People are cowards; don´t be worried about them. Go on your way, go on your way dancing. Remember only one thing: whatsoever feels good is good, whatsoever feels beautiful is beautiful, and whatsoever makes you joyful, gay, delighted, is truth. Let that be your only criterion.
Don´t be bothered by others opinions. Let this be your only touchstone – whatsoever makes you happy is bound to be true. Ananda, bliss, is the only criterion of truth.
Love is the most healing force in the world; nothing goes deeper than love. It heals not only the body, not only the mind, but also the soul. If one can love then all one´s wounds disappear. Then one becomes whole - and to be whole is to be holy.
Unless one is whole one is not holy. The physical health is a superficial phenomenon. It can happen through medicine, it can happen through science. But the innermost core of one´s being can be healed only through love. Those who know the secret of love know the greatest secret of life. Then there is no misery for them, no old age, no death. Of course the body will become old and the body will die, but love reveals to you the truth that you are not the body. You are pure consciousness, you have no birth, no death. And to live in that pure consciousness is to live in tune with life. Bliss is a by-product of living in tune with life
It is only through intensity that one arrives. When all your desires, when all your passions become one flame, it is intensity. When there is only one desire left inside you and your total being supports that one, it is intensity. It is exactly what the word says: in-tensity. The opposite word is ex-tensity. You are spread out, you have a thousand and one desires, many fragmentary desires - one going to the north, one going to the south. You are being pulled apart. You are not one, you are a crowd. And if you are a crowd you will be miserable. If you are a crowd you will never feel any fulfillment. You don´t have any center. Intensity means creating a center in yourself.
When all the arrows are coming towards the center, when all the fragments are joined together, integration arises. Becoming centered, concentrated inwards, that is the meaning of intensity. Sometimes you have known moments, in some danger when all your thought disappear, the crowd will become one. In that moment you will be one single individual, indivisible. You will be undivided, one unity. The death facing you has created the intensity. Or in love sometimes there is intensity. All else becomes irrelevant, peripheral. Only the love is all and the whole of your heart.
When such intensity arises in meditation, it brings you to the ultimate. You arrive home.
It is always simple to love abstract things. It is more simple to love humanity than to love human beings, because in loving humanity you are not risking anything.
Too much concern about yourself is the greatest disease possible. You cannot be happy, you cannot enjoy yourself. How can you enjoy? So many problems inside! Problems and problems and problems and nothing else! – and there seems to be no solution. What to do? You go crazy. Everybody, inside, is crazy.
You also need to become mad now and then – that’s how anger happens: anger is a temporary madness. If you don’t allow a leakage now and then you will gather so much you will explode, you will go nuts. But if you are continuously concerned with this you are already nuts.
And if nothing is happening then too they are worried: why is nothing happening? And immediately they have to create something because that has become their constant business, occupation; otherwise they feel lost. What to do? Nothing is happening! How is it possible that nothing is happening to me? They feel their ego only when something is happening – maybe it is depression, sadness, anger, an illness, but if something is happening they are okay, they can feel themselves.
Have you seen children? They pinch themselves to feel that they are. The child remains in you – you would like to pinch and see whether you are or not. They say a brave man dies once and cowards die millions of times – because they go on pinching and feeling whether they are dead yet or not.
Your diseases help you to retain your ego.
You feel that something is happening – of course not bliss, not ecstasy, but sadness and “Nobody is as sad as I am,” and “Nobody is as blocked as I am,” and “Nobody has such a migraine as I have got.” You feel superior there, everybody else is inferior.
If you are concerned too much with yourself, remember, you will not attain. This over-concern will enclose you, and the way is right before your eyes. You have to open your eyes, not close them
Now, there are masters who say, “Whatsoever you want, you will get it through meditation. Money will pour in. Just ask in deep meditation and it is going to happen.”
This is speaking the language of your desire. The truth is just the opposite. If you ask me, if you really meditate you will be a failure in life, an utter failure. If you are succeeding, even that success will disappear because meditation will make you so relaxed, so nonviolent, so loving, so noncompetitive, non-egoistic, that who cares for success?
Meditation will make you so joyous that who wants to bother about the tomorrow?
Who wants to stake today for tomorrow?
Meditation will make you inwardly rich, certainly. Inwardly you will become ecstatic, but outwardly it can’t be guaranteed that you will become rich, that you will become successful, that you will become very healthy, that no disease will ever happen to you. That is all sheer bullshit!
Maharshi Raman died of cancer, Ramakrishna Paramahansa died of cancer. Can you find greater meditators? J. Krishnamurti suffers from many illnesses; he has been suffering from severe headache for almost twenty years. The headache is so severe that sometimes he wants to hit his head against the wall. Can you find a greater meditator? Can you find a greater buddha alive? If J. Krishnamurti suffers from a headache, if Raman Maharshi dies of cancer, if Ramakrishna dies of cancer, do you think meditation is going to give you health? Yes, in a way it will make you more healthy and more whole, but only in a very inner way.
Deep down you will be whole, deep down there will be an inner spiritual health.
Raman is dying with cancer, but his eyes are full of joy. He dies laughing. This is real health. In deep agony is his body, but he is just a witness. This is meditation
Atomic war is on the horizon, the deadly disease aids is spreading fast, and scientists say the earth will change its axis by the end of this century.
But why are the priests, politicians and governments not aware of these facts? And why are they not interested in making the public aware? Please comment.
It is one of the most significant questions that can be asked, but you will have to understand some deeper implications, which you may not be aware of.
The politicians and the priests have a vested interest in keeping the people of the world unaware of the future. The reason is very simple: if the people are aware of the future and the darkness ahead, the death that is coming every moment closer, there is going to be a tremendous upheaval in the consciousness of man all around the world. And the politicians and the priests, who have dominated humanity for millennia, know perfectly well they cannot solve any problem that is going to be faced by humanity in the future. They are absolutely impotent. The problems are too big and they are too small. The only way for them to save their faces is not to let the people become aware of what is happening tomorrow.
I have to make it clear also that politics attracts only the most mediocre minds in the world. It does not attract Albert Einsteins, Bertrand Russells, Jean-Paul Sartres, Rabindranath Tagores... No, it attracts a certain kind of people. Psychologists are aware of the fact that people who are suffering from some inferiority complex are the people to be attracted towards politics, because politics can give them power. And through power they can convince themselves and others that they are not inferior, that they are not mediocre.
But just attaining power makes no difference to their intelligence. So the whole world is ruled by mediocre people when we have a large number of intelligent people -- scientists, artists, musicians, poets, dancers, painters -- all kinds of sensitive, creative people, the very cream of humanity, but they are not in power. They can change the whole fabric of human history, they can change the darkness of the future into a beautiful morning, a sunrise. But the misfortune is that power is in the hands of the wrong people, and the people of intelligence are devoid of power. I will tell you a small story to make it clear....
A great mystic heard that one of his friends, a childhood friend -- they had played together, studied together -- had become the prime minister of the country. Just to congratulate him, the mystic came down from the mountains. It was a long journey, tiring. By the time he reached the prime minister's palace, the prime minister was getting ready to go somewhere.
He recognized the mystic, but he said, "I'm sorry, I have some appointments. I have to go to three places, and I would love it if you can come with me. On the way we can talk and remember the golden old days."
The mystic said, "I would love to come with you, but you can see my rags are full of dust. It would not look right to sit by your side on a golden chariot."
The prime minister said, "Don't be worried. The king has presented me with a very costly overcoat. I have never used it; I have been keeping it for some special occasion. I will give you the coat. You just put it on; it will cover your clothes, the dust and everything." The coat was given to him.
They reached the first house. They entered the house. The prime minister introduced his friend: "He is a great mystic. He lives in the mountains.
Everything that he has is his own, except the coat -- that is mine."
The mystic could not believe it: "What kind of stupidity is this?"
Even the family was shocked, to insult the mystic in such a way.
Outside the house the mystic said, "It is better I do not accompany you. You insulted me. What was the need to say that it is your coat? They were not asking."
He said, "I am sorry, forgive me. And if you don't come with me to the next appointment, I will think you have not forgiven me."
The mystic was a simple-hearted man. He said, "Then it is okay, I am coming."
Entering the second house, the prime minister introduced him: "He is a great mystic who lives in the mountains. Everything is his -- even the coat is his!"
The mystic could not believe that this man had any intelligence at all. Outside he simply refused: "I cannot go to your third appointment. This is too much."
But the politician said, "I have said that the coat is yours!" The mystic said, "It is unbelievable how unintelligent a man can be. Your assertion, emphasis, that the coat is mine, creates suspicion: there is something you are hiding. What is the need to mention the coat at all? I don't see the point that in any introduction coats need to be introduced."
And the politician said, "Forgive me, but if you don't come to the third appointment I will never forget that I have hurt you. Please, there is only one more appointment, and I will not say that the coat is yours or the coat is mine. Don't be worried about it."
The simple mystic, innocent, agreed to go with him. At the third house he introduced the mystic in the same way, "He is a great mystic from the mountains. All the clothes are his, but as far as the coat is concerned, it is better not to say anything!"
The politician is not the most intelligent part of humanity. Otherwise there would not have been five thousand wars in three thousand years. The politician has destroyed, but has not created anything. It is the politician who is creating the atomic weapons, the nuclear missiles. With what face can he make the people of the world aware that the future is dark, dismal?
Perhaps there is no future anymore, perhaps we are sitting on a volcano which can erupt any moment. Already we have so many nuclear weapons that we can destroy seven hundred planets of the size of our earth. In other words, we can kill everyman seven hundred times over.
Can you think of the stupidity of it? A poor man simply dies one time. There is no need to kill him seven hundred times. For what is all this nuclear arrangement being made?
There is a certain madness behind it. The madness is that the politician can live only if there is war. In his autobiography, Adolf Hitler has made many significant statements. One of the statements is that if a politician wants to be a great hero, a great historical figure, then the only way is to create a great war. Without war you don't have heroes.
Just think of all your heroes, they have been created by war: Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Nadirshah, Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill... And what have these people got, except that they lived at the time of a great war? The war brings them to the pinnacle of their glory. And your whole history is full of these idiots.
If we have any sense we should completely stop studying this kind of history in the schools and universities. Can't you study beautiful people, creative people? We have produced great musicians. We have produced great scientists. We have produced great poets. We have produced great painters. Our history should remember them. Our history should remind us that they are our real forefathers, not Genghis Khan, not Tamerlane, not Nadirshah. These are accidents, and they should not even have a place in the footnotes of history books. They should be simply ignored. They were mad people and there is no need to go on studying them and creating the same kind of desire in the new generation.
The priests are also in a deep conspiracy with the politicians. It is a thousands-of-years-old conspiracy: the priest protects the politician; the politician protects the priest. It has to be understood
If you can trust, something or other will always happen and will help your growth. You will be provided for. Whatsoever is needed at a particular time will be given to you, never before it.
If one person goes against the crowd – one Jesus or one Buddha – the crowd doesn´t feel good with this man, the crowd will destroy him; or, if the crowd is very cultured, the crowd will worship him. But both ways are the same. If the crowd is a little wild, uncultured, Jesus will be crucified. If the crowd is like the Indians – very cultured, centuries of culture, of nonviolence, of love, of spirituality – they will worship the Buddha. But by worshipping they are saying: We are different; you are different. We cannot follow you, we cannot come with you. You are good, very good, but too good to be true. You don´t belong to us. You are a god – we will worship you. But don´t trouble us; don´t say things which can unhinge us, which can disturb our peaceful sleep.
Kill a Jesus or worship a Buddha – both are the same. Jesus is killed so the crowd can forget that such a man ever existed, because if this man is true.... And this man is true. His whole being is so full of bliss and benediction that he is true; because truth cannot be seen, only the fragrance that comes out of a true man can be felt. The blissfulness can be felt by others, and that is a proof that this man is true. But if this man is true, then the whole crowd is wrong, and this is too much. The whole crowd cannot tolerate such a person; it is a thorn, painful. This man has to be destroyed – or worshipped, so we can say: You come from another world, you don´t belong to us. You are a freak, you are not the normal rule. You may be the exception, but the exception only proves the rule. You are you, we are us: we will go on our path. Good that you came – we respect you very much – but don´t disturb us. We put Buddha in the temple so that he need not come into the marketplace; otherwise he will create trouble
My approach to your growth is basically to make you independent of me. Any kind of dependence is slavery, and the spiritual dependence is the worst slavery of all. I have been making every effort to make you aware of your individuality, your freedom, your absolute capacity to grow without any help from anybody. Your growth is something intrinsic to your being. It does not come from outside; it is not an imposition, it is an unfolding.
All the meditation techniques that I have given to you are not dependent on me – my presence or absence will not make any difference – they are dependent on you. It is not my presence, but your presence that is needed for them to work. It is not my being here but your being here, your being in the present, your being alert and aware that is going to help.
The whole past of man is, in different ways, a history of exploitation. And even the so-called spiritual people could not resist the temptation to exploit. Out of a hundred masters, ninety-nine percent were trying to impose the idea that, "Without me you cannot grow, no progress is possible. Give me your whole responsibility." But the moment you give your whole responsibility to somebody, unknowingly you are also giving your whole freedom.
And naturally, all those masters had to die one day, but they have left long lines of slaves: Christians, Jews, Hindus, Mohammedans. What are these people? Why should somebody be a Christian? If you can be someone, be a Christ, never be a Christian. Are you absolutely blind to the humiliation when you call yourself a Christian, a follower of someone who died two thousand years ago?
The whole of humanity is following the dead. Is it not weird that the living should follow the dead, that the living should be dominated by the dead, that the living should depend on the dead and their promises that `We will be coming to save you.´?
None of them has come to save you. In fact, nobody can save anybody else; it goes against the foundational truth of freedom and individuality.
As far as I am concerned, I am simply making every effort to make you free from everybody – including me – and to just be alone on the path of searching.
Gurdjieff said, “You are nothing but the body, and when the body dies you will die. Only once in a while does a person survive – one who has created soul in his life survives death – not all. A Buddha survives; a Jesus survives, but not you! You will simply die, not even a trace will be left.”
What was Gurdjieff trying to do? He was shocking you to the very roots; he was trying to take away all your consolations and foolish theories which go on helping you to postpone work upon yourself. Now, to tell people, “You don’t have any souls, you are just vegetables, just a cabbage or maybe a cauliflower” – a cauliflower is a cabbage with a college education – “but nothing more than that.” He was really a master par excellence. He was taking the very earth away from underneath your feet. He was giving you such a shock that you had to think over the whole situation: are you going to remain a cabbage? He was creating a situation around you in which you would have to seek and search for the soul, because who wants to die?
And the idea that the soul is immortal has helped people to console themselves that they are not going to die, that death is just an appearance, just a long sleep, a restful sleep, and you will be born again. Gurdjieff says, “All nonsense. This is all nonsense! Dead, you are dead forever – unless you have created the soul….”
Now see the difference: you have been told you are already a soul, and Gurdjieff changes it totally. He says, “You are not already a soul, but only an opportunity. You can use it, you can miss it.”
And I would like to tell you that Gurdjieff was just using a device. It is not true. Everybody is born with a soul. But what to do with people who have been using truths as consolations? A great master sometimes has to lie – and only a great master has the right to lie – just to pull you out of your sleep
Atisha says: In the morning remember it is a new day, a new beginning. And have a decision deep in your heart that “Today I am not going to waste this opportunity.
I’ve been working as a diplomat but thinking I might study something like massage because I like working with my hands, and I know it’s a job where one can be open and receptive.
It’s very good. To do something with the hands is always good.
Rather than to be a head, it is always good to be hands.
It will make you more alive and more in contact with life. It will make you more grounded. Massage is perfectly good. It is better than to be a diplomat! It is very very good to forget all about that nonsense.
Get more into your body. Make your senses more alive. See more lovingly, taste more lovingly, touch more lovingly, smell more lovingly. Let your senses function more and more. Then suddenly you will see the energy that was moving too much in the head is now well-divided in the body.
The head is very dictatorial. It goes on taking energy from everywhere and is a monopolist. It has killed the senses.
The head is taking almost eighty percent of the energy, and only twenty percent is left for the whole body. Of course the whole body suffers, and when the whole body suffers, you suffer, because you can only be happy when you are functioning as a whole, as an organic unity, and every part of your body and being is getting its proportion; not more than that, not less than that. Then you function in a rhythm. You have a harmony.
Harmony, happiness, health – they are all part of one phenomenon, and that is wholeness. If you are whole, you are happy, healthy, harmonious.
The head is creating a disturbance. People have lost many things. People cannot smell. They have lost the capacity to smell. They have lost the capacity to taste. They can only hear a few things. They have lost their ears. People don’t know what touch really is. Their skin has become dead. It has lost the softness and receptivity. So the head thrives like an Adolf Hitler, crushing the whole body. The head becomes bigger and bigger. It is very ridiculous.
Man is almost like a caricature – a very big head and just very small limbs, hanging.
So bring back your senses. Do anything with the hands, with the earth, with the trees, with the rocks, with bodies, with people.
Do anything that needs not much thinking, not much intellectualization.
And enjoy. Then your head will by and by be unburdened. It will be good for the head too, because when the head is burdened too much, it thinks – but it cannot think. How can a worrying mind think? For thinking you need clarity. For thinking you need a non-tense mind.
It will look like a paradox, but for thinking you need a thoughtless mind.
When the mind is burdened too much with thoughts, you think too much but to no purpose. It comes to nothing; there is nothing in the head. You go round about, round about; you make much noise, but the end result is zero. So it is not against the head to disperse the energy into all the senses. It is in favor of it, because when the head is balanced, in its right place, it functions better; otherwise it is jammed. It is such great traffic. It is almost a rush hour; for twenty-four hours a rush hour.
So start doing something...whatsoever you feel. Massage is very good. The body is beautiful...anything to do with the body is beautiful
There is a totally different quality of being which comes by not thinking: not good, not bad, simply a state of no-thinking. You simply watch, you simply remain conscious, but you don´t think. And if some thought enters... they will enter, because thoughts are not yours; they are just floating in the air. All around there is a noosphere, a thought-sphere, all around. Just as there is air, there is thought all around you, and it goes on entering on its own accord. It stops only when you become more and more aware. There is something in it: if you become more aware, a thought simply disappears, it melts, because awareness is a greater energy than thought.
If you become really integrated in your awareness, thoughts don´t enter you; you have become an impenetrable citadel, nothing can penetrate you. Not that you are closed, remember - you are absolutely open; but just the very energy of awareness becomes your citadel. And when no thoughts can enter you, they will come and they will bypass you. You will see them coming, and simply, by the time they reach near you they turn. Then you can move anywhere, then you go to the very hell - nothing can affect you. This is what we mean by enlightenment
If you are unhappy, that simply means that you have learned tricks for being unhappy. Nothing else! Unhappiness depends on the frame of your mind. There are people who are unhappy in all kinds of situations. They have a certain program in their mind that transforms everything into unhappiness. If you tell them about the beauty of the rose, they immediately start counting the thorns. If you say to them, "What a beautiful morning, what a sunny day!" they will say, "Only one day between two dark nights, so why are you making so much fuss?"
The same thing can be seen from a positive reference; then suddenly each night is surrounded by two days. And then suddenly it is a miracle that the rose is possible, that such a delicate flower is possible among so many thorns.
All depends on what kind of frame you are carrying in your head. Millions of people are carrying crosses. Naturally, obviously, they are burdened; their life is a drag. Their frame is such that it immediately becomes focused on everything that is negative. It magnifies the negative. That is a morbid approach towards life, pathological. But they go on thinking, "What can we do? The world is such."
No, the world is not such! The world is absolutely neutral. It has thorns, it has roses, it has nights, it has days. The world is utterly neutral, balanced - it has all. Now it depends on you as to what you choose. That´s how people create hell and heaven on the same earth
They say that every human being is equal. And of course, it satisfies the ego of every human being – nobody objects. It is one of the most dangerous lies to tell human beings.
I say to you, equality is a myth.
There are not even two human beings who are equal – in any way, in any dimension. I don´t mean that they are unequal, I mean that they are unique, incomparable, so the question of equality or inequality does not arise. Are you equal to these pillars in the hall? The pillars may be beautiful, but you are not equal to them. But does that mean you are inferior to the pillars? It simply means you are not a pillar – pillars are pillars, you are you.
Every human being is a category unto himself.
And unless we recognize the uniqueness of each individual, there are not going to be any human rights, and there is not going to be a civilized world – human, loving, rejoicing.
It is impossible. The ego cannot be sacrificed because the ego exists not. The ego is just all idea: it has no substance in it. It is not something – it is just pure nothing. You give it reality by believing in it. You can withdraw belief and the reality disappears, evaporates.
“The mouth is really very very significant, because that is where the first activity landed; your lips started the first activity. Surrounding the area of the mouth is the beginning of all activity: you breathed in, you cried, you started groping for the mother’s breast. And your mouth remains always in a frantic activity.
“Whenever you sit down to meditate, whenever you want to be silent, the first thing is to shut the mouth completely. If you shut the mouth completely, your tongue will touch the roof of your mouth; both the lips will be completely closed and the tongue will touch the roof. Shut it completely – but that can be done only if you have followed whatsoever I have been saying to you, not before it.
“You can do it – shutting the mouth is not a very big effort. You can sit like a statue, with a completely shut mouth, but that will not stop activity. Deep inside the thinking will continue, and if thinking continues you can feel subtle vibrations in the lips. Others may not be able to observe it because they are very subtle, but if you are thinking then your lips quiver a little – a very subtle quivering.
“When you really relax, that quivering stops. You are not talking, you are not making any activity inside you. And then don’t think.
“What will you do? – thoughts are coming and going. Let them come and go; that’s not the problem. You don’t get involved; you remain aloof, detached. You simply watch them coming and going – they are not your concern. Shut the mouth and you remain silent. By and by, thoughts will cease automatically. They need your cooperation to be there. If you cooperate,they will be there; if you fight, then too they will be there – because both are cooperations: one for, the other against. Both are sorts of activity. Simply watch.
“But shutting the mouth is very helpful. So first, as I have been observing many people, I will suggest to you to first yawn. Open your mouth as wide as possible, tense your mouth as wide as possible and yawn completely; it even starts hurting. Two or three times do this. This will help the mouth to remain shut for a longer time. And then for two or three minutes, say gibberish, nonsense, loudly. Anything that comes to the mind, say it loudly and enjoy it. Then shut the mouth.
“It is easier to move from the opposite end. If you want to relax your hand, it is better to first make it as tense as possible. Clench the fist and let it be as tense as possible. Do just the opposite and then relax – and then you will attain a deeper relaxation of the nervous system. Make gestures, faces, movements of the face and distortions. Yawn, say two or three minutes of nonsense and then shut the mouth.
“This tension will give you a deeper possibility to relax the lips and mouth. Shut the mouth and then just be a watcher. Soon a silence will descend on you.
“Be passive...just as you sit by the side of a river and the river floats by, and you simply watch. There is no eagerness, no urgency, no emergency. Nobody is forcing you. Even if you miss, there is nothing missed. You simply watch, you just look. Even the word watch is not good, because the very word watch gives a feeling of being active. You simply look, not having anything to do. You simply sit by the bank of the river, you look, and the river flows by. Or, you look passively at the sky and the clouds float.
“This passiveness is very very essential; that is to be understood, because your obsession for activity can become eagerness, can become an active waiting. Then you miss the whole point; then the activity has entered from the back door again. Be a passive watcher.
“This passivity will automatically empty your mind. Ripples of activity, ripples of mind-energy, by and by will subside, and the whole surface of your consciousness will be without any waves, without any ripples. It becomes like a silent mirror.”
ZORBA THE BUDDHA
Zorba the Buddha is a man who embraces and celebrates both the outer , material world , as well as the inner world of spirituality , transcendance and freedom.
Zorba the Greek is a character from a novel , by Nikos Kazantzakis, who lived his life to the maximum, enjoys eating and drinking wine , playing music and celebrated and danced for hours on the beach, under the stars.
Gautama the Buddha explored the depth of his inner world with awareness and discovered the light and the deathless nature of his being .
Previously, many of those on the inner, spiritual journey , have been conditioned to deny the outer , material world . The body has been denied and many cases treated as if it is something sinfull. This has led to life-negating attitudes and guilt complexes around sex and basic pleasures of life.
On the other hand, the materialists of the West , have advanced in many ways technologically and scientifically, but have no understanding or knowledge of the inner world , meditation, and consciousness.
Osho’s understanding of what he called ‘the new man and women’ , is the meeting of East and West, of Zorba and Buddha, living in harmony with nature and celebrating this earth , embracing technology , and outer science as well as the inner science, meditation , bliss, love, transcendance and enlightenment.
Osho felt that if seekers are allowed to enjoy the outer life fully and totally , it will become easier to turn inside when the time comes , towards the inner light
“I would like this man Zorba to be alive in everybody, because it is your natural inheritance. But you should not stop at Zorba.
Zorba is only the beginning. Sooner or later, if you allow your Zorba full expression, you are bound to think of something better, higher, greater. It will not come out of thinking; it will come out of your experiences – because those small experiences will become boring.
Buddha himself had come to be Buddha because he had lived the life of a Zorba.”
“The Zorba loves singing, playing on his musical instruments, dancing. Buddha will make it perfect, absolute. Even silence will become a song, even stones will become sermons, and whatever you touch will become a musical instrument because your hands will now have the magic of the whole existence; they will have the grace, the beauty, the poetry...”
There has never been any peace. There have been only two periods in history: the period we know as war, and the period we call peace, which is a cover up – in reality it should be called preparation for another war. The whole history consists only of two things: war and preparation for war. And you are asking me, "Since peace was officially restored to the world at the end of World War Two, what have the politicians been doing?"
The politicians have been doing exactly what they have always been doing: creating more conflict, more unrest, more discrimination, more destructive weapons – and preparing for the third world war.
Once, Albert Einstein was asked: "You, being the scientist who discovered atomic energy, must be able to inform us what is going to happen in the third world war."
Einstein had tears in his eyes and he said, "Don't ask me about the third world war – I do not know anything about it. But if you want to know about the fourth world war, I can say something."
The journalist who was asking the question was immensely surprised and amazed: The man is not saying anything about the third world war, says he knows nothing about it, but he is ready to say something about the fourth world war? He asked excitedly, "Then please tell me about the fourth world war."
Einstein said, "Only one thing can be said about it – that it is never going to happen." The third world war will be the last world war. For this last world war, politicians have been preparing since peace was officially restored after the second world war.
The politician and his game are the ugliest things you can conceive of. We are facing a dark night, and I am reminded of the old saying that "When the night is darkest, the dawn is very close by." But I hesitate to say that this dark night that is surrounding us will have any dawn to it.
I will just tell you exactly what has been happening since 1945 – and people are kept in absolute ignorance; they are not aware that they are sitting on a volcano which can erupt any moment. They are kept engaged in trivia, and the real problems are kept hidden as if they don't exist.
Since 1945 there have been one hundred and five wars fought in sixty-six countries – all of them in the Third World. One is necessarily tempted to ask, "Why in the Third World?" America and the Soviet Union both have gone so far ahead in developing destructive weapons, that the weapons used in the second world war are out of date. For them, they are of no use. They have to be sold somewhere; some market is needed, and the market is possible only if there is war.
America goes on giving weapons to Pakistan. Then, naturally, India goes on taking weapons from the Soviet Union. And this has been happening in the Third World: one country purchases out-of-date material from the Soviet Union; then its enemy purchases from America. This is good business.
And they don't want these people to stop wars, because otherwise, where are they going to sell these weapons on which they have spent billions of dollars? And these poor countries and their politicians are ready to purchase them, although their people are dying of hunger – seventy-five percent of their budget goes towards war.
On the average, each war has lasted three and a half years. So who says peace has been restored? One hundred and five wars in sixty-six countries, each war lasting at least three and a half years – and you call it peace?
These wars caused sixteen million deaths. In the second world war, there were also millions of deaths. Since the second world war, which is the time of peace, sixteen million people have been killed in wars – and still you go on calling it peace?
But the politicians are so cunning, and people are so blind that they will not look around at what is happening. They will go on fighting about small things: which district should remain in which state? Belgaum is a district here; should it remain in Maharashtra? – because it is a boundary district between the states of Karnataka and Maharashtra.
There are people belonging to both languages, and they have been killing each other continually for three decades – and just a small thing cannot be decided.
In fact, nobody wants to decide it. Otherwise, what is the problem? Just a small plebiscite, a vote under neutral observation, and people can decide where they want to be. There is no need for killing each other. But it seems politicians are deeply interested in trouble continuing somewhere or other, so that they are needed.
Sixteen million people have been killed, and yet in every school and every college and in every university, they go on repeating, "We are living in a period of peace." In fact, the world war was almost more peaceful!
The majority of the wars have been in Asia. It is one of the strategies of the powerful nations and their politicians that they should fight always in some other country; the Soviet Union and America should fight in Afghanistan.
So the people of Afghanistan are killed; Afghanistan becomes a graveyard, and America and the Soviet Union are both profited by selling weapons. They are sending their experts, their weapons; they are training the Afghanis, and Afghanis are killing other Afghanis. One side has weapons from America, the other side has weapons from the Soviet Union.
Nine million civilians have been killed in conventional wars since Hiroshima. In ancient times, civilians were never killed. It is absolutely absurd: if your armies are fighting, the people who are fighting in armies may be killed, but now there seems to be no sensibility, no reasonability – nine million people who are civilians are killed. There may be small children, women, old people – who have nothing to do with the war, who may be reading in their schools, who may be working in their factories, or who may be cooking in their kitchens.
Just a few days ago Ronald Reagan, for no reason at all, attacked Libya – he bombed the civilian parts of Libya. His target was Kaddafi, and because Kaddafi has three houses inside the city, all his three houses had to be bombed. And in bombing his houses, other houses were burned and bombed. And just now, investigators have come to know that while the bombing was going on, professional killers were searching inside Libya for Kaddafi because it was possible he might not be killed by the bombs, he might not be in his own house.
So they were bombing the civilians, and professional killers were searching inside Libya to find Kaddafi. They could only kill Kaddafi's daughter. And neither Kaddafi nor the Libyans have done anything wrong against them.
And it is a coincidence that the day England allowed Ronald Reagan to use England as a base for bombing Libya, the parliament of England did not allow me to stay at the airport, in the lounge, for six hours – because I am a dangerous man! And Ronald Reagan is allowed to use England to bomb an innocent country which has done no harm to him. This is as dark a night as humanity has ever faced.
The current war budget is around seven hundred billion dollars per year. Every year, fifteen million people die from malnutrition and disease, and every year seven hundred billion dollars are spent on warfare.
Every minute, thirty children die for want of food and inexpensive vaccines and every minute one point three million dollars of public funds are spent on the world's military budget.
It seems we are not interested in life anymore; we have decided to commit suicide. Man has never been in such a suicidal mood – ever, in the whole of history.
Two hundred and fifty million children have not received even a basic education. A single nuclear submarine equals the annual education budget for one hundred and sixty million school-age children in twenty-three developing countries. Just one submarine! And there are thousands of submarines moving around the ocean all over the world – American and Russian both – and each submarine has nuclear weapons six times more powerful than all the weapons that were used in the second world war. And they are so costly that we could have provided our children with education and food, nutrition. But our interests are not there.
These are the politicians who don't want to be interfered with, who want absolute control of humanity – nobody above them.
The world's forests are disappearing at the rate of eighteen to twenty million hectares a year – an area half the size of California, and California is one of the biggest states in America. Within the next twenty to thirty years, all the tropical forests will be gone; and the implications are tremendous because these forests are supplying you with oxygen and life. If these forests disappear at the rate they are disappearing, mankind will be at a loss to find enough oxygen – from where?
And on the other hand, whatever carbon dioxide you exhale, these forests inhale. If these forests were not there... already there is a very thick layer of carbon dioxide continuously accumulating in the sky, just on the twenty-mile boundary where the atmosphere ends. And because of that carbon dioxide, the temperature of the atmosphere is rising. It is already four degrees higher than it has ever been.
If all the forests disappear, the temperature will become so high that it will do two things: firstly, it will become impossible for life to survive; secondly, all the ice at the north and the south poles, on the Himalayas and the Alps and other mountains, will start melting because of the heat. And this will raise all the oceans by forty feet. It will flood all our cities, all our countries; it will drown almost the whole earth – and this is not a flood that is going to recede.
But these politicians go on doing it. Just a few months ago I was in Nepal. Nepal is the poorest country in the world, but rather than dropping its arrangements for war, it has sold its forests – eternal forests of the Himalayas – to the Soviet Union. And the Soviet Union has cut whole mountainsides and left them dry. And for what? To create more newspapers.
What is the need of so many newspapers? It is almost the same news every day, and now that we have got far better media systems, the newspaper is out of date – there is radio, there is television. Why do you go on clinging to newspapers and destroying all the forests? Just because all the politicians, presidents and prime ministers need their pictures on the front page; their speeches, which are simply bullshit, to be published – without any consideration of what harm they are doing.
During the same period, the world population is expected to increase thirty to forty percent, from five billion to seven billion. This population growth alone will cause requirements for water to double in nearly half the world. Food is another thing... even water will become difficult, because the requirement will be double and we don't have that much water for drinking.
In addition, the United Nations reports say that globally, twenty million hectares a year of farm and grazing land are being reduced to zero productivity. More than one thousand plant and animal species become extinct each year – a rate that is expected to increase. One and a half to two million people in developing countries suffer acute pesticide poisoning annually, and pesticide-related deaths are estimated at ten thousand per year. Officers of India's planning commission reported recently: "We in India are on the verge of an enormous ecological disaster, with our water reserves drying up. What is happening in Africa is going to happen in India within a few decades."
Your population goes on growing, your land goes on becoming more barren, your water supply is becoming less and less, and because forests have been cut, the rivers that go through Nepal to Bangladesh are creating, every year, such floods as have never been seen before. Thousands of people are dying, thousands of villages simply disappear – because those thick trees were making the rivers flow slowly. Now that there are no trees, the rivers come with such force that the ocean is not ready to absorb that much water so quickly. The water starts returning and that returning water creates the floods that happen in Bangladesh.
Neither Indian politicians nor Nepalese politicians are ready to stop cutting the trees. Nobody is interested in human life. Nobody is interested in finding out what our priority should be.
A poor country like India has so many newspapers, so many magazines, which are absolutely unnecessary. And that newsprint paper does not grow in the fields, does not fall from the sky; you have to cut trees. Trees that have taken one hundred fifty years, two hundred years to grow, disappear. And what do you gain from your newspapers? Politicians are the real criminals – not the criminals who are in your jails. It would be a far better world if there was an exchange: all the politicians in the jails, and all the criminals in the politician's positions – they would prove more human.
The politicians go on hiding facts as long as possible, as if by hiding facts you can change anything.
Now many countries are not declaring how many homosexuals they have. Families are not declaring that the person who has died, has died from AIDS. They are bribing doctors to get certificates that he has died of a heart attack, or of cancer – because the family is more worried about its respectability, about what people will think: "Somebody has died of AIDS in your family?"
But hiding the fact means... that man had a wife; he may have transferred the disease to the wife and if there are children, they may be born with the disease – and nobody will know it and they will go on spreading it all around.
The disease is not an ordinary sexual disease – anything that comes out of your body, even your tears, carries the virus. If a child is crying, and just out of kindness and compassion you wipe the tears of the child, there is a danger you may be getting AIDS. Saliva carries the virus, and the whole of humanity is being kept in darkness: kissing should be stopped now – completely!
There is only one small part of humanity – the people who live in Siberia, the Eskimos – they are the only people in the whole of history who have never kissed. And when for the first time they saw Christian missionaries kissing, they could not believe it: "How dirty these people are, mixing saliva with each other! Are they human beings or some kind of monsters?"
Their way is far more scientific and far more hygienic. They don't kiss just to show love – because it can be not love, but death – they rub noses with each other; that looks very clean, unless you have a cold.
The other day it was accepted that ten million people are suffering from AIDS right now; and this is not a definitive report because countries like India have no way of knowing – nor the means to know. Only very developed countries have come to know that ten million people are suffering.... Perhaps at least one hundred million people are suffering in all these backward countries.
For example, in Africa, AIDS is more prevalent than anywhere else. And it was never made known that Africans are not homosexuals, but they have a strange perversion: they make love to women, but not from the front.
There are people around the world, in small villages, who even make love to animals -- and they have given AIDS to animals! And now animals are spreading that AIDS through their milk, through their meat. Things have gone beyond human control.
No doctor wants... even if he comes to know that his patient has AIDS, he does not want to tell the patient because then the patient will insist, "Treat me!" There is no treatment. So the doctor tries, "You have some other disease," and sends him to some other expert because being in contact with the AIDS patient the doctor is in danger, the nurses are in danger. The whole staff is in danger.
In one of the reports I saw about jails... thirty percent of the people in jails are homosexuals. And that does not seem to be an accurate report. It must be the minimum that jail authorities have accepted – because people who are living in jails for twenty years, thirty years, and cannot come in contact with women, are bound to force homosexuality on each other.
The simplest thing would be.... There are separate jails for women – why should they be separate? The prisoners should live in a mixed way, with women and men together, and then AIDS and homosexuality can be avoided. But politicians will not say anything about it, simply because of fear. Their whole object is to say only things which people like, only things which don't go against people's prejudices, their traditional mind – because they depend on people's votes.
That's why I said that religious people should always be consulted by the politicians; their advice should be given every possible attention. But Rajiv Gandhi says that politicians should not be interfered with by religious people. Religious people can be interfered with by politicians – about that, there is no question. This is an unfortunate thing, but it goes on and on, and time is very short.
I used to be very hopeful. Still, I go on hoping against hope that perhaps, in a very dangerous situation, man may awaken. But there seems to be a sadness in my heart because I can see that if nothing is done, then this century is going to be our end. And not only our end, but the end of the whole of existence's dream of creating consciousness. It has been successful only on this planet. There are millions of stars and each star has dozens of planets; only on this small planet has the miracle happened that not only life exists – consciousness exists; not only consciousness exists, but there are people who have reached to the ultimate peak of consciousness: a Gautam Buddha, a Socrates, a Pythagoras, a Chuang Tzu.
Life disappearing from this small planet will make the whole universe so poor that it will take millions of years to come again to this state where consciousness can become enlightened.
My sadness is not about myself. I am absolutely contented. Death cannot take anything from me. My sadness is concerned with the whole of humanity, because their death will take away any opportunity of their becoming enlightened, of their becoming blissful, of their knowing meaning and significance. They have lived in darkness. Are they going to die in darkness too?
I would like my people, at least, not to waste time in postponing their own growth, because politicians are absolutely prepared to destroy each other -- to destroy all and everything. Their lust for power has come to the climax. Before they succeed in committing a global suicide, at least you should have known the god that exists within you.
You should spread your joy and your silence and your laughter to anybody you come in contact with. You cannot give a better gift to your friends, to your acquaintances, to your lovers, to your children.
The time is very short and the work is tremendous, but if you have courage, the challenge can be accepted. Don't depend on politicians; they cannot do anything; they are not even aware of where they have been leading humanity – into what darkness.
