You have seen something so significant that everybody must be made aware
of it.
There is only one possibility for sanity to exist in relationships so they
don't turn into inferiority and superiority games, so they don't become
sado-masochistic tortures. And that only possibility is in the presence
of an unconditional love. Love is the greatest alchemy.
It transforms base metals into gold. Your ingredients are the same -- the
murderer and the Gautam Buddha are not different as far as their ingredients,
their intrinsic potentialities are concerned. It is just that man is not
a one dimensional machine.
Man is not one-dimensional; otherwise, his whole world would be sheer boredom.
And man's search is basically to be one with existence -- separation hurts.
In our other loving relationships, in small measures we are searching for
the same unity. In love with a woman, in love with a man, in love with a
friend, in love with some creative activity -- dance, music, poetry -- we
are trying to have a certain synchronicity with existence.
Our situation is that of a small child in the forest who has lost his mother
and is searching in the forest, not knowing where to go. This situation
allows many exploiters... this helplessness is used by those who are in
power, by those who have money. The helplessness is used to convert you
into a slave, into dependence.
Hence, all the religions have developed particular programs. They begin
with God -- and with God, your relationship cannot be anything else but
that which exists between a puppet and a puppeteer, between the slave and
the owner. With God, you cannot expect more than that, because he is the
creator; he has made you -- he can at any moment destroy you too. Neither
did he ask you whether you wanted to enter into life, nor will he ask you
whether you are in favor of destroying the world.
All the gods of all the religions
are dictatorial. They are fascist.
I don't have any God; hence I don't have any program for you in which you
will be transformed slowly into a slave.
I am fulfilled -- nothing more can be added to my experience. That's why
the people who are with me will not feel in any way inferior.
Nobody is inferior. People may be in different spaces, but nobody is inferior
and nobody is superior. They are all made of the same stuff you call God.
How can somebody be superior and somebody be inferior? We belong to the
same existence, our roots are nourished by the same existence.
Existence makes no distinctions, no discriminations between the sinners
and the saints. My approach is existential.
Hence, nobody is superior and nobody is inferior here. Naturally, by destroying
this complex of inferiority and superiority, we are removing the very possibility
of any kind of fascist mentality, fascist personality -- because to me,
it is inconceivable that a fascist can ever be religious.
And your so-called religious people are more or less all fascist fanatics.
They are not in search of truth; they think they have found it already --
in their scriptures which are dead, in the old superstitions which even
they know have no basis in reality.
Just a clarity of vision dispels all darkness out of which all the monsters
are born.
Here with me, whether you are a man or a woman, whether you are white or
black, it does not matter; nobody even takes note of it. It is enough that
you are a human being. And it is your freedom to choose your own lifestyle;
it is your basic right how you want to blossom. Those who love you can help
in taking care of the garden in which you are growing -- watering your roots,
showering their warmth.
It has now been scientifically proved that even the plants know who are
their friends and who are their enemies. They have developed something like
a cardiogram which is attached to the tree, and if a man comes with the
idea to cut a branch of the tree or to uproot the tree -- he just has the
idea -- suddenly the graph that is being made by the cardiogram on the tree
starts trembling. It loses the rhythm it had... now you can see how fear
is felt by the tree.
And remember that the tree has telepathic sensitivity; otherwise she could
not know the thought in the man's mind. He has not done anything -- visibly,
nothing has happened. And when the gardener comes -- with his warmth, with
his love -- suddenly the graph becomes the most harmonious. Now the tree
is no longer afraid, the tree is immensely blissful.
Loving warmth is not only a poetic phenomenon. It is a reality of great
importance.
Now the flowers will be bigger, the fruits will be juicier; the tree will
respond. Except for man, perhaps there is no ingratitude in this whole existence.
The tree cannot give anything more -- she cannot give money, she cannot
give gold -- but she can give beautiful flowers, as big as possible, to
a loving heart. She can give juicier fruits.
Love has never been thought of as
food, but it is a very subtle kind of food.
And now psychologists have concluded that if a child gets everything necessary
-- all chemicals, all hormones, food, exercise, fresh air, rest, everything
that is necessary for life -- still he will die in three to six months unless
there is someone to pour love. He will not feel that life is worth living
without love; he will simply shrink and die. And in thousands of labs around
the world, many animals have died in these experiments.
Ordinarily, it is understood that these experiments are being done on animals
first and that unless we have found safe principles we do not apply them
to human beings -- this has been the idea prevalent in the masses. Even
the medical professionals -- doctors, physicians -- also believe in it.
But the truth is something very different.
Just a few days ago.... For almost two years, a group of senators in America
were investigating about a certain amount of money... not a small amount
of money; two hundred million dollars is there in the books, but where has
it been spent, where has it gone? The cabinet went on denying any knowledge
of it, the president went on denying. The suspicion was that the government
of America today is the greatest terrorist. And the money is going to the
terrorists in a small country in the middle portion of the Americas, between
South America and North America.
Just like Cuba, another small country has become communist. It is their
right, whether they are right or wrong. Nobody else has to decide it. If
they want to live a wrong kind of life, then too, they have the absolute
freedom to live it; only they should not harm anybody else. They should
not interfere in the lives of others.
Two hundred million dollars had been given to guerrillas, terrorists, to
destroy that small Central American country because it had gone into the
hands of the communists. And after two years of continuous struggle, only
now has the president accepted that, "Yes, that money has gone to the terrorists."
And the whole world is silent, nobody has criticized it!
Governments are to save people from terrorism, and here governments are
supplying money and arms and food to terrorists. And then they go on lying....
I have looked into the scriptures of all the religions, I have looked into
the ideological literature of all the political parties and I am amazed:
they go on piling up lies upon lies. And the whole of humanity is asleep
-- not only does nobody object, but nobody even suspects.
Here with me, you are gathered for a special purpose: the search for the
truth, the search for the purest kind of love, the search for a life which
is a dance of sheer joy.
Nowhere else in the world are people gathering for the same reasons. They
are gathering for the purpose of creating more hatred; they are gathering
to create more wars; they are gathering to create more destructive activities
in human life. Naturally, we have a sick world, an insane world.
Here, it is impossible to feel any superiority or inferiority.
I have tried my best to convince you of only one thing: that enlightenment
is your nature; that it is not something achieved, you bring it with your
birth. All that you have to do is not to create it but just to open the
hidden secret of your life.
The moment you start feeling your inner light, your whole perspective starts
changing. You will feel compassionate towards human beings even if they
are doing stupid things. And you will feel immensely joyous, celebrating,
even though you don't have anything to celebrate. Nothing is needed to celebrate
-- only excuses... my birthday is just an excuse! But if you want to celebrate,
you will find a thousand and one excuses.
It is your life, and whatever becomes of it is your creation.
Remember, there are hidden signatures on it. You cannot disassociate yourself
from what you create, from the way you live, the way you respond.
Once you are overflowing with love and blissfulness, you cannot, even in
your dreams, act in a way which is humiliating to another. Because the other
is not really the other, it is just part of us.
We are one consciousness filling the whole universe.
But a little experience will help... and you will start seeing the same
light in others. And to see light within yourself and light within others
is to live the whole year round surrounded with a festival of lights.
In the outside world, there are people who want to dominate and there are
people who want to be dominated. The responsibility is not one-sided. There
are people who want to be enslaved, because slavery has one thing about
it: it takes all responsibility away from you. Then the responsibility is
of your owner. You are just instrumental -- whatever he says, you do, but
you don't feel any burden. So most human beings deep down want to remain
slaves.
Slavery in religion means you remain a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian.
And you are afraid also, because your slavery is based only on beliefs.
So everybody is trying to protect his flock from coming in contact with
others.
Just the other day I received a message from friends in Germany. The German
parliament has passed a resolution that I cannot enter Germany. Sannyasins
are protesting it because it is absolutely against the German constitution,
against German law. There is not a single precedent! Not only in Germany
but all over the world, there is not a single incident prohibiting a man
who has never before entered your country. How can you judge that he is
going to be dangerous?
So they asked five hundred world-famous, prominent intelligentsia from different
fields -- professors, scientists, poets, painters, dancers, actors. Up to
now they have received one hundred and fifty letters of strong support,
an absolute protest against the government.
They have also received a few letters which are in support of the government.
A few points in those letters were so hilarious that they have sent me those
few points. One point was: One Protestant high priest has supported the
government because he thinks I am a Catholic, and Germany has to be saved
from the Catholic religion.
Such fear shows deep doubts. You are not certain about your Protestant theology;
you are afraid somebody may make punctures in the balloon of your faith.
Here with me, there is a religious fragrance but no religion as such. That
gives you total freedom. That makes you proud of yourself and grateful for
all that existence has done for you.
Remember, pride is not ego.
Ego is something without content. For example, a man who cannot even draw
a straight line thinks himself a great painter -- that is ego, there is
no content. But if Picasso thinks he is a great painter, that is simply
a fact, and if he is proud of his genius there is nothing wrong in it. In
fact, people should be helped to find some pride in their individuality
because that pride will make their eyes shine, their faces luminous; that
pride will make them unique individuals, with no more question of inferiority
and superiority.
And secondly, anybody who is proud is always grateful. Because the genius
of Picasso or Yehudi Menuhin is not their own; they are only vehicles. It
is the beyond that comes through them -- in music, in dance, in painting,
in scientific research, in poetry, in thousands of ways, but the real genius
will know it for sure, that it is coming from the beyond.
He is proud that he has been chosen, he is not proud in comparison to you.
Ego is a comparison: you are higher, you are superior, but there is comparison.
You cannot be superior living alone in a forest -- superior to whom? You
cannot even be inferior -- inferior to whom?
The man of pride has a deep feeling of gratitude that existence has chosen
him, although he is not worthy. It is a strange phenomenon. The more worthy
you are, the more you feel you are not worthy enough. You have been given
so much and you cannot do anything in return.
Here, there will be people with pride. I would like my sannyasins to be
proud, even of the fact that they are sannyasins, that they have been courageous
enough to move against all orthodoxies, traditions, conventions, all that
is rotten, and come out into the fresh, into the young, into the new. You
are blessed. But your blessedness will be full of gratitude.
That is the distinction to be remembered between ego and pride.
I destroy the ego and I create the pride. Ego is something like a cancer
that simply eats you and eats others. Pride, self-respect is a creative
phenomenon. It fulfills your own potential and it also shares with the world
all the treasures that you have brought into the world. So here the situation
is totally different.
I would like it to be so in the whole world, but they are so afraid. Their
fear that I can destroy their morality, their religion, their past, is a
clear-cut indication that they are already uprooted from the past. They
are just hoping against hope that somehow all this old garbage can be carried.
Because we have respected it as golden for centuries. Now, to suddenly drop
it as garbage by the side of the road hurts the ego, because it means the
ego has been wrong for centuries.
A sannyasin needs the courage to drop the fear -- because unless he drops
the fear, the ego cannot be dropped. And without dropping the ego, the whole
load, the whole luggage, all rotten, has to be carried. Your whole energy
is wasted in carrying the dead.
Just think of yourself carrying your father, your grandfather, your forefathers,
all on your back and going towards Marine Drive. Do you think you will ever
reach Marine Drive? Because the people lined up on your back is going to
be endless; all your skyscrapers will look like pygmies. The load is going
to be so tremendous that you will not be able to carry it without the help
of Suraj Prakash -- you will need trucks, transport vehicles.
And your whole life will be simply
wasted carrying these dead people.
And we are all carrying them. That's why life becomes serious, burdensome,
heavy, juiceless, dry. Otherwise, there is no reason. You can be lush green
with red flowers.
And there is no need for any comparison. Why not have all the people of
the planet be emperors? What is the problem? It is a question of understanding
the world -- and if you understand yourself, to understand the world is
not difficult, it is the simplest thing.
And once you have understood that to be an emperor or to be a slave is your
decision, who is going to choose to be a slave? When you can put your whole
energy into creating something that will give you satisfaction, that will
give you a deep sense of fulfillment, a sense that you have not been here
unnecessarily, you have contributed something; you have made the world a
little more beautiful -- a few more flowers you have added to it.
If everybody is adding a few more flowers, this whole world can again become
a garden.
There is no need to fight. There is no need for you to be superior to anybody,
because I am giving you something which is far higher than superiority.
I am making you unique individuals. |