A man once went abroad to a country whose language he did not understand—and the people there did not understand his. Standing before a grand palace in the capital, he asked someone, “Whose mansion is this?” The man replied, “Kavatsan.” What he meant was, “I don’t understand your language.” But the foreigner took it to be the name of the owner—some man called Kavatsan. Instantly, a great jealousy seized his heart toward this Kavatsan. Such a vast mansion, so priceless, hundreds of servants coming and going, marble everywhere! His envy grew fierce—for someone who did not even exist. The local had only said, “I didn’t understand what you asked.”
He wandered on and reached the harbor. A great ship was being unloaded—costly goods, automobiles being lowered ashore. He asked, “Whose goods are these?” Someone answered, “Kavatsan.” Meaning: “I didn’t understand what you asked.” The foreigner’s envy grew still more—so the one who owned that palace also owned these expensive cars! And yet there was no such person at all. His heart burned: If only he were that rich! Then, returning along the road, sad, worried, miserable, full of envy, he saw a funeral bier being carried, thousands of people following behind. Surely the dead must be a great man! A thought flashed: could it be Kavatsan has died? He asked someone on the road, “Who has died?” The man said, “Kavatsan. I didn’t understand.”
He beat his chest. He had felt such jealousy toward that man—poor fellow, he’s dead! Such grand palaces! Such splendid cars! Such wealth! All lying there useless—and the man has died, a man who never existed in the first place.
Very often I find myself in just such a situation. I feel as if I’m in a foreign land. You do not understand my language, and I do not understand yours. What I say—when I hear its echo in you—I am astonished, because that is precisely what I never said! And when you ask something, what I take you to have asked—when I answer and then gaze into your eyes—I realize: that is not what you asked at all. I am like a stranger here, an outsider, a foreigner.
And yet I still try to explain what I see. It is not my desire that you should believe what I see; whoever says to another, “Believe me,” is an enemy of humankind. Because whenever I say, “Believe me,” I am really saying, “Accept me and abandon yourself.” Whoever urges you to abandon yourself and accept another is committing a murder of souls. All those who are restless to make others believe are dangerous to the human race.
I do not say, “Believe me.” There is no question of belief. I only try to say: understand what I am saying. And for understanding, belief is not necessary. In fact, those who quickly believe do not understand—and those who quickly disbelieve do not understand either. In the hurry to believe or disbelieve, there is no time left to understand. Whoever longs to understand should not be eager either to believe or to disbelieve, but only to understand.
Believing what I say will not develop you. No one has ever grown by believing someone else. But anyone who understands—by that very understanding, growth happens. Because the more you make the effort to understand, the more your intelligence develops. Yet we are all eager either to believe or to reject—since understanding demands effort, and belief or disbelief demands none.
We have become so mentally lazy that we do not want to exert our minds at all. That is why there are so many followers in the world; so many doctrines, so many “isms”; so many gurus and so many disciples. The day human beings are willing to exert mentally, there will be no followers, no isms, no gurus, no disciples.
Until we agree to engage in mental effort, all these stupidities will continue. Those who refuse to labor inwardly prefer to depend on someone else’s labor. This too is a kind of exploitation. If I think and you simply believe, you are exploiting me. If I think and force you to believe, I am exploiting you. And in this world, economic exploitation is not as pervasive as mental and spiritual exploitation. Money is not so big an issue: if someone steals your money, he has not stolen your all. But when someone steals your soul, everything is lost.
The whole world is in spiritual bondage, and its cause is mental laziness—mental lethargy. Inside, we don’t want to do a thing. Therefore if anyone loudly declares, “Believe me, I am God!”—or gathers a few fools and beats the drum in the marketplace that a great saint is arriving—we are immediately ready to believe. We’re already waiting to believe—let someone come and declare, “I am right!” He must shout loudly, his robes must be dyed the proper color, there must be an aura of publicity swirling around him—then we are ready to believe.
Will we never be ready to think? Humanity would never have been born if humans had not prepared themselves to think. Yet we are utterly unwilling to think.
I have no insistence that you believe what I say; nor do I insist that you not believe. My only insistence is: listen, and try to understand. That alone has become difficult, because our very languages seem different. I speak one language, and you understand another.
In one village, a friend came and asked: “What do you think about democracy?” I said, “If what you call democracy is this, then better the country be under a dictatorship.” He went and spread the news in the village that I favor dictatorship.
It’s like this: suppose a sick man comes to me, coughing and wheezing, and asks what he should do, and I tell him, “Rather than living in such sickness, it would be better to die,” and then he announces in the village that I believe everyone should die. When I returned, I discovered I’m the enemy of democracy and a supporter of dictatorship—and not only that: that I myself wish to be a dictator. What else can one conclude but that we are speaking different languages!
It would be hard to find someone who loves democracy more than I do. I love it so much I would like there to be no “cracy” at all. As long as there is any “-cracy,” there can be no true democracy. Any system that stands above will make us slaves—more or less, but slaves nonetheless. Where there is a system, where there is rule, man remains in some form of bondage. The day there is no system, that day true democracy will be. The day there is no rule, that day we can say true rule has arrived.
Yet I learned in that village that I supposedly want to be a dictator, that I like dictatorship. Not only did the newspapers publish it, one gentleman wrote an entire book asserting I want to be a dictator. What else can one say but that we are speaking different tongues!
Once I was staying in a village. The district collector’s wife came to see me. In college she had been my classmate. It was a cold night. I was sitting on the bed with a blanket over my legs. She came, embraced me warmly, and began reminiscing about childhood and college days. She sat on the bed. I said, “It’s cold.” She pulled the blanket over her legs too. We both sat there on the bed with the blanket over us.
Next day, in the meeting, a man sent a note asking: “Last night, in private, were you with a woman on the same bed under the same blanket or not? Answer yes or no. We do not like roundabout answers.”
I said, “Certainly—yes.”
When I got home, people said, “You’re absolutely mad! You said ‘yes’—what will people think?” I replied, “But it’s true: we were on one bed, under one blanket, and it was night. Their description is correct.” They said, “That’s not the point. You didn’t understand what they meant. They meant something else entirely. Don’t you know the rumor in the village is that you were with a woman on the same bed under the same blanket?”
What can one say but that we speak different languages? And people insist I answer, and not evasively—plain yes or no. I am astonished, I laugh and I weep: What kind of people...!
Then I remember a mystic—Bodhidharma. He went from India to China. For nine years he sat facing a wall. If you went to see him, he seemed terribly discourteous—he would not face you; he sat with his face to the wall, his back to you. The Emperor Wu of China came to meet him. “What bad manners!” he said. “I, the emperor, am standing behind you, and you keep your face to the wall!”
Bodhidharma said, “After countless experiences, I concluded that facing a wall is best—because people seem like walls to me; no one listens. Facing you, I would feel more rude, because you appear more wall than man. And seeing my eyes, you might notice I take you for a wall. So I face the wall. When a man arrives, I will turn to face him. But you are a wall.”
Emperor Wu wrote in his memoirs, “For the first time I met a man worth hearing—but perhaps I was not a worthy vessel to hear him. That’s why he did not turn to face me.”
Bodhidharma did well. Many times I too feel that if this tug-of-war of languages continues, better to face the wall than to face you. Yet I have not lost heart. I will keep trying. I do not wish to believe you are a wall. I want to believe you are human, with a thoughtful soul within. Despite all, I keep hope alive, and keep trying—perhaps someday, the words will be heard. But for now, the opposite seems to be the case.
I just returned to Gujarat—it is scorching. In village after village, people said, “You are an enemy of Gandhi.” I was astonished. If there are enemies of Gandhi in this country, it is the Gandhians more than Godse. Godse killed Gandhi’s body; the Gandhians are bent upon killing Gandhi’s soul. Even after Godse’s bullet, Gandhi remains—fully. That bullet did not and could not touch him; but the Gandhians, chanting his name while firing their volleys, will erase even the name of Gandhi. And these are the very people who announce that I am Gandhi’s enemy.
How could I be Gandhi’s enemy? Who could testify? No one but Gandhi himself could witness in this matter. But the witnesses are precisely those who are killing him in every way.
You may not have noticed: Jesus was not killed by those who crucified him. Jesus was killed by the Christians—his followers. And Socrates was not killed by those who gave him hemlock; Socrates can only be killed by those who pass themselves off as his disciples.
As Socrates neared death, his friend and disciple Crito asked, “They will give you poison at dusk. Tell us how you would have us bury you.” Socrates replied, “Look at the joke: my enemies try to kill me, and my friends try to bury me! See the fun: my friends ask how they should bury me. Friends always ask: you will die, how shall we bury you?”
The Gandhians are busy burying Gandhi. They are his “friends.” Socrates told Crito something delicious—perhaps Crito never understood; languages differ. Socrates said, “Foolish Crito, you try to bury me—but I tell you: even if you all get buried, I will remain. And if anyone ever remembers you, it will be only because you asked Socrates how to bury him.” And today, what we know of Crito is only that he asked Socrates that question—nothing more.
Disciples bury masters; followers bury leaders; those who trail behind bury those who walk ahead. Why does it come to this?
There is a reason. Perhaps you have not noticed: anyone who becomes a follower is dangerous. No intelligent person ever becomes a follower; only the unintelligent do. The community of followers is a congregation of the stupid. All the dullards gather there.
I have heard: once a man found the Truth. The devil’s disciples ran to him and said, “What are you doing? One man has found the Truth—everything will be ruined!” The devil said, “Relax. Go spread the news in the village: a man has found the Truth; whoever wants to become a disciple, come.” The disciples said, “What good will that do? Should we promote it ourselves?” The devil replied, “My experience of thousands of years is this: if you want to destroy a man who has found the Truth, gather a crowd of followers around him. Beat the drums from village to village: if anyone wants a true guru, one has appeared. Then all the fools will rush and encircle him—and what can one intelligent man do among a thousand fools?”
And so it happened. The devil’s disciples spread the news. The unintelligent thronged around him. The poor man tried to run: “Save me!” But who could save him? You can escape enemies—how do you escape disciples? So if anyone ever finds the Truth, beware of followers and flee from disciples. They are always ready—the devil trains them.
All his life Gandhi shouted, “I have no doctrine.” Now the Gandhians are busy systematizing his doctrine. They are opening research centers, giving scholarships, saying: “Define the framework of Gandhi’s doctrine.” They are erecting an ism out of Gandhi. Gandhi struggled all his life to avoid having any ism.
In truth, no intelligent person has a doctrine. An intelligent person lives moment to moment by his own intelligence—not by doctrine. Doctrines are for those who have no inner light.
What is a doctrine? Ready-made answers. Life changes daily, life poses new questions each day, and the doctrinaire carries ready-made replies. He pulls answers from his book: “This should work.” Life changes every day, but the doctrinaire does not; he freezes.
Those who have stopped at Mahavira froze twenty-five centuries ago. In these twenty-five hundred years, life has moved far, but the doctrinaire stands fixed at Mahavira, saying, “We believe in Mahavira.” Those who halted at Krishna stopped three-and-a-half to four thousand years ago. Those who halted at Christ stopped two thousand years ago. Life has not stopped there; it has moved on.
Life changes moment to moment. It brings new questions daily, and the doctrinaire comes with fixed, ready-made answers. Ready-made clothes may work; ready-made answers do not. He stands before new questions clutching a fixed reply, insisting, “Our answer is correct.” Such answers keep failing. That is why doctrinaires continually lose—they never win.
I have heard: In Japan there was a small village with two temples—one to the north, one to the south. Between the two there was an ancestral feud.
Temples always fight—you know this. You’ll have rarely heard of two temples in friendship. Those days of friendship have not yet come. For now, temples are dangerous; they are not religious. As long as temples instigate conflict, how can they be religious? They are centers of irreligion, because quarrels originate from them.
Between those two temples the enmity was so strong that the priests would not even look at each other’s faces. Each priest had a young boy to run errands—buy vegetables, do the odd jobs, serve. The priests warned their boys: “Never, even by mistake, go near the other temple. And never befriend that other boy. Our enmity is ancient—and ancient things are sacred. Do not violate this sacred enmity. Never meet or mingle.”
But children are children. However hard the old try to spoil them, it takes time. Parents would like to spoil them from birth, but even spoiling takes time. For a while, children resist. The more life there is in a child, the more he fights his parents: “You won’t spoil me.” But usually, parents win and children lose. So far it has been that way. Let us hope the time will come when parents lose and children win, because until children win against their parents, the old diseases of the world cannot end; they will continue—because parents keep injecting their poison into the children.
Those old priests kept warning the boys: “Don’t even look!” Still, children are children. Sometimes they met secretly on the road. The world is so bad you even have to do good things secretly; the time has not yet come when good things can be done openly. One day, one priest caught his boy meeting the other on the path. He was ablaze with anger.
A Hindu father burns if his son meets a Muslim boy. And if it’s his son meeting a son, that’s one thing; if it’s his son meeting a daughter, he burns even more—because two sons meeting is not so dangerous, but a son and a daughter meeting can be very dangerous. Dangerous enough to sweep both Hindu and Muslim away in its flood. So daughters and sons must absolutely be stopped from meeting.
The priest called his boy over and said, “What were you talking about? How many times have I told you not to speak to him!”
The boy said, “Today I too felt you were right—not to talk to him. Because today I returned defeated. I asked him, ‘Where are you going?’ He said, ‘Wherever the winds take me.’ I was stunned. Such a metaphysical, such a philosophical reply—‘Wherever the winds take me.’ After that, I had nothing more to say.”
The priest said, “This is dangerous! We have never lost to anyone from that temple. This is the first defeat. Tomorrow you must defeat him. You go again and ask, ‘Where are you going?’ And when he says, ‘Wherever the winds take me,’ then say, ‘What if the winds stop and do not blow—will you go anywhere or not?’ He will stumble.”
The boy went with a prepared answer and stood on the path. A prepared answer!
Prepared answers are the sign of stupidity. It is hard to find a more idiotic mind than one that carries ready-made replies. A prepared answer is the hallmark of the mediocre mind. The intelligent never have ready answers. They encounter the question directly, and answers are born—fresh, not prepared.
But the boy armed himself with the reply and waited on the path, eager to deliver it. Scholars are like this—answers ready.
The other boy came along. The prepared boy asked, “Friend, where are you going?” He wasn’t eager to ask; he was eager to answer. Few people are inquisitive in asking; most are eager to deliver their answers. And whoever is eager to answer, his questions are always false.
The other boy said, “Where am I going? Wherever my feet take me!”
Now there was trouble. The answer was prepared for the wind! Anger arose—not at himself, but at the other boy: “Dishonest! He changes his words! Yesterday he said the winds, today he says the feet. Dishonest!”
He went back and told his priest, “That boy is very dishonest.” The priest said, “People from that temple have always been dishonest—that is the cause of our quarrel. He changed his answer?”
The unintelligent never realize that life changes every day. Life is “dishonest.” Only the dead do not change—life does. Flowers change, stones remain the same beneath them. Stones must think, “What dishonesty! These flowers bloom in the morning and by noon begin to fall. What deceit! Morning they are one thing, by noon another, by evening something else. Look at us stones: the same in the morning as now. From the Vedic age until today we have been stones. These flowers are unreliable; they have no soul—always changing!”
The boy said, “He changed; what can I do now?” The priest said, “You must defeat him. I’ll give you another reply. Prepare yourself and go again.”
But he did not realize that it was not that particular answer that failed; it is prepared answers that always fail. The master thought, “That answer lost; this new one will work.” The foolish never see that it is the ready-made answer that loses—not any particular answer.
Next day he instructed, “When he says, ‘Wherever my feet take me,’ tell him, ‘God forbid you become crippled—then will you go anywhere or not?’”
The boy was delighted and returned to the same path to wait. The other boy came out of the temple. He asked again, “Friend, where are you going?”
The boy replied, “To the market to buy vegetables.”
This country is tormented by prepared answers. All our replies are ready-made, and no one is ready to encounter life’s questions face-to-face. Whether the answers were prepared by Buddha or Mahavira or Krishna—or more recently, Gandhi—our heads are stuffed with them, and we clutch them tight. That is why the soul of this country has remained undeveloped—has turned to stone. It has lost the quality of being a flower, the capacity to change. It has gone static, stuck. And if someone says, “Drop your prepared answers,” we cry, “You are trying to rob us of our saints and tirthankaras! You are our enemy!”
No one is trying to rob you of your tirthankaras or your saints. But you cling so hard that you constantly fear they might be snatched away. It is your very clinging that breeds this fear. Stop clinging—no one can snatch them away. They are what they are by their own stature, not because of your grip. But we clutch them, mistaking that grip for support.
Gandhi gave certain answers—and he was a remarkable man. I maintain that he had courage: he did not carry ready-made replies. If anyone in the last two thousand years gave velocity to Indian life, it was Gandhi. And the sole reason was that he did not possess prepared answers. All other Indian leaders had ready-made solutions; Gandhi did not. Therefore he was an anomaly in Indian life.
All India’s leaders were troubled by Gandhi. They laughed at him behind his back: “This man is a muddle. You never know what he will say or do; he changes. Morning he says something, evening something else. What he said last year, this year he contradicts. He is unreliable.” Yet that one man gave this land more movement than thousands of “great souls” could give combined.
How did he do it? The fundamental key was this: he carried no ready-made answers. He tried to live life; he tried to confront it. He wrestled with life and then shared the answers that emerged. But he never considered even those to be ultimate. He would say only: “This is what I see for now. Tomorrow something else may become clear; the day after, something else.”
No Indian saint had ever spoken in this way. Indian sages always spoke in absolute terms: “This is the final answer—the word of the omniscient. There is nothing beyond this. This is ultimate.”
Gandhi had the courage to say, “This is not the word of the omniscient; this is the word of a seeker.” He titled his book Experiments with Truth—not “The Attainment of Truth.” In an experiment there is room for error. He acknowledged the possibility of mistakes.
He did something extraordinary. And now we are hell-bent on undoing it—on killing it. We say, “We will build Gandhi-ism. We will keep his answers ready. The answers Gandhi gave, we will go on giving.” That is the beginning of Gandhi’s murder. Gandhi-ism is the killing of Gandhi. Whoever you turn into a doctrine, you kill.
And people tell me I am Gandhi’s enemy! Who is Gandhi’s enemy? All those standing under Gandhi’s label are his enemies. We don’t need the label; we need to understand Gandhi’s life. And if you understand, the first thing you will grasp is that Gandhi had no ready-made answers, and neither should we. We too must look, see, and recognize for ourselves.
Among the basic reasons India has lagged behind the world is this: In the world, no nation has kept its answers frozen. They have begun to discard old replies and search for the new. And we? Whenever life asks a question, we run to Krishna, we run to Mahavira—“What is the answer?” Have we no souls of our own? No evolving minds? Has our nation no capacity to understand life and respond?
No—we are afraid. New answers frighten us; they may be errors. The old carry no risk; they are safe.
But remember: a people who lose the capacity to err are a dead people. The capacity to err is a hallmark of life. So I say: make mistakes every day—do not fear mistakes. Just don’t repeat the same mistake, because a fixed mistake also becomes a fixed answer. Life is an adventure, a quest—an expedition of courage in which there will be many mistakes. We will learn from them and move ahead. If we don’t make mistakes, we won’t learn and won’t grow.
And that is why, being security-minded, we grab someone and say, “Your answers are forever—we will not search anew.” New answers carry danger, insecurity, the possibility of error. A saint’s answer is safer—hold it tight. The talismans saints used to give us were not so dangerous; they were simply useless. But if a nation clutches at saints’ answers, its development will be blocked; it cannot move forward.
I am not Gandhi’s enemy. My love for Gandhi is of a kind few can claim. But the only way we know to express love is to carve a stone statue and offer flowers. Our way is to worship—make a man into a god and be done with it. I tell you: that is not love; it is a tactic to avoid a man.
If you want to avoid someone, make him a god. Once he’s a god, he’s beyond our trouble. We remain human; he becomes divine. Between us there is no vehicle of communication—no bridge. He’s a god; the case is closed. Earlier too we escaped good men this way. We made Krishna a god—case closed. We made Mahavira a tirthankara—case closed. Then, whatever Mahavira does, we can say, “He is a tirthankara; that’s why. We are ordinary people—what can we do? We can only worship.” Krishna? Krishna is a divine incarnation. Rama is a divine incarnation. They can do anything; it is their lila. We? Ordinary—we can only bow.
Have you seen the trick of escaping Rama? Escaping Krishna? So cunning—we found a clever way: make the man a god and drive him beyond the bounds of humanity. Once he is outside humanhood, we have no dealings left—except one: we worship him, celebrate a festival once a year, make noise, and the matter is finished. We have no real business with him.
I want to say to you: do not let Gandhi become a god. Try hard to keep Gandhi from becoming divine—so that he can be of use to this country. Let Gandhi remain a man. But those who claim to follow him are working hard to make him a god. Once he’s a god, we are rid of him. To worship a man is to accept that he is not human, and we are human. We are human; he is not—that ends the conversation.
India enthroned all her greatest men as gods—and hence the Indian man could not become great. Look at the Indian man—why is he so small, so weak and wretched in a land where such great ones walked? Have you ever reflected? Where Mahavira lived, where Buddha set his feet, where flowers like Gandhi bloomed, where millions of extraordinary beings have been born—what is the condition of the humanity there? How pitiable, how crawling upon the earth!
We feel no shame when we boast that we are the people of Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, and Rama. Seeing us, one doubts that Rama ever was, or Buddha, or Krishna. There is no evidence of them in us. Indeed, seeing us, it seems they were just stories. Our multitude cannot exalt Mahavira; rather, because we are many and he is one, we might diminish him.
How did this misfortune happen? Because those who could have lifted humanity we thrust beyond humanity. Then within our human circle we felt comfortable remaining small—contented. Greatness became the destiny of a few; our smallness became our destiny.
India will have to bring all her gods down and stand them upon the earth again. Bring Mahavira down into our midst, standing among the crowd. He will not become smaller—rather, the possibility of our becoming great will increase.
It is a tragic state: where there are so many extraordinary people, there the human person is so diminutive. Why?
Sometimes I wonder whether these great ones appear so vast only because we are so petty—like white chalk on a blackboard. A teacher writes on a blackboard; he does not write on a white wall—on a white wall it won’t be visible. On a blackboard the white stands out. Perhaps our great ones shine so huge because our crowd is the blackboard—so dark and mean that one white figure appears enormous.
No other country seems to produce as many “great men” as we do. This raises a suspicion: our humanity is very low. So the moment a man rises even a little, he appears gigantic. And because our humanity is so low, we sing his praises loudly—for in praising him we secretly feed our own ego.
When Gandhi went to the Round Table Conference in England, one of his secretaries went to see Bernard Shaw, who was a marvelous man. The secretary asked, as disciples always do, “What do you think of Mahatma Gandhi? Do you accept him as a great soul?” Shaw said, “Mahatma? Yes, but number two. Number one is me.”
The secretary was shocked. “What kind of man is this! He says he is number one, Gandhi is number two—and there are only two mahatmas in the world!” He returned distressed and told Gandhi, “Bernard Shaw is a strange, very egotistical man. I asked and he said he’s number one and you’re number two.” Gandhi replied, “He is right. He is honest. Everyone feels inside that they are number one—only few have the courage to say it. He said what is true.”
Why was the secretary bruised? Because if Gandhi is number two, then he becomes the disciple of number two. When a man has nothing of his own, he seeks substitutes for being high. We shout that our Mahavira, our Buddha is the greatest. Why? Because they are ours—and by that we bask in borrowed greatness. The ego is cunning; it finds many routes.
A professor of philosophy in the University of Paris once said to his students one morning, “Do you have the news? There is no one greater than me in this world.” The students thought he had gone mad. It’s generally unstable heads who choose philosophy, and with minds, there is always a risk of breakdown. With minds unused, there is no such risk. Politicians boast daily that they are the greatest; no one is surprised—their minds are always deranged. But a philosophy professor?
They asked, “Are you serious? You are the greatest man in the world?” He said, “Not only do I say it—I can prove it, because I never say anything without proof.” “Then please prove it,” they said. They couldn’t imagine how.
He walked to the map of the world and asked, “Which is the greatest country?” They were all French. “France,” they said—naturally. A man living in France cannot accept that the land he lives in is not the greatest—such a great man must live in the greatest land! “Very well,” said the professor. “Forget the rest of the world. Now if I prove I am the greatest in France, then I am the greatest in the world.
“Which is the greatest city in France?” “Paris.” Now they began to suspect. “And the greatest place in Paris?” “The university.” “And the greatest subject in the university?” “Philosophy.” “And I am the head of the department of philosophy. Therefore I am the greatest man in the world.”
See how the ego finds its ways! When you say, “Hinduism is the greatest,” don’t imagine you care about Hinduism—you care about yourself. You are a Hindu; by calling Hinduism great you find a way to call yourself great. When you say, “Our god is greatest; our saint is greatest,” you care neither about god nor saint. You are saying, “My saint—how can he be small, when I am so big?”
This quarrel among Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs is not a quarrel among great souls; it is a quarrel of egos fattened by standing on the shoulders of great souls.
So when I say, “We must bring Mahatma Gandhi down,” I do not mean carry him to heaven; I mean keep his roots in the earth—he is of great use to the earth. When I say, “Join Mahavira to the earth,” it pains you—because thinking them in the sky, you dream yourself also in the sky. That dream shatters.
No, I am not Gandhi’s enemy. I want Gandhi to be the salt of this earth. I want us to reflect on Gandhi; I want us to learn from Gandhi. Do not “believe” Gandhi—learn from him. And if there is one great thing to learn from Gandhi it is this: life asks for new answers each day; life calls for new consciousness each day; life refuses to be confined in fixed channels. Any people who stop flowing fall behind life and die.
India is a dead country. Our existence is posthumous—we have been living as corpses for thousands of years. We have lost the stream of life. Ask Russian children what they are thinking: “How to colonize the moon.” Ask American children: “How to settle outer space.” And our children? Our children are watching Ramlila. Their eyes are fixed on the past.
Rama is very dear—but a nation that stalls at Ramlila dies. There will be more Ramlilas—new Ramas will be born in the future. God is not exhausted; he creates ever anew and never repeats himself—always the better. There will be Ramlilas on unknown stars and planets. But those Ramlilas will be watched by the children of America and Russia. Our children will not have that fortune. Our children are satisfied watching the past’s Ramlila, and are pacified.
I want this past-obsessed country to become future-oriented. I want these eyes, cemented to the back, to look forward.
God made a grave mistake putting our eyes in front—had he placed them on the back of the head we would be delighted, because we have no wish to look ahead. We gaze only at the dust of roads that have passed, at chariots already gone, at tales already told. What has been is all we see; what is to be is not in our eyes.
How long will we cling to what is past? Gandhi has happened—clutching him now will be like stopping at Ramlila again.
No—we will give birth to more Gandhis, more Ramas, more Mahaviras. Our soul is not spent. We still have vast creative capacity. We will not stop; we will face forward.
When I say this, people think I am an enemy of those of the past. I am not. You are their enemies—you who cling to them. By clinging, you prevent their like from being born again. We need a vision for the future.
In the next three days I will speak on how to create a future-facing society: its principles and the foundations of its revolution.
For now I have said only the preliminary thing. If this first point is already misunderstood, it will be difficult. I will say a few more things. I ask only this much: try to understand—there is no need to believe. I am no guru, no leader, and I have no madness to be one. I hold that only those afflicted with an inferiority complex want to be leaders. Only such people crave leadership. And in this country being a leader has become so easy that any sensible man should not want to be one.
One little story, and I will finish.
I have heard: a donkey learned to read the newspaper. I too was astonished—how did a donkey learn to read! Then it struck me: what else are donkeys good for but reading newspapers? The donkey began to read and became “knowledgeable.” Many donkeys become knowledgeable by reading newspapers. Once he could read, he also learned to give speeches—whoever can absorb newspapers can also deliver speeches. In speech, you only have to regurgitate what the papers have stuffed into your head. And a donkey has a powerful mouth—an art form of its own. He started giving speeches. Then he thought, “Why stay in small villages? I should head to Delhi.” As soon as donkeys learn to read and speak, they start toward Delhi. He set off and reached Delhi. It’s hard to keep donkeys from entering Delhi—he had gathered a band of ten or twenty other donkeys, and whoever has a crowd is a leader. He reached Delhi.
This was some years ago—Pandit Nehru was alive. The donkey went straight to his house. A guard stood at the gate. He was posted to stop men, not donkeys. He paid no attention to the donkey. Guards do not concern themselves with donkeys—and donkeys stroll into palaces. The donkey slipped inside. Nehru used to walk in his garden early in the morning. The donkey came up from behind and said, “Panditji!”
Nehru was alarmed—he believed neither in ghosts nor in God. He looked around. “What is this? Where does that voice come from? I don’t believe in ghosts—who is speaking?”
The donkey trembled. “I am very afraid—please don’t be angry. I am a talking donkey. You won’t be upset, will you?”
Nehru said, “I see talking donkeys every day—no reason to be upset. What have you come for?”
The donkey said, “I was afraid—would you meet me or not? You are very kind. Could you give me an appointment? I am a donkey—could I have some time?”
Nehru said, “Who else comes here but donkeys! Good you came. What do you want?”
The donkey said, “I want to be a leader.”
Nehru said, “Exactly. That is the very sign of being a donkey: to want to be a leader!”
This whole country is trying to become leaders. This country does not need leaders—or followers, or crowds. This country now needs thinkers. It needs those who sow seeds of thought. It needs those who will awaken the nation’s sleeping mind. This land needs a revolution of ideas. Not politics, but a spiritual revolution.
My concern is not with politics or politicians. My concern is with the sleeping soul of this country. And I will keep striking it wherever I can—however I can. You may insult me, be angry—I will accept it all. But I will continue my effort that somewhere the nation’s soul is jolted, somewhere life stirs, somewhere this country begins to think and awaken, and we do not fall behind in the race of the world. We are already far behind.
In these three days I will speak on a few principles of a revolution in life and society.
You have listened to my preliminary talk today with such peace and love—I am deeply obliged. In the end, I bow down to the God seated within each of you. Please accept my pranam.
Osho's Commentary
A man once went abroad to a country whose language he did not understand—and the people there did not understand his. Standing before a grand palace in the capital, he asked someone, “Whose mansion is this?” The man replied, “Kavatsan.” What he meant was, “I don’t understand your language.” But the foreigner took it to be the name of the owner—some man called Kavatsan. Instantly, a great jealousy seized his heart toward this Kavatsan. Such a vast mansion, so priceless, hundreds of servants coming and going, marble everywhere! His envy grew fierce—for someone who did not even exist. The local had only said, “I didn’t understand what you asked.”
He wandered on and reached the harbor. A great ship was being unloaded—costly goods, automobiles being lowered ashore. He asked, “Whose goods are these?” Someone answered, “Kavatsan.” Meaning: “I didn’t understand what you asked.” The foreigner’s envy grew still more—so the one who owned that palace also owned these expensive cars! And yet there was no such person at all. His heart burned: If only he were that rich! Then, returning along the road, sad, worried, miserable, full of envy, he saw a funeral bier being carried, thousands of people following behind. Surely the dead must be a great man! A thought flashed: could it be Kavatsan has died? He asked someone on the road, “Who has died?” The man said, “Kavatsan. I didn’t understand.”
He beat his chest. He had felt such jealousy toward that man—poor fellow, he’s dead! Such grand palaces! Such splendid cars! Such wealth! All lying there useless—and the man has died, a man who never existed in the first place.
Very often I find myself in just such a situation. I feel as if I’m in a foreign land. You do not understand my language, and I do not understand yours. What I say—when I hear its echo in you—I am astonished, because that is precisely what I never said! And when you ask something, what I take you to have asked—when I answer and then gaze into your eyes—I realize: that is not what you asked at all. I am like a stranger here, an outsider, a foreigner.
And yet I still try to explain what I see. It is not my desire that you should believe what I see; whoever says to another, “Believe me,” is an enemy of humankind. Because whenever I say, “Believe me,” I am really saying, “Accept me and abandon yourself.” Whoever urges you to abandon yourself and accept another is committing a murder of souls. All those who are restless to make others believe are dangerous to the human race.
I do not say, “Believe me.” There is no question of belief. I only try to say: understand what I am saying. And for understanding, belief is not necessary. In fact, those who quickly believe do not understand—and those who quickly disbelieve do not understand either. In the hurry to believe or disbelieve, there is no time left to understand. Whoever longs to understand should not be eager either to believe or to disbelieve, but only to understand.
Believing what I say will not develop you. No one has ever grown by believing someone else. But anyone who understands—by that very understanding, growth happens. Because the more you make the effort to understand, the more your intelligence develops. Yet we are all eager either to believe or to reject—since understanding demands effort, and belief or disbelief demands none.
We have become so mentally lazy that we do not want to exert our minds at all. That is why there are so many followers in the world; so many doctrines, so many “isms”; so many gurus and so many disciples. The day human beings are willing to exert mentally, there will be no followers, no isms, no gurus, no disciples.
Until we agree to engage in mental effort, all these stupidities will continue. Those who refuse to labor inwardly prefer to depend on someone else’s labor. This too is a kind of exploitation. If I think and you simply believe, you are exploiting me. If I think and force you to believe, I am exploiting you. And in this world, economic exploitation is not as pervasive as mental and spiritual exploitation. Money is not so big an issue: if someone steals your money, he has not stolen your all. But when someone steals your soul, everything is lost.
The whole world is in spiritual bondage, and its cause is mental laziness—mental lethargy. Inside, we don’t want to do a thing. Therefore if anyone loudly declares, “Believe me, I am God!”—or gathers a few fools and beats the drum in the marketplace that a great saint is arriving—we are immediately ready to believe. We’re already waiting to believe—let someone come and declare, “I am right!” He must shout loudly, his robes must be dyed the proper color, there must be an aura of publicity swirling around him—then we are ready to believe.
Will we never be ready to think? Humanity would never have been born if humans had not prepared themselves to think. Yet we are utterly unwilling to think.
I have no insistence that you believe what I say; nor do I insist that you not believe. My only insistence is: listen, and try to understand. That alone has become difficult, because our very languages seem different. I speak one language, and you understand another.
In one village, a friend came and asked: “What do you think about democracy?” I said, “If what you call democracy is this, then better the country be under a dictatorship.” He went and spread the news in the village that I favor dictatorship.
It’s like this: suppose a sick man comes to me, coughing and wheezing, and asks what he should do, and I tell him, “Rather than living in such sickness, it would be better to die,” and then he announces in the village that I believe everyone should die. When I returned, I discovered I’m the enemy of democracy and a supporter of dictatorship—and not only that: that I myself wish to be a dictator. What else can one conclude but that we are speaking different languages!
It would be hard to find someone who loves democracy more than I do. I love it so much I would like there to be no “cracy” at all. As long as there is any “-cracy,” there can be no true democracy. Any system that stands above will make us slaves—more or less, but slaves nonetheless. Where there is a system, where there is rule, man remains in some form of bondage. The day there is no system, that day true democracy will be. The day there is no rule, that day we can say true rule has arrived.
Yet I learned in that village that I supposedly want to be a dictator, that I like dictatorship. Not only did the newspapers publish it, one gentleman wrote an entire book asserting I want to be a dictator. What else can one say but that we are speaking different tongues!
Once I was staying in a village. The district collector’s wife came to see me. In college she had been my classmate. It was a cold night. I was sitting on the bed with a blanket over my legs. She came, embraced me warmly, and began reminiscing about childhood and college days. She sat on the bed. I said, “It’s cold.” She pulled the blanket over her legs too. We both sat there on the bed with the blanket over us.
Next day, in the meeting, a man sent a note asking: “Last night, in private, were you with a woman on the same bed under the same blanket or not? Answer yes or no. We do not like roundabout answers.”
I said, “Certainly—yes.”
When I got home, people said, “You’re absolutely mad! You said ‘yes’—what will people think?” I replied, “But it’s true: we were on one bed, under one blanket, and it was night. Their description is correct.” They said, “That’s not the point. You didn’t understand what they meant. They meant something else entirely. Don’t you know the rumor in the village is that you were with a woman on the same bed under the same blanket?”
What can one say but that we speak different languages? And people insist I answer, and not evasively—plain yes or no. I am astonished, I laugh and I weep: What kind of people...!
Then I remember a mystic—Bodhidharma. He went from India to China. For nine years he sat facing a wall. If you went to see him, he seemed terribly discourteous—he would not face you; he sat with his face to the wall, his back to you. The Emperor Wu of China came to meet him. “What bad manners!” he said. “I, the emperor, am standing behind you, and you keep your face to the wall!”
Bodhidharma said, “After countless experiences, I concluded that facing a wall is best—because people seem like walls to me; no one listens. Facing you, I would feel more rude, because you appear more wall than man. And seeing my eyes, you might notice I take you for a wall. So I face the wall. When a man arrives, I will turn to face him. But you are a wall.”
Emperor Wu wrote in his memoirs, “For the first time I met a man worth hearing—but perhaps I was not a worthy vessel to hear him. That’s why he did not turn to face me.”
Bodhidharma did well. Many times I too feel that if this tug-of-war of languages continues, better to face the wall than to face you. Yet I have not lost heart. I will keep trying. I do not wish to believe you are a wall. I want to believe you are human, with a thoughtful soul within. Despite all, I keep hope alive, and keep trying—perhaps someday, the words will be heard. But for now, the opposite seems to be the case.
I just returned to Gujarat—it is scorching. In village after village, people said, “You are an enemy of Gandhi.” I was astonished. If there are enemies of Gandhi in this country, it is the Gandhians more than Godse. Godse killed Gandhi’s body; the Gandhians are bent upon killing Gandhi’s soul. Even after Godse’s bullet, Gandhi remains—fully. That bullet did not and could not touch him; but the Gandhians, chanting his name while firing their volleys, will erase even the name of Gandhi. And these are the very people who announce that I am Gandhi’s enemy.
How could I be Gandhi’s enemy? Who could testify? No one but Gandhi himself could witness in this matter. But the witnesses are precisely those who are killing him in every way.
You may not have noticed: Jesus was not killed by those who crucified him. Jesus was killed by the Christians—his followers. And Socrates was not killed by those who gave him hemlock; Socrates can only be killed by those who pass themselves off as his disciples.
As Socrates neared death, his friend and disciple Crito asked, “They will give you poison at dusk. Tell us how you would have us bury you.” Socrates replied, “Look at the joke: my enemies try to kill me, and my friends try to bury me! See the fun: my friends ask how they should bury me. Friends always ask: you will die, how shall we bury you?”
The Gandhians are busy burying Gandhi. They are his “friends.” Socrates told Crito something delicious—perhaps Crito never understood; languages differ. Socrates said, “Foolish Crito, you try to bury me—but I tell you: even if you all get buried, I will remain. And if anyone ever remembers you, it will be only because you asked Socrates how to bury him.” And today, what we know of Crito is only that he asked Socrates that question—nothing more.
Disciples bury masters; followers bury leaders; those who trail behind bury those who walk ahead. Why does it come to this?
There is a reason. Perhaps you have not noticed: anyone who becomes a follower is dangerous. No intelligent person ever becomes a follower; only the unintelligent do. The community of followers is a congregation of the stupid. All the dullards gather there.
I have heard: once a man found the Truth. The devil’s disciples ran to him and said, “What are you doing? One man has found the Truth—everything will be ruined!” The devil said, “Relax. Go spread the news in the village: a man has found the Truth; whoever wants to become a disciple, come.” The disciples said, “What good will that do? Should we promote it ourselves?” The devil replied, “My experience of thousands of years is this: if you want to destroy a man who has found the Truth, gather a crowd of followers around him. Beat the drums from village to village: if anyone wants a true guru, one has appeared. Then all the fools will rush and encircle him—and what can one intelligent man do among a thousand fools?”
And so it happened. The devil’s disciples spread the news. The unintelligent thronged around him. The poor man tried to run: “Save me!” But who could save him? You can escape enemies—how do you escape disciples? So if anyone ever finds the Truth, beware of followers and flee from disciples. They are always ready—the devil trains them.
All his life Gandhi shouted, “I have no doctrine.” Now the Gandhians are busy systematizing his doctrine. They are opening research centers, giving scholarships, saying: “Define the framework of Gandhi’s doctrine.” They are erecting an ism out of Gandhi. Gandhi struggled all his life to avoid having any ism.
In truth, no intelligent person has a doctrine. An intelligent person lives moment to moment by his own intelligence—not by doctrine. Doctrines are for those who have no inner light.
What is a doctrine? Ready-made answers. Life changes daily, life poses new questions each day, and the doctrinaire carries ready-made replies. He pulls answers from his book: “This should work.” Life changes every day, but the doctrinaire does not; he freezes.
Those who have stopped at Mahavira froze twenty-five centuries ago. In these twenty-five hundred years, life has moved far, but the doctrinaire stands fixed at Mahavira, saying, “We believe in Mahavira.” Those who halted at Krishna stopped three-and-a-half to four thousand years ago. Those who halted at Christ stopped two thousand years ago. Life has not stopped there; it has moved on.
Life changes moment to moment. It brings new questions daily, and the doctrinaire comes with fixed, ready-made answers. Ready-made clothes may work; ready-made answers do not. He stands before new questions clutching a fixed reply, insisting, “Our answer is correct.” Such answers keep failing. That is why doctrinaires continually lose—they never win.
I have heard: In Japan there was a small village with two temples—one to the north, one to the south. Between the two there was an ancestral feud.
Temples always fight—you know this. You’ll have rarely heard of two temples in friendship. Those days of friendship have not yet come. For now, temples are dangerous; they are not religious. As long as temples instigate conflict, how can they be religious? They are centers of irreligion, because quarrels originate from them.
Between those two temples the enmity was so strong that the priests would not even look at each other’s faces. Each priest had a young boy to run errands—buy vegetables, do the odd jobs, serve. The priests warned their boys: “Never, even by mistake, go near the other temple. And never befriend that other boy. Our enmity is ancient—and ancient things are sacred. Do not violate this sacred enmity. Never meet or mingle.”
But children are children. However hard the old try to spoil them, it takes time. Parents would like to spoil them from birth, but even spoiling takes time. For a while, children resist. The more life there is in a child, the more he fights his parents: “You won’t spoil me.” But usually, parents win and children lose. So far it has been that way. Let us hope the time will come when parents lose and children win, because until children win against their parents, the old diseases of the world cannot end; they will continue—because parents keep injecting their poison into the children.
Those old priests kept warning the boys: “Don’t even look!” Still, children are children. Sometimes they met secretly on the road. The world is so bad you even have to do good things secretly; the time has not yet come when good things can be done openly. One day, one priest caught his boy meeting the other on the path. He was ablaze with anger.
A Hindu father burns if his son meets a Muslim boy. And if it’s his son meeting a son, that’s one thing; if it’s his son meeting a daughter, he burns even more—because two sons meeting is not so dangerous, but a son and a daughter meeting can be very dangerous. Dangerous enough to sweep both Hindu and Muslim away in its flood. So daughters and sons must absolutely be stopped from meeting.
The priest called his boy over and said, “What were you talking about? How many times have I told you not to speak to him!”
The boy said, “Today I too felt you were right—not to talk to him. Because today I returned defeated. I asked him, ‘Where are you going?’ He said, ‘Wherever the winds take me.’ I was stunned. Such a metaphysical, such a philosophical reply—‘Wherever the winds take me.’ After that, I had nothing more to say.”
The priest said, “This is dangerous! We have never lost to anyone from that temple. This is the first defeat. Tomorrow you must defeat him. You go again and ask, ‘Where are you going?’ And when he says, ‘Wherever the winds take me,’ then say, ‘What if the winds stop and do not blow—will you go anywhere or not?’ He will stumble.”
The boy went with a prepared answer and stood on the path. A prepared answer!
Prepared answers are the sign of stupidity. It is hard to find a more idiotic mind than one that carries ready-made replies. A prepared answer is the hallmark of the mediocre mind. The intelligent never have ready answers. They encounter the question directly, and answers are born—fresh, not prepared.
But the boy armed himself with the reply and waited on the path, eager to deliver it. Scholars are like this—answers ready.
The other boy came along. The prepared boy asked, “Friend, where are you going?” He wasn’t eager to ask; he was eager to answer. Few people are inquisitive in asking; most are eager to deliver their answers. And whoever is eager to answer, his questions are always false.
The other boy said, “Where am I going? Wherever my feet take me!”
Now there was trouble. The answer was prepared for the wind! Anger arose—not at himself, but at the other boy: “Dishonest! He changes his words! Yesterday he said the winds, today he says the feet. Dishonest!”
He went back and told his priest, “That boy is very dishonest.” The priest said, “People from that temple have always been dishonest—that is the cause of our quarrel. He changed his answer?”
The unintelligent never realize that life changes every day. Life is “dishonest.” Only the dead do not change—life does. Flowers change, stones remain the same beneath them. Stones must think, “What dishonesty! These flowers bloom in the morning and by noon begin to fall. What deceit! Morning they are one thing, by noon another, by evening something else. Look at us stones: the same in the morning as now. From the Vedic age until today we have been stones. These flowers are unreliable; they have no soul—always changing!”
The boy said, “He changed; what can I do now?” The priest said, “You must defeat him. I’ll give you another reply. Prepare yourself and go again.”
But he did not realize that it was not that particular answer that failed; it is prepared answers that always fail. The master thought, “That answer lost; this new one will work.” The foolish never see that it is the ready-made answer that loses—not any particular answer.
Next day he instructed, “When he says, ‘Wherever my feet take me,’ tell him, ‘God forbid you become crippled—then will you go anywhere or not?’”
The boy was delighted and returned to the same path to wait. The other boy came out of the temple. He asked again, “Friend, where are you going?”
The boy replied, “To the market to buy vegetables.”
This country is tormented by prepared answers. All our replies are ready-made, and no one is ready to encounter life’s questions face-to-face. Whether the answers were prepared by Buddha or Mahavira or Krishna—or more recently, Gandhi—our heads are stuffed with them, and we clutch them tight. That is why the soul of this country has remained undeveloped—has turned to stone. It has lost the quality of being a flower, the capacity to change. It has gone static, stuck. And if someone says, “Drop your prepared answers,” we cry, “You are trying to rob us of our saints and tirthankaras! You are our enemy!”
No one is trying to rob you of your tirthankaras or your saints. But you cling so hard that you constantly fear they might be snatched away. It is your very clinging that breeds this fear. Stop clinging—no one can snatch them away. They are what they are by their own stature, not because of your grip. But we clutch them, mistaking that grip for support.
Gandhi gave certain answers—and he was a remarkable man. I maintain that he had courage: he did not carry ready-made replies. If anyone in the last two thousand years gave velocity to Indian life, it was Gandhi. And the sole reason was that he did not possess prepared answers. All other Indian leaders had ready-made solutions; Gandhi did not. Therefore he was an anomaly in Indian life.
All India’s leaders were troubled by Gandhi. They laughed at him behind his back: “This man is a muddle. You never know what he will say or do; he changes. Morning he says something, evening something else. What he said last year, this year he contradicts. He is unreliable.” Yet that one man gave this land more movement than thousands of “great souls” could give combined.
How did he do it? The fundamental key was this: he carried no ready-made answers. He tried to live life; he tried to confront it. He wrestled with life and then shared the answers that emerged. But he never considered even those to be ultimate. He would say only: “This is what I see for now. Tomorrow something else may become clear; the day after, something else.”
No Indian saint had ever spoken in this way. Indian sages always spoke in absolute terms: “This is the final answer—the word of the omniscient. There is nothing beyond this. This is ultimate.”
Gandhi had the courage to say, “This is not the word of the omniscient; this is the word of a seeker.” He titled his book Experiments with Truth—not “The Attainment of Truth.” In an experiment there is room for error. He acknowledged the possibility of mistakes.
He did something extraordinary. And now we are hell-bent on undoing it—on killing it. We say, “We will build Gandhi-ism. We will keep his answers ready. The answers Gandhi gave, we will go on giving.” That is the beginning of Gandhi’s murder. Gandhi-ism is the killing of Gandhi. Whoever you turn into a doctrine, you kill.
And people tell me I am Gandhi’s enemy! Who is Gandhi’s enemy? All those standing under Gandhi’s label are his enemies. We don’t need the label; we need to understand Gandhi’s life. And if you understand, the first thing you will grasp is that Gandhi had no ready-made answers, and neither should we. We too must look, see, and recognize for ourselves.
Among the basic reasons India has lagged behind the world is this: In the world, no nation has kept its answers frozen. They have begun to discard old replies and search for the new. And we? Whenever life asks a question, we run to Krishna, we run to Mahavira—“What is the answer?” Have we no souls of our own? No evolving minds? Has our nation no capacity to understand life and respond?
No—we are afraid. New answers frighten us; they may be errors. The old carry no risk; they are safe.
But remember: a people who lose the capacity to err are a dead people. The capacity to err is a hallmark of life. So I say: make mistakes every day—do not fear mistakes. Just don’t repeat the same mistake, because a fixed mistake also becomes a fixed answer. Life is an adventure, a quest—an expedition of courage in which there will be many mistakes. We will learn from them and move ahead. If we don’t make mistakes, we won’t learn and won’t grow.
And that is why, being security-minded, we grab someone and say, “Your answers are forever—we will not search anew.” New answers carry danger, insecurity, the possibility of error. A saint’s answer is safer—hold it tight. The talismans saints used to give us were not so dangerous; they were simply useless. But if a nation clutches at saints’ answers, its development will be blocked; it cannot move forward.
I am not Gandhi’s enemy. My love for Gandhi is of a kind few can claim. But the only way we know to express love is to carve a stone statue and offer flowers. Our way is to worship—make a man into a god and be done with it. I tell you: that is not love; it is a tactic to avoid a man.
If you want to avoid someone, make him a god. Once he’s a god, he’s beyond our trouble. We remain human; he becomes divine. Between us there is no vehicle of communication—no bridge. He’s a god; the case is closed. Earlier too we escaped good men this way. We made Krishna a god—case closed. We made Mahavira a tirthankara—case closed. Then, whatever Mahavira does, we can say, “He is a tirthankara; that’s why. We are ordinary people—what can we do? We can only worship.” Krishna? Krishna is a divine incarnation. Rama is a divine incarnation. They can do anything; it is their lila. We? Ordinary—we can only bow.
Have you seen the trick of escaping Rama? Escaping Krishna? So cunning—we found a clever way: make the man a god and drive him beyond the bounds of humanity. Once he is outside humanhood, we have no dealings left—except one: we worship him, celebrate a festival once a year, make noise, and the matter is finished. We have no real business with him.
I want to say to you: do not let Gandhi become a god. Try hard to keep Gandhi from becoming divine—so that he can be of use to this country. Let Gandhi remain a man. But those who claim to follow him are working hard to make him a god. Once he’s a god, we are rid of him. To worship a man is to accept that he is not human, and we are human. We are human; he is not—that ends the conversation.
India enthroned all her greatest men as gods—and hence the Indian man could not become great. Look at the Indian man—why is he so small, so weak and wretched in a land where such great ones walked? Have you ever reflected? Where Mahavira lived, where Buddha set his feet, where flowers like Gandhi bloomed, where millions of extraordinary beings have been born—what is the condition of the humanity there? How pitiable, how crawling upon the earth!
We feel no shame when we boast that we are the people of Buddha, Mahavira, Krishna, and Rama. Seeing us, one doubts that Rama ever was, or Buddha, or Krishna. There is no evidence of them in us. Indeed, seeing us, it seems they were just stories. Our multitude cannot exalt Mahavira; rather, because we are many and he is one, we might diminish him.
How did this misfortune happen? Because those who could have lifted humanity we thrust beyond humanity. Then within our human circle we felt comfortable remaining small—contented. Greatness became the destiny of a few; our smallness became our destiny.
India will have to bring all her gods down and stand them upon the earth again. Bring Mahavira down into our midst, standing among the crowd. He will not become smaller—rather, the possibility of our becoming great will increase.
It is a tragic state: where there are so many extraordinary people, there the human person is so diminutive. Why?
Sometimes I wonder whether these great ones appear so vast only because we are so petty—like white chalk on a blackboard. A teacher writes on a blackboard; he does not write on a white wall—on a white wall it won’t be visible. On a blackboard the white stands out. Perhaps our great ones shine so huge because our crowd is the blackboard—so dark and mean that one white figure appears enormous.
No other country seems to produce as many “great men” as we do. This raises a suspicion: our humanity is very low. So the moment a man rises even a little, he appears gigantic. And because our humanity is so low, we sing his praises loudly—for in praising him we secretly feed our own ego.
When Gandhi went to the Round Table Conference in England, one of his secretaries went to see Bernard Shaw, who was a marvelous man. The secretary asked, as disciples always do, “What do you think of Mahatma Gandhi? Do you accept him as a great soul?” Shaw said, “Mahatma? Yes, but number two. Number one is me.”
The secretary was shocked. “What kind of man is this! He says he is number one, Gandhi is number two—and there are only two mahatmas in the world!” He returned distressed and told Gandhi, “Bernard Shaw is a strange, very egotistical man. I asked and he said he’s number one and you’re number two.” Gandhi replied, “He is right. He is honest. Everyone feels inside that they are number one—only few have the courage to say it. He said what is true.”
Why was the secretary bruised? Because if Gandhi is number two, then he becomes the disciple of number two. When a man has nothing of his own, he seeks substitutes for being high. We shout that our Mahavira, our Buddha is the greatest. Why? Because they are ours—and by that we bask in borrowed greatness. The ego is cunning; it finds many routes.
A professor of philosophy in the University of Paris once said to his students one morning, “Do you have the news? There is no one greater than me in this world.” The students thought he had gone mad. It’s generally unstable heads who choose philosophy, and with minds, there is always a risk of breakdown. With minds unused, there is no such risk. Politicians boast daily that they are the greatest; no one is surprised—their minds are always deranged. But a philosophy professor?
They asked, “Are you serious? You are the greatest man in the world?” He said, “Not only do I say it—I can prove it, because I never say anything without proof.” “Then please prove it,” they said. They couldn’t imagine how.
He walked to the map of the world and asked, “Which is the greatest country?” They were all French. “France,” they said—naturally. A man living in France cannot accept that the land he lives in is not the greatest—such a great man must live in the greatest land! “Very well,” said the professor. “Forget the rest of the world. Now if I prove I am the greatest in France, then I am the greatest in the world.
“Which is the greatest city in France?” “Paris.” Now they began to suspect. “And the greatest place in Paris?” “The university.” “And the greatest subject in the university?” “Philosophy.” “And I am the head of the department of philosophy. Therefore I am the greatest man in the world.”
See how the ego finds its ways! When you say, “Hinduism is the greatest,” don’t imagine you care about Hinduism—you care about yourself. You are a Hindu; by calling Hinduism great you find a way to call yourself great. When you say, “Our god is greatest; our saint is greatest,” you care neither about god nor saint. You are saying, “My saint—how can he be small, when I am so big?”
This quarrel among Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains, Buddhists, Sikhs is not a quarrel among great souls; it is a quarrel of egos fattened by standing on the shoulders of great souls.
So when I say, “We must bring Mahatma Gandhi down,” I do not mean carry him to heaven; I mean keep his roots in the earth—he is of great use to the earth. When I say, “Join Mahavira to the earth,” it pains you—because thinking them in the sky, you dream yourself also in the sky. That dream shatters.
No, I am not Gandhi’s enemy. I want Gandhi to be the salt of this earth. I want us to reflect on Gandhi; I want us to learn from Gandhi. Do not “believe” Gandhi—learn from him. And if there is one great thing to learn from Gandhi it is this: life asks for new answers each day; life calls for new consciousness each day; life refuses to be confined in fixed channels. Any people who stop flowing fall behind life and die.
India is a dead country. Our existence is posthumous—we have been living as corpses for thousands of years. We have lost the stream of life. Ask Russian children what they are thinking: “How to colonize the moon.” Ask American children: “How to settle outer space.” And our children? Our children are watching Ramlila. Their eyes are fixed on the past.
Rama is very dear—but a nation that stalls at Ramlila dies. There will be more Ramlilas—new Ramas will be born in the future. God is not exhausted; he creates ever anew and never repeats himself—always the better. There will be Ramlilas on unknown stars and planets. But those Ramlilas will be watched by the children of America and Russia. Our children will not have that fortune. Our children are satisfied watching the past’s Ramlila, and are pacified.
I want this past-obsessed country to become future-oriented. I want these eyes, cemented to the back, to look forward.
God made a grave mistake putting our eyes in front—had he placed them on the back of the head we would be delighted, because we have no wish to look ahead. We gaze only at the dust of roads that have passed, at chariots already gone, at tales already told. What has been is all we see; what is to be is not in our eyes.
How long will we cling to what is past? Gandhi has happened—clutching him now will be like stopping at Ramlila again.
No—we will give birth to more Gandhis, more Ramas, more Mahaviras. Our soul is not spent. We still have vast creative capacity. We will not stop; we will face forward.
When I say this, people think I am an enemy of those of the past. I am not. You are their enemies—you who cling to them. By clinging, you prevent their like from being born again. We need a vision for the future.
In the next three days I will speak on how to create a future-facing society: its principles and the foundations of its revolution.
For now I have said only the preliminary thing. If this first point is already misunderstood, it will be difficult. I will say a few more things. I ask only this much: try to understand—there is no need to believe. I am no guru, no leader, and I have no madness to be one. I hold that only those afflicted with an inferiority complex want to be leaders. Only such people crave leadership. And in this country being a leader has become so easy that any sensible man should not want to be one.
One little story, and I will finish.
I have heard: a donkey learned to read the newspaper. I too was astonished—how did a donkey learn to read! Then it struck me: what else are donkeys good for but reading newspapers? The donkey began to read and became “knowledgeable.” Many donkeys become knowledgeable by reading newspapers. Once he could read, he also learned to give speeches—whoever can absorb newspapers can also deliver speeches. In speech, you only have to regurgitate what the papers have stuffed into your head. And a donkey has a powerful mouth—an art form of its own. He started giving speeches. Then he thought, “Why stay in small villages? I should head to Delhi.” As soon as donkeys learn to read and speak, they start toward Delhi. He set off and reached Delhi. It’s hard to keep donkeys from entering Delhi—he had gathered a band of ten or twenty other donkeys, and whoever has a crowd is a leader. He reached Delhi.
This was some years ago—Pandit Nehru was alive. The donkey went straight to his house. A guard stood at the gate. He was posted to stop men, not donkeys. He paid no attention to the donkey. Guards do not concern themselves with donkeys—and donkeys stroll into palaces. The donkey slipped inside. Nehru used to walk in his garden early in the morning. The donkey came up from behind and said, “Panditji!”
Nehru was alarmed—he believed neither in ghosts nor in God. He looked around. “What is this? Where does that voice come from? I don’t believe in ghosts—who is speaking?”
The donkey trembled. “I am very afraid—please don’t be angry. I am a talking donkey. You won’t be upset, will you?”
Nehru said, “I see talking donkeys every day—no reason to be upset. What have you come for?”
The donkey said, “I was afraid—would you meet me or not? You are very kind. Could you give me an appointment? I am a donkey—could I have some time?”
Nehru said, “Who else comes here but donkeys! Good you came. What do you want?”
The donkey said, “I want to be a leader.”
Nehru said, “Exactly. That is the very sign of being a donkey: to want to be a leader!”
This whole country is trying to become leaders. This country does not need leaders—or followers, or crowds. This country now needs thinkers. It needs those who sow seeds of thought. It needs those who will awaken the nation’s sleeping mind. This land needs a revolution of ideas. Not politics, but a spiritual revolution.
My concern is not with politics or politicians. My concern is with the sleeping soul of this country. And I will keep striking it wherever I can—however I can. You may insult me, be angry—I will accept it all. But I will continue my effort that somewhere the nation’s soul is jolted, somewhere life stirs, somewhere this country begins to think and awaken, and we do not fall behind in the race of the world. We are already far behind.
In these three days I will speak on a few principles of a revolution in life and society.
You have listened to my preliminary talk today with such peace and love—I am deeply obliged. In the end, I bow down to the God seated within each of you. Please accept my pranam.