Cheti Sake To Cheti #3

There is a connection between spirituality and miracles—the connection is one of opposition. A spiritual person will not consent to miracles; that is the connection. And one who consents to miracles should be called a conjurer, not a spiritual person.

But conjuring impresses many people. It is very difficult to be touched by spirituality. Conjuring makes an impact very quickly. And we should not live under the illusion that our governors, our judges, our ministers and chief ministers are free from the influence of conjurers. In fact, the truth is they are even more under such influence. Anyone with great ambition will fall under a conjurer’s sway very quickly, because the conjurer’s claim is that through him anyone’s ambition can be fulfilled. If someone is sick, the illness can be cured; if someone lacks a position, he can be raised to it; if someone already has a position, there is a way to keep him there. Anyone filled with ambition will be influenced by a conjurer.

There is another point: whenever a society is very poor, destitute, and unhappy, conjurers become very effective. And there is yet another difficulty: we fall into the illusion that since our governor or our chief minister or our great leaders have attained some height in one direction, therefore in other directions they must be far ahead of the simple villager. We should not think this. A man can be a governor and even have the qualifications for being a governor, yet in other areas he may have the mind of an ordinary villager; in the common matters of life he may be just a simple person. But this does cause harm. And those who occupy such posts have a responsibility to be very thoughtful about where they go, because once they go somewhere, a whole current of people starts following behind. And these conjurers do everything they can to get such people to come. Once this kind of person begins to come, the public follows in their wake.

I am preparing a couple of friends so that whatever Sai Baba does, I can have it demonstrated on an open stage by anyone, and then travel throughout the country. My friends have agreed. And soon I will ask your support so that whatever they do can be reproduced on a public stage by anyone, and I can also reveal its whole secret—how it is done. There is nothing spiritual in it; it is sheer trickery and mischief, nothing more. But unless this is done, we cannot uproot such matters.

So I am strongly opposed. And I want to tell you that spirituality has no relationship with showmanship and has no connection with miracles. In a spiritual person’s life, another kind of miracle happens—not the appearance of amulets, or ash, or sweets, or rings. In a spiritual person’s life, miracles of a wholly different order occur. For example, Jesus is being hung on the cross and the man is laughing—that is a miracle, and that can carry the meaning of a spiritual life. Mansoor is being cut to pieces, and he is praying for those who are cutting him—“O God, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” This I call a miracle. But producing an amulet, handing out sweets—this is not a miracle.

There was a woman professor with me in the college. Six or seven years ago she told me she wanted to resign and go dedicate her life to Sai Baba. “Bless me so that I may succeed in this spirituality,” she said. I told her, if it were up to me, I would bless you not to succeed in that kind of spirituality—because that is not spirituality, it is conjuring. And if someday you come to understand that it is conjuring, at least come back and tell me.

Just now I came to Bombay; after speaking at a meeting, as I stepped down, that woman touched my feet. I asked, “Where have you been? What is this? And how is it you’ve come to touch my feet?” She said, “I’ve come only to touch your feet in remembrance of that day—what you said, I have experienced. Now I am in trouble: what should I do? These amulets that ‘appear’ are all bought in the market. These rings that ‘materialize’ are all made in the market. They’re hidden under beds, hidden in clothes. Having seen all this with my own eyes, what should I do now? Where should I go?”

This has no connection with spirituality—except that these are completely non-spiritual acts.

Of course he will be. Of course he will be. Any sick person, close to old age, close to death, becomes weak—whether it is Munshi or anyone else.

No. I mean that as death begins to come close, many weaknesses and many fears take hold.

And the irony is that his hand probably trembled; that trembling could also stop. And it has nothing to do with a miracle. If I first pull out an amulet and make it seem as if a ring has arrived from the sky, the person in front can be so impressed by such things that if I then pick up some dust and say, “This will cure your hand,” the trembling in his hand may well stop. And it is purely a psychological matter. This happens all over the world; at Lourdes it happens—by drinking the water there. In the West there are plenty of healers who will do just this.

But I still consider the Western healers honest: they say outright that it is purely a psychological effect. And a psychological effect can have consequences for the body and the body can recover. But there is no spirituality in it and no miracle. There is no miracle in it. The hand may indeed get better.

Illness can also be created mentally. And it is becoming established that out of a hundred, eighty percent of illnesses are related to the mind in some way, and fifty percent are purely mental. So an illness that is mental... For example, let me tell you: of all the snakes in the world, ninety-seven percent have no poison, yet a person bitten by them can die. There is no venom, and yet the person can die—he dies simply because a snake has bitten him! But if rituals are performed for this man—incantations, exorcisms—and somehow he can be made to believe that he will be fine, he will be fine.

Now the amusing part is: his first delusion was of dying—the “illness” itself was false. There was no poison in the snake at all. Merely because a snake bit him he panicked and is dying. If that panic can be removed in any way, the man will be saved. The illness was false; a false cure will work.

Or it may be that the illness is quite real; but if the mind becomes very determined—and in creating that determination this conjuring helps. If I first show you a few “miracles” which strain credulity, and you come to believe in them, and then I give you some dust, you will take that dust with such faith—“The man who performed such miracles, his dust must be efficacious; there is no reason to doubt it”—that the dust will have an auto-hypnotic effect, a suggestive effect; it can help.

But do ask Munshi-ji whether the hand hasn’t started shaking again. As far as I have been told, it is shaking again. But now the newspapers are not publishing it, nor is Munshi-ji saying anything. Someone just told me that the hand has started shaking again. So please find out from Munshi-ji—if the hand has begun to tremble again, it should be reported in the papers. And he should ask once more, “Now fix it again!” And I think the second time it will be difficult to fix.

Let me tell you what our difficulty is. I was staying in a village. In the evening I was walking outside the house; from a side window a woman had been peering at me for a long time. Then she came down, brought a little child, laid him at my feet and said, “Please touch him. I am certain he will be cured.” He had diphtheria; his throat was completely blocked.

I told her, “I have no objection to touching him. The danger is only that he might get well! Because he hasn’t died yet; he may recover. Not because I touch him; even if I don’t touch him he may recover. He hasn’t died yet. He has fifty chances of living and fifty of dying. I don’t mind touching him, but if he survives after my touch, there’s the danger that you’ll think he survived because I touched him.”

A crowd gathered there. Even the people of the house where I was staying began to say, “Why speak so harshly? What harm is there in touching him?” The woman was crying. She said, “If my child dies, you will be responsible. Please touch him.” I tried hard to explain to the people of the house. They wouldn’t agree. I had to touch the child.

When I went there again, it became a problem. No spiritual seekers came to listen to me. The lame, the crippled, the blind—everyone kept coming, saying, “Please touch us.” The child had survived. If I touch a hundred patients, fifty will survive anyway—not because I touched them. Those who don’t survive need not concern us; they won’t publicize it. The K. M. Munshis who didn’t get cured have done no publicity. And the K. M. Munshis who did get cured are doing publicity. Those who survive will become my advertisers; those who don’t, I have nothing to do with. Gradually a crowd will gather around me of those who benefited, and they will create a buzz—and that buzz keeps going.

There is no value in this, no spirituality, no meaning. And when even people like K. M. Munshi fall prey to such showmanship, we should reflect that in this country those whom we call intelligent, sensible, literati—their mental condition too is extremely childish; it is neither very elevated nor scientific. Their capacity to think is not very great either. And such people become centers for exploitation. And if K. M. Munshi says so, then who knows how many people who take him to be thoughtful will think, “Now everything will surely be fine; it must be so. If it happened to K. M. Munshi, it has to work for everyone.”

But I ask you: why don’t you take four or five patients—let journalists take four or five—and have them “cured” and see how many are cured. And then see why those who are cured are cured and why those who are not, are not. And also see whether it isn’t the case that if you bring them to me, just as many get well; if you take them to a fan, just as many get well; if you take them under a tree, just as many get well. Then it means nothing. The getting well has become entirely natural—some will get well anyway. That is why homeopathy works, biochemic remedies work, Ayurveda works, exorcism works, plain water works, urine therapy works—the world’s stupidities all “work” in curing disease.

And the amusing thing is that you cannot deny of any “pathy” that it works—every pathy cures someone or other. The sole reason is that people are bound to get well. If a hundred people fall ill, not all hundred are going to die. People are bound to recover. So give them water—they will still get well. Give them nothing—give them ash—they will still get well. Then the one who gets well will publicize it; the one who doesn’t will forget you and search for some other guru where he might get well.

Absolutely—I am at it day and night.

Yes, yes—quite right. You are right. Let me tell you. You will be surprised: the laws by which the mind works are very strange. And there is a particular law of the mind: the Law of Reverse Effect. If you read Coué—the man in the West who cured thousands of people of mental ailments—if you read his books, you will come upon a rule like this: the Law of Reverse Effect, the rule of contrary results.

If a person goes saying, “I am a complete disbeliever; I don’t believe in anything,” that is only one part of the upper mind speaking. In opposition to it, the rest of the mind is getting ready—“No, something should happen! No, something should happen!” The mind is divided in two.

Munshi-ji, outwardly, from the standpoint of his clever intellect, is thinking, “I am against this. I don’t believe in such things.” But his unconscious gathers in the opposite direction. And it is even more likely that a person who went filled with simple faith may not be healed, and Munshi-ji may be.

You can observe this. A man is learning to ride a bicycle, brand-new to it. There is a stone lying in the road. He keeps saying, “I must not hit the stone.” Now the road is very wide; even if he tried to aim at the stone, for a novice it wouldn’t be easy to hit it. But he keeps saying, “I must not hit the stone!” and his hands begin to turn toward the stone. “I must avoid the stone!”—and his attention gets fixed on the stone. Now he cannot see the whole road; he sees only the stone. And in trying to avoid the stone, he is about to collide with it.

No; I am not saying that God exists. I am saying: whatever is, I call that “God.” I am not saying that God exists; I am saying that that which is, I call “God.”

Give it any name—truth, God, X, Y, Z—it makes no difference. But there is something that is unknown to us, and it has to be known, and we have to find the doors to knowing. If someone calls it God, someone else calls it truth, I have no objection either way. I am not saying that God exists; I am saying that whatever is, I give the name “God” to that. If you wish to give it another name, that is entirely up to you; there is no difficulty. What I am saying is that what is, is not yet known to us. And to discover it we will have to find a path, we will have to find a door.

So what could be its door?

I say: faith cannot be its door; inquiry can be its door. Therefore I am not making any hypothesis about God. For me “God” means: the Totality. Not some person sitting somewhere—no such God or Supreme Being. But this whole existence, this entire expanse of what is in all directions—this is; and it will have a center, there will be sources of its life. What are those sources, where are they, how are we to seek them, how are we to know them—that search is religion.

First of all, as I understand it, any intelligent person in the world—from Buddha or Mahavira or Christ up to today—will inevitably, in some sense, be a communist. But the meaning of communism should be made clear.

The endeavor of all wise people has always been to bring about a society where each human being attains a state of equality, and where each person has equal opportunity for growth. If communism means the effort toward equal opportunities for growth and the equality of human beings, then I am a communist. And whoever is not a communist in that sense is an enemy of humanity.

But if someone thinks that “communists” are the blind devotees of Marx who, by force, crush all democratic sentiments and impose dictatorship; who murder the entire vision of God, truth, love, and soul—if that is what is meant by communism, then no one could be more opposed to it than I am. In that sense, I am not a communist.

My position should be properly understood. As I see it, the whole current of thinking in the world is moving in this direction: how to bring about a society in which no human being is inferior to another—no one is less than anyone else. In that direction I am fully engaged. And it is true that the ultimate aim of all my discourses is certainly this: that a society be created where all are equal.

Further, I understand that on the day there is an equal society, when there is no private property, not only will there be material development, there will be spiritual development too. And here I am exactly the opposite of those so-called communists. My view is that religion has not been able to happen in the world because the majority of people die just struggling for bread and livelihood—who then will search for religion? The day the world has equality, when people are happy and life is abundant, that day religion can be born; before that, it cannot.

Therefore I say repeatedly that Buddha, or the twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jains—all were sons of kings. Rama and Krishna—both were princes. It is princes who could attain such heights in the search for the truth of life; there is a reason for it. The basic reason is that the one who has seen all the enjoyments of the world, his mind becomes engaged in rising above the world.

It is also my view that a poor society can never be religious. A poor society will only be dishonest and criminal; it cannot be saved from that, it cannot be religious. It will be without character. For a poor society to be virtuous is extremely unnatural; only an affluent society… My point is not that an affluent society will inevitably be religious. My point is: an affluent society can be religious. Its possibilities for being irreligious are reduced.

That is why, in those days when India was religious, they were days of prosperity in India’s history. Today there is a possibility that America may become religious. And tomorrow there is a possibility that Russia may become religious. And the day they become religious, their religiosity will not be an escape from poverty; it will be the search of an affluent person. Even when our people go to the temple, there too they are asking for bread, asking for salary, asking for a job, asking for a daughter’s marriage. What they are asking for in the temple is precisely what should have been available in the world.

In my view, the day the whole world attains equality, there will be an explosion of religion in the world. And for that explosion, some system like communism becoming available is absolutely necessary.

But I have nothing to do with the so-called communists. In fact, I have no faith in any kind of ism or ideology. And I hold that all ideologies harm human thinking, because they bind it. I want human thought to be free. And let free thought do whatever it understands to be right.

So, to a small extent, what they say fits. But these are childish things—that one should try to match my signature with Mao’s signature. These are children’s games. And such things only happen when we have nothing intelligent to say; then we go looking for these silly, childish things.

Spiritual growth is a stage that comes after material development; it cannot come first. Individually it may be possible—one or two people can do it—but they will have to pass through great austerities. Austerity is required precisely because such a person is trying to act against the very laws of nature. In my understanding, the body comes first; the soul follows. The material comes first; the spiritual follows. One whose body is still unsatisfied, troubled, and tormented cannot even think about the soul. And for someone in whose life we have not yet been able to make ordinary arrangements for material comfort, talk of spirituality is opium. Marx said that rightly. He is speaking of spirituality only to forget his misery.

Therefore my view, my emphasis, is that there should be a complete and well-ordered provision of the material. But do not think my goal is materiality. My emphasis is on the material, and my goal is the spiritual.

Certainly, certainly. He must have said it, he must have said it.

I understand. Why am I doing this? It may be that something I say was also said by Vivekananda. But my mind is entirely different from Vivekananda’s; the context is different. And so, when I say something that Gandhi too may have said, that can happen, but my mind is wholly different and the context different. In a fragment or two there may be a point of overlap. But I cannot invoke Vivekananda’s name, because the moment I do, it will create the illusion that I am in agreement with him. I am not in agreement with Vivekananda on many counts. Not even in this matter—not very far.

For example, Vivekananda speaks of “daridra-narayana,” the poor as God. I consider this sheer foolishness. To confer any kind of honor on the poor is to honor poverty. The poor do not need respect in this world; poverty needs to be eradicated, just as disease needs to be eradicated. And only when we feel revulsion for poverty will it be eradicated; otherwise it will not go.

But there is a tradition in India that keeps honoring the poor. And by honoring the poor, the poor also feel good. Poverty doesn’t end, but it gets a little relief. It begins to seem as if being poor is some great virtue.

To be poor is sheer foolishness. And we are poor because people like Vivekananda...

Look, let me speak with you. Vivekananda, and all those of that kind—anyone who takes some pride in voluntarily choosing poverty—do end up glorifying poverty. After all, Vivekananda stood there like a beggar. And that old Indian tradition of giving great respect and honor to the beggar, to the bhikshu—he is part of that very stream.

However, Vivekananda returned from America having learned a great deal, and one of his learnings was that to be poor is not something honorable. But when he left India, none of this was in his mind. From America he learned that prosperity, too, can be a path toward religion. We have made a great hullabaloo that Vivekananda taught America so much; we have kept no account of how much America taught Vivekananda. After coming back from America, Vivekananda was almost a different man. And that is why the honor he should have received in Bengal evaporated within a few days.

He came back from America with Nivedita. No Indian sannyasin had ever stood with a woman beside him. Trouble began in Bengal as soon as he arrived. In America, Vivekananda came to see that such a wide distance between man and woman is irreligious, unspiritual. He learned that there. And he also learned there that in India this very distance between the sexes is itself proof of sexuality. But when he returned and stood in India, the trouble began.

You must know that Sister Nivedita had to leave the ashram. After Vivekananda’s death she had to leave the Order. She was separated from the Order; she had to live apart, take her stand elsewhere.

All that Vivekananda learned from America is never discussed in India, because we live under the delusion that we are the world’s teacher in everything—do we ever learn anything from anyone? Among those learnings was this as well: that only a prosperous country can be religious.

But what I am saying is fundamentally different from Vivekananda; that is why I do not speak on anyone’s behalf. And if it gives you the impression that I am saying it for the first time—some things are said again and again, but because the context keeps changing, each time they are said they are new. They cannot simply be repeated.

Understood. All right, let’s talk about this, let’s understand it. It is very subtle. And because it is subtle, it is not seen: only a poor nation honors renunciation. It is subtle; that is why it is not seen.

No. Only a certain class in India was prosperous. India as a whole was never prosperous; only some strata were. From that affluent class came the religious people. From that affluent class the talk of religion also spread. India was never prosperous. As a society it was never prosperous. But yes, India was contented in its poverty. Therefore, rebellion against poverty never arose. Do not take this to mean that India was prosperous. India would still have been content in its poverty if the contact with the West had not come. The poor in India had no anxiety about it. But contact with the West created restlessness, and it planted in the poor the idea that being poor is the result of the social order. Poverty is not a necessity. But the affluent in India had convinced the poor that poverty is the fruit of your own sins, that being poor is your compulsion; you will have to be poor.

India was poor; except for a few, India has always been poor.

Wherever a country is poor, renunciation will be respected. Why? It will be respected because renunciation means: a rich man becomes poor. And when a prince—a prince like Mahavira or Buddha—becomes poor, then all the poor are glorified. They say, “Look, poverty is so wondrous that even a prince has to become poor!” And all the poor revere that prince for becoming a beggar—what a great act he has done! Because the poor derive satisfaction from this.

And why does the prince become poor? In my view, whoever has access to all the pleasures that wealth can give will get bored with them and try to be rid of them. The last luxury of a rich man is to enjoy being poor. But a poor man cannot know this. A poor man cannot know this. The man who is walking on foot cannot understand the joy a rich man—who will not walk for even a minute—finds in walking. A man starving in a famine cannot even conceive that in America hundreds of cults are running around fasting. They are overfed people. Whenever a nation becomes overfed, the doctrine of fasting will be launched. Because they greatly enjoy fasting for one, two, four, ten days. Tell a poor man, “You are having great fun—you are starving. You are having great fun; the eater has to fast! You are already fasting; God’s great grace is upon you.” The poor man will not understand this. But even the poor will respect fasting. Whenever a society is poor, renunciation will be honored.

In my understanding, there is a kind of poverty that the rich man chooses; that is the final form of wealth. And the poor man takes that richness to be praise of his own poverty. And the poor feel very pleased, and they show great respect. The poor feel envy toward the rich and respect toward the renunciate; it is the other side of the same envy. The poor are jealous because of what the other has. When the other leaves it, he gives him respect. When a poor man sees that some tycoon who rides the skies in airplanes is walking on foot, he feels that by walking we too are being honored.

The day the world becomes prosperous, renunciation will have no value. Renunciation is a by-product of poverty.

So you say—it is a subtle point.

I understand; let me tell you. The restlessness in the hearts of American youth is the beginning of a religious era. Such a thing has never happened in the world before. Such restlessness did occur, but only in a few households. People like Buddha or Mahavira felt this kind of restlessness. They had everything. The most beautiful women were gathered around them. As many beautiful women as could be found in Bihar were confined within a single household. All the beautiful girls were there, all the wealth, all the splendor. When all this is attained, a restlessness arises—Now what? A difficulty arises—Now what shall we do? This used to happen now and then to a few great families.

America has reached the point where millions of families are in the condition once experienced by the families of Buddha and Mahavira. For the first time an entire society has become affluent. Until now there were affluent families; there was not an affluent society. In America a completely new chapter in human history is beginning. A very large class has become affluent to the point where it can ask, “Now what?”

So their children have become restless. And their children will pass through a transition. They will create all sorts of upheavals. They will drink alcohol, take mescaline, take lysergic acid, they will dance, break marriages, plunge into sexual orgies—they will do all that. And then the question will become even deeper—Now what? Now what? And out of this “Now what?” the situation will arise that gives birth to religion. America stands at a point where, within fifty years, there is the possibility of a great religious revival.

You are not standing there yet. So do not be too happy that your children are not restless in that way. That restlessness in the young is a sign of good fortune. It is the restlessness that precedes an extraordinary revolution. It is very extraordinary. The day our children too reach the point of becoming hippies, the Beatles, and beatniks—that will be a fortunate day! I am not praising the hippies or the Beatles. That is the initial stage of the coming transformation. It is the first upheaval. It will happen, and it is absolutely necessary.

Absolutely necessary, absolutely necessary. And that’s why I am not a supporter of renunciation-and-all-that, because renunciationists never believe in economic progress.

I am against organized movements, not against movement. Whenever a movement becomes organized, it is no longer a movement; it immediately turns into a vested interest. There should be movement—a wave in the consciousness of the whole country, a stirring. From that movement, things should emerge.

But the moment it is organized, it becomes tied to a small section. A minority then starts trying to impose itself on the majority. Whenever a movement is organized, by that very organization it becomes the property of a minority and tries to impose itself on the majority. Then violence is born, because whenever a minority tries to forcibly change the majority, violence becomes inevitable.

In my view, the movement should be diffused; it should spread. It should deepen, idea by idea. And when the whole country consents to an idea, then without much organization things change on their own...

A decentralized social structure and a decentralized society...
No—not a decentralized social structure, a decentralized social movement. There is a difference between the two.

Vinoba-ji and Jayaprakash-ji have said this—so will you support it?
No, no; I don’t support anything by taking someone’s name. Because then there are twenty-five other things they say of which I am a declared enemy. I do not support anyone by name.

Yes, yes—certainly it is a contradiction.

Think about it a little. In fact, what does organization mean? Organization means that people of one idea, people who imagine bringing about a certain kind of society, gather together. They gather and try to place a pattern of ideology upon society.
My understanding is that it is dangerous to impose a very fixed pattern on society. Because society moves ahead every day; a fixed pattern is always left behind. It is like putting pajamas on a child. The child keeps growing day by day; the pajamas keep getting smaller day by day. Every day there is a need for the pajamas to be bigger. But those who organized the pajamas say, “This is the pajama we decided on; he must go on wearing this same pajama.” The child grows; the pajama becomes tight.
All organizations—the more organized they are—the more fixed and dead they become. What is needed is fluidity. And by fluidity I mean this—that is why I say movement, not organization. Movement is needed. Although...

No, no, no. I am not afraid, I am not afraid. I am simply saying what seems wrong to me. If people think that is right, they will do it. That is not the question.

Yes, that is exactly what I want. And I say to you: because up to now human society has not had the courage to create chaos, a true human society could not come into being. It takes the courage for chaos. Because out of chaos, creation is born. That is my own vision.

So I want the mind of this country to become chaotic, at least once. To be chaotic means: to be thinking. To be chaotic means: to be doubting. To be chaotic means: to be questioning. And all the fixed patterns of thousands of years should loosen, a certain looseness should come. And we begin to think, and a movement arises, and a flow begins.

I do not worry about what comes afterward; I don’t, because a thoughtful, reflective society continually faces things and finds their solutions. There is no need to hand out fixed solutions. There are two ways. Either we tell you: go left, walk ten steps, and on the eleventh step turn right—there is the door. That is one way. The other way is that we teach you the art of seeing with your own eyes and say: you look! And wherever you find a path, take it. The path and the door will be visible to your open eyes.

The mentality the world has had till now has been to give people a fixed formula, to give them an organized religion, to give them an organized party, to give them an ideology to follow—but not to give them a mind with which they can think and move. There is a difference between the two. So my effort is that you have a thinking mind. Problems will come; we will face them, and whatever solution emerges, we will live it. But we do not carry any fixed solution in advance, nor do we proceed having decided that we have a ready-made answer to apply to every problem.

So far, that is exactly what has happened. The Muslim has a ready-made answer; the Hindu has a ready-made answer; the communist has a ready-made answer—everyone has a ready-made answer. That answer always lags behind; life changes every day. Therefore we need a consciousness, a mind capable of seeing the new truth, the new problem. And that will be a movement, a flow; it cannot be something fixed. But up to now, that is what has been done.

And what you say is also right: this is very difficult to do. In fact, whatever is true is always difficult to do.

Not at all. It is neither a movement nor organized—neither of the two.
It is organized!
No, just look. Try to understand a little how it is not organized.

That would be their mistake. And the moment their foolishness dawns on them, they will run away. Every day many run away. I am no one’s guru—that much is certain. If someone has made himself my disciple, that is his mistake. And I will keep making every effort to disillusion him. If someone is absolutely blind, that’s another matter.

I have no organized movement. Nor am I a partisan of one. Whatever exists is merely a makeshift institution—one that prints books, sells books, delivers books; nothing of greater value than that.

So regarding political problems too, something like that will have to be done, right!

There will be institutions. I accept that there will be institutions. An institution is one thing; an organization is another. The railways are an institution; they are not an organization. The post office is...

Those who look at me with reverence...
They are greatly mistaken, greatly mistaken. Because I am in favor of uprooting every kind of reverence. That is their mistake—and it comes from old habit. The gurus they were with earlier taught them reverence; in the same way they have come to me. Outwardly they listen to what I say, but inside their mind remains just the same. So they touch my feet too, they even take me as a guru. But they will not be able to accept me, because I am a mixed-up guru. I am at it twenty-four hours... very hard for them to accept. Very hard.

Understand this a little, understand it a little. In this country there hasn’t been freedom to think; rather, there have been many prisons to bind thinking—not just one.
In one village there is one jail; in another village there are ten. The village with ten jails says, “We have great freedom—go to any jail you like.” The other village is not free; it has only one jail.
See, there is a difference between reasoning and mere verbal cleverness.
Who will decide who is doing clever wordplay and who is reasoning? Who will decide?
Time will decide.
Yes, time will decide. What I am saying is: in India too the mind is the same; only the prisons are many. The multiplicity of prisons creates the illusion of freedom. It looks as if one worships Rama, another Krishna, another Buddha, another Mahavira—so there is a lot of worship, therefore there is great freedom.
But the worshipper’s mind is the same. Whom he worships is utterly meaningless. That he worships—that is the bondage. My emphasis is not on whom you worship; my emphasis is that you worship. This habit of worship creates prisons. How many prisons there are is not the question.

“There were defiers too. There was Charvaka.”
Certainly there were. But such people could never find a place in this country’s psyche. When you say, “There was Charvaka,” that is what I am saying.

“The fact that these people were allowed to survive in this country, in spite of some turmoil and upheaval, shows that…”
Let’s talk about this a little. First, I am not saying that in India no people were ever born who spoke rebellion. They were. But they never became, and could not become, the main current of India. And when India did show respect to their names, it changed their whole form and then included them in the main current; otherwise they were not included.
Take Charvaka. Charvaka’s thought could not take root anywhere in the genius of this land. Had Charvaka taken root in India, what has happened in the West today would have happened here three thousand years ago—we would have produced all that science long ago. The West could do what it did because a root of materialism could establish itself there; otherwise it could never have done it.
In India, Charvaka’s teaching disappeared so completely that today not a single book of Charvaka is available. Not one scripture of Charvaka survives. What we know about him we know through the abuses hurled by his enemies in their own books. And knowing him that way is like this: suppose that whatever your Gujarati newspapers say about me survives a thousand years, and that is all that remains to know me by—then the kind of “knowledge” people would have of me is exactly the kind of knowledge that remains about Charvaka.
You understand what I mean, don’t you?

Buddha rebelled in India, Mahavira rebelled in India—and you say both survived. Think a little! Buddha’s rebellion was so great, but how many Buddhists remain in India? The truth is: except for India there are Buddhists everywhere—if you set aside Ambedkar’s so‑called Buddhists. Everywhere but India there are Buddhists; all over India, there are not. The land of Buddha became empty of Buddhists. Have you kept any account of how many Buddhists you killed?

“Buddhism there has been converted; it isn’t Buddhism anymore. There in Japan Buddhism…”
I am not talking about that. I am not saying that. I am saying: in your country you say they survived. How many Jains do you think there are? How many Jains are left? After Mahavira and his twenty‑four tirthankaras and that long tradition, how many Jains are there in India? Not more than two to two-and-a-half million. And those two-and-a-half million did not survive because they are Jains; they survived because in every way they made themselves a complete part of the Hindus, and thus survived. And the second reason for their survival is that Jains accumulated wealth; because of wealth they survived. The survival of Jains in India is not the survival of a Jain revolution.

“Hinduism has been accommodative…”
I am not talking in praise of Hinduism. I am only saying: do not remain under the illusion that there was ever some great freedom here. There has never been such freedom. It should be there now—we should strive for it. And those who say it has been there prove themselves to be enemies of the very idea that it should be. Because if you say it already exists, then the question of bringing it about does not arise. When I insist it has not been there, I mean it should be, it ought to be.

You would be amazed: how many philosophies there are in the West—you can’t even count! You speak of your traditions, but here you have nine boxed‑in philosophies. No tenth philosophy has been born in India. The nine boxes are ready‑made; you choose one. In the West there are no boxes. In the West there are as many philosophies as there are philosophers. And that I would call freedom. That would mean thought has been free. Socrates has his own thinking, Plato his own, Heidegger his own, Sartre his own. But in India it is not so. Here the matter is pre‑decided. Here there are nine categories set, and within those…
Even now scholars come to me and ask first, “Tell us which system you belong to.” Because the idea that someone could be outside all systems does not even arise; one must belong to one of the nine. Whether to Nyaya, to Vaisheshika, to Sankhya—one must be in some system.

This country will have to learn free thinking. It has not been there yet. Yes, some sparks have always appeared. We have smothered them. We are the ones who smother those sparks. And even today we try our best to smother them. And you say…

“If those sparks did not have any strength, they would go out by themselves!”
No—understand this. When you say we did not smother those sparks, that they went out because they were weak—if they were weak, they would have ended by now. They have not ended; they are still sparks. But you have thrown ash over them—the crowd has thrown ash. They lie buried. Any day someone uncovers them and India’s Charvaka will live again, India’s Buddha will live again. That Indian revolution can live again.
At most, what the crowd can do is this: smothering does not mean extinguishing; it only means the crowd can throw ash over the fire. And ash has been thrown very thickly. Today it is hard even to find where they are.

Tantra did such great work in India, yet we have to learn about sex from Freud. Nothing could be more tragic. Freud is a child compared to India’s tantrikas. And the psychological sutras the tantrikas discovered two thousand years ago—we have to go to his school… If someone in India wants to study psychology today, he goes to Germany, to America. And all those psychological sutras were discovered two thousand years ago by tantrikas. But the Indian crowd threw ash over them completely. It has become hard even to locate what they are. You will ask, “How was ash thrown?”
Bhoja had one hundred thousand tantrikas killed. Bhoja alone had one hundred thousand tantrikas murdered.

“There was persecution in the West too.”
There was. In the West there have been people like you too; it is because of such fools that the matter cannot move forward. There have been people like us too; because of them there are obstructions in the West as well. But in the West in recent…

“You who say ‘people like you’…”
No, no, you didn’t understand. When I say “you,” I am not saying it to you. And what you are raising is not your personal point—I do not take it that way. So when I use the word “you,” I am not addressing you.
What we are talking about, we are talking for the sake of two kinds of thinking. And when I say “you,” let me be clear: I mean our collective mind. I include myself in it. I am speaking of that Indian psyche. And the questions you are raising are not yours. They may be yours or may not be; that is irrelevant. There is no personal issue here. So let us not take it personally. I have to speak to you because you are here, but I am speaking about the whole Indian mind.

That Indian mind has existed in the West too. It created obstacles there as well; it is creating obstacles. The same kind of guru is there, the same kind of pope is there, the same kind of religious man is there, the same sect is there—they create obstacles. They have created as much obstruction as they could. Despite those obstructions, work has happened in the West. For work to happen here despite our obstructions, you and I must make the effort so that, in spite of them, work can happen in this country too.

And when you say you are raising questions with me—this is exactly what I want. My whole effort is to speak in such a way that a thousand questions arise. Questions are valuable; I am not concerned about answers. I have no anxiety that you accept my answer. I have no answer. And even when I speak with great emphasis, that emphasis is not to find followers or devotees. The only reason to speak emphatically is to excite you enough that you question with equal force. So we can really fight—directly, sincerely. In India even fights are not straight. Even if one has to fight, there is no joy left, no delight in it; it instantly becomes personal.

“I think Sai Baba is doing the same thing as you are doing here. Am I right?”
You tell me what he is doing. I don’t know what you call it.

No. If you want to bring about an intellectual revolution, you cannot display miracles.

Who is denying any of that? I am not saying you were weak at shastrarth. But you kept doing shastrarth; what never happened in this country was dialogue.

Do you understand what shastrarth means? Shastrarth means: What is the meaning of the scripture? Please grasp this. The disputes in this country have been about things like: What does this line of the Gita mean? What meaning do you give it, what meaning do we give it—that is the quarrel. But there is no quarrel about whether there is truth in that line of the Gita or not. That is not the quarrel. It is always: What is the meaning of a line in the Gita, or of a verse in the Vedas, or of a passage in the Upanishads.

Shankaracharya engaged in shastrarth, yes—but in India a Socratic dialogue could not arise. Shastrarth did happen. And there is a fundamental difference between the two.

Dialogue is always in a conversation in this country.
No, no—that’s not the point. What I am saying is that this country has held one premise: that truth resides in the scriptures. So the only question left, at most, has been: What should the interpretation of the scripture be? Our quarrel for three thousand years has been: What does the scripture mean? That the scripture is true—this much is taken for granted.

There are those who defy it too.
I am not denying that. I just said there are those who defy it. But they are not our main current.

They didn’t burn him like Galileo here.
You are mistaken—then you don’t know the full history. In the South so many Buddhist monks were burned alive and boiled in cauldrons that there’s no reckoning of it. But who is going to raise that controversy!

History doesn’t record this, though.
Do a little digging. Do a little research. History in this country is a kind of lie—because who is writing the history here? Who writes Charvaka’s history? The one who is Charvaka’s enemy. Who is writing history here? The history that gets written here is made by the Brahmins, by those who...

What you’re saying is just a comparative picture.
I am only saying this much: the “history” of our country, as we call it, has become a storehouse of so many untruths. You must have heard about Oak’s book, which says the Taj Mahal is a Rajput palace. This is beyond our imagination—because Muslims wrote the history, and they wrote the Taj into being as Mumtaz’s tomb.

Now one man has gathered so many facts that we could never have imagined—after all these years of our schools, colleges, universities, and history professors teaching that the Taj Mahal is a tomb. And one man does the research, brings all the facts, and says: it is not a tomb at all, and it was not built by Mumtaz’s husband. It was a Rajput palace from four or five hundred years earlier, which was forcibly seized and made into a tomb. It was just given a bit of tinkering on the top—a makeover—and that was that.

Now the irony is, these facts are out in the open today; not a single Indian historian is opposing him. But the universities keep teaching that the Taj Mahal is a Muslim palace.

The funny thing is, hardly a single palace in India is truly Muslim. The palaces of India are all old, and they were seized and converted from above. Not a single mosque in India was originally built by Muslims; they are all old temples that became mosques. And because Muslims wrote the history, the history is something else. Now changing that history has become a problem.

It was Hindus who destroyed the Buddhists, and then they wrote the history. Those who were destroyed did not survive to write it. It’s quite a spectacle: so many Buddhists in India suddenly vanish—completely dissolve! There are references here and there, but who will collect them? The Hindu pandit is sitting there, the Brahmin is entrenched everywhere. Who will collect those references? Who will search?

As for the whole history of India—take Nehru’s book. It is not a re-discovery of India. It still needs to happen. He simply repeated the old narrative; the title of that book is entirely wrong. India needs to be rediscovered.

Of course he did; that is part of the Indian mind. It’s not as if I consider Ashoka non-Indian—I do not consider him non-Indian. The Buddhists too must have burned Hindus.

In the West it has happened a lot—indeed, a lot. But about all the facts you can produce from the West, let me say one thing to you. We in this country have one advantage: we have neither a clear history nor facts. For example, if today in America you ask Western girls how many have sexual intercourse before marriage, the statistics are available. If you ask the girls of India, the statistics won’t be available. It does not mean that the girls do not go through it. But an Indian sannyasin will take America’s statistics and shout, “Look, this is the state of girls in America! Indian girls are so pure.” Only because there are no statistics?

The West’s history is very neat and tidy. The West has written history. We have not written history—except for the Puranas.

“The West was not enslaved, right!”
Being enslaved is not the point; we do not have a historical mind. And there is a reason for that—and very deep reasons. India believes that whatever is happening is a play, a lila, a maya. What is the need to write it down? It has happened many times and will happen many times. Rama has been born many times and will be born many times. Tirthankaras have been born many times and will be born many times. It is an eternal repetition. What is the need to write it?

The West has a sense of history—and because of that there is history.

I understand, I understand your point. I understand your point. It is quite true that what Christianity has done is in no way behind us; in fact, it goes beyond us. And the misconduct, the persecution, the coercion they have carried out is more than ours, not less. But that does not mean that we have not done all this. We simply do not have the statistics, the history, the clear record.

Would you agree if I say that your thinking is largely influenced by M. N. Roy?
Influenced—not in the least. But I like M. N. Roy and I love him. I like him very much.

Then, with your type of conviction, why do you not openly admit it?
No, no—there is no question of “openly admitting” anything. I like M. N. Roy. In many places I oppose him; in many places there is divergence. That’s just how it is. I am not saying that no one has any influence on me—that would be impossible.

What about Krishnamurti?
I have great love for Krishnamurti. On many points I am very much in agreement with him; on many points I am not.

Do you think the philosophical–ideological revolution you want to establish in our country can be established by platform speaking?
No.

Then don’t you think that your platform speaking or your Jeevan Jagruti Kendra is itself the very process you are opposing and denying—the very process of making a religion, the very process of organization?
No—no organization...

Because you just said that through platform speaking no revolution is possible in our country. That again is an opium which you are trying to oppose in other religions. You are putting the same cycle—another opium—of platform speaking, which will not give an ideological–philosophical revolution to our country. It will only give a false sense of revolution in our country. No revolutions are made like this—by the speaking of an individual.
Then what do you think—how do they happen?

That is my question!
Yes. What I want to say to you is this: it is absolutely true that merely speaking, standing on a platform and explaining something, does not bring about revolutions. But there has never been any revolution that has happened without speaking and without a platform. Keep that in mind too. It is true that revolutions do not happen by platform speaking alone, but do not fall into the illusion that any revolution has happened without platform speaking.

After speaking, it will have to be organized, no?
No, no, no! The revolution I am talking about is precisely a revolution that is not to be organized. That is my revolution. You have organized—so far revolutions have been organized—and therefore I hold they could never be complete revolutions. No organized revolution can be a total revolution. The very process of organizing makes it rigid; it becomes a pattern.

It may be that the revolution I am speaking of may never happen. But there is no great concern that it must happen. That insistence again becomes an organization. What I feel to be right, I will go on saying. Whoever finds it right—whatever is to happen will go on happening. I have no expectations that it must come to pass.

But this is my understanding: by speaking alone a revolution does not happen, but without speaking a revolution also does not happen. And since what I am talking about is an ideological revolution, I am not eager to seize the government, nor eager to create some organization and drench the country in bloodshed. My only eagerness is that your mind—one should say our mind, otherwise someone might feel offended—that mind of ours has become so rigid that it should be shaken from every side. If it is shaken, my work is done. For me, that is all a revolution means.

No, this movement of yours against religious bigotry—why do you not take it to the States?
I will take it there, I will take it there. You will have to become a collaborator to take it to the States. Yes, I will take it.

Good. What I said—that girls should not be given the same education as boys—does not mean that girls can be taught some different kind of chemistry or some different kind of mathematics.

What I meant is that the entire bodily education of girls should be different from that of boys. The whole arrangement of girls’ clothing should be entirely different from boys’. In a girl’s life, what she has to take care of, where she has to expand life, the home she has to look after—there should be complete education for that. There should be education for becoming a mother, for becoming a wife, all of it. Because we leave precisely the important parts of life uneducated. A girl is never taught how to become a mother, how to become a wife. She just becomes a mother-wife. And then there is upheaval.

What I meant was only this: either we accept that the field of boys and girls is the same; then the same education is fine. But a girl has something special to do that a boy does not. She has to become the center of a home. She should receive all the education for that. It will be different from that of boys.

And trainings such as drill, parade, or horse riding—such trainings should be given only to those girls who are going to the battlefield. But for the girls who are going into the home, these trainings have no meaning. In fact, all these trainings will tend to diminish their girlhood, their femininity.

All this should be decided by psychologists. You ask, who will decide? Today psychology has done considerable research; there is a lot of work on feminine psychology. It should be determined what will be useful for girls, what makes them more feminine; and what will be useful for men, what makes them more masculine. If girls are more truly girls and men more truly men, there will be more attraction and more joy in their lives. That is what I said.

You say that she has to become the center of the home, the center of the family—she becomes that anyway. Such education is given to her at home.

She is getting nothing. You can see what the condition of the home is!

That education is given at home. When she goes to college or school, then for her you had said there should be separate arrangements for education...

It will have to be made completely separate. Nothing is being received at home; nothing at all is being received. Nothing at all is being received in the home, and the family is becoming utterly distorted, deranged.

Then that means that the distortion of the family is exactly what is happening to us.

All right. We will talk about that.

So then it means the family should be improved.

Absolutely. My whole vision is about the family.

It is happening. We are not able to see it. We are not even using it. It is happening—happening very forcefully.
Where is it happening? And how should it be applied?
Come aside and I will talk. Come aside; it will take a rather long talk.

I do not want to show a direction. My point is that the inert mind needs to be shown a direction; the conscious mind sees the direction. That I do not want to point out.

After becoming conscious, is there any possibility of falling back?
Consciousness never falls back. Once thoughtfulness arises, you cannot become inert again. It is highly unlikely. A thoughtful person does not turn back. Only if dullness is not allowed to be broken does one remain dull.