conception. For the master, it is spontaneous.

YAKUSAN SAID, "OKAY. YOU COME AND FOLLOW ME, HOLDING UP MY

BOWL" -- because I have not finished my breakfast.

Now this was a very strange situation, going to the assembly hall... is he going to deliver the discourse, or eat his rice? And the monk felt a little embarrassed: "I am following him with the bowl of rice. What will people think of me? -- `That idiot! Why is he carrying the bowl with the rice, behind the master?'"

THE MONK DID NOT UNDERSTAND THE MASTER'S MEANING, AND UNGAN

-- WHO WAS ALSO PRESENT -- ASKED, "MASTER, WHEN DID YOU LOSE

YOUR ARMS AND LEGS?"

Why are you not carrying your bowl yourself? When did you lose your arms and legs?

Even Ungan, who finally became enlightened, could not understand the meaning.

The meaning was that the discourse is nothing but a nourishment. It is a spiritual nourishment. Just as the body needs food, your spirituality needs nourishment. Carrying the bowl behind him, he was giving the monk an insight: "Think of all your meditations and discourses in terms of nourishment."

The master is nothing but food -- food for your soul. But Ungan did not understand either. He thought, "What is the matter?" because every monk carries his own bowl unless he is sick, unless he has lost his arms in some accident. What happened? "WHEN

DID YOU LOSE YOUR ARMS AND LEGS?"

YAKUSAN SAID, "YOU ARE SIMPLY WEARING THE MONK'S HABIT."

You don't know, and you cannot know. You are only wearing the monk's habit, the monk's robe, but you don't understand anything.

UNGAN REPLIED, "I AM NOT OTHER THAN THIS."

This is what I am. I am standing utterly naked before you. If you call me just the monk's habit... perhaps. This is what I am.

This was coming from a deeper source, indicating THISNESS.…

Buddha's whole philosophy can be contained in the simple word `thisness' -- suchness, TATHATA. "This moment, this is what I am. You can call me anything you like, it does not matter." This was a great answer.

UNGAN REPLIED, "I AM NOT OTHER THAN THIS. WHAT ABOUT YOU, MASTER?"

YAKUSAN SAID: "I DON'T HAVE SUCH A FAMILY."

Strange answer from the master.…

What does he mean that he does not have such a family? I will tell you one anecdote to have some feel of it.

When al-Hillaj Mansoor, who was killed finally by the Mohammedans... just like Jesus, but in a far worse way. They cut him piece by piece. But this happened later on, when he became enlightened and declared: "Ana'l haq -- I am the truth." And Mohammedans cannot forgive anybody saying this. Only god is truth. Calling yourself truth, you are indirectly calling yourself God.

But he was not calling himself God. He was simply saying, "I am the truth." And he was not claiming any monopoly on it. He was saying, "You are also the truth, it is just that you don't know it. I know it." But this came later on.

When he first went to his master, Junnaid... it was a very sad affair. His family, his wife, his children, his old parents, his friends, his neighbors -- all loved the young man. He was so beautiful, so joyous, just his presence was a light.

He had been visiting all kinds of masters. Finally he decided to leave the family and to go to Junnaid, who was residing just outside the village in the forest. Junnaid was a very famous master. So out of the town the family came, friends came, wife, children, neighbors, to say goodbye, to give him a good send-off. And he went towards the forest...

but again and again he looked back. Those people were still standing on the

boundary of the town.

Finally, when he was entering into the forest, he looked for the last time. They were still standing, far away; he could not figure out who was who. And then he reached Junnaid's hut. He knocked on the door. Junnaid said -- from the inside; he has not seen the person yet -- he said, "First leave the crowd outside and come alone!"

What crowd? He looked all around, there was no crowd. He opened the door.

Junnaid said, "You did not follow my order! Leave the crowd outside and then come in."

But he said, "What crowd? I don't see anybody. I looked everywhere -- there is nobody."

He said, "You are looking outside -- look inside. The whole crowd is present. Your wife, your children, your family, your parents, your neighbors, your friends

--

everybody is present. Just close your eyes: that is the crowd you have to leave outside.

Get out! When you are finished with the crowd, come in."

It took three years for al-Hillaj Mansoor to sit outside till he was finished with the family, with the crowd, till he became utterly silent. He forgot completely to enter into the hut.

Three years is a long time. He had forgotten the family, and he had also forgotten the master. There was no need now, he was completely fulfilled.

Exactly at that moment Junnaid came out and said, "Come in now." He said, "But now there is no need."

Junnaid said, "Only now, when there is no need, can I start my work on you. Come in and close the doors."

This is the "family" that Yakusan means. He is saying, "I am absolutely alone. I

am utterly silent. I don't have a crowd of thoughts, images, dreams in my mind. And you, standing before me, although you are saying, `This is what I am,' I can see the crowd inside, the family. You are not just this, you are that too."

Ungan must have understood, because he did not say a single word. The master was absolutely correct.

When the master is absolutely correct, the disciple simply has to bow down in silence.

There is no question of argument -- with the master you cannot argue, and if you argue you are creating a distance between yourself and the master.

Come close to the master without any argument, without any mind, without any thought, without any images, and suddenly there is a synchronicity -- your heart starts beating in tune with the master's heart.

And the master's heart is already beating in tune with the heart of the universe. So in an indirect way, coming closer to the master is the first step of coming closer to existence.

He is the window, the door. He opens into existence. He gives you the first taste of dropping the self, of dropping the crowd, of dropping everything and just being a pure consciousness.

ONCE YAKUSAN CALLED A BOY MONK TO HIM. DOGO ASKED, "WHY DO

YOU CALL SUCH PEOPLE?"

Dogo also became, finally, enlightened. He was a brother of Ungan. Both the brothers were disciples of Yakusan.

DOGO ASKED, "WHY DO YOU CALL SUCH PEOPLE?"

Just a young boy -- how can he understand the great teachings?

That's where the mind distracts you. The mind is interested in the scriptures, in the teachings, in the theology, philosophy -- in all kinds of gymnastics of words, beliefs, disbeliefs, arguments. And truth comes to those who are innocent. It can

come more easily to a child than to a grown-up, because what you call growing up is nothing but gathering more rubbish. You have more knowledge, but nothing of knowing.

Knowing is a totally different experience than knowledge. Knowledge is borrowed.

Knowing is just like a man opening his eyes to the sun, and knowledge is just like a blind man writing a thesis on light. He can write.…

Now there are ways -- the blind man can read, the blind man can write. But a blind man writing about light... will it have any relevance, any truth? It will be all borrowed. It will be all rubbish. You can know light only with your own eyes.

So when Yakusan called this young boy monk... Dogo was a scholar, a great knower of the scriptures. He said, "Why do you call such people? What will this boy understand?"

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "BECAUSE OF THIS."

Because he is so young, because he is so fresh, because he knows nothing, he is available.

You are not available. Your mind is full of thoughts, and thoughts are a China wall, thick

-- they prevent any master from approaching your heart, your being.

Yakusan said, "Simply because of this -- because he is so young, so fresh, so new. He knows nothing about anything. He is innocent."

And the innocent has more capacity to know the truth. Those who have already become knowledgeable will have to drop their knowledge and become again childlike.

Unless you become childlike, innocent, you cannot know the truth. Innocence is the path that leads to ultimate truth.

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "BECAUSE OF THIS."

DOGO ASKED, "WHY DON'T YOU THROW IT AWAY?"

He was still not understanding the master. That is the difficulty with so-called scholars, professors, knowledgeable people. He did not hear what the master has said; on the contrary, he is saying, "Why don't you throw it away? This kind of boy is not going to become a buddha."

Yakusan replied, "BECAUSE I HAVE USED IT FOR A LONG TIME. I cannot throw him away, because I have used innocence as a path towards enlightenment my whole life." A beautiful anecdote.…

Meditation makes you innocent, it makes you childlike. In that state, miracles are possible. That state is pure magic. A great transformation happens -- in innocence you transcend the mind, and to transcend the mind is to become the awakened one, the enlightened one.

This is the only revolution, real revolution: the great rebellion that happens within you.

This is what the Soviet Union needs today. Basho wrote:

LONELY IS MY WAY!

NO ONE PASSES HERE BUT I, LATE THIS AUTUMN DAY.

Just visualize the late autumn day: soon the sunset, soon there will be multi- colors, psychedelic colors, on the horizon -- a beautiful autumn day. No one passes here but I.

He is talking about his inside. "No one passes here but I -- lonely is my way." Lonely is everybody's way. The master can only indicate, can point his finger to the moon, but you should look at the moon, not at the finger. If you look at the finger, you miss the moon; you miss the master, his indication.

And that's what has happened to all so-called religions. They are holding fingers: somebody the finger of Jesus, somebody the finger of Krishna, somebody the

finger of Mohammed. Nobody is looking at the moon. And because these people themselves don't understand, they are very joyful -- "My finger is being caught by six hundred million Catholics!" The pope is immensely happy: "Six hundred million Catholics holding my finger?"

But the question is not the finger; the question is the moon.

And the path is alone. It is the moon within you. The master can indicate.…

I am doing it every day, indicating where to go, how to go, how much energy is needed to reach there, what kind of experiences will be happening on the path and what kind of experiences will be happening when you have reached to the center of your being. I can only indicate, but you have to go. If you don't go, I am helpless.

Question 3

Maneesha has asked a question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

NEITHER COMMUNISM NOR ZEN HAVE A GOD AS A CENTRAL HYPOTHESIS

ON WHICH A BELIEF SYSTEM IS BASED. DOES THIS IMPLY THAT RUSSIA MIGHT HAVE A GREATER AFFINITY WITH ZEN THAN THE WEST HAS?

Certainly, Maneesha. The Soviet Union will be more capable and receptive because it has dropped all gods and all the superstitions surrounding God. It has dropped all consolations, all opium. It has dropped all that has been forced on man for millennia.

The Soviet Union is almost in a state of innocence. But the danger is that this innocence can be exploited if the Soviet leaders are not conscious about it, that there is an innocent mind which has been created in seventy years and this can be exploited by organized religions very easily.

Keep the organized religions out! The Soviet Union needs a totally different kind of religiousness which these organized religions cannot supply -- they don't have

it themselves. The Soviet Union needs a contemporary man -- with no past, absolutely present, now and here -- who can help this innocence to blossom into blue lotuses.

The Soviet Union has much more possibility than the capitalist West. In fact, the capitalist countries of the West used to call the Soviet Union "the East," although it is not the East. But they include it in the East; they don't consider it to be a Western country.

Perhaps it is a good sign! Unconsciously they have called it the East. It can really become the East, and far better than the East is, because the East is poor. The East has the roof, but it does not have the pillars, it does not have the foundation. Under the roof people are being crushed, dying of starvation. It knows the inner world but it has no idea that the outer world is not unreal; it is as real as the inner.

Both are real, both are existential, and both need to have a synchronicity, a harmony between matter and spirit, between that which can be seen and that which cannot be seen.

A deep accord is needed.

Yes, Maneesha, the Soviet Union has much more vulnerability, much more receptivity than the capitalist West. The capitalist West is too much in the mind, too much in the thinking. The Western part of the world still follows people like Aristotle and Socrates --

great giants, but confined only to the refinement of the mind. Socrates and his dialogues are beautiful, the highest that mind can reach. And Aristotle is the father of Western logic. All the philosophers of the West, from ancient Greece to Germany... Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach... to the contemporary world -- Sartre, Jaspers, Marcel, Soren Kierkegaard, Bertrand Russell, Whitehead, G.E. Moore -- they are all in the same line of intellectual giants. But they don't know anything about meditation, and they will argue against meditation. They will say there is nothing beyond the mind -- and without experimenting!

A strange thing I remember... In Greece, traditionally it was believed that women don't have the same number of teeth as men. Obviously, the reason is that the woman should be in every way second-rate to man. How can she have the same number of teeth as man?

Aristotle had two wives, not one -- he could have asked wife number one, or number two, "Just let me count your teeth." Or while they were asleep, he could have counted their teeth. And most women are continuously talking, and they don't have a moustache like me. You cannot count my teeth. Even just when they were talking he could have managed to count, but he depended on his logic that certainly women are a lower category than men -- just a male chauvinist idea. In his book of logic, he writes that

"Women have fewer teeth than men." Logic is non-experimental.

Science is experimental, and Zen -- which is the science of the inner -- is also experimental. Just the inner experiment is called "experience," and the outer experience is called "experiment."

But unless you experience and experiment with the inner, you don't have any right to deny that there is anything beyond the mind. Have you gone beyond the mind? Have you reached beyond the mind, just trying to find out whether there is something beyond the mind? No one -- neither Russell nor Soren Kierkegaard nor Martin Heidegger --

nobody has tried to reach beyond the mind.

Martin Heidegger has written a book on Zen, but that book is also just intellectual. And you can see that the man was not a meditator, because he was a follower of Adolf Hitler.

That was a great intellectual giant of Germany, and still he followed a madman, a crackpot, Adolf Hitler. That shows the level of his insight, that he knows nothing about the inner. No man of meditation will follow Adolf Hitler.

That's why I said, by vocation I am a logician, by mistake I am a mystic. Because to be sane in an insane world is very difficult and hard. That's why I call it a mistake.

But I would love you to commit the mistake. I love to corrupt people! Their morality, their religion... anything you give me and I will corrupt it! Corruption is my business.

It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Now he has come back, with his rainbow turban.

Where is he sitting...?

(OSHO LOCATES SARDARJI BY HIS UNMISTAKEABLE LAUGHTER, AND

ACKNOWLEDGES HIS RETURN WITH A SMILE.)

There is a job opening at the local zoo for two men to clean out the gorilla cages. Paddy and Seamus go directly from the pub to apply.

"Before I give you lads the job," says Duckworth Bird, the head keeper, "I want to ask you a few questions."

"Okay," says Paddy, "I am ready!"

"The first question," says Duckworth. "What bird does not build its own nest?" "That's easy," says Seamus. "It is a canary. He lives in a cage."

"That's not it, you idiot," says Paddy, digging Seamus in the ribs with his elbow. "It's a cuckoo!"

"Very good, Paddy," says Duckworth Bird. "How did you know?" "Ah!" replies Paddy, "everybody knows that a cuckoo lives in a clock!"

Hamish MacTavish and Sandy MacPherson go mountaineering in the Swiss Alps.

Suddenly, Hamish loses his footing, slips and falls off a cliff into a deep crevasse.

Sandy MacPherson pokes his head over the cliff and just sees the fingertips of his Scottish friend clinging to a rock.

"Are you all right, Hamish?" shouts Sandy.

"Not exactly," gasps Hamish. "But if you run down to the village ten miles back,

and get some rope, I will try to hang on until you get back. But hurry, for God's sake!"

Sandy MacPherson goes running off down the mountainside.

An hour later, his face suddenly reappears over the edge of the precipice. "Are you still there, Hamish?" he shouts.

"Jeezus Christ! Just barely!" shouts back Hamish, hanging on by one hand. "Have you got the rope?"

"Ah!" replies MacPherson, "No! Those tight Swiss bastards wanted two francs for it!"

Old Father Fumble is invited to the local high school for its graduation ceremonies. But he is shocked and scandalized by some of the latest fashion outfits worn by the girls.

"Look at that youngster!" cries Fumble to the person next to him -- "the one with the orange hair, the cigarette, and the purple pants. Is it a boy or a girl?"

"A girl!" snaps his companion. "And by the way, she is my daughter."

"I am sorry, sir," says the flustered Fumble. "Do forgive me -- I would never had said anything had I known you were her father."

"I'm not, you idiot!" says the other. "I am her mother!" Nivedano...

(Gibberish) Nivedano... Be silent.

Close your eyes.

Feel your body to be completely frozen.

This is the right moment to look inwards. Gather your whole life energy and rush towards the center of your being -- with total consciousness, with an urgency as if this is going to be your last moment on the earth. Without this urgency you will never reach to the center.

Faster and faster... deeper and deeper.

As you start coming closer to your center, a great silence descends over you.

The closer you are... you find fountains of peace and serenity surrounding you. As you reach to the very center, for the first time you know who you are -- the buddha.

The buddha simply means the awakened one -- it has nothing to do with Gautam Buddha. He was one of the buddhas among thousands of buddhas... of course the most well-known buddha. But his name was not Buddha, his name was Gautam Siddharth.

Buddha was his awakening.

The same awakening, the same silence you are in... the same blossoming of your center into a lotus flower. You must have seen Gautam Buddha's statues sitting on a lotus flower.…

This moment, Gautam the Buddha Auditorium is full of ten thousand buddhas.

You have to remember only one quality. Buddha consists only of one quality: witnessing.

Just being a witness -- without any judgment, without any identification; just watching as if you are only a mirror.

Witness that you are not the body.

Witness that you are not the mind.

Witness that you are only a witness. Just pure consciousness.…

And suddenly you come in touch with your eternal life, with your immortal being.

Suddenly you have come very close to the heartbeat of the cosmos. Your being a buddha is the door to the cosmos.

To make this witnessing more clear, Nivedano... Relax...

Let go of the body, but keep remembering one thing: that you are a buddha. And the buddha has only one quality; he is made up of only one thing -- that is witnessing.

The whole religious experience can be reduced to a single word:

witnessing.

And as you get deeper into witnessing, you start melting like ice into the ocean; the Buddha Auditorium suddenly turns into an ocean of pure consciousness without any ripples, without any waves -- just so utterly silent.

Flowers from the beyond start raining on you in celebration of your achievement. This moment you are the most blessed people on the earth.

The evening was beautiful on its own. But in coming closer to your ultimate nature, buddhahood, you have made it a splendor, a miracle, a magical moment.

Just gather all the flowers and the fragrances

and the juices of life.

You have to bring them with you.

And don't forget

to persuade the buddha to come along.

First he will come, slowly slowly, as a shadow to you. He has been hiding at the center for millions of years. You have to bring him back from the center to the circumference of your life.

First he will be just behind you as a shadow.

In the second step, you will be behind him as a shadow. In the third step, you will merge into the buddha -- and the buddha is pure consciousness; hence it casts no shadow. It is absolutely transparent.

The moment you become a buddha in your day-to-day existence -- chopping wood, carrying water from the well -- that day will be the greatest day in your life.

The day of awakening... the day of being reborn as a buddha. In this very moment you are so close to it.

Persuade him to come along with you. He is your ultimate nature, so he cannot deny your request. Welcome him.

Nivedano...

Come back, but come back with great peace, silence, tranquility, serenity. Come back as a buddha, with all grace.

Sit for a few seconds just to remember where you have been, what golden path you have followed.

Remember who is behind you -- the buddha. He has to come in front of you.

These are the three steps of Zen:

First the buddha comes behind you as a shadow.

Second, he comes in front of you; you become the shadow.

Third, the shadow disappears into the buddha. Only a transparent consciousness remains which is eternal -- absolute freedom, love, compassion, beauty, godliness.

This I call the Zen Fire and the Zen Wind. Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.

Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind Chapter #3

Chapter title: This I call Zen Fire, Zen Wind

1 February 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium Archive

code: 8902015

ShortTitle: FIRE03

Audio: Yes Video: Yes

Length:

200

mins

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

THE MONK, SOMPU, WAS ONCE WASHING A BUDDHA STATUE. YAKUSAN

CAME AND ASKED HIM, "NOW YOU ARE WASHING THIS, BUT CAN YOU

WASH THAT?"

SOMPU REPLIED, "PLEASE GET THAT AND BRING IT TO ME." THE MASTER DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING.

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, WHEN YAKUSAN WAS SITTING DOWN, A MONK

CAME UP TO HIM AND SAID, "OSHO, YOU ARE SITTING SILENTLY. WHAT

ARE YOU THINKING?"

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "I'M THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE." THE MONK SAID, "HOW DO YOU THINK THE UNTHINKABLE?" YAKUSAN REPLIED, "NON-THINKING."

WHEN YAKUSAN WAS ABOUT TO DIE, HE YELLED OUT, "THE HALL IS

FALLING DOWN! THE HALL IS FALLING DOWN!"

THE MONKS BROUGHT VARIOUS THINGS AND BEGAN TO PROP IT UP.

YAKUSAN THREW UP HIS HANDS AND SAID, "NO ONE OF YOU UNDERSTOOD WHAT I MEANT!"

Friends, Question 1

One of the sannyasins has asked:

WHY DOES COMMUNISM NEED A DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT?

WHY NOT DEMOCRACY?

In a democracy you cannot change the status quo, you cannot change the class- divided society into a classless society.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is not an ordinary dictatorship of an Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini. It is a dictatorship of the poor, the have-nots. Unless the have-nots have the power, they cannot stop the exploitation by the rich.

In a democracy it is almost impossible for the poor to have the power for the simple reason that the rich people have enough money to fight elections, enough money even to buy the poor and their votes, enough money to buy the politicians. It is impossible in a democracy for the poor to have power, and without power there is no possibility of changing the society. Hence, Karl Marx proposed the idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Karl Marx was not a practical man. He was a great thinker, a great dreamer, a great utopian; in short, he was a stargazer. He spent his whole life in the library of the British Museum. Before the museum would open he was standing at the door, and it was with difficulty that the museum staff would force him out, physically, when the museum was closing.

It happened many times that without eating, without drinking... he was so deeply concentrated in finding the root causes of poverty and how to destroy it, looking into different sources, all the possible literature that might give some clue, that the museum staff had to call the ambulance from the hospital, because he would faint on his table. He would become unconscious -- no food, no water, just

working out the whole plan for a utopia.

Communism is his great contribution to the world. But it has come out of a thinker's mind, dreamer's mind, and practical life is totally different from logic. His whole idea was that soon the poor would become poorer and the rich would become richer -- it seems perfectly logical -- and the middle class would disperse. A few would rise up and become richer, and more would fall down and become poor. When the society is absolutely divided between the proletariat, the have-nots, and the bourgeois, the haves.…

Obviously the bourgeois cannot be in the majority, because there is tremendous competition; every rich man is trying to pull down other rich men by the legs. Everybody is trying to climb the ladder higher than the others. So those who reach the highest point of being super-rich are going to be, obviously, a minority. The poor will be the majority, and because they don't have anything... Karl Marx's great work, THE COMMUNIST

MANIFESTO, ends with the line: "Proletariat of the world unite. You don't have anything to lose except your chains, and you have the whole world to gain, the whole power, the whole society in your hands."

This is how logic functions, but life does not agree with it. He completely forgot the implications. He was thinking that the first country to become a communist country would be America, but America seems to be going perfectly well. There is no question at all of America becoming a communist country unless it is invaded and forced to become communist. From its inner sources, it is not going to become a communist country for a simple reason: the middle class has not disappeared and is not going to disappear.

That was completely overlooked by Marx. He thought that a few people would become richer, more ambitious, more competitive, more efficient. The others would fall down and become poorer. But he forgot the other side of the coin: that a few rich people will go bankrupt and become middle class, and a few poor people will start struggling and fighting and will join the middle class, so the middle class is not going to disappear. And it has not disappeared.

And the middle class is absolutely against any revolution, for the simple reason that they have much to lose. In revolution there is going to be chaos. And the middle class is not going to share its possessions with the millions of poor

people.

Marx also forgot completely -- that shows how just thinking is not enough; a practical, down-to-earth approach is needed to change the society -- he forgot completely that even the poor may not be complete have-nots. The American poor may not have a Rolls Royce, but he has a Chevrolet, he has a house, he has a wife, he has children. His children are his ambitions, he is teaching them and they will become richer. But even the poor man has a car, a house, and he is afraid that in the sharing of wealth he may lose his car, his house. The proletariat has not turned out completely to be have-nots, so they are not ready for any revolution. Yes, they are ready for more and more facilities for the poor, but they are not going to be for the revolution.

America has the poorest and smallest Communist Party in the world, which has no power at all.

It happened in the Soviet Union: after the revolution a journalist was asking a poor man,

"Are you really a communist?" He said, "Yes, I am a communist." The journalist asked,

"If you had two cars, would you give one to your neighbor?" He said, "Of course."

"If you had two horses, would you give one to your neighbors?" He said, "Of course."

"If you had two cows, would you give one cow to your poor neighbors?" He said, "Yes."

And the journalist finally asked, "If you have two hens, are you going to give one hen to your neighbors?" He said, "No!"

The journalist said, "But this is absolutely illogical."

The man said, "It is not illogical. I have two hens -- I don't have two cars, I don't have two houses, I don't have two horses, two cows. That which I don't have, who cares? -- I can give. But two hens I have got, and I'm not going to give them!"

When you have something, then the problem arises.

So according to Marx nobody is really a have-not in America; hence there is no possibility of a communist revolution.

In Russia it was a miracle, because it was not even a capitalist country. And that was the idea of Karl Marx, that communist revolution can happen only in a capitalist country where there will be poor people in the majority, and rich people in the minority. The poor can overthrow the rich very easily, there is no question of much violence or any trouble.

Russia was not even a capitalist country. It was a feudal country, far more backward than a capitalist country. There were no poor, no proletariat, no labor unions. And there was not a class of rich people; there were just a few -- the emperor, the czar, a small aristocracy. They were not owners of factories, they were owners of land, and on their land they had slaves to do the work.

Now a slave is taken care of by the landlord because unless he is strong enough, he will not be able to work on the land. The slave is not a machine, so he has to be given good food, good clothes... in winter he has to be given warmer clothes. So the slaves were not have-nots; in fact, they were enjoying everything. The aristocrats had to keep them in good health -- medical facilities, good clothes, houses which are healthy and hygienic, because unless those slaves are powerful and strong they will not be able to work the vast lands, thousands of acres. Miles and miles of land one aristocrat would have, and thousands of slaves. It was a totally different situation.

Marx never thought about a Soviet Russia. He never thought that Russia was going to become a communist country. That's how theorization fails. Life takes its own course; it does not follow your logic, your philosophy.

In Russia the revolution happened. It was not a communist revolution in fact, because it was not a fight between the have-nots and the haves.

It happened during the first world war. The czar was not equipped well enough to fight Germany. Neither were the communists ready to fight in Russia -- a small group of thinkers, they were not hoping that there was going to be a revolution there. Even capitalism had not come, which was going to produce the haves and have-nots, so it was very far away.

Even Lenin, who was to become the head of the first communist country in the world, was in Germany -- because in Germany the emperor had relaxed the power and given it to the people. It was becoming a democracy, and the Communist Party in Germany was the biggest party so there was every chance it would come into power. Lenin was there to direct them.

But instead of the Communist Party -- which it was logical to conclude would succeed -

- Adolf Hitler came in between. And Adolf Hitler was neither a thinker nor a philosopher. He was absolutely a fanatic, insane man, and his party, the Nazi Party, began with only nineteen soldiers. These soldiers had been found to be unfit for the army, so they were unemployed and they wanted to do something. Adolf Hitler himself was thrown out of the army because he was psychologically unfit.

These nineteen people gathered together in a small hotel and created the Nazi Party of Germany, with Adolf Hitler as the leader. Because he was a fanatic, he was very emphatic about everything he said. And his strategy was very strange -- because he had not a great following, he created a new strategy. It looks absurd, but it worked.

His whole strategy was not to bother about gathering more and more people, gathering membership for the Nazi Party; he knew that was not going to happen. He had no philosophy to offer, no program for the future -- why should they join his party? So he started disturbing the communist meetings. Those nineteen people -- they were all soldiers -- would sit in the communist meetings in separate places, and whenever the communist leader would start speaking, they would create trouble. They would start beating people, whoever was by their side; it was not a question of whom. Just nineteen people would disturb a meeting of ten thousand people or twenty thousand people. And when there are beatings going on, you cannot speak. They were throwing stones at the speaker, they were hitting the audience.

Slowly slowly, it became clear that you are safe only in Adolf Hitler's meetings; you are not safe in any other meeting. When Adolf Hitler would speak, obviously, those nineteen people were standing around the crowd watching that nobody creates any mischief.

People went to hear Adolf Hitler just because that was the only safe meeting. You could come home alive! This is how Adolf Hitler came to power, because he disturbed all meetings of the communists, which was the greatest party and was logically bound to succeed -- but could not succeed because it could not approach the masses. Communist leaders would call a meeting and nobody would come.

Only Adolf Hitler was listened to all over the country, and slowly slowly he started gathering followers because he seemed to be the only savior. All others had left the area.

And nobody knew his strategy; it became known only after Adolf Hitler wrote in his autobiography about how he came into power. Just those nineteen people managed to do the work.

The first thing was to disturb everybody's meeting. And there was no propaganda from anybody else -- if the Communist Party was putting up posters, those nineteen people were removing the posters in the night. In the morning people would see only Adolf Hitler's posters; every other poster was removed. They would never know that there were any other posters.

A very strange strategy, but he succeeded the emperor. The emperor had to leave his monarchy because in the first world war Germany was defeated badly, and the whole blame went to the emperor because he was not adequate to create enthusiasm in the people to fight for their country. Because of the defeat of Germany in the first world war, the emperor had to leave it in the hands of democracy.

At the same time the Russian armies, who were fighting with Germany, became very frustrated with the czar, because the czar had a very primitive army, absolutely out-of-date. No proper clothes in the falling snow, no proper boots, no leather coats, not enough guns, not enough food either. So the Russian armies became so frustrated that they turned against the czar.

At that moment, Lenin immediately rushed from Germany to Russia. Soldiers are soldiers; they are not leaders of men. Lenin was a great organizer; he immediately organized the soldiers and became the head of the revolt against the czar. It was the birth of the Soviet Union, not out of the fight between the proletariat and the bourgeois, but out of the fight between the czar and his own

army. The army was angry, frustrated -- "We have been thrown into a war for which we are not ready. We are being killed unnecessarily." And Lenin provoked them.

He was a very good organizer. He organized the army and now the czar was left alone.

Nineteen persons of the czar's family -- even a six-month-old baby -- were immediately murdered. If his own armies are against him, how can he remain in power?

Lenin was a good organizer. But if he had remained in power, perhaps communism would not have been possible. He was a man of great compassion and love. He was a communist out of compassion and love; he wanted the poor to disappear from the earth.

But he was not perfectly clear. When the power comes into your hands, what are you going to do with it? How are you going to destroy poverty?

We have seen it in India. This is a very difficult problem, very complex problem. After forty-two years of freedom, India is in a worse position than it was under slavery. More poor people, more poverty, more population, and problems have doubled. Prices have gone up twenty, thirty, fifty times more, and the salaries have remained almost the same.

The poor have become immensely poor and are on the verge of starving to death. What happened? These great revolutionaries who were fighting against the British Empire had no program.

My whole family was involved in the freedom struggle. My uncles lost their whole lives; one of my uncles was in his graduation class in the university and he was caught and jailed. And once a person was jailed under the British Empire, he was never again allowed to enter any university or college. Another uncle, who had just passed matriculation, was caught in the freedom struggle and after he was released, could not go back to any educational institution. Both the uncles lost their careers and the family suffered immensely.

Even in my very childhood, I remember I used to ask my father, "I can understand that you are against the British Empire. This is freedom from. But what are you going to do when you have got the freedom -- freedom for what?"

And he would shrug his shoulders. He would say to me, "The leaders know." But the leaders were as much unaware.…

You may have sometimes seen a dog who runs after a car, barking, and with great speed.

And if the man in the car stops, the dog looks all around, embarrassed -- "What to do now?" -- miles of unnecessary running and barking. And that happens to all revolutionaries. Miles of trouble! Fighting, murder, being killed, jailed, and when they get into power they look just like the dog, embarrassed. "What to do now?"

India has been in the hands of the revolutionaries, but they could not do anything. In fact, a revolutionary is not the right person to be in power. But this is a very difficult problem.

Because the revolutionary wins the freedom, naturally he comes into power. But he knows only how to revolt, he does not know how to consolidate a society. He does not know anything of the economics, of the finances, of the people's psychology.

He can provoke people to fight, to destroy the empire, to destroy all kinds of slavery. He is a good orator, influential; he has an impressive personality, charisma, but when he comes into power he looks just like the dog, embarrassed: "Now whom to provoke?" He is in power, and his whole life has been just a life of provocation, revolt. He has never learned anything about how to rule.

But in Russia the miracle happened. All the great revolutionaries in Russia... Lenin was the main one, but he had no charisma. He was an organizer behind the scenes, he had no personality which you can call impressive. In fact he had a very deep inferiority complex for a strange reason. His legs were very small in comparison to his upper body. His legs never reached to the earth while he was sitting on a chair, they were just dangling. This was his immense inferiority complex. So only behind the scenes... He could organize, manage, give whole programs for how to do things, but he was not a charismatic man.

But he had at his right hand a really charismatic philosopher, thinker, dreamer, and a great orator, Trotsky. So Lenin was behind the scenes organizing, and Trotsky was the great revolutionary orator, very impressive personality, to provoke people. But he was only a good orator. A charismatic personality is not

needed when you come into power.

What are you going to do with your charisma? There is no public, no speech, no oratory.…

It was a strange coincidence that a man who was not in the forefront of the revolutionaries, Joseph Stalin... he was just the general secretary of the party, which was a position of no importance. Sitting in his secretariat's room, he was working on the files and membership, and this and that, correspondence, letters. The public had no idea of Joseph Stalin.

Stalin was not his real name. In Russian, Stalin means "a man of steel." This man was absolutely practical. He had no philosophical bent of the mind. Not a theoretician, he had nothing to do with any philosophical background; he looked to the reality and faced it brutally.

He kept Lenin under the influence of poison, because he was the head, and so that after the revolution Lenin could not really come into power. He was suffering under continuous poisoning, slow poisoning. It took two years for him to die. And Joseph Stalin was behind the poisoning, he was keeping his own doctor to look after Lenin. Lenin's wife, Krupskaya, wrote in her autobiography, "I am absolutely certain that my husband has been killed by poisoning, because he never became as healthy as he had always been." For two years he was continuously sick, and the doctor was treating him, and his treatment was making him sicker and sicker. And Stalin was absolutely adamant not to bring in any other doctor.

Just keeping Lenin sick, Stalin became more and more powerful. In the name of Lenin, who was almost in a coma, he started ordering a mass murder of all the revolutionaries --

Kamenev, Zinovyev, Trotsky, all the great revolutionaries who had come into power.

Trotsky was the defense minister. Nine revolutionaries... eight simply disappeared, nobody knows to where. Stalin killed them quickly. He was a very quick man. Seeing the situation... as the defense minister, Trotsky had all the power over the army. But he was just a revolutionary; he had no idea what to do with the army. He escaped from Russia, but Stalin was not a man to take any risk. His murderer, a paid murderer, followed Trotsky.

Trotsky was staying in Mexico, hiding, and was writing the biography of Joseph Stalin to make clear to the world that this man had killed all the revolutionaries and taken over all the power. As he was finishing the biography of Stalin -- it is a big book, perhaps one thousand pages of very detailed description of each murder, how it happened, how the person was removed in the middle of the night

-- just the last page he was finishing, when he was killed with an axe. Behind him was standing the murderer. As he finished the paragraph, the last paragraph, an axe cut his head in two parts. The last page is full of blood.

It looks very cruel, inhuman. But it was Joseph Stalin who managed the Soviet Union, because it was confronting on enemies two sides. Enemies from within... the Russian Orthodox Church, the intellectuals, the people who did not want to share their property --

even the poor masses. As I told you, a man who has only two hens will not share

-- that's all he has. The masses are the greatest enemy of their own welfare. So you will be surprised to know that one million Russians were killed by Joseph Stalin, and these were not the rich people. These were the poor people who were adamant, stubborn.

Without Joseph Stalin, communism would not have succeeded -- although it succeeded out of violence, murder, massacre. First he had to finish all the enemies inside the country, and then he had to make an iron wall around the Soviet Union, because the whole world was against him. All the capitalist countries were against him, against communism, because if communism succeeds in one country it is going to succeed in every country. It is better to kill it in the beginning, because soon it will be gaining more and more strength and it will become impossible to stop it.

The whole credit for protecting the Soviet Union and communism goes to Joseph Stalin.

But of course he had to use murder, no trials in the courts, no wastage of time. He had not much time to waste in fighting in the courts. Simply finishing people immediately, just on a suspicion.…

It used to be said, and is still said in every capitalist country, that "You cannot kill one innocent man, even if you have to leave ninety-nine criminals just to save one innocent man." Joseph Stalin turned the whole thing upside down. He

said, "You cannot leave one criminal, even if you have to kill ninety-nine innocent men."

So it is not a question of individuals, it is not a question of innocence, it is a question of saving communism at any cost.

Although he is the architect of Soviet Union, his successors started condemning him for his dictatorial methods -- murder, massacre, mass massacre. But the successors don't know that they would not have been here if Stalin had not done the dirty work for them.

You will be surprised to know that he was buried by the side of Lenin's grave in Red Square near the Kremlin, because he was the man second to Lenin. His successors dragged his body from Red Square, and sent it back to the Caucasus from where he had come -- a mountainous country, primitive, tribal, so nobody can even go there to see his grave.

I can understand the successors. Khrushchev was giving his first talk when he became head of the Soviet Union after Stalin. And he had been a colleague to Stalin for almost his whole life. In his first speech he exposed Stalin, and he said, "He was the greatest murderer humanity has known."

Now the question of communism became secondary. His murders... which were not his personal grudge against anybody; he was simply trying to save one of the greatest experiments in human history, and there was no other way to do it. So I know it is evil, but there was no alternative. When there is no alternative you have to choose the evil.

Khrushchev, addressing the Communist Party, said, "Stalin was the greatest murderer, and I am going to remove his grave from Red Square. He should not be given any respect. And I am going to burn all his books."

One man from the back, sitting in the dark, said, "You have been with him your whole life. Why did you not say it before?"

There was utter silence for a moment. Then Khrushchev said, "Comrade, whoever has said it, please stand up." Nobody stood. Khrushchev said, "Now you know why I was silent. I did not want to be murdered, just as you don't want to be murdered. Just stand up and you would disappear! So I had to keep my thoughts to myself; even walls had ears at the time of Stalin."

He had managed in such a way... he had a party, a Communist Party for small children, and they were trained to spy on their parents. What they said in their houses the children had to report to the Party. Then the youth had their own youth league, and they had to be aware that anything against communism -- it does not matter whether it is your mother or your father -- had to be reported immediately.

Women had their own Communist Party and they were taught the same programming, that it is a question of saving this great experiment. Anybody, it does not matter -- he may be your husband, but you have to report it. It may be your wife, you have to report it.

And once reported it was never asked whether the report was true, whether the report was reason to kill the man. In the middle of the night the KGB, the Russian equivalent of the CIA, would knock on the door. The man would open the door, and the KGB agent would tell him to follow, and the family knew: "That man is gone. You will never hear anything about that man."

So it is true, it was a very cruel effort. But the reason was that without this cruelty... all around the Soviet Union there were sitting vultures, all the capitalist countries of the world, ready to destroy it.

He had to give as little nourishment to the people as possible; his whole concentration was to create more arms and a bigger army, because the enemies were too many, and all around. People can eat one time a day, people can have only two or three sets of clothes -

- there is no need to have many. We need the army as a priority; otherwise we will be destroyed.

It was Stalin who managed to bring the Soviet Union out of a small feudal state, into a world power, the world's biggest power.

Now Gorbachev is again a visionary, like Marx, and does not understand the practical necessities of reality. And you will be surprised to know -- the whole American propaganda machine is pressurizing the world news media to make Gorbachev a great hero. It is the American strategy to make him a great hero and praise all the things he is doing by withdrawing all the iron curtains, by reducing armaments, by reducing the budget for the army -- forty percent of the budget has been reduced right now, and every year he is going to cut it. Nuclear

weapons have been stopped; for two years they have not created any nuclear weapons. They want Gorbachev to become such a big celebrity that it becomes a matter of his personal prestige -- not communism, not the Soviet Union. Whatever happens to the Soviet Union is not the issue: Gorbachev becomes the great man of history who changed a dictatorship into a democracy.

But once this starts happening, communism will disappear -- not only from the Soviet Union but from every small communist pocket around the world, because they all depend on the Soviet Union's support.

Yesterday I told you the Hare Krishna movement has been given land there. Today I received the news that a Vivekananda center is being opened, a branch of the Ramakrishna Mission. Now this is going to destroy the whole country. These were the people Stalin killed! These were the people... he'd throw them into Siberia just to die.

These people are now entering in the name of democracy.

My understanding is that the Soviet Union is not yet ready to open its doors. It is an American conspiracy to praise Gorbachev through the news media --not directly; directly they will oppose him, but in the news media praise him highly: "He is doing a great service to the Soviet people. What Stalin has done, he has to undo. Withdraw the dictatorship, make the country democratic, open all the doors."

Now what has the Vivekananda center to do in Russia? What has Ramakrishna to do with Russia?

Ramakrishna became enlightened only in the last stage of his life, and that too because of a wandering mystic, Totapuri. I have told you the story. But his whole life he was just suffering from epileptic fits. His whole religion was based on the Mother Goddess; it was emotional, it was a religion of prayer. He was a nice man, he would dance before the Mother Goddess, he would sing songs and praise the Mother Goddess, but the Mother Goddess is more primitive than the Father God!

The Mother Goddess came into existence before the family came into existence. At that time you were not certain who was your father. You were certain who was your mother because the mother gave birth, and the mother was raising the children. The family had not yet come into existence. Of all the people who were

the right age, one of them must be the father, but nobody knew.

So you will not be surprised to know that the word ùncle' is more ancient than the word

`father'. All people of the age of the probable father, were called uncles. It was a tribal world; the mother was certain and everybody else was an uncle, someone anonymous must have been the father. And because there was no fixed family, the mother was not bound to have only one person to love her; even she might not be certain who made her pregnant. It was a very flowing world, in which partners were continuously changing and there was nobody who was called father.

So the Father God is a very recent invention. After the family became established and the father became the head of the family, then God the Father came as a fiction. Before that, the whole world was a matriarchy; the mother was the most important phenomenon.

Obviously, the mother was projected as the goddess who has created the world.

Ramakrishna was worshipping in the most primitive religion, and I don't support him until the point when he met Totapuri -- that was the very last phase.

I was surprised... I have met many Ramakrishna Mission sannyasins, monks, well known, world famous, but they don't mention the last phase when Ramakrishna accepted Totapuri as his master. They hide that fact, because Ramakrishna accepting somebody as a master feels humiliating to these people. Totapuri helped Ramakrishna to become enlightened, but it happened only in the last days of his life. Those days and the meeting of Totapuri are not mentioned, are not even known by the monks of Ramakrishna Mission. They go on propagating Ramakrishna's emotional worship of the Mother Goddess.

Now today they have been given land to build a big center, Vivekananda Center, a branch of the Ramakrishna Mission. What will they do? They will teach worship of a very primitive kind.

As I told you, whatever Gorbachev is doing looks right, but it can backfire. It can destroy the whole experiment. Dictatorship was absolutely needed because there were so many enemies all around.

You know perfectly well how our commune in America has been destroyed, because we had no armies to fight, and we were just a small pocket with a vast world power around us. Violently, illegally, against their constitution they destroyed the commune.

The same was the situation of the Soviet Union after the revolution. It was surrounded by the whole world, and everybody wanted to destroy it. It was Joseph Stalin's great, earthbound policies that protected the Soviet Union. He finished with all the monks, all the Christians, all the priests. And the Russian Orthodox Church is one of the most orthodox churches in the world -- used to be, now perhaps it will be again. He forced the monks to work in the fields. This is possible only in a dictatorship. In a democracy it is not possible, and if you do it in a democracy then your democracy is a hypocrisy.

At least Joseph Stalin was absolutely honest: he called it dictatorship. And he made it clear, that "I don't want to waste time. Any suspicion that you are against communism and you will be finished."

He changed all the churches into schools, hospitals, universities -- there were great monasteries that became universities -- and he made the monks work in the fields, in the orchards, because "You cannot have food if you don't work. Worship is your private affair, but work. The society feeds you, you have to work. In the night you can pray and do whatever you want, it is your private time." And he completely destroyed the organized religions of the Jews, of the Christians, of the Mohammedans.

It looks bad to our eyes, but I have a more comprehensive vision. I am against dictatorship, but for the interim course, while the society is moving from capitalism to communism, dictatorship is one of the necessary steps.

And Marx also thought in the same way, that dictatorship will remain only as an interim process. Once the society becomes classless, there is no need of dictatorship; there is no need of the state. He was in favor of no classes, no government, no bureaucracy. That will be the ultimate flowering.

But as I told you, he was a thinker, not a practical man. He did not see the point that one country may become communist, may become classless, but all the other countries around it are capitalist. You cannot withdraw the state, you cannot withdraw the dictatorship; otherwise all the surrounding countries will

enter into it. All the superstitions you have thrown out will come back with tremendous force. And they are coming.…

Gorbachev seems to be a nice man, has a very deep respect for democracy, but does not understand that in the name of democracy America is conspiring, and puffing up his personal ego that he is a great leader, a great pacifier. If all this gets into his head it is going to kill communism, and that will be a great loss to humanity.

The second question is connected with the first. Another sannyasin has asked: Question 2

WHY HAS THE STATE NOT DISAPPEARED AFTER SEVENTY YEARS?

Because the world is still not communist. Unless the whole world is communist, the state cannot disappear; neither can dictatorship disappear. You will have to wait.

Marx's idea was that once the whole world becomes capitalist, it will soon turn to communism. That idea did not work. The capitalist countries have remained capitalist, and two great countries... the Soviet Union, which was not capitalist, has become the first communist country. And the second great country, China, which was also not capitalist, has become the second great communist country.

And he was not aware of personal egos. He was not a student of psychology, he was purely a student of economics. But in the hands of man, you have to understand everything through his psychology. The money may be the same, but in a miser's hand it has a different meaning; in a playboy's hand it has a different meaning. In a businessman's hand it has a different meaning, in a hungry man's hand it has a different meaning.

And it has different value in different hands. In a rich man's hand, one rupee has no value at all, but in a beggar's hand one rupee, perhaps, has come for the first time into his vision. It is the greatest richness. So the value differs according to the psychology and the personality. And Marx was not aware of the total personality of man.

I have been interested in the total personality of man: his body, his mind, his no- mind, his mortal existence and his immortal existence.

Marx was a pure economist, so he thought that once the society is equal... He forgot two things: one, those who will be in power for the interim period -- who is going to take the power out of their hands? Because power corrupts and corrupts absolutely. The people who are in power are not going to leave the power so easily as Marx thought. "When the society becomes classless, the state will disappear" -- but it is not so easy. Those who are in power are not going to leave their power. He was not aware of the psychology.

He thought that when two countries became communist, they would drop their boundaries. He was not at all aware of personal egos. For instance, China is against the Soviet Union, and both are communist countries. And the reason is absolutely trivial. The reason is, communism believes in Marx as the founder and Engels as the second founder

-- both were together. Engels himself was a capitalist, he owned many factories. It was because of Engels that Marx could live without working, just studying, studying, and finding causes and finding clues. It was possible because of the support, financial support from Engels; otherwise Marx would have been working and there would not have been a DAS KAPITAL or COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.

So Engels is number two in the hierarchy of the founders. Number three is Lenin. Stalin was hoping that when he died he would be number four, and certainly he deserves it.

With all his faults, with all his violence, he has protected a great experiment. Men after all, have to die; it is not such a great problem to make so much fuss.

Mao Zedong, who brought China to communism, was supported by Stalin for thirty years

-- because the revolution continued for thirty years; it was the greatest and longest revolution in world history.

Chiang Kai-Shek, who was the dictator of China, was a very strong man. He was thought to be one of the strongest men amongst five strong men in the world. And China is such a vast country. Over each inch there was a fight, inch by inch. Stalin gave them complete support: arms, armies, training for the Chinese -- because they share their boundaries; China and Russia meet on their boundaries. So he was training Chinese communists to be soldiers, and he was sending all

kinds of arms to Mao Zedong. For thirty years he supported him financially and in every possible way.

And when Mao Zedong came to power and Chiang Kai-shek was thrown out to his small island of Taiwan, which he had kept as his personal property, Mao wanted to be number five in the hierarchy. After Stalin, he wanted his name; that was the clash. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was not willing, because he had not contributed anything new, anything original, to communism.

And in fact, it was the Soviet Union who had supported him and brought him to power.

He himself had not even been a success on his own, so he could not be put as fifth in the hierarchy. This was the clash, a personal clash, which Karl Marx would have never thought -- that even personal clashes, egos, will keep two communist countries, based on the same idea, separate. Not only separate but inimical.

Now China is moving closer and closer to America, because China is afraid: the Soviet Union is far more powerful; unless America supports China, there is danger. And America is very happy that a great communist country is coming closer. China is also opening its doors because, who was trained by Stalin, is dead.

In forty years in India, nothing has happened. China became communist in 1951, four years after India became independent. Within ten years, by 1961, China became a world power. It was because of the training of Stalin and following the whole strategy of Stalin that China has raised itself to a world power.

Now America wants China to open its doors. That will be the end of Chinese communism. And the world press is praising Gorbachev too much, puffing up his ego, pumping up his personality into that of a big hero. That is the greatest danger to Soviet communism.

It is true that Marx has this idea that the state will disappear, and I love the idea because I am an anarchist myself. I don't want any government in the world, but my not wanting is not going to change anything. Till all crime disappears, till all rapes disappear, the state will be needed. So when Marx says that finally the state will disappear, don't think that the "finally" is coming soon. It will be finally.

It is a good idea -- the greatest idea is anarchism. And if out of communism, anarchism can grow -- which is not practical, because those who are in power will not easily leave their power -- and two communist countries, as Marx thought, would dissolve into one...

that has not happened. Yugoslavia remained under Tito, a separate country, because Tito himself wanted to be in the hierarchy. Just personal egos, of which Marx never thought anything; he was not a psychoanalyst.

And now again Gorbachev has completely forgotten the great struggle, the great bloodshed out of which communism has somehow survived. They have removed Stalin's name from the hierarchy. Now there are only three -- Marx, Engels and Lenin -- and perhaps Gorbachev is thinking he will be the fourth. But most probably he will be the end of communism in the Soviet Union.

To be absolutely frank and truthful, if he is not awakened quickly, and closes the doors to all kinds of enemies which are entering fast and quick, he will be the end of a tremendously beautiful idea. And humanity will never forgive him.

But he has now become absolutely powerful. The president in the Soviet Union used to be nominal, the prime minister was the real power. And behind the prime minister, the more real power was the secretary general of the Communist Party and the Communist Party's central group, the Politburo.

All the states had their one representative in the Politburo -- that was the commanding body -- and the general secretary was the head of the commanding body. Stalin continued to be the general secretary and the prime minister, so he was holding total power.

The same Gorbachev has done. He has changed the constitution of the Soviet Union according to America -- perhaps he must have been feeling, meeting "President" Ronald Reagan and he is just a prime minister... So now he is the president of the Soviet Union.

The prime minister is no longer powerful; it is a nominal post, just a rubber stamp. The president has all the power. And he has changed the whole commanding body of the Communist Party; he has put in his men. And he is also the general secretary of the Communist Party.

The third powerful agency is the KGB. That is their central intelligence, which

has immense power, more power than any other intelligence body around the world. He has changed the head of the KGB and put his own man as head of the KGB. So now everything is in his hands -- president, general secretary of the Communist Party, and the KGB is in his hands -- his man is there. So he has in fact more power than any man on the earth. If he uses it rightly, by making communism more prosperous, by making communism more creative, more spiritual, more scientific, he will be a great benediction not only to the Soviet Union but to the whole world.

But he can go wrong. And when one person has all the power and goes wrong it is a suicidal phenomenon. And there seems to be every possibility; he can go either way.

I would like him to understand clearly that we need the Soviet Union as a communist stronghold in the world, because sooner or later the whole world has to be turned to communism. Communism has to become the base, because it is a materialist philosophy and on that base can be raised the temple of spirituality.

But that temple will not be created by orthodox Christians or Hare Krishna people, or Jehovah's Witnesses, or the Ramakrishna Mission. These out-of-date, absolutely belonging to the bullock-cart age... when the bullock cart was invented, nobody knows.

These religions belong to the bullock-cart age. They are not going to help communism, which is a contemporary phenomenon. It needs not to go backwards. It needs a future orientation, not a past orientation. That's what is possible from Gorbachev's opening the doors -- all past-oriented people will enter into the country and destroy it.

He should be absolutely clear: open the doors, but open the doors for the future- oriented people. Open the doors not for organized religions, not for missions and missionaries --

they may be Christian or Hindu, it does not matter -- open the doors for individual awakened people who will not create any kind of organized obstacles for the growth of communism.

Every religion will be against communism -- Gorbachev does not understand it. Hinduism is against communism -- now what is a Vivekananda center going to

do in Russia? Teaching people that poverty has nothing to do with the capitalists, that your whole revolution is wrong, that you were suffering from your past lives' karmas, bad and evil acts, and you have done a great injustice to the capitalist people who were enjoying their past lives' good karmas, good acts. This is the Hindu philosophy. This is what Ramakrishna believed in and this is what Vivekananda believed in.

What is Christianity going to say to them? Don't disturb anything; let the world be as God created it. No revolution -- God has not given the idea of revolution at all, in any of his scriptures.

He has written so many scriptures! He is a great scholar; he writes the four Vedas of the Hindus, Koran Sharif of the Mohammedans, the Holy Bible of the Christians. God seems to be a great scholar -- but very contradictory, because all these scriptures contradict each other. And these religions will again bring God into the Soviet Union -- who has been forced out by Joseph Stalin, out of the gates of the Soviet Union the same way he turned Adam and Eve out of the gates of paradise.

The Soviet Union is in a very vulnerable state, because all the old people who have seen the revolution, who have been participants in the revolution, are dead. The new generation knows nothing.

Here is Haridas. He is one of my oldest sannyasins. He is German and he heard Adolf Hitler's name for the first time from me! Can you believe it? But he was born after the second world war.

Now in Russia nobody exists who has seen the revolution, who has seen how Stalin established communism with difficulty.

Gorbachev is not aware of the whole past and he is bringing the same enemies back in.

They will disrupt the whole society. And for seventy years the new generation that has come into existence after the revolution has been taught: "There is no God, there is no hell, there is no heaven. There is no future life, there is no past life -- this is all." But they are feeling a tremendous hollowness within themselves and that is a red signal for danger. Because they are feeling a hollowness -- that everything is good outside, but inside there seems to be nothing -- these people will rush in and fill their inside with beliefs, with

SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA, with the Koran, with the Bible, with Vedas, and destroy a great opportunity for meditation. None of these people are meditative.

Open the doors for scientists, for mystics, for meditators, for poets, for painters, for engineers, for doctors, for psychoanalysts. But don't open the door for orthodox, fanatic, organized religions. Don't open the door for capitalists and their agents. Otherwise you will spoil something so precious that all the utopians, all the people who have any vision for the future, have been dreaming of for centuries.

In the RIGVEDA, the ancientmost book in the world, comes the sentence, VASUDHAIVA KUTUMBAKAM -- "this whole earth should become one family."

Ninety thousand years ago some visionary, some mystic, was thinking in terms of this whole earth turning into one family. That was the old language for communism: this whole world becomes one commune.

Rather than looking at possibilities for how to turn the whole world into communes, which will be supportive to all communist revolutions... and as I said, I can bring to the Soviet Union the second revolution. The first revolution was material; the second revolution will be spiritual. Only then will Soviet citizens be able to cope with all kinds of idiots. Right now these idiots will destroy their innocence. Then they will turn them towards being exactly as the whole world is.

A great country -- one of the biggest countries in the world; it is one sixth of the whole earth -- and it is going to be a tremendous loss if Gorbachev does not understand the implications. Communism has to be saved and communism has to be transformed into a great spiritual revolution. He can do it; he has all the power. And only when the whole of humanity is meditative is the state of no use.

When the whole of humanity has become one family there is no need of anybody to dictate. When the whole of humanity has become intelligent, when the whole of humanity has dropped all miseries and is immensely blissful, the state has no function.

The powerful will feel absolutely out-of-date, old hat. They will disappear because their function is no more.

When no criminal turns up in the courts, what is the function of the courts? When there is no prostitution -- and that is possible only if there is no marriage -- what is the need of a registrar for marriage, and licenses for prostitutes?

Things are very clear if you have the clarity that comes only when you go beyond the mind. The higher you go the more you have a bird's-eye view of the whole situation of humanity.

Gorbachev himself, before he does any act against communism, needs a great training in meditation. And after that, whatever he will do will be right. I can see the man is certainly intelligent and has good intentions for humanity, is a peace- loving person, but he has no depth of meditation. These are all superficial mind values, which don't go deep enough.

They are only skin deep -- scratch just a little and all those values disappear.

Meditation brings transformation from the inside. It is not an imposition of morality and commandments from outside. Anything that comes from outside is worthless --

morality, religion, spirituality, whatever you call it. Only that which blossoms within you like a lotus has ultimate value. Out of that arising of consciousness, you cannot do evil.

Your every action will be spontaneous; it will come from your deepest being, and the deepest being cannot do any harm.

Then the state disappears. Then the world needs no hierarchy, no bureaucracy, no presidents, no prime ministers, no KGB, no CIA.

Every individual has to contribute to that final utopia -- and I am preparing you for that final stage when the state is useless, when the police are useless, when armaments are useless, when armies are just stupid, when we can all work together, create together, love together, rejoice together.

This very body the buddha -- this very earth the lotus paradise. But it will happen only -

- not according to Marx but according to me -- it will happen only when the whole world is full of buddhas. There is no other way. It is not an economic

revolution; neither is it a social revolution. It is a spiritual revolution, an individual-to-individual rebellion.

Every heart starts blossoming.

When millions of hearts start blossoming it becomes a chain reaction. Just like one candle aflame can make thousands of candles aflame -- just bring the other candle close enough and suddenly the flame jumps to the unlit candle. The lit candle loses nothing and the unlit candle gains everything. The whole life is in the flame.

This I call Zen Fire, Zen Wind.

Unless the whole world goes through the Zen Fire and becomes pure gold, unless the whole world becomes a Zen Wind passing through every heart, connecting every heart to the universal heartbeat -- this utopia is not possible.

But I hope, I am absolutely certain, that every man's destiny is to become a buddha. So whether it happens today or tomorrow or day after tomorrow does not matter. There are only seven days in the week. It will happen Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, maybe Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday -- on some day, it is going to happen, I am absolutely certain. Because I understand human nature. It cannot be satisfied with this miserable world. It cannot be satisfied with this ugly and violent world. It can only be satisfied when it finds its ultimate source of blissfulness, eternal source of life.

And that is what meditation is a scientific methodology for. The sutra:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

THE MONK, SOMPU, WAS ONCE WASHING A BUDDHA STATUE. YAKUSAN

CAME AND ASKED HIM, "NOW YOU ARE WASHING THIS, BUT CAN YOU

WASH THAT?"

What does Yakusan mean? The monk is washing the statue of the buddha -- Yakusan calls the statue this and he calls the living buddha that. "You are only washing a stone statue -- this is okay, but can you wash that, the living buddha which is within you?"

THE MONK, SOMPU WAS ONCE WASHING A BUDDHA STATUE. YAKUSAN

CAME AND ASKED HIM, "NOW YOU ARE WASHING THIS, BUT CAN YOU

WASH THAT?" He is indicating towards the interiormost hidden buddha, the living buddha: "Can you wash that?"

I call that washing "meditation."

People condemn me around the world that I am washing people's brains. I am washing something deeper -- brains I don't care about at all. I am throwing the brains out of the door! I am washing the buddha inside who has been covered in dust for centuries. A dry-cleaning is needed, and I am doing the dry-cleaning. So when anybody says to you --

and there are millions of people around who will say it -- that I am doing brainwashing, tell him, "Our master does not do ordinary things. Certainly he does a dry-washing, but that is not of the mind. He does a dry-cleaning of the ancient buddha, the eternal buddha who is covered with dust and all kinds of garbage." Don't feel offended. Rather, turn the question against them.

There is now a new profession arising in the West of deprogrammers. And many of my sannyasins have been forced... just now one sannyasin is back from Canada. The parents had called her with great love, saying, "Come here and visit because we have not seen you for so long." And when the sannyasin reached there, it was a totally different matter.

They had two deprogrammers arranged and they started talking against me and telling her that I have brainwashed her. "You are living in a trance, in hypnosis, and we are here to take you out of your trance." But the reality is, they are brainwashing you!

I don't wash such dirty things. Only Christians do such dirty things: they are

brainwashing you and forcing you back again into the old program.

They call themselves "deprogrammers." That is a wrong word they are using for themselves; they are REprogrammers. What has been thrown out by meditation, they are forcing back into your head.

You will be facing this, many of you, when you go back home. Parents have been known even to abduct their children -- who are young people, adults, and keep them physically imprisoned in houses with deprogrammers who continuously harass them. And there is a certain stage when you become very weak. If you are not allowed to sleep for three days, on the fourth day you will become very vulnerable. If somebody says: "God is," you don't have enough strength to say no. Perhaps in this weakness... God is born out of weakness, out of fear, out of dread, and they have created all the dread and fear and weakness and now they say, "God is. If you pray, everything will be alright."

These are reprogrammers. As far as I am concerned I have no interest in your mind at all, or in your brain. My concern is far more ultimate. It is beyond the mind. My function is to clean the space of no-mind.

Those deprogrammers or reprogrammers have not even heard about the no- mind. They are ordinary psychoanalysts turned into deprogrammers. But they can do harm if you listen to them, so I have to tell you because I received the letter from the Canadian sannyasin. She said, "I have been treated very badly. I am still shaking. All the old stuff that has been dropped they have again forced into the mind."

So if you come across any deprogrammer, remember this. Rather than them deprogramming you, you should deprogram them! Never answer their questions.

Whenever they ask you, answer with another question. If they ask you, "Is there God?" --

you ask them, "Have you any proof? Give me the proof. I want absolute evidence of God.

And if you cannot prove his existence, don't speak nonsense. Have you been to hell?

Then how are you back? -- because from the Christian hell nobody comes back,

it is eternal. Do you know anything about hell?" If they say no then ask them: "Do you know anything about heaven? Have you seen Socrates in heaven? Have you seen Gautam Buddha in heaven? -- because these people did not believe in God."

Have I told you the story of Edmund Burke? He had a great friendship with the archbishop of England. He was a great orator, Edmund Burke, and the archbishop used to come to listen to his lectures. They were delicious, just a deep nourishment, but the archbishop was surprised that although every Sunday he gave a sermon, Edmund Burke had never come. At least for courtesy's sake he should have come one time.

Finally, seeing that he was not going to come, the archbishop invited him. He said, "I come to all your lectures, whenever I know that you are going to deliver a lecture. This Sunday I am preparing specially for you; you have to come to the church."

Edmund Burke said, "You should have asked before. I will be coming." He went.…

The archbishop of England is the highest authority of the Church of England, equivalent to the pope. He had prepared with great effort; otherwise Christian preachers don't prepare. They have four or five ready-made sermons.

I used to know a Christian monk. He became very friendly to me. I asked him, "How many sermons do you have?"

He said, "How did you come to know...?" He said, "I have three sermons. One for ten minutes, one for twenty minutes, one for forty minutes, as the occasion demands. And I never stay in a city more than three days, so I am always original!"

But Edmund Burke was coming so the archbishop prepared with great effort, consulted dictionaries and encyclopedias and theological books and biblical research, and he made it really a very scholarly sermon. But he was surprised. He was watching -- Edmund Burke was sitting just in front of him -- and there was no sign whether he was appreciating it or not. He was sitting just like a statue.

When the sermon was over, they walked out together. The archbishop could not gather courage to ask him, "How was it?" But finally he managed. As he was entering his car he asked Edmund Burke, "One thing at least you should say, whether you liked it or not."

He said, "That is not the point. The point is, you were saying that those who believe in Jesus Christ, God, and the Holy Ghost, and those who follow all the Christian virtues and don't commit sins, will go to heaven. Do you remember saying this?"

The archbishop said, "But perfectly -- I have said exactly this." "Do you see any contradiction in it?"

The archbishop said: "I don't see any contradiction in it."

Edmund Burke said, "I see the contradiction and I want you to answer. This is my question: If a man believes in Jesus and his virgin birth, the Holy Ghost, God, all the miracles, resurrection, but does not do what you call `virtue' and commits sins, what will happen?

"Secondly: The person who does not believe in God, does not believe in the Holy Ghost, does not believe in Jesus Christ, but follows all the virtues and commits no sin -- what will happen?"

The archbishop was at a loss, completely at a loss. The question was immensely important. He said, "You will have to give me at least seven days' time to figure it out."

Edmund Burke said, "I will come again next Sunday; you prepare."

But for seven days, day and night, the archbishop could not sleep. Howsoever he tried it was not fitting. If he says that a person who commits sins and does not follow the virtues, but believes in Jesus Christ, the Holy Ghost and God, goes to paradise, it does not look right. The person is a sinner!

If he says that a person who follows the virtues and does not commit any sin, but does not believe in God or Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost, goes to paradise, that means the belief in God, the Holy Ghost and Jesus, is absolute nonsense. You can go directly -- why unnecessarily have this hypothesis? So he was caught, in

what is called in logic, on the horns. Both the sides -- if you go this side, this horn; if you go that side, that horn. This is called "the horns of a dilemma."

Seven days passed, but no possibility of any answer. He went early to the church to pray to Jesus before the gathering came in and Edmund Burke appeared. But he had not slept for seven days, so while he was praying he fell asleep. And he saw in a dream... because for seven days that was his only thought, how to solve it. He saw in the dream that a train is running fast and he is in the train. He inquired, "Where is this train going?"

They said, "It is going to heaven."

He said, "This is good!" He thought inside, that "This is good. I will be able to see for myself. Because Buddha never believed in God, never believed in anything. Socrates never believed in God, never believed in heaven, never believed in hell. If I find these people in paradise, the answer is that whether you believe in God or not, that is not the issue. If I do not find these people in heaven, that means that even if you follow the virtues and you don't commit sins, still you will go to hell."

But if he finds these people in heaven, that means believing in God or Jesus does not matter; all that you have to do is to be virtuous and not to commit sins. He was immensely happy.

But as the train stopped at the station in paradise, he could not believe his eyes. It looked so dull and dismal, far more dismal than England, and he saw all kinds of saints, so ugly and shrunken, just skeletons moving here and there around the station. Even the signboard on the station which said `Paradise' had faded millions of years before. You had to concentrate very much on the board and only then you could figure out, yes it says Paradise.

He asked the stationmaster, "Have you heard anything of Socrates, Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Bodhidharma? Are they here?"

The stationmaster said, "Never heard. Nobody with those names has ever appeared here.

But you can go around, have a look; there are only a few saints playing on their harps, Àlleluia, Alleluia' -- no other work. Everybody is dull."

So he went around... no work, because in paradise you don't need any food. Everybody was so sad, because in paradise you cannot have any entertainment. No parties or going anywhere -- no restaurants, not even a Zorba the Buddha! Everything was so dull and dirty, stinking.

He rushed back to the station and he said, "Is there any train direct to hell from here?"

The stationmaster said, "It is going just now, you get in."

So he went to hell and he was surprised. As the train entered hell... such lush greenery, such beautiful roses, ponds with flowers and swans. The whole station looked as if it had been freshly painted.

He said, "This is strange! This should be paradise, but right on top of the station in neon lights it is written -- Hell." He got down, he met the stationmaster, a very nice and beautiful fellow who was just going to the golf course.

The archbishop said, "Golf? In hell?"

He said, "Since these people have come here -- Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Socrates, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Bodhidharma -- since these people have come here they have changed the whole scene. It used to be very dirty, but now we have the best golf course in the whole world, the best roses, the best food. Just go! See, there in the field, Socrates is sowing seeds."

He saw Socrates, who looked so beautiful, so healthy, so young, as he had never been on earth. He asked about Gautam Buddha.

Socrates said, "Look under that tree. He is meditating. But since he has come, the whole air is fragrant with his meditations. You will find all the great people here."

"But," he said, "what about sinners?"

The stationmaster said, "We don't know any sinners. Since these people have come, they have transformed all sinners into sannyasins. Hell is no more the old place. You don't know about me -- I used to be the devil! Now they have posted me as the head stationmaster. And so many people are coming that we don't have one station, we have twelve stations. All around hell, beautiful stations --

gardens, lawns, beautiful houses...

and since scientists started coming we have electricity, ecology programs. They don't allow me to cut the trees to create hellfire -- they have air-conditioned the whole of hell!"

At that moment, from shock, he woke up. He said, "My God! What a dream!" He saw that people had started coming, and the first to enter was Edmund Burke.

He was an honest man, the archbishop. He said, "I don't know the answer, but I have seen this dream. I will relate the dream and you can conclude whatever you want."

It is not a question of belief in any God, in any Jesus, in any Krishna, in any Rama. It is a question of being a meditative person, so all that you do is virtuous. Out of meditation only -- flowers of virtue, eternal flowers of good, of love, of laughter.

So when Yakusan said to the monk, "Now you are washing this stone statue, but can you wash that?" he must have pointed to the heart, the very being of the monk.

SOMPU REPLIED, "PLEASE GET THAT AND BRING IT TO ME."

He said, "I don't know who you are indicating within me; just please bring it out."

... When I was looking at "Sompu," I thought of "shampoo," because shampoo seems to be the right thing for washing. So I will call him "Shampoo."

Shampoo replied, "PLEASE GET THAT AND BRING IT TO ME. I will give him a good washing."

THE MASTER DID NOT SAY ANYTHING.

Because that which is hidden within you... only you can go there. It cannot be brought to you. You are asking an absurd question; hence the silence. The master must have thought, "The man is not yet ready."

ON ANOTHER OCCASION, WHEN YAKUSAN WAS SITTING DOWN, A

MONK

CAME UP TO HIM AND SAID, "OSHO, YOU ARE SITTING SILENTLY. WHAT

ARE YOU THINKING?"

That's how ordinary people will ask. If you are sitting silently, they will ask, "What are you thinking?" because people do that continuously. "Perhaps there is some great problem that you are solving? Some anxiety that you are figuring out how to deal with?

What are you thinking?"

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "I AM THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE."

He is saying, "I am not thinking. I am just being, and facing the unthinkable. You cannot think it; it is not a thought, it is not a thing. It is an experience, a taste."

You taste something sweet. What can you say about sweetness? You will say, "Sweetness is sweetness." But that is not the answer. All you can do is to give the other person a little sweet to taste, and tell him, "This is it."

Experiences, especially deeper experiences, are far beyond language, far beyond thought, far beyond mind. Thinking the unthinkable is not thinking at all, but facing the clarity of space within you.

THE MONK SAID, "HOW DO YOU THINK THE UNTHINKABLE?"

He could not understand. He thought, "Perhaps there is something unthinkable that he is thinking. If it is unthinkable, how can you think it?" -- HOW DO YOU THINK THE

UNTHINKABLE?

YAKUSAN REPLIED, "NON-THINKING."

That is the way to think the unthinkable: stop thinking. Just be in a space of meditation, utterly silent. Not even a single thought moving on the screen of your mind -- just the pure screen, and suddenly you are able to see the eternal,

the ultimate, the very beyond which never even comes close to language or thought.

WHEN YAKUSAN WAS ABOUT TO DIE, HE YELLED OUT, "THE HALL IS

FALLING DOWN! THE HALL IS FALLING DOWN!"

THE MONKS BROUGHT VARIOUS THINGS AND BEGAN TO PROP IT UP.

YAKUSAN THREW UP HIS HANDS AND SAID, "NO ONE OF YOU UNDERSTOOD WHAT I MEANT!"

He was not talking about the hall, he was talking about himself -- "My body, where I used to live for so many years, is falling all apart. The moment for my departure has come."

But Zen always uses symbols, and those monks were just like ordinary people. They could not see that it is not that the hall is falling... But because the master is saying the hall is falling, perhaps he is predicting some future catastrophe. So they started putting up props to keep the hall together.

And poor Yakusan threw up his hands in utter frustration -- "NO ONE OF YOU

UNDERSTOOD WHAT I MEANT! -- I am falling down. The body which used to be my house is falling apart. Soon I will be on the wings moving into the eternal sky." And saying this, he died. That was his last statement: "NO ONE OF YOU UNDERSTOOD

WHAT I MEANT."

It is very rare that a master is understood; most probably he is misunderstood. Only very few people have such courage and such sharpening of their innermost space that they can understand the master.

To understand the master is to understand the whole mystery of existence. After attending a funeral, Ikkyu wrote:

WHEN WE COME AND SEE HERE ALSO

IS THE BURNING HOUSE -- WHY DO PEOPLE SAY "GOOD TO LIVE IN"?

He is saying, "At a funeral a body is burning, and people are standing around the funeral pyre, but nobody is aware that it is not just this body that is burning. It is not an exception, it is the rule. Your body is also going to burn on a funeral pyre."

This house is not eternal. This house made of matter is going to collapse any moment.

Then why do people say, "GOOD TO LIVE IN -- to live in this body is good"? Why do people say this, when the body is nothing but a carriage that takes you from the cradle towards the grave?

To live in the body is not good. To be in the body but be as a witness, to know that "It is not me" -- that is a great experience. You are discarding the body even while you are alive; you are discarding the mind even while you are alive. So when death comes it cannot take anything from you, you have discarded all that it can take and you have saved the eternal, which it cannot touch.

It is absolutely essential for every intelligent person: before death comes he should become completely clear that he is not the body and he is not the mind; he is only a pure consciousness.

Question 3 Maneesha's question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

THERE WAS NO PLACE FOR ANY GOD IN THE WORK OF THE RUSSIAN

MYSTIC, GEORGE GURDJIEFF, YET HE DID NOT ATTRACT A LARGE

NUMBER OF DISCIPLES IN WESTERN EUROPE OR IN HIS HOME COUNTRY.

WAS THIS MORE A REFLECTION OF HIS ABILITIES AS A COMMUNICATOR

OR WERE THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE SIMPLY NOT READY TO RECEIVE HIM?

In the beginning of the revolution, communism was programming people for atheism.

Communism as propagated by Marx and Engels is atheist, and to be an atheist is to be again a believer. The only difference between the theist and the atheist is, the theist is a positive believer -- he believes that God is. The atheist is also a believer -- his belief is that God is not.

In the beginning of the revolution -- George Gurdjieff was in Russia at the time when the revolution began -- he had to escape from Russia; otherwise he would have been killed by the atheist revolutionaries.

Now it is a different matter. The reason why it is different after seventy years is because a negative belief cannot be a nourishment to your inner being. One can go on deceiving oneself with a positive belief for centuries, because a positive belief fills a gap. A negative belief does not fill any gap.

In seventy years' time, the Russian people have become aware of an immense hollowness within them. The negative belief is not of any help. The positive belief at least gives you a false religion -- a prayer, a god, a church, a bible, something to fill in the gap. All junk! -- but still you can fill your hollowness with the junk.

What do you think you go on keeping in your refrigerators? All kinds of junk -- chocolate, ice cream, and you go on stuffing.…

Have you ever watched? Whenever a man or a woman are in love, they don't eat much.

What happens? Why don't they eat much? Because love is such a nourishment, who cares about chocolate and chewing gum and ice cream? But once they get married, the woman starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger. What happened? Now there is no more love; now she is replacing love with ice cream.

Why do husbands bring ice cream when they come home? Love is no more there; perhaps ice cream will cool down the atmosphere! And whenever a husband brings ice cream the wife suspects: "He must have committed something that he is trying to cover up."

So it is very difficult. If you don't bring ice cream, the atmosphere is very hot. If you bring ice cream, the wife looks out of the corner of her eye, looks at your coat -- any hair from some woman?

Mulla Nasruddin was caught again and again with some woman's hair on his coat. He asked a friend what to do. The friend said, "It is simple. Before entering the house, you just clean your coat. Keep a brush with yourself."

He said, "That's a good idea! It never occurred to me -- so simple!" So one day he found a brush. Outside the house he completely cleaned his coat, and suit, and shirt, and entered the house.

The wife looked at his coat, at his pants, and simply started beating her head and crying and screaming! He said, "What has happened? There is no hair at all!"

She said, "That's why I am crying. It seems you have started loving some bald woman!"

It is difficult any way. Whichever way you try, it does not work.

Today the situation is totally different than it was seventy years before. Today the Russian people feel immense emptiness. You cannot live on negatives. Positive things may not be authentic, but at least they help you to fill the hollowness. Hence I say theism is more dangerous than atheism, because the atheist sooner or later has to realize that "It is not helping me in any way. I am utterly empty."

The theist may be able to deceive himself for lives together, because he feels full. He knows the prayer, he knows the scripture, he knows God is taking care. But the atheist sooner or later is bound to be aware that atheism is not fulfilling,

it is negative. No God, no heaven, no scripture, nothing. You have to encounter your hollowness.

So I say it is better to be an atheist than to be a theist. But still better is the agnostic, who does not believe in God, who does not disbelieve in God, who is simply open and ready to find out what is the truth -- in his own consciousness, because that is the closest thing which is alive.

Look deep into your throbbing life and you will find the quality of the divine. You will not find a God but you will find a godliness, a truth, an awakening, a buddha.

Gurdjieff could not attract many disciples in the West. The reason was, he was not an articulate person. He knew only the Caucasian language. He was born, strangely, in the same place where Joseph Stalin was born. They both learned in the same seminary, they were colleagues when they were small children. And both had the same quality of steel.

Joseph Stalin proved his steel, and in the same way but in a different direction, George Gurdjieff also proved his steel. He was perhaps the strongest man you can imagine, stronger than Stalin, because Gurdjieff had no power; his power was inner. You could give him as much alcohol as possible, and you could not make him drunk -- that was his power -- no drug had any effect on him, his witnessing was so great. He would go on moving behind the alcohol, the alcohol would not be able to distract his witnessing.

But he knew only his mother tongue, the Caucasian language. He learned a little bit of English but it was very broken, he could not make a complete sentence. So language was a barrier, and his methods were a barrier.

His methods he learned because his father died when he was nine and his mother had died already, before his father died, so he was left an orphan. His father was a gypsy, so he was left with a gypsy group, and he learned whatsoever he could learn with the gypsies. They are not great scholars; they are vagabonds moving from one place to another place.

You will be surprised to know that gypsies belong to India, Rajasthan. They moved from Rajasthan to Egypt, and from Egypt to Europe. It is because they moved from Egypt to Europe that they are called "gypsies." The name is derived from "Egypt," but their language is Hindi. It has changed, but you will find that

seventy percent is Hindi and thirty percent is derived from Hindi words, changed.

So Gurdjieff was moving with one gypsy group, and when he had learned everything from that group, he would move to other gypsy groups -- they are always on the move.

He learned every method from the gypsies, and those methods are very crude, very hard

-- and not at all attractive to the Western people who were living in comfort, luxury. So those who came to him turned back immediately, seeing his methods.

First, he would feed people -- he was a great cook -- and very exotic foods, which Western people had never known. He had learned from different gypsy groups to prepare strange kinds of foods, with strange spices. His whole monastery where he used to live near Paris was full of foodstuff, spices, alcohol, all kinds of drugs. These were his methods.

He would force people to eat too much till they started vomiting; he would force people to go on drinking, go on drinking, till they fell flat on the ground and started doing gibberish -- what you do every day without any alcohol! And he would sit by them and listen to what they were saying, because what they were saying was more true than what they say when they are in their consciousness. It was a very crude psychoanalysis.

He would tell people to dig trenches in the ground, the whole day in the hot sun. People who had never worked were digging trenches, people who were philosophers, professors of philosophy. They had dealt with books and libraries, they were not laborers, but they were digging. The master was walking by the side, looking at all the disciples digging ditches. And in the evening when the ditches were complete he would say, "Now fill the ditches back in. Bring them back to the same condition as they were before you started digging."

Now, by the evening they are utterly exhausted! A few will faint, just out of exertion.

And he will watch their faces when they faint. A few will succeed, to find a strange phenomenon: when they feel absolutely exhausted, he will go on insisting, "Don't be worried. Continue!" And if somebody followed him -- which

was difficult -- then suddenly he would find, when the exhaustion came to the peak, a sudden release of a new energy and he would be as fresh as one is fresh in the morning. What happened?

He was teaching that you have three layers of energy. The first layer is for day- to-day work; it exhausts itself very easily. Exhaust it completely -- and if you exhaust it completely the second layer will immediately come up and you will be filled with fresh energy, as you have never known. If you continue to work for months and months together, the second layer will also be one day finished; then the third layer -- which is inexhaustible, which is the very life itself -- will pop up in you. You will see that you have an eternal source of energy.

But this is a very crude method. I can do it within six minutes! Gurdjieff needed six years to do it -- just bullock-cart methods. Certainly he was not very attractive to the Western intelligentsia. Only very few people -- not more than twelve, or at the most, twenty --

used to live in his monastery. Most of them were refugees from Soviet Russia. They were just seeking shelter because the communists had thrown out everybody who was not with them. They followed Jesus on that point -- anybody who is not with you is against you.

Either kill him or throw him out of the country.

He had a beautiful campus near Paris, a few miles away. Huge trees and a big forest, an old monastery deserted by the monks... Now professors, painters, poets

-- almost half the group of people in his campus -- were those who became interested in him because of his great disciple P.D. Ouspensky, who was a very great mathematician and had a tremendous quality of articulateness.

I have never come across books written so well as P.D. Ouspensky's. His every sentence is so condensed; it has so much to say... It was because of Ouspensky -- Ouspensky had a school in London -- that people were attracted. And then he would send them to Gurdjieff and from there, ninety percent would escape within twenty-four hours: "That man was crazy! The whole day no food, the whole day you had to work hard, to exhaust your energy, and in the night he would cook exotic foods which were not suitable to your stomach..."

So his assembly was a very strange assembly. Somebody is vomiting, somebody is flat, foaming at the mouth. Somebody is making some utterances and nobody

understands what he is saying. Only Gurdjieff was conscious; everybody else was unconscious. First food, then drink -- and hard liquor, not soft wine that you sip and enjoy just to relax. It was not to relax, it was to bring you inside out. Next morning, when you wake up amongst all kinds of strange people shouting, screaming, vomiting all around you, it is better to get out of the doors before Gurdjieff catches you again!

His methods were certainly useful but they were too old, too tribal; hence he could not attract the Western intelligentsia. And he could not attract the Russians because they were going through the revolution and atheism was their theme.

He died a frustrated master, one of the great masters of this century. He died just in 1950.

His life is a sad life.…

Hence comes the time of Sardar Gurudayal Singh!

Manuel Labor, the defeated South American dictator, is trying to get back into power. He is addressing a meeting of workmen to organize support for himself.

"When the revolution comes," shouts Manuel, "you will enjoy the pleasures of the rich!

You will walk down Main Street wearing a gold watch!"

"Excuse me," interrupts Pancho, the dog catcher, "but I like to wear my old Timex watch."

"Or if you prefer it -- a Timex watch!" continues Manuel. "You will wear an Yves St.

Laurent three-piece suit and Gucci shoes..."

"Excuse me," interrupts Pancho, again. "But I am more comfortable in my blue jeans and sneakers."

"Very well -- blue jeans and sneakers, if you insist," snaps Manuel Labor, getting annoyed. "And you will ride to work in a Cadillac..."

"Excuse me," interrupts Pancho, "but I would rather use my bicycle."

Furious, Manuel jumps off the platform, strides through the crowd and grabs Pancho by the neck.

"Listen, you idiot!" hisses the ex-dictator. "When the revolution comes, you will do what you are bloody well told!"

Newton Hooton gets up one morning, walks into the bathroom, turns on the tap, but it does not work. So he calls out to his wife, Helen Hooton, in the bedroom, "Hey, honey, the water tap doesn't work!"

"Well, sweetie," calls back Helen, "you are the man in the house -- you fix it!" "Hey, I'm no plumber," replies Newton.

Then he goes over to the clothes closet to get his suit, and the door handle comes off in his hand.

"Hey, Helen," shouts Newton, "the closet door handle is broken!"

"Well, darling, you are the man in the house," shouts back Helen, "You fix it!"

"Hey, I'm no carpenter!" snaps Newton, and he goes downstairs for his breakfast. But when he switches on the light in the kitchen, the bulb pops.

"Hey, honey," shouts out Newton. "The light is busted!" "Well, sugar-pie," calls back Helen, "why don't you fix it?"

"Hey, I'm no electrician," shouts back Newton, and he goes off to work.

That evening, Newton comes home and sees a new light bulb in the kitchen. He goes upstairs, and the door handle on the closet is fixed. Then he goes into the bathroom, and the water tap works.

"Hey, honey," shouts out Newton. "Who fixed all these broken things in the house?"

"Well, baby-cakes," calls back Helen, "Burton Belch from next door must have heard us shouting this morning, so he came over and offered to fix everything."

"That's great, honey," shouts Newton. "But what did he want in payment?"

"Well dearie," replies Helen, "he said I could either screw him or bake him a cake."

"Hey, honey," shouts Newton, "that is nice -- what kind of cake did you bake him?"

"Hey, poopsie," calls out Helen, "I'm no baker!"

Little Ernie is doing his homework one evening and has a problem. "Dad," he says, "what is the difference between ànger' and èxasperation'?" "Well, son," says his father, "I will give you a practical demonstration." His dad then goes to the phone and dials a random number.

"Hello," comes a voice at the other end. "Hello," says Ernie's father. "Is Melvin there?"

"There is no one called Melvin here!" comes the reply. "Why don't you learn to look up numbers before you dial them?"

"You see?" says Ernie's father.

"That man was not at all happy with our call. But watch this!"

He then dials the same number again, and says, "Hello, is Melvin there?"

"Now look here!" comes the angry reply. "I told you there is no Melvin here! You have got a lot of nerve calling again!" And then he slams down the receiver.

"Did you hear that?" asks Ernie's father. "That was anger. Now, I will show you what exasperation is!"

He picks up the phone and dials the same number again, and when a violent voice shouts,

"HELLO!" Ernie's father says, "Hello! This is Melvin. Have there been any calls

for me?" Nivedano (Gibberish) Nivedano

Be silent. Close your eyes and feel your body to be completely frozen. This is the right moment to look inwards.

Gather your whole life energy and rush towards your center with total consciousness and with an urgency as if this is going to be the last moment of your life on the earth. Without this urgency, nobody has ever reached to his center.

Faster and faster, deeper and deeper.…

As you come closer to your center, a great silence descends over you. A little closer and flowers of peace start springing up all around you.

A little more close and you start feeling the Zen Wind -- a cool breeze.

Still closer and you start feeling the Zen Fire -- it is not the fire that you have known. It is the very energy arising from your center of being. These flames are cool, they are like lotus petals.

Reaching to the center, you suddenly realize you are no more but buddha is.

The buddha simply means pure witnessing. The buddha is only a symbol of your eternal existence.

Just remember one word -- witnessing. This simple word is the whole of religion, is the whole of spirituality,

is the whole of all that is known

as truth, as beauty, as good, as godliness.

Just witness -- you are not the body. Witness you are not the mind, witness that you are only a witness, just a pure consciousness.

This is your buddha. This is your very nature.

This is your intrinsic potential.

A great ecstasy will arise. You will feel almost drunk, but remain a witness. To make the witnessing more clear, and deeper...

Nivedano

Relax, let go. Just remember one thing -- forget everything else -- you are only a witness and nothing else.

The moment you are only a witness you are a buddha, and your consciousness starts melting and merging into the cosmos.

Gautam the Buddha Auditorium at this moment is turning into an ocean of consciousness.

Ten thousand buddhas have melted into one pure, oceanic consciousness.

The evening was beautiful on its own, but your entering the innermost mystery of being has made it a great splendor, a miracle, a magical evening. At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth.

Collect all the experience that is happening at the center. Collect all the flowers, the fragrances of the beyond, the flames of Zen Fire -- they are so cool, so serene.

Gather the Zen Wind which is passing through you like a song, like a melody, and persuade the buddha to come along with you.

Every day he is coming closer and closer, inch by inch. Your life is going through a transformation, a breakthrough. You will never be the same again. The past is dropping and you are settling into the herenow.

The buddha is your nature.

It has remained hidden at the deepest center of your being because you never called it, you never welcomed it.

It does not come without invitation. Invite him, request him; he will come.

The first step of meditation is, buddha comes behind you like a shadow. The second step: the buddha is in front of you, and you become the shadow.

And the third step: you merge into the buddha. There is no shadow anymore -- only pure awareness, so transparent that it cannot create a shadow.

That day when it happens to you will be the most fortunate, the most blessed day. You will become the awakened one.

We have to spread this Zen Fire and this Zen Wind around the globe. This is the only hope for humanity.

Now Nivedano...

Come back, but come as a buddha with great peace, silence, grace. And sit for a few moments just to recollect where you have been, which space you have touched, what golden path you have traveled. And look who is standing behind you, just behind your consciousness.

A new guest -- the buddha.

Every day you are gaining more and more.

Your victory is absolutely guaranteed, because you are not struggling against anyone; you are simply trying to bring your own nature to its ultimate blossoming.

Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Beloved Master.

Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind Chapter #4

Chapter title: I am a spiritual terrorist

2 February 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium Archive

code:

8902025

ShortTitle:

FIRE04

Audio:

Yes Video:

Yes Length:

147

mins

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

ONE DAY, UNGAN WAS SWEEPING THE GARDEN WITH A BAMBOO BROOM.

HIS BROTHER DOGO CAME OVER TO HIM AND SAID, "HEY, YOU LOOK

TERRIBLY BUSY!"

UNGAN SAID, "ALTHOUGH BUSY, THERE IS SOMETHING WHICH IS NOT

BUSY."

DOGO SAID, "THAT MEANS THERE ARE TWO MOONS."

THEN UNGAN PUT THE BROOM ON THE GROUND AND SAID, "WHAT MOON

IS THIS?"

DOGO SILENTLY LEFT.

AT ANOTHER TIME, UNGAN ASKED A MONK, "WHERE ARE YOU FROM?"

THE MONK REPLIED, "I CAME WITH INCENSE." UNGAN ASKED, "DID YOU SEE BUDDHA?"

THE MONK REPLIED, "YES, I DID."

"WHERE DID YOU SEE HIM?" UNGAN ASKED.

THE MONK REPLIED, "I SAW HIM IN THE LOWER WORLD." UNGAN SAID, "THE OLD BUDDHA! THE OLD BUDDHA!"

Friends, Question 1

One sannyasin has asked:

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COMMUNISM AND SOCIALISM?

A vast difference -- the same difference that there is between me and Comrade Gorbachev. I am a spiritual communist, and Comrade Gorbachev is a socialist.

Socialism is a compromise, a compromise with capitalism. Communism is a totally revolutionary step. The closer I have been looking at Gorbachev and his statements, the sadder I am feeling. He is not a revolutionary; he is a reactionary, he is going backwards.

Just today Anando has given me a small summary of his books. Just a few sentences I heard, and I told her, "Close it" -- because he is talking about bringing private property back into the Soviet Union, and with private property capitalism comes in. He is saying that the communist motto was, "Each according to his need" -- and what is his motto?

"Each according to his work."

But that's exactly the motto of capitalism: each according to his work. Obviously, if you give to people according to their work and efficiency, then there will be richer people and there will be poorer people. The classes will come back again.

As I have told you again and again, physically, people are not equal. You can give equal opportunity to all, but still a Picasso will be a Picasso, all people are not going to become Picassos. A Henry Ford will be a Henry Ford; to create wealth is an art in itself, and everybody cannot be a Henry Ford.

Now if Gorbachev introduces the idea of each according to his work and his efficiency...

his intentions are absolutely good. I don't have even a small doubt about his good intentions for his people, for his land, but he is not a buddha. He is an unconscious man as everybody else is. The unconscious man does not know that his intentions may be good but the results may go wrong.

I am in absolute favor of communism because I think it is the foundation for spiritual growth. But I am against socialism. It is a compromise with capitalism, and when you compromise with capitalism, capitalism will drown you.

It seems Gorbachev has become too much interested in America -- the high-rise buildings, miles and miles of cars -- the richness has overwhelmed his mind. He has been reported to have said, "What should I call my revolution?" It is not a revolution in the first place, it is anti-revolutionary. And then he thought about it, and said, "Perhaps I should call it socialist capitalism, or capitalist socialism." In

both ways, capitalism will be the victor and communism will be the defeated. He has already stopped talking about communism, he is talking about socialism.

Socialism I have been against always, because it is an effort to keep the capitalist incentive for people to work. What is the capitalist incentive for people? Private property: my house, my car, my wife, my children. That is the incentive, and it creates competition.

My house should be better than your house. My wife should be more beautiful than your wife. My children should be educated better than your children. It starts competition, it starts ambition. Of course, people start working harder. That's what Gorbachev is thinking, that people are not working as hard in the Soviet Union as they are working in every capitalist country.

It is true, because Karl Marx is not a complete communist. He has no idea that man is not just an economic animal; he has a mind and he has a soul. He thought, absolutely wrongly, that once the financial conditions change, once the society changes its structure, consciousness will change also. That is wrong. It is taking things from the wrong end.

If consciousness changes, then certainly the social structure will change, because the social structure is just a projection of man's mind. But Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, or Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, have no idea what the mind is. The question of going beyond the mind does not arise.

They worked hard for seventy years to bring communism in Russia, but slowly slowly...

In the beginning there was some incentive, because the poor were thinking they would become rich, that everybody would be equal. But slowly slowly it was found that as all the property was taken from the individuals it was a great struggle. In that struggle one million people were killed. By not changing the mind first, this was the outcome. People's minds have lived for centuries, thousands of years, with the idea of private property.

Their only incentive is that if it is going to help their ego, if it is going to help them rise higher than others, only then they are going to work hard.

It is said about Henry Ford -- he was a poor man as far as his birth is concerned, but he became one of the richest men in the world -- it is said that he used to

come to his office at eight o'clock, early in the morning. The peon used to come at ten o'clock to open the doors and clean the office. The clerks used to come at eleven o'clock, the manager used to come at twelve o'clock. And the manager would leave by two o'clock, the clerks would leave at five o'clock. The peon would leave at six o'clock, and Henry Ford? -- there was no time for him. Sometimes eight o'clock in the night, sometimes nine o'clock, sometimes ten o'clock. A great incentive to work hard, because he was such an ambitious man and he wanted to be the richest man in the world. And he succeeded.

In Russia that incentive has disappeared. As the years went on, people saw that instead of becoming rich they were as poor as ever. Because Russia was not a capitalist country, there was no capital to be distributed -- only poverty to be distributed. There were a few landlords, and their property was taken. Their property was the land, but that land was not given to the poor because of the communist ideology. Everything had to be centralized; nobody had anything private.

People saw that their poverty was the same, and they could not adjust to the new phase.

Their minds were hankering to be better than others, to be more successful, to be richer -

- and that possibility had disappeared. Now what is the point of working hard? Now there were vast lands belonging to the state, running for miles on. It was a beautiful phenomenon... not small patches, pieces of land which go on being divided every generation into even smaller pieces.

You can see it in India. If the father has five acres and five sons, each son will have one acre of land. And then the son will have his own sons. Then that one acre of land will be divided again into as many sons as he has. Such small patches of land that they cannot nourish you, and you cannot use tractors, new technology on those small patches of land.

You don't have the means; neither is the land big enough to use bigger machines, more chemicals. The poor go on becoming poorer.

Private property will certainly bring an incentive. People will work hard. But all people are not equal as far as working hard is concerned. Those who are able to work hard will become richer, and those who are not able to work that hard will

become even poorer than they are now.

This was the whole program to dissolve the classes, and Gorbachev is bringing those classes back. Soon... just now he has dropped the word `communism'; he is no longer mentioning the word `communism' at all. He is talking about socialism, and has started talking about whether to call it "capitalist socialism" or "socialist capitalism." Whatever you call it, it is capitalism! Socialism is just a word to deceive the masses.

Gorbachev is going against all the basic principles of communism. First he is talking about patriotism -- communism is absolutely against nations and patriotism. Its whole idea is to dissolve all nations into one humanity; it was from its very foundation an international movement. Now Gorbachev is talking about patriotism, nationalism.

He is also talking about decentralization, which is against the foundation of all communism. Decentralization is an idea of Gandhism. Soon Gorbachev will be having, just like Morarji Desai, a spinning wheel! Decentralization means you cannot use modern technology; modern technology can be used only in a centralized world where the fields are miles and miles long. But if you decentralize and divide the land back again to the same people from whom it has been taken... They were poor then and they will be poor again, far poorer than they are now.

But he is too much infatuated by America. I want him to remember: American capitalism has a three-hundred-year-old life. It will take at least three hundred years for you to have the same pollution as L.A., the same high-rise buildings, one hundred stories, one hundred twenty stories high. You cannot do it just like a miracle. And still, America has three million beggars. At least the Soviet Union has no beggars. It is not as rich as America, but it is not as poor as India. Dividing the land, distributing property to individual hands, will not make it America; it will make it India.

And because he has opened the doors, it will be too late now for him to close them.

Journalists are there; each nook and corner of the Soviet Union is being filmed, televised, and they are bringing out all those things which the closed doors were hiding. Twenty percent of the people in the Soviet Union are living below the

minimum nourishment level. Now he has to go against all the statistics that have been given to the world by the Soviet leaders up to now.

He is against vodka. He himself does not drink. That is the trouble of people who don't drink: they become saints. It is very difficult to not drink without becoming a saint. Then they want everybody to stop drinking. Now he is proposing prohibition of all alcohol.

That has been the poor Russian's only relaxation, only enjoyment, only entertainment --

vodka. Otherwise he has no beautiful car, no house, nowhere to go, no money... it was vodka that was keeping him alive! At least in the evening he can drink, and with his friends he can dance and rejoice. Even that is being taken away.

I have heard that the youth of the Soviet Union are absolutely against prohibition. They should be against it, because prohibition has never succeeded anywhere in the world. It seems people never learn.

In India we have tried twice -- and India must be the best place to try prohibition

-- but both times we have failed. It was Morarji Desai, both times, who was responsible for prohibition: once when he was the deputy prime minister under Indira Gandhi. Then he enforced prohibition, and prohibition killed thousands of Indians, because people started drinking spirit, people started making alcohol -- homemade, and they don't know how to make it! So hundreds and hundreds of people -- in Calcutta, in Patna, in Madras, everywhere -- were dying of poisoning.

It is an art to create a refined wine that gives you a little forgetfulness about your anxieties, gives you a little laughter, a little dance, a little music. There are connoisseurs.…

I have heard about one connoisseur, one man who could, just by tasting the wine or any kind of alcoholic beverage, tell what trademark the wine is, and how old. Ten years old, twenty years old, thirty years? -- because the older the wine is, the better.

He used to go to pubs and he would put one hundred dollars on the table, and convince the owner: "Give me any alcohol and I will tell you the trademark, the country in which it was manufactured, and how old it is. If I fail, these hundred

dollars are yours. If I succeed... put a hundred dollars by the side; both the notes will be mine."

And every pub owner thought that this would be an impossible job. He had so many kinds of alcohol -- how is this man going to manage? So he would give him a glass and the man would immediately say, "Thirty years old, a French wine," and a certain trademark. Amazed, the whole pub crowd would gather around, and he would take both the notes and say, "Do you want another try?"

The owner would say, "Okay, you put another hundred dollars." So he would put down one hundred dollars. The owner would again put one hundred dollars, give him another wine, and immediately, just by tasting it -- such a refined taste, such sensitivity -- he would tell everything about it.

Once it went on for ten times, and the owner was losing one hundred dollars every time.

He said, "My God! This man is unbelievable." Then suddenly a man came from the crowd and gave the man a cup. He took one sip, and he said, "My God! This is human urine!" And the man, who had gone behind the crowd again, asked, "But whose? Unless you tell whose, you are a loser! How old...?"

Intoxicating drugs are as ancient as man. No country has ever been able to prohibit them.

Alcohol has been prohibited by many countries, and they all failed finally because it turned out to be more dangerous. People were taking all kinds of things, and people were creating all kinds of things in the name of "medicine." But it was all illegal so there was no way to check on it and see whether it was the right stuff. Nobody knew its constituents. So it killed thousands of people in every country, wherever there was prohibition. And it attracted more people who had never been drinking before.

Prohibition always attracts. You prohibit anything, and just see: people who have never bothered about it will start searching for it, thinking that "There must be something in it; otherwise why is the government so interested in prohibiting it?"

Just try. Prohibit ice cream, and suddenly you will see the whole country becomes interested in ice cream -- people who have never bothered about it. And when there is such a great demand, there will be suppliers. And it will not be the

right stuff, because ice cream can be made of blotting paper; just the blotting paper has to be soaked in water, mixed with milk, and you can have ice cream made out of blotting paper! It looks exactly like ice cream! Just prohibit it and people will find ways, and even those who were never interested will become interested.

Now Gorbachev wants to prohibit Russians from drinking alcohol. This is not revolution.

If you want people not to drink, you have to give them something higher that takes away their anxieties. They drink because they are tense, they drink because there is anxiety, they drink because they want to forget. They want to forget the wife, they want to forget the husband, they want to forget the small kids, they want to forget their business, they want to forget their financial troubles.

Unless you give them a higher consciousness which can solve these problems -- then there is no need to forget anything -- unless you give them such a deep alertness and awareness that they can see the root cause of their misery, and they don't want just to cover it with alcohol but want to cut it from the roots... Except meditation there is no way that intoxicant drugs can be prohibited.

Meditation is real spiritual alcohol! It takes you to such deep blissfulness... you don't have to forget your blissfulness. Do you want to forget your blissfulness? Alcohol only helps you to forget. Whether it is anxiety or ecstasy, whether it is tension or relaxation, it simply helps you to forget. Once you are blissful, happy, once you don't have any tensions, you will not drink because the drink will simply destroy your blissfulness, your joy, your dance, your song.

Give people some new spiritual awakening. That is revolution.

This is not revolution, this is a very reactionary step. People are already sad, and you want them to become sadder. But what reason has he to prohibit alcohol? The reason is that he thinks that because of alcohol people don't work efficiently. He wants people to work efficiently, to work hard. The harder they work, the more they will need alcohol just to relax for the night! -- because in the morning again the torture begins.

If you take away the alcohol it will not help efficiency, it will not help people

work more, it will simply make people more sad, more aloof, not interested in anything. It is not going to make the country richer, just sadder.

And creating the idea of patriotism is the foundation of fascism. Fascism lives on patriotism: you are Germans, you are born to rule over the world; you are Russians, you are the chosen people. But you will have to find God if you want to be chosen people --

and Gorbachev is allowing churches, the Ramakrishna Mission, the Hare Krishna movement. And other idiots will soon follow: snake charmers from India, Satya Sai Baba from India, making miracles, and all those miracles are nothing but street magic.

Magicians will be coming. Russia will soon become an ordinary capitalist country; it will lose its dignity and power.

One man in Germany has found a certain program which can transform the armies into only defensive forces, they will never attack on their own. And Gorbachev has sent his personal aides to learn the technique. I think he is naive. He does not know: if a person cannot attack, he cannot defend either, because in defense also he will have to attack.

How are you going to defend without attacking?

The oldest policy of all warmongers -- from Chanakya in India, three thousand years ago, to Machiavelli in Europe -- has been the same policy. Chanakya and Machiavelli --

three thousand years' difference, but the policy is the same: the best way to defend is to attack. Once you are on the defensive, you have already lost half the battle, and particularly in a time when the war is not going to be a slow war with small weapons.

When the war is going to be nuclear, it is only a question of ten minutes and the whole world will be finished. Whoever attacks, perhaps may survive. If you are on the defensive there is no chance to survive.

My own understanding is, America is playing a great role behind the whole scene. It is a great conspiracy of American politicians, but very indirect: they are influencing Gorbachev towards a suicidal step for communism.

I am absolutely in support if the country is opened for chosen persons who will help the country become a spiritual land, who will help the country with new economic plans, a new financial structure. But the churches and the Witnesses of Jehovah are not going to change the economic status of the country. They are going to destroy whatever has been achieved in seventy years.

Mahatma Gandhi was in favor of decentralization -- but even his own followers saw the point, that it is good to make his statues, it is good to call him the "Father of the land"; it is good to put his pictures everywhere, in all the government offices, but don't listen to him. Because if you listen to him, he will take you back to the age, thousands of years back, when the spinning wheel was invented.

Gandhi wanted the spinning wheel to be the last word in technology: after the spinning wheel, whatever has been invented should be destroyed. The bullock cart should be the only vehicle in the world and the spinning wheel the only technology. He was in favor of decentralization.

Of course, if you decentralize you cannot have new technology; it needs centralization, and particularly in a country which is communist. In a capitalist country the state and the capitalists are separate. The capitalists have individual freedom to exploit people, although they are supported by the government from the back door, because they support the politicians in their elections. So it is a combination, but on the surface it seems to be separate.

The capitalist has no power and the politician has no money, so they go together well.

But at least the capitalist has no power, so he cannot harass people; and the politician depends on votes, so he has also to be aware not to harass people too much; otherwise they won't give him their votes.

In a communist country the state is both: it is the only capitalist -- it owns everything in the country -- and it has all the power. And because there is only one party, the communist party, there is no question of any voting. Elections happen, but they are just mock elections. Only the communist party is there -- who is going to fight? And anybody who stands against the communist candidate will disappear in the middle of the night; it will not be known where that man has gone. So nobody else has been standing for election. One person stands and

the whole population is told to vote for him; it is not a question of choice. In a communist country everything is centralized. But if communism knows how to transform people's minds, how to make them clear of the past of private ownership, of possessiveness, how to make them more meditative and silent so that their actions come out of their silence and peace and love and compassion, then communism becomes a spiritual revolution.

Gorbachev is calling what he is doing a revolution. I say, absolutely no! If you want to be really a revolutionary, the only way is bring spiritualism to your country, not capitalism.

That is going backwards in time, and destroying the whole effort of seventy years, and destroying the whole sacrifice of millions of people who died.

I am a spiritual communist -- a spiritual terrorist! And I don't care either for George Bush or Comrade Gorbachev. His books have come into my hand just today -- they are ugly. He is sabotaging his own people! And he has taken all the power into his hands, so there is no possibility.…

But he is not aware that even presidents can be shot dead, and if he is trying to make the Soviet Union another America, remember: twenty percent of the presidents of America have been shot dead!

What Gorbachev is doing is going against the whole revolution, and not only in the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union turns into a country of capitalism it will not only destroy itself, its dignity and power, it will destroy other small communist countries which are dependent on it. He has already started cutting support to other small countries.

He has stopped supporting Cuba. Now Cuba is so small -- once the Soviet Union is not supporting it, America is going to take it over within a minute.

What will happen to Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia? And China is already on the way towards being capitalist again, but it has not been talked about much because the communist leaders of China are very silent. They are not doing it in the cities, in big towns, but eighty percent of China is in the villages; they have already been for two years distributing land to private owners in the villages. But they have not been making much fuss about it. They know that they are betraying the communist revolution and coming closer and closer to America.

When Richard Nixon was found guilty of immense crimes against his own people and had to lose his presidentship... that was the only way for him to be forgiven. The president has the power to forgive crimes, so his vice-president, Ford -- as Nixon retired from the presidency, Ford became the president, and this was the mutual understanding, that once Ford becomes the president he will immediately forgive Nixon. So Nixon had not to face the Supreme Court, he had not to face any court, and he had not to face the Senate or the people.

The first man to invite Richard Nixon, after he was no longer the president, was Mao Zedong of China. He sent his own plane to take Nixon to China, and what he said to him is worthy of being remembered. He said, "What kind of people are yours? Just small things, listening and taping other people's phone calls -- this is not a crime. Every politician does it. I do it!" Mao Zedong said it clearly: "Every politician has to do it out of necessity, to be alert about where enmity is growing, from the where attacks can come.

Because once you are in power, you are always in danger."

Now nobody is going to kill Richard Nixon. You don't know where he is, you never see his name in the newspapers. You will see some time, when he dies, a small note on the fourth page, that "The ex-president of America, Richard Nixon, is dead" -- finished. And he was in the headlines for years.

Mao was surprised: "What kind of people are Americans? They forced out their own president? If I was in your place, I would have killed the whole country!" But once Mao died his enemies, whom he had been keeping out of power, came into power. They immediately killed Mao's wife, who was a very powerful influence on Mao. In fact, she was behind Mao, ruling the country. Mao was getting old; she was young. She was a film actress. There was great age difference between her and Mao. Mao was getting senile, and thirty years of revolution can destroy anybody's mind. Just fighting and fighting and fighting, and escaping and fighting.… In his old age he married this film actress. And the film actress was not interested in Mao, certainly, because neither was he beautiful, nor was he young. No child was born out of the marriage, so you can understand where he stood.

The only reason for this woman to marry Mao -- a very beautiful woman -- was simply to have power. She was dictating in the name of Mao -- she was the real dictator. And she threw all the people out of the Communist Party, out of their

powerful positions, who she thought were against Mao, or who she thought were against her.

When Mao died those people returned to power, and the first thing they did was to hang the woman and the four other people who were her supporters. Then many others were hanged, and the whole group around Mao was completely erased.

Now, these people have no idea exactly what communism is. And seeing that America is flourishing, they started distributing the land to private ownership. The next step will be in the cities, in the towns: distribute everything to individual owners, because that brings incentive. People start struggling hard for success, out of ambition. That is the old mind.

Unless that old mind is completely transformed, and people start feeling for the whole humanity... Then they work out of love, not out of ambition. And I have actual experience of it -- you are here. In the American commune people were working not out of any ambition but just out of love, out of joy, the very joy of creating a new kind of commune that the world has never known. But their foundation was meditation.

What Russia needs is not capitalism. Comrade Gorbachev, you should not deceive your people by calling it "socialist capitalism" -- that is a contradiction in terms. And it is not going to help, it is going just to help America destroy you without any war -- and not only destroy you, but all the communist countries that are dependent on you and your support. The great utopian experiment evaporates just because of one man's misunderstanding.

And if Gorbachev wants his armies not to attack, he should be aware: they will not be able to defend either. These are two sides of one coin. That man in Germany, if he is given the job, must be an agent of America. America has not sent anybody to that man to learn the art of how not to attack but only to defend. Gorbachev was the first, immediately sending people to him.

I have asked German sannyasins to immediately send me the literature about what kind of programming that man is suggesting. It cannot be anything else but post-hypnotic suggestion. You can suggest to a person in deep hypnosis that, "You will never attack anybody, but if somebody attacks you, you can defend yourself." Just a few sessions to the whole army and they will become absolutely

immobile when the question of attack comes.

I have been working on every dimension of your mind and no-mind. I was working on a young student of mine with post-hypnotic suggestions. I hypnotized him.… Hypnosis is a simple matter: you just look at something very bright that dazzles your eyes. These lights of Niskriya's are enough -- you just look at them, and without blinking your eyes... hold your eyes so they do not blink, whatever happens.

The hypnotist is sitting by your side, telling you, "Hold on, don't close your eyes." And when he sees... and it is very clear when a person is going to close his eyes, and has come to his limit. Just within three minutes, his face starts relaxing and you can see it; it is not something that you have to infer. You can see exactly that the man is feeling sleepy, the face is relaxing.

Then you start suggesting to him, "Your eyes are feeling very heavy. Although you are trying your best, you will not be able to succeed any longer, they are closing, they are closing, they are closing"... in a very sleepy voice.

And the person is told beforehand that he has to fight: at the last moment when it becomes impossible, when he cannot do anything, when in spite of him the eyes close, and what can he do...? There comes a moment that in spite of him, he feels his eyes are closing and he cannot do anything about it anymore. And the person is giving instructions: "Your eyes are becoming heavy, you are feeling very sleepy. You will fall into a deep sleep." Just within five minutes the person is snoring.

And while you are going deeper into sleep... Hypnosis means sleep. The very root of the word simply means sleep, nothing else; deliberate sleep, created sleep. But the created sleep goes much deeper than your natural sleep.

And the medium, the person who is being hypnotized, is told, "You will hear only my voice and nothing else. No other sound will reach to you, only my voice." And that actually happens. All his senses become relaxed and closed; he hears nobody. If you shout his name he will not hear, but if the hypnotist just whispers he will hear. That is the only opening left, a very narrow opening; everything else is closed.

That is the time when you can give any post-hypnotic suggestion. Post-hypnotic suggestion means that it will be applicable when you are out of hypnosis. For

example, I told this boy, "The pillow you are sleeping on right now -- I am making on the pillow a cross with red ink. And tomorrow, exactly at eleven o'clock, you will kiss that cross."

This is a post-hypnotic suggestion for tomorrow, when he will not be in hypnosis, but it has entered into his unconscious.

The next day, nearabout fifteen minutes before eleven, he became fidgety -- not knowing why. I asked, "What is the problem? Why do you look so tense?"

He said, "I don't know, but something seems to be happening inside me."

I said, "Nothing is happening." I took his pillow -- he watched -- and I put the pillow in my suitcase and locked it. He became more and more troubled. Exactly as it was coming to be eleven, he looked at the clock and he asked me, "Please give me the key."

I said, "Why?"

He said, "I want my pillow back."

I said, "What are you going to do with it at eleven o'clock? In the night I will give it to you."

He said, "No! Just give me the key!"

I gave him the key, he opened the suitcase. It was exactly eleven; the clock was striking the hour of eleven. He pulled out the pillow, hugged it as if it was his girlfriend, and started kissing exactly the point where I had marked with red ink.

I said, "What are you doing?"

He said, "I don't know! I am feeling absolutely insane. This is a pillow, I know -- why I am hugging it I don't know. And why am I kissing it? I have never kissed any pillow in my whole life!"

But such romance! You should have seen his face, so romantic. He had fallen in love, just as you fall in love.

Do you think you fall in love in a different way? It is biological hypnosis! And

do you think you are kissing something else than a pillow? What are you kissing, have you ever thought about it? It is just a biological insistence from inside. The same insistence can be created by hypnosis.

But it is a dangerous program. If Gorbachev agrees to use that man, whole armies can be hypnotized without any trouble. And armies are the most easily hypnotized because they are obedient to orders. So when the hypnotist orders, they will follow more easily than anybody else, because they have spent their whole life turning left, turning right, going backwards, going forwards, nobody asking why. They are trained for obedience; they are more vulnerable to hypnosis than anybody else in the world. And you can just tell them that they will never attack.

But this is a dangerous policy: a person who cannot attack cannot defend either. And that is what he is saying, that "I will simply take away the idea of attacking and leave the defensive idea." But in defense also you have to attack! They will be simply paralyzed, they will not know what to do.

And in the conditions we are living in... It is a nuclear age. If America attacks the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union is finished, because it is only a question of ten minutes. If the Soviet soldiers are not able to attack they will not be able to defend either; they will be in a confusion about what to do. They will feel paralyzed. And because it is a question of a very small amount of time, ten minutes, the whole country can be blasted, finished.

With good intentions, Gorbachev is going in a wrong direction, suicidal. And America is trying to puff up his ego as much as possible so that whatever he is doing he should go on doing. Bring all kinds of snake charmers, street magicians, bishops, cardinals, the pope.

Soon the Shankaracharya of Puri, Mohammedan priests, Ayatollah Khomeini, will be visiting the Soviet Union. This one man can destroy a great hope for the whole of humanity.

I am saying these words just to make him aware. He has all the powers at this moment.

He can transform the the Soviet Union into a spiritual country. And out of meditation creativity arises; out of love people will work. Not out of ambition -- that is the old strategy. Not out of possessiveness -- that is falling back into the

dark ages again.

I know the Soviet Union is not as rich as America, but there is no need to be so rich. Just bring about a comfortable existence: and bring meditativeness to people; then they will work. But this work will be a work of dedication, a work dedicated to the ultimate revolution which will involve the whole humanity.

He's talking of patriotism -- which is a disease. All wars have come out of patriotism, nationalism. And soon he is bound to allow foreign money to be invested in the Soviet Union, on the condition -- this is my prediction -- on the condition that foreign money will not be nationalized, that the foreign money will be available to the outside owners and they can take it back any time they want. This is the only way left for him to make the social economy of the Soviet Union rise higher.

But this will create the capitalist class again, and the laborers, the proletariat.

Without knowing, Gorbachev is working against Marx, against Engels, against Lenin --

against all the people who have worked so hard to create a new kind of social structure, but they were missing on one point. That point was spirituality. Just add spirituality to the Soviet Union and it will have the most joyous, most loving, most compassionate people in the world.

You have seen the Soviet crew which was here from Soviet television. There have been all kinds of television crews, all kinds of journalists from all over the world, but it is only the Soviet crew who went with tears in their eyes. They loved you; they loved your commune so much, so deeply. They have gone with the promise that when they have their holidays for ten days in June, they are not going anywhere else. They are going to come here for ten days to live in the commune as sannyasins, meditating, doing groups.

You can see the difference. When the American journalist comes, he starts looking immediately to find something sensational. If he cannot find it, he creates and invents it, because America is interested only in sensationalism. These people behaved in a totally different way. This was for the first time that a Russian crew has come. When you were doing your meditations, dancing, they forgot all about photographing. They dropped their cameras and started dancing! They loved the sannyasins.

Their questions were absolutely non-sensational. Significant, meaningful, but not sensational -- utterly concerned with human welfare. And Anando told me that they had tears in their eyes when they left the gate; they did not want to go. They wanted to stay for the whole series, but their office from Delhi called them, saying, "You come back, there are other assignments."

They will be back in June for ten days, to have more experience of what you have. They want to taste it. They want to be insiders, not outsiders.

And this is the state of the whole Soviet Union: the people have become like children. No church, no programming, no God, no prayer -- they have become so innocent that meditation will go deep down in them, faster than in any other country.

Question 2

The second question, which is connected:

IS IT NOT TRUE THAT IN THE RUSSIAN PEOPLE THE ZORBA IS ALREADY SO

MUCH ALIVE THAT IT IS EASIER TO BRING BUDDHA IN THAT COUNTRY

THAN IN ANY OTHER? AND IS IT REALLY DEPENDENT ON COMMUNISM, BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE LESS CONDITIONED?

Zorba is certainly there. But if vodka is denied to the Zorba, that will be a disaster!

I am absolutely against Gorbachev's idea of prohibition. Vodka is every Russian's birthright! That is all they have. Don't take away their dance and their joy unless you can provide something better. That's my very simple arithmetic: don't take anything from anybody unless you can give something better in its place.

And I don't know that Gorbachev has anything better to offer. He himself does not know anything better.

Rather than sending those people to Germany to learn the art of how not to

attack, he should come here, and send his people here. I will teach them how to dance, how to love.

And if there is a need to attack you should be the first, not the second! You have the tremendous responsibility of protecting a great experiment that has never been done before.

Yes, it is true: they are less conditioned, simpler people; hence they can more easily enter into the world of no-mind. The Zorba is there; I can introduce the Buddha also. But Gorbachev has no idea of the Buddha. His eyes are fixed on America and American money, and American capitalism's success. He is not looking eastward towards Zen, which is the only solution for the Soviet Union to protect communism and its dignity, and to spread communism all over the world.

Zorba has to come first; Buddha will come once Zorba becomes established. I can take away the vodka because I can give the Buddha. Who cares about vodka when you have the Buddha in you?

But Gorbachev seems to be on a power trip, utterly dangerous. A single man's ego has to be fulfilled by destroying a valuable, immensely valuable experiment! And once the Soviet Union fails, is scattered, it will take centuries for humanity to again take the risk of creating communism. Once a thing fails people lose their hope; it takes centuries for them to forget and begin anew. So it is not only a question for today, it is a question for future generations too.

And my concern is absolutely impartial. I have been interested in communism from my very childhood. The Soviet crew has been to my library, and they were amazed to see the communist literature there -- perhaps there is no book that is missing from my library.

And they were amazed to see that I have signed and dated each book before 1950. I was absolutely concerned to know about communism, everything. For three years, 1948, 1949, and 1950, I had collected all the literature possible. And I stopped at 1950. I have not read anything after 1950 about communism, for or against.

It is very strange... I go on forgetting small things. I cannot count up to five -- after the third finger I start hesitating, whether it is fourth or third. But in these forty years I have not forgotten a single name of the communist revolutionaries. Small details are so vivid before me, because that was my first entry into the

intellectual world. It got deeply rooted in me. But I never became a member of a communist party, because I could see something was missing.

It is a grand plan for humanity, but something central is missing: it has no soul, it is a corpse.

Because nothing new was happening, I stopped reading. And nothing new has happened since then, except Gorbachev. So I am talking about Gorbachev.

First I was deeply interested in communism, but finding that it is a corpse I became interested in anarchism -- that was also a Russian phenomenon -- Prince Kropotkin, Bakunin, Leo Tolstoy. All three were anarchists: no state, no government in the world.

But I saw the point that they have a beautiful dream but with this criminal humanity, with this stupid mass, if there is no government and no court and no police there will be simply chaos, not anarchism.

I have been always very scientific in my approach, either outside or inside. Communism can be the base. Then spiritualism has to be its growth, to provide what is missing. Once a society is given equal opportunity -- to be unequal, to be unique -- and once that society becomes interested in meditation and spiritual growth, then there is a possibility of anarchism. That will be the very final stage, when there is nobody who is interested in committing crime. Only then can the state be removed, not before it. Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Leo Tolstoy are perfectly right, but not relevant now. First communism has to be aided by spirituality.

Once spirituality gains ground in your very being, crime becomes impossible. To do anything wrong becomes impossible. Obviously, the state will wither away. When there is nobody committing any crime, how long are you going to keep your courts empty and judges sitting there? Soon you will feel that it is better that these judges go into the fields and work. How long are you going to keep unnecessary policemen standing around?

Armies, millions of people unnecessarily being fed, clothed -- and they are getting the best food, the best clothes, and they are not working at all. Every country is filled with millions of people in armies. They should be brought back to the world, to work.

But this is possible only if communism steps into spiritualism; then spiritualism can flower into anarchism. These are simple steps. But if communism disappears, then it becomes very difficult to transform the capitalist world towards spirituality. It is a difficult job. And anarchism becomes a very faraway, remote possibility -- may be, may not be.

Hence my support for communism: because I would love the world one day to have no nations, no religions, no boundaries, no policemen, no armies, no guns, no murderers.

Healthy people, spiritually loving, growing deeper and growing higher simultaneously, getting roots and getting wings together, simultaneously -- these will be the real superhuman beings, the new man I have been working for.

I see in the Soviet Union great possibilities, great potentialities. If Gorbachev does not go wrong, those opportunities can be transformed into a reality.

The sutra:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

ONE DAY, UNGAN WAS SWEEPING THE GARDEN WITH A BAMBOO BROOM.

HIS BROTHER, DOGO, CAME OVER TO HIM AND SAID, "HEY, YOU LOOK

TERRIBLY BUSY!"

UNGAN SAID, "ALTHOUGH BUSY, THERE IS SOMETHING WHICH IS NOT

BUSY."

That is your consciousness, that is your buddha inside. You may be busy but there is someone, the witness, who is never busy. It has no business at all. It simply is, like a mirror.

When the mirror reflects you, do you think it is doing something? It is not doing anything. To mirror is its nature; it is simply there. It is just a coincidence that

you happen to stand before it. Once you are gone the empty mirror will be there.

When Ungan said, "Although busy, there is something which is not busy," he was saying,

"On the surface you can see me busy but inside I know someone who is just sitting silently, doing nothing. And that is more essential and more fundamental. This busy-ness will end soon."

DOGO SAID, "THAT MEANS THERE ARE TWO MOONS" -- one busy and

one not busy.

THEN UNGAN PUT THE BROOM ON THE GROUND AND SAID, "WHAT MOON

IS THIS?"

Now he is no longer busy. He dropped the broom on the ground and sat silently and asked, "What moon is this?"

DOGO SILENTLY LEFT -- not knowing what to say now.

In a metaphorical way there are millions of moons. When the full moon arises in the night, in every small pond, in every river, in every ocean... millions of reflections, uncountable reflections. But they are only reflections, not realities. The moon is one --

reflections many, millions. The consciousness is one -- reflections many, millions.

As you move towards your consciousness, you are moving towards oneness. As you go back towards the circumference there are millions of moons, but they are only reflections.

Whatever you are doing is nothing more than a reflection. What you are is a reality, eternal reality. Only the eternal can be called the real. The momentary is so passing, it does not matter.

So when Ungan put the broom down on the ground and sat there and asked, "What moon is this?" Dogo could not understand.

They were brothers. Both finally became enlightened, but Ungan seems to have a deeper understanding. Even before his enlightenment, he is coming very close.

AT ANOTHER TIME, UNGAN ASKED A MONK, "WHERE ARE YOU FROM?"

THE MONK REPLIED, "I CAME WITH INCENSE."

This is the world of Zen. You should not expect Socratic dialogues. There is nothing else in the world to compare with Zen, it is unique and a category in itself.

Ungan has asked, "Where are you from?" and the man does not answer the question.

THE MONK REPLIED, "I CAME WITH INCENSE."

The present moment. "What are you bothering about, from where I am coming and where I am going? Just look at my hand: I have come with incense." And incense also is symbolic. It is offered to the Buddha, the fragrance and the smoke of the incense continuously rising towards the blue sky and disappearing.

All these are very significant symbols. People have forgotten their symbology because people very quickly become ritualistic.

I have told you about a woman, a nun, who had a small golden Buddha. Now there are temples in Japan, in China -- and she was in China. One temple has ten thousand statues of Buddha -- unbelievable! The whole mountain has been carved; the mountain has disappeared, only Buddha's statues, statues upon statues, ten thousand Buddhas. And every temple has many Buddhas.

So this nun was always in trouble: "MY Buddha!" When she would worship in the morning... now the incense knows nothing about whose Buddha and whose incense...

sometimes it would start moving with the breeze to some other Buddha.

All the statues were of the same man, but such is the possessive mind: she wanted the incense to reach to HER Buddha. And her Buddha was very small -- it was pure gold --

and there were huge Buddhas standing, sitting, lying down, in all kinds of postures. The incense has no idea of possessiveness, and the wind has no idea. So the wind would come and the incense would go to this Buddha or that Buddha, and that woman was very angry.

"This is absolutely wrong. It is my incense and MY Buddha is not getting anything!"

So she devised a small technique: she cut a bamboo, hollow bamboo, and she put the hollow bamboo over the incense and the smoke which was going to other Buddhas. She put the other end of the bamboo to her golden Buddha's nose. But a disaster happened.

The golden Buddha's nose became black! So she went to the priest of the temple: "How to clean my Buddha's nose?"

He said, "How did it happen?" Then she told the whole story. The priest was a master. He laughed; he said, "Such is the human mind, so utterly retarded! All these Buddhas are just the reflection of one Buddha -- your Buddha included. So whosoever is getting the incense, Buddha is getting the incense. You should not have been so possessive. My Buddha, my incense! -- now your possessiveness has destroyed your Buddha's nose. I cannot help."

She was in tears. She said, "You are an old master, and you know everything. Some way to clean my Buddha's nose... and I don't want to scratch it, I don't want to destroy my beautiful Buddha."

He said, "This whole idea of `MY Buddha, MY Buddha' is the cause of your Buddha's nose becoming black! Drop this idea! And leave your Buddha with me. Tomorrow morning you can take it away. The nose will be cleaned, but first drop this idea; otherwise it will happen again. What is the point? If you are going to use that hollow bamboo you will destroy your Buddha. Let the wind take the incense anywhere it takes it.

It always reaches to the one Buddha."

There are not two Buddhas; all are reflections.

The moon is one, reflected in millions of ponds, millions of rivers, oceans.

But reflections are reflections.

Our actions are nothing more than reflections, momentary; they go and come, the buddha remains. He is always there, the eternal presence.

THE MONK REPLIED, "I CAME WITH INCENSE."

He is saying, "I have come in search of a buddha. I came with incense, and you are asking nonsense questions." Ungan immediately understood.

UNGAN ASKED, "DID YOU SEE BUDDHA?"

If you have come with incense, that means you are looking for the buddha. Did you see the buddha?"

THE MONK REPLIED, "YES, I DID."

"WHERE DID YOU SEE HIM?" UNGAN ASKED.

THE MONK REPLIED, "I SAW HIM IN THE LOWER WORLD." UNGAN SAID, "THE OLD BUDDHA! THE OLD BUDDHA!"

This is a very strange anecdote. The monk said, "I SAW HIM IN THE LOWER WORLD."

You have to understand the idea of the lower world.…

Buddha said in his statements, "If there is a hell I will go there, because who will take care of the people in hell? Who will teach them the way to be out of hell and misery?

Until hell is emptied, I will remain there."

And the second story says, when he emptied hell completely of all the people, he reached the gate of heaven. There was great rejoicing and the doors were opened for him. There were roses on the road, and people were standing on both sides of the road leading to the place they had chosen for Buddha to live. But Buddha said, "I am not going to enter --

please close the doors. I will stand here till every living being has passed through. I have emptied hell, but the earth is full of unconscious people. Let them all pass, there is no hurry. I will stand here outside the gate." And the parable says, he is still standing there.

That will help you to understand the monk when he says, "I saw him in the lower world."

`Lower world' is the Buddhist way of saying hell. The upper world is heaven; in the middle is this earth. We are the middle world.

UNGAN SAID, "THE OLD BUDDHA! THE OLD BUDDHA! His compassion

is so great, he must have entered hell."

He is immensely touched by the fact that Buddha has gone into hell. "The old Buddha, with his eternal compassion, can't resist the temptation to go into hell! He will suffer hellfire, that is not a problem, but he will empty hell."

So this statement -- "THE OLD BUDDHA! THE OLD BUDDHA!" -- is of great gratitude. He is remembering the old Gautam Buddha, his compassion, his love, his effort to transform the whole world into absolute awareness.

"Every living being has to become a buddha." That was his message -- not a Buddhist, but THE BUDDHA.

Buson wrote:

PLUM SCENT HALOING THE MOON.

The scent of the plum is reaching the moon, and creating a halo around the moon. Only meditators can experience such refined, beautiful experiences.

Plum scent reaching to the moon, haloing, making a halo around the moon. A tremendous, beautiful, vivid picture.

Sometimes you see the halo of the moon. When it goes behind a cloud, then you

can see the halo. Inside you can see the moon and just around it, a little fainter but still beautiful, very beautiful, a round circle.

Buson must have arisen out of his meditation and seen the moon, and smelled the plum perfume.

Zen masters used to write their experiences immediately after meditation. And every Zen master was asked before his death to write one haiku to be remembered for centuries --

"This is your last word." So every Zen master has written before dying a small haiku which comprehends his whole experience of life. Before moving beyond life he leaves the last signature and the last message, compressed, of his whole life's experience.

It happened in one Zen master's life that the disciples forgot -- they were in such sadness

-- to ask him to write.

So he died, it is said, and they took him out of his cottage and were preparing the funeral pyre. Then the master opened his eyes and he said, "Listen, you have forgotten one thing..." They were shocked! He said, "Bring the book. Otherwise what will the coming generations say? `What kind of master died without giving any message?' Bring the book!"

The book was immediately brought. He wrote a small haiku, signed it, closed his eyes, and died again.

Now they were very cautious, they took their time. Somebody put his ear to the master's heart -- no sound, no beat. Somebody brought a mirror close to his nose

-- maybe some small breath, then the mirror will show the vapor. But no vapor. They shook him -- no reaction, no response. Finally, they decided, "It seems he has died." And he laughed.

He said, "Now I am really dying. This time don't try to check. Because you were checking, I waited. Laughter is my last message -- write it down!" And he really died.

But he tricked them two times. So when I die, remember: Don't be in a hurry!

Question 3 Maneesha's question:

OUR BELOVED MASTER,

IT SEEMS THAT THE FREEDOM OF CAPITALISM ALWAYS MEANT THE

FREEDOM OF THE JUNGLE AND THE VICTOR OF THE MOST POWERFUL

EGO. IN AMERICA, NORTH AS WELL AS SOUTH AMERICA, IT ALSO MEANT

STARVATION OF THE POOR AND ORGANIZED PROSTITUTION AND CRIME

ON A VERY WIDE SCALE. IS NOT SOCIALISM AND COMMUNISM A NECESSARY STEP IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A MORE HUMANE SOCIETY?

Maneesha, communism is certainly a necessary step for a more humane society, but not socialism. You don't understand the difference between socialism and communism. Most people think they are synonymous.

Socialism is a cowardly compromise with capitalism. Communism is absolutely no compromise with capitalism, and no compromise with anything that constitutes capitalism.

Up to now the Soviet Union has been a communist country. Now Comrade Gorbachev is trying to bring it down to socialism. That is destroying its dignity; that is a defeat. I hope he understands before it is too late.

It is time for Sardar Gurudayal Singh... because I don't want to be too late!

(THE ASSEMBLY LAUGHS APPRECIATIVELY, REMEMBERING LAST NIGHTS'

THREE AND A HALF HOUR DISCOURSE)

Dick Puller is the office playboy, and all the guys go to him for advice on how to score with women. One afternoon, Muffin Snuffler takes Dick aside, and asks him, "Tell me, Dick, how do you manage it? You are a married man but you have a different girlfriend every night. What is your secret?"

"It is simple," replies Dick Puller. "It is all in the approach. I will tell you how to do it.

Tonight, take the five o'clock train from Penn Central Station and get off at Trenton. At Trenton you will find dozens of women waiting for their husbands. And there are always some husbands who have to work late, so all you have to do is be charming and let nature take its course."

So Muffin catches the five o'clock train from Penn Station but dozes off in his seat. He wakes up with a start and finds that he has gone past Trenton and he has to get out at Westchester.

Muffin is about to catch a train to go back, when he sees a woman standing on the platform, looking very available.

Muffin casually walks over to her -- one thing leads to another and they end up in bed together at her place.

They are really beginning to enjoy themselves when the door swings open and Dick Puller comes in.

Dick takes one look at his wife in bed and shouts, "Dammit, Betty! So this is what you do when I work late! And as for you, Muffin, you idiot -- I told you to get off at Trenton!"

It is four o'clock on that fateful day on Calvary Hill. Jesus has been nailed up to the cross since lunchtime and is beginning to feel really hang-dog.

All of his disciples have deserted him, except one. Alone and standing right underneath the cross, in the hot baking sun, is Jesus' unknown thirteenth apostle, Reginald the homosexual. Reginald looks up at the nearly-naked Jesus on the cross, and whispers,

"Jesus! Ah! Jesus!"

Jesus looks down and says, "What is it, Reggie?"

"My Lord!" replies Reginald, looking up at him. "From where I am standing, I have to say -- you are really well hung!"

Jack Jerk is watching as his wife, Jill, tries on her new "Betty Boobs" brand bra.

"What the hell did you buy that thing for?" asks Jack Jerk. "You have nothing to put into it!"

"Cool it, Jack!" snaps Jill. "Do I complain about you wearing underpants?" Nivedano...

(Gibberish) Nivedano... Be silent...

Close your eyes... and feel your bodies to be completely frozen. This is the right moment for looking inwards.

Gather your life forces, and rush towards the center of your being -- with your total consciousness, and with an urgency as if this is going to be the last moment of your life.

Faster and faster... Deeper and deeper...

As you come closer to your being, a great silence descends over you just like rain, very soft rain of silence, cool.

Closer... and you find flowers of peace blossoming all around you.

Still closer... and you see for the first time your original face. This is the buddha.

The buddha is everyone's original face, and the buddha simply means witnessing.

Witness: you are not the body. Witness: you are not the mind.

Witness that you are only a witness and nothing else, and suddenly you are at the very center of your being.

A great ecstasy arises in you, a deep blissfulness is felt.

You disappear... just like incense smoke disappearing into the blue sky... only the buddha is left.

To make the witnessing deeper and clearer, Nivedano... Relax.

Let go... but continue to witness. Continue to be a buddha. This is your nature.

This is your ultimate, eternal existence.

At this moment you are the most blessed people on the earth.

The evening was beautiful on its own, but your meditation, your becoming a buddha, a witness, has added to the beauty of the evening tremendously. Now it is a miracle.

As your witnessing becomes more and more clear, you start melting like ice in the ocean.

Gautam the Buddha Auditorium is turning into an ocean of consciousness without waves, without any ripples, just a silent ocean.

Ten thousand buddhas were just reflections -- now there is only one buddha. Ten thousand reflections have disappeared into oneness, the ocean.

This is the authentic buddha.

When you become one with existence, the cosmos, you have entered the ultimate immortal existence.

Collect as much of the juices of life as possible. You have to bring them back with you.

Collect the fragrances of the beyond, the flowers that are showering on you, the silence, the ecstasy, the peace, the serenity.

And don't forget to persuade the buddha to come a little closer to your ordinary day-today existence.

These are the three steps:

First, buddha will become a shadow to you, always following behind you. Second step, you will become a shadow of buddha, always following him.

The third and final step, you will merge into the buddha -- a transparent consciousness, it does not make any shadow. The moment you merge into the buddha, only buddha remains: you are no more. That is the greatest, most blissful day of your life.

Nivedano...

Come back, but remember the grace of a buddha, the beauty, the silence, the serenity.

Sit down for a few moments just to remember where you have been, what has been the experience at the center of your being, what golden paths you have traveled on.…

And feel the presence of buddha just behind you. He is almost touching you; every day he is coming closer and closer. Every day your life is becoming more and more graceful, more and more of a deeper understanding of the secrets of the cosmos, more and more mysterious. Soon you will find yourself one of the greatest mysteries in existence. That day will be the day of your awakening, of your enlightenment.

It is not far away.

It is only a question of bringing more intensity, more totality, more sense of urgency. And the Zen Fire will burn all that is false in you, and the Zen Wind will take it away from you. You will remain just pure gold.

This pure gold of your being has the face of the buddha.

To be a buddha is the only meaning, the only significance of life. Those who miss it have missed all. Those who have found it have found everything that is valuable in this existence.

Okay, Maneesha? Yes, Beloved Master.

Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind Chapter #5

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