Kahe Vajid Pukar #4

Anand Maitreya! This reminds me: once I went for an early morning walk with a Jain monk. By the roadside a poor drunk had died. They were tying up his bier. The Jain monk said to me with great satisfaction, “Look, this is the fate of drunkards.” I asked, “Drunkards die because of drink—then why do monks die? Will you not die? Or won’t you?” It’s been twenty years; he still hasn’t answered. He never will.

So, the Kalinga empire perished because it was “permissive,” and because it built beautiful temples like those of Bhubaneswar and Puri—temples of love. Then tell me, Morarji-bhai, why did all the other empires perish? If Kalinga alone had vanished, your point might have held some meaning. But what about all the empires? Every empire in the world falls. Whatever is born must die. Whether drunkard or monk, what is born dies. What happened to Emperor Ashoka’s empire—the empire that annihilated Kalinga in a flood of blood, that killed a hundred thousand people? What became of Ashoka’s “virtuous” empire? Where is it now? Not a trace remains! And Rome? Greece? Babylon? Egypt? Assyria? China? Innumerable empires have risen and vanished. Either all were permissive—or perishing has other causes than permissiveness. And if everything that rises must fall, then there is no need each time to fabricate a special moral reason: what is made in time perishes in time.

Mulla Nasruddin turned eighty and still no one could beat him at running. Journalists gathered and asked, “What’s the secret of your health? Do you drink ‘life-water’ like Morarji-bhai?” Mulla said, “No. The secret is I never drink alcohol, never eat meat, never chase other men’s wives. That’s why I’m so fit—no one can beat me even today.” Just then there was a loud crash and a scream in the next room. The reporters asked, startled, “What happened?” Nasruddin said, “Don’t worry, it’s my father. He’s grabbed the maid again.” “Your father! How old is he?” “He’s a hundred.” “He’s grabbed the maid?” “Whenever he drinks a bit too much, he behaves like this.”

Nasruddin is eighty because he doesn’t drink or eat meat; his father is a hundred, still drinks, and is still chasing the maid! So where’s the secret of longevity? Those who don’t drink think they live longer because they abstain. Those who drink think they live longer because they drink. It is pointless to descend into such trivial causalities. Whatever is born will one day die—sooner or later.

Kalinga did not fall because it was sexual; Ashoka did not win because he was virtuous. Ashoka won because he wielded superior violent force; Kalinga had less. Kalinga was a small state. In this world, might makes right.

Do you think America defeated Japan because America was more virtuous and the Japanese were permissive? Who today is more “permissive” than America? Yet America won because it had the atom bomb. Japan is a moral nation, deeply religious, cultured; but it lost because it lacked the bomb.

Why did Hitler lose? Do you imagine Hitler was permissive? Hitler was more of a “mahatma” than Morarji Desai! He never ate meat, never smoked, never drank; he did not drink “life-water” either! He rose in brahma-muhurta, exercised, never married. Morarji Desai at least married and produced a “great son” like Kanti Desai! Some sexual activity must have occurred! Hitler left no children at all. So how did Hitler lose? He bound all of Germany in rules and discipline as no one ever had. The whole nation became a camp of moral rectitude and military drill. Still he lost.

Do you suppose Churchill was more virtuous? There’s no sign of virtue about Churchill—he drank, ate meat. He never got up at brahma-muhurta—never before ten, they say only once; and after watching the sunrise he said, “Why see it again? It’s the same sun that will rise every day.” And he claimed that early rising did not bring freshness; that day he was irritable and drowsy for want of sleep.

Churchill won, Hitler lost. The “virtuous” lost, the “immoral” won.

In this world victory and defeat do not hinge on virtue and vice; they hinge on the quantum of violent power. Do you think China grabbed India’s territory and India lost because India is immoral and China virtuous? If virtue alone decided outcomes, then, Morarji-bhai, why beg at America’s door for nuclear power? Why spend seventy percent of India’s wealth feeding the army? The country is poor and starving. If virtue guarantees victory, send the soldiers home; spend the money on making the nation virtuous—and then you’ll see who wins and who loses.

Mahatma Gandhi—Morarji Desai’s guru—preached nonviolence all his life. But as soon as the country became free and the Congress had power, they no longer talked of nonviolence. For Kashmir, they blessed our planes as they took off to bomb Pakistan. Before that they’d said that after independence the army would be disbanded. But once in power, all that was forgotten. No one said, “Send the army home; we’ll conquer by nonviolence.”

If China or Pakistan attacks, will you fast and spin the wheel and win? They did not do this. And if nonviolence is so powerful, then when Godse shot Gandhi, Gandhi should not have died. The virtuous died, the celibate died. One could say, “Gandhi must not have been truly virtuous; otherwise how could he die? The aura of celibacy—what could a bullet do? It would have bounced back and struck Godse!”

If Godse’s bullet can kill Gandhi, then think: Ashoka had enormous power, a vast empire; Kalinga was small and poor. If poor Kalinga was destroyed by Ashoka’s empire, then, Morarji-bhai, please don’t utter such absurdities—don’t peddle such meaningless foolishness.

Yes, it may be that Kalinga’s loss came because where Bhubaneswar and Puri’s exquisite temples rose, people were busy carving beauty, worshipping the divine, not forging swords and guns. Their energy went into the service of beauty; they had no time to cast cannons and shells. It may also be that the people of Kalinga loved one another.

Where people love, they are not eager to fight. Eager to fight are those whose lives are empty of love. That is why politicians everywhere strive to prevent love from spreading—because if love spreads, who will go to war?

Understand this science rightly: if you want to make a person fight, deprive them of love. The same energy that becomes love turns into violence when blocked. If love’s energy finds no outlet and development—if no flowers of love bloom—that very energy becomes violence. If you want soldiers, you must bar them from love; otherwise their will to fight diminishes. That’s why we don’t send soldiers’ wives to the battlefield. We forbid soldiers love, so the poison of frustration accumulates—and they vomit it upon the enemy. Those who get no joy of life become eager to kill and die. So it may be that in Kalinga, where the tender tantric temples of Puri and Bhubaneswar were built, the aura of love prevailed and people were not keen to fight. When people are eager to live, they are not eager to kill; fighting risks the very nectar they cherish.

When your life is full of flavor, you are not eager to fight—for fighting will drain your flavor. When there is something to lose, one hesitates to fight. When there is nothing, only war seems to offer a thrill. So we take soldiers through a whole process of sexual repression: suppress their sexuality so the energy that could fill life with juice turns neurotic and restless within, finds no path; in that restlessness they become ready to kill. From love is birth; obstruct love—and love becomes death.

But for this, should we deprive people of love? What is the point of preserving a society built on war, enmity, and jealousy—where people live only to die and to kill? We need a society that allows the individual to blossom to his fullness. And love is life’s deepest essence.

Societies come and go; unless old ones pass, how will new ones arise? If the evening sun does not set, how will a new dawn come? If the old do not die, how will children be born? The old do not die because they were immoral; they die because they are old. Children are not born because they are virtuous; they are born because they are new. The new comes; the old goes—giving space to the new.

To say Kalinga fell because of tantra and because they built sweet temples like Bhubaneswar, and to use this to speak against me—“If my words are heeded, society will be destroyed”—is as foolish as what Mahatma Gandhi said when the Bihar earthquake struck. Do you know? He said, “This is God’s punishment for the sin of oppressing the Harijans.”

Were Harijans oppressed only in Bihar? The entire country oppressed them—yet only Biharis were punished, the rest rejoiced! In truth, Bihar saw less oppression than many other regions. But only Biharis were punished and the rest had fun!

These are habits—using any pretext to propagate one’s preconceived notions. A few days ago a violent cyclone hit the South. People died in Andhra and Karnataka. Mr. Raj Narain said it happened because the people there didn’t vote for the Janata Party. Now floods have struck Delhi and the North—people are dying because they did vote for Janata? What kind of stupidity is this?

When a country’s prime minister utters such foolishness, it is pitiable. It is our misfortune that we have sat an extremely dull-witted, inert-minded man in the prime minister’s chair. That is why I keep saying: history will not forgive Jayaprakash Narayan for saddling this country with corpses dug from their graves in the name of revolution—people who should have been gone long ago, with minds at least fifty or sixty years out of date.

No modern nation chooses prime ministers of eighty-two or eighty-three. Only we, the ill-fated, do! What can we expect from them now? They are cartridges already fired, appearing like cartridges but empty. Their one great life goal they have chased for eighty years and secured; now nothing is left to do—only cling to the chair.

Do you think this is how history is analyzed? Is this historical insight? Have you read any history, Morarji-bhai? How many empires rose and fell! To blame only Kalinga? What happened to the rest? Either all were immoral, or else we must accept that the virtuous also perish, the saintly also perish—and thus perishing has no necessary relation to morality or immorality.

Then what do you call morality?

There are many reasons why he is angry with me. One: when he was Deputy Prime Minister, I met Indira. Indira had long been interested in my ideas. She listened deeply and said, “What you say is right—and I would like to do it. But think of the people I’m bound to—consider Morarji-bhai. He is Deputy Prime Minister. Any new idea—he obstructs it immediately.”

I told Indira, “Such people should be sent away. Dismiss them. Either do something—or, if people stand in the way, remove them. And if you can’t remove them, then remove yourself—what’s the point of staying?”

It seems this struck Indira. I reached Jabalpur from Delhi and before I got there, Morarji-bhai had been shown the door. Perhaps that wounded him deeply; he must have heard I had a hand in his dismissal.

Returning to Jabalpur and hearing the news, I felt a bit concerned; I hadn’t thought it would happen so fast. When I next went to Delhi, I met Morarji-bhai to offer condolences—he’d been turned out, at least a few kind words. But I found such rigidity in him that I came away pleased I had advised Indira well; no condolences were needed. Our brief conversation—you can imagine what conversation there could be between him and me—was nothing but friction. There can be no meeting ground between us. Thinking has not touched him; he only repeats ready-made notions with eyes closed, without argument or support.

I met him again when Acharya Tulsi invited us both; we were his guests. Tulsi sat on his dais; we all sat below. This irked Morarji-bhai. It was a small colloquium—about twenty invitees—to discuss the country. But the discussion never began, because Morarji-bhai said, “We can talk later; first tell me, Acharya, why are you seated above and we below?” Tulsi was in a fix. He said, “As the head of the bhikshu sangha, our tradition seats the acharya above.” Morarji retorted, “You may be the acharya of your monastic order, not ours. We are not sitting with your sangha. Besides you call yourself a revolutionary saint—what kind of revolution is this!”

I saw the meeting was spoiled. I told Tulsi, “Though you haven’t asked me, if both you and Morarji-bhai agree, may I respond?” Both agreed. I said, “Look, Morarji-bhai, I too am sitting below, and I’m not offended. Why are you? Tulsi is seated above—let him sit. Do you see the lizard? It’s seated even higher. Let it sit. You seem rather foolish, not wise. We were called for a colloquy. If it were a sermon, sitting a bit higher helps people see—but this is a discussion among twenty people. We are his guests at his invitation. It’s odd that the host sits above and the guests below—but if it pleases him, let him sit there. Why does it offend only you? Perhaps you want to sit up there too—then go ahead! He won’t come down now, because you raised the issue. If he had some courage he would have said, ‘My mistake,’ and come down—but he sits there shamelessly. Why are you afraid? Climb up—sit there together so we can begin. One ego has climbed up; another ego writhes below.”

From that day, Tulsi was offended—and so was Morarji. They have their reasons, but can’t state them straight; they express them obliquely. He says: “He expressed his strong dislike for the views of Acharya Rajneesh on women and sex, saying that a permissive society ultimately destroys itself. In ancient India too, society once became permissive; the temples of Bhubaneswar and Puri built during the Kalinga period indicated this; and that was why the Kalinga empire vanished. A permissive society has no moral standard.”

Morarji-bhai, morality and repression are not the same. A truly moral person is not repressed but free. He is permissive in the sense of being inwardly liberated, spontaneous. He has not suppressed desire; he has known it, lived it, and transcended it through understanding.

I am not telling people to break rules and live like animals. I am telling people to awaken and live like buddhas. This “permissiveness” is not permissiveness in the Western, social sense; it is the conduct of the free.

In my view—and the entire modern psychological inquiry supports it—if you repress sexuality, you will remain filled with it forever. That is what has happened to Morarji. For fifty years he has suppressed sex; he thinks repression is morality. That unfulfilled, unlived energy still surges within him. He is not free; he has not gone beyond. It remains inside like a knot. He may not admit it. His guru, Gandhi, at least had the courage to admit, till the end, that his sexuality had not ended. Suppressed, yes—but how could it end? In the end Gandhi had to take refuge in tantra—the very tantra which, according to Morarji, destroyed Kalinga.

All his life Gandhi suppressed. But I must grant him this: he was an honest man. When he erred he could admit it. All his life he tried to conquer sexuality and impose celibacy. He failed; he admitted, “My dreams are still filled with sexual imagery. Even at seventy, sex roams in my dreams. By day I manage; by night I still have not won.”

By day you can hold yourself because you are awake. But when you sleep, how will you repress—sleep or repress? Once asleep, what you repressed by day rises in dreams. Freud’s whole discovery is precisely this. I don’t think Morarji has even heard Freud’s name. Gandhi never read even a single book of Freud in his life. Such ignorance! Without knowing Freud one cannot be called modern; such a person belongs in a museum, not among the living. For Freud discovered a crucial truth: what you repress becomes your dreams, and what you repress you must keep repressing all your life—and still you never get free. At death, what you suppressed will stand before you in its entirety—you will die sunk in that very pit.

Gandhi was honest; Morarji is not so honest. Gandhi admitted, “Desire is in my mind still. How to be free of it?” As death approached, his anxiety grew: “If I am not free, I will have to be born again; the cycle will start anew.” What to do?

Seeing no way out, in the end he took refuge in tantra. In his final days, his close disciples—Morarji among them—turned against him, because he began sleeping naked at night beside a young naked woman—in old age. But that is a well-known tantric method: if you want to be free of something, don’t run from it—enter it totally, naturally; understand it, be watchful, meditate upon it—don’t suppress. Lived with awareness, sexuality dissolves.

It is not difficult for sex to end, but not for the repressor. Understand this subtlety—which Morarji cannot; his understanding is too coarse.

Three types:
1) The bhogi (hedonist): who indulges unconsciously without understanding.
2) The yogi: who represses unconsciously, without understanding.
3) The tantrika: different from both.

The tantric way: live what the hedonist lives, but don’t be unconscious; don’t repress like the yogi. Cultivate awareness and meditation like the yogi, but do not change life’s outer situation like the hedonist. If you change life’s situations, what will you meditate upon? Life is the device and the field for meditation.

That’s why I tell my sannyasins: don’t run away. Don’t leave wife or children, shop or marketplace—leave nothing. Live where you are, as the worldling lives, but kindle the inner light of yoga, of attention. When the outer situation of the bhogi meets the inner state of the yogi, the great wisdom of tantra is born—the mahamudra. Tantra uses the bhogi’s outer circumstances and the yogi’s inner state. Tantra is a great synthesis, an alchemy.

This is precisely what I teach. I do not teach a Western-style permissiveness. I certainly want you to be free of lust—but you can be free only by dropping condemnation. Befriend desire, for it is your own life energy. If you make it an enemy, you will split in two; a man divided can never know the divine. Only the undivided can.

How to become one? Accept life as it is. Introduce just one new element: awareness. Let life be as it is; cultivate inner wakefulness. Sit by your wife—but now sit with awareness. Stay with your children—but aware. Go to your shop—but mindful. And you will be astonished: the shop remains as it is; you are in it yet free of it. Wife, children—everything continues; and amidst all, you become different—like a lotus in water.

So I am not teaching Western permissiveness. I offer the time-tested wisdom of tantra. But the repressed feel I preach permissiveness—because of their repression.

What Morarji has said is not about me; it is about himself. It is like a fasting man passing someone eating his meal and muttering, “Glutton! Sensualist! He’ll rot in hell!” He is talking about his own suffering. The other is simply obeying nature: hungry, so he eats; thirsty, so he drinks. The fasting man is sick; the body asks for food and he refuses, fighting himself. Spirituality does not grow by fighting—it is the fruit of awareness.

Morarji cannot understand this. He does not even dare read my books. Laxmi went to see him with some of my books; he wouldn’t even take them in his hands. How will he understand me? He pronounces on me without knowing me. Whenever he sees someone in saffron—and there are many of my people across the land—he erupts. Many have told me: old acquaintances of his are now my sannyasins; when they go to see him he stiffens with anger: “You too got caught up in this racket!”

Is it a racket—or freedom from the racket? Read, think, understand. He tells a sannyasin, “You too fell into this trap!” And what trap is he himself in? Twenty-four hours of whirling chaos—someone pulls his leg, someone his arm, someone runs away with the chair, locks are being hammered, Hanuman Chalisa chanted. He tells my sannyasin, “You are in a trap!” My sannyasin is striving to be free.

He has not listened to what I say, not read, not tried it. Soon after becoming Prime Minister, asked if he meditates, he said, “Yes, Acharya Rajneesh described a method to me—but I never tried it; it did not appeal.”

How, without trying, can you decide it is right or wrong? Meditation is an experiment—a living taste. You must taste it; and taste is not cheap: six months or a year may be needed. With a stony mind like Morarji’s, perhaps even longer. Then you can say yes or no. But without experience, such statements have no value.

I am offering a new vision: its foundation is the union of yoga and bhoga.

I don’t want the sannyasin cut off from the world. Centuries of experiment have shown the harm. When we separated the sannyasin from life, two things occurred. First, his challenges ended; without challenge he fancied he was transformed. Suppose you sit in a cave: no one to insult you, so no anger arises. After two years you think, “I have conquered anger.” Come back to the marketplace—let someone insult you; suddenly the snake raises its hood. It was not dead, only coiled.

A man spent thirty years in the Himalayas and thought his anger had ended. He returned for the Kumbh. In the crowd someone stepped on his foot: in a moment thirty years were gone! He grabbed the man’s neck, “Do you know whose foot you stepped on?” While he strangled him, saying “Are you aware?” he remembered his own awareness: “What happened to my thirty years?” Tears came; he saw the truth: there had been no challenge, that’s all. Gunpowder can sit a thousand years; if no spark falls, you won’t know it is gunpowder. Let a spark fall and no fire arises—then the powder is truly inert. So I say: don’t flee the world; it has the sparks. If you go to the forest, you avoid challenges; you are a deserter. I don’t wish that.

Second, each challenge faced increases your awareness. Every challenge is a rung on the ladder. If you learn the art of awareness—that is meditation—you can convert every challenge into heaven. Unconsciously faced, the same challenge becomes hell.

A Chinese emperor went to a Zen sage: “I want proof that heaven and hell exist.” The sage looked at him and said, “Who are you?” “Don’t you know? I am the emperor.” The sage laughed, “Have you seen your face in a mirror? You fool! Flies are buzzing on you—an emperor!” The emperor was enraged; never had he suffered such insult. He drew his sword; as it flashed toward the sage’s neck, the sage said, “Wait! This is the gate of hell.” The emperor paused—and understood. He sheathed his sword; his face softened. The sage said, “This is the gate of heaven.”

Heaven and hell are not far away. The same challenge—how you take it is the key. Anger’s spark is thrown; you burn—hell! You put the sword away—awareness arises—heaven! Don’t flee challenges.

So the so-called religious—Morarji is one—feel I am corrupting people. Because I am birthing a new sannyas that does not flee from challenges but embraces them all. Life, body, mind, desire—all that existence has given is meant to be used. Don’t run, don’t suppress—wake up! Let every blow awaken you. When life becomes an alarm clock, it wakes you from sleep. On this path of awakening the lamp of buddhahood is lit. Where nothing is repressed, there is freedom.

In the truest sense, then, I do teach “permissiveness”—not in the social sense, but in the sense of buddhahood: the conduct of the free. Understand that whatever God has given is meaningful—sex too is meaningful; through the upward journey of kama arises the experience of Rama. Kama becomes Rama.

If there were no sexual energy in you, devotion would never arise—for devotion is sexuality distilled, refined. Sexuality is like gold mixed with dross; devotion is gold passed through fire. The world is the fire; you are the gold. You are soiled with refuse. Pass through fire—be refined, burn! The dross will be burnt away; one day you will appear pure gold. That state I call the ultimate. So don’t deny what God has given.

This is the message of tantra. And those temples of Puri and Bhubaneswar are among this nation’s greatest treasures. Have you seen their art? On the outer walls are mithuna—nude couples in love, man and woman in myriad erotic postures. But enter within—and God is enthroned. Inside there is no lust. The temple’s walls are of lust; between these walls sits Rama. These are profound symbols!

But I understand Morarji’s difficulty. Gandhi had the same. He proposed that the temples of Puri, Konark, Bhubaneswar, Khajuraho be buried in earth so people could not see them. They were saved only because of Rabindranath’s fierce opposition. Such madness—to bury such beauty!

These temples are extraordinary! But they will not appear so to Morarji. He cannot even look fully at the mithuna images; his repressed sexuality will begin to roar.

Khajuraho is in Vindhya Pradesh. A minister friend of mine there once hosted an American artist—sculptor and painter—friend of Jawaharlal Nehru, who had asked my friend to personally show him Khajuraho. My friend, a Gandhian, was very uneasy: “How will I explain? What will I say?” He was ashamed, afraid of what the American would think.

Nowhere else are there sculptures like Khajuraho’s. Nowhere has sexuality been accorded such spiritual dignity. The Taj Mahal could be built a thousand times and razed; it would not equal the value of a single Khajuraho image. The extraordinary thing is: though the couples are nude and in embrace, see their faces—there is samadhi! No trace of lust on their faces. Those who carved stone have engraved samadhi—even in stone!

But you can see those faces only if you can bear to look at nude, embracing bodies. If at the sight of nudity you get a fever, a 105-degree delirium, your repressed lust erupts, you feel you’ve fallen into sin—your eyes drop, you tremble. Morarji cannot look fully at these images; impossible. If you have never looked fully into a living woman’s face, how will you look at these?

These figures are supremely beautiful—no living woman is so beautiful. They are essences of many women: the breasts of one, the face of another, the legs of a third, the hands and fingers of a fourth. Only by taking a thousand beauties and distilling them could such a form be made.

My friend, flustered, hurried the tour. As they descended the steps, he said, “Please don’t take this as our culture’s main current. Only two or three temples among millions are like this. Forgive us; some eccentric libertines built them. Don’t carry the idea that these represent India.”

Hence Morarji’s fear of me. He even tries to keep Western visitors from coming here, saying I don’t represent the true India; he does. He claims that only once—“in Kalinga”—did such a thing happen.

That’s false: Khajuraho is not in Kalinga. And there were such temples across the land; records exist. But fanatics like Morarji destroyed them. The wonder is that Khajuraho, Puri, Konark, Bhubaneswar survived. Millions were razed. Their priests were killed. King Bhoja alone had a hundred thousand tantrikas killed—historical fact. Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra was not written in Kalinga either. The sages of India called Vatsyayana a maharshi—Morarji could never do so.

Seeing my friend’s shame, the American said, “You seem uneasy—do these temples seem wrong to you?” “Wrong? Nude figures—obscene! Libertine!” The American replied, “Then I must go back inside. I could not see any obscenity. I have not seen such beautiful depictions of love, prayer, samadhi. If anywhere I have seen the ascent from sex to samadhi, it is here—turning mud into lotus! You seem to have looked only at the lower halves; you did not look at the faces.”

Eyes cannot rise to the faces of those who have repressed—they turn back in fear. Khajuraho’s faces are marvelous—how hard to carve samadhi on stone—and in such a “context”! Yet the miracle happened. Note: all this is on the outer walls. Enter the inner sanctum—the garbhagriha—there is no sex, only God. What does this mean? The world is the temple’s outer wall. Unless you are free of that outer wall, you are not worthy to enter within. If you are not free of the outer, even inside you will think only about the outer.

Sit to pray after repressing sex—sex will arise. Sit to meditate after repressing sex—apsaras will descend in the mind; Urvashi will dance! These “rishis” to whom Urvashi comes are types like Morarji. No apsaras come from heaven. It is your repressed desires that take form; your own dreams surround you.

Until you become utterly aware of sexuality, you cannot truly enter the temple—cannot meditate, pray, worship; your mind will throw up obstacles.

My message is: don’t flee the outer wall of life—understand it completely. Understanding—not repression—is my key; observation, witnessing. Enter your sexuality with witnessing, and one day you will find yourself free—without having tried to be free. Trying implies repression. Freedom that comes naturally has an incomparable beauty. My path is of the natural; I am a sahaja. “Sādho, sahaja samadhi bhali”—O seekers, natural samadhi is best.

But people of repressed minds like Morarji sit on this nation’s chest and have crippled it for centuries. He says Kalinga perished due to permissiveness. I tell you: because of people like him this whole country declined.

Civilizations rise and fall—nothing unusual. But the heaviest burden on India’s chest is the so-called moralists—the fake moralists. They sat on this country and did not let it prosper. Prosperity needs freedom, a simple acceptance of life. They made us poor. How can a nation prosper if it condemns everything—sex, love, enjoyment, food, clothing, beauty? Then why be prosperous? Prosperity comes only where life is accepted in all its colors—beautiful clothes, a healthy body, the joy of food, music, literature. When life is full of color, it prospers.

This country shrank and died. It was taught that poverty is spiritual. Poverty is not spiritual; it is the greatest sin. From poverty all other sins arise.

I want to say something else to this nation—so there will be obstacles. The custodians—the priests and politicians—will resist. I say: fill the country with the affirmation of life. Enough of negation. Long have we said “no, no, no” and shriveled and rotted. Now we must say “yes.” We must live—live in all dimensions. We will seek beautiful clothes and healthy bodies, good food and beautiful homes.

People come here and are surprised: “An ashram should be huts!” They don’t understand my vision. Huts should not exist anywhere—why in an ashram? I can’t remove huts everywhere, but at least not in my ashram. Why should people not live with orderliness, cleanliness, grace? Life should have a touch of affluence. See: our word Ishvara (God) comes from aishvarya—splendor.

Someone asked, “Why do you ride in such an expensive car?” I asked, “Did Krishna ride a bullock cart? The Mercedes wasn’t available then; otherwise Krishna would have ridden it. He rode a chariot—more expensive than this!” The man agreed, now stuck: Krishna didn’t ride a bullock cart; if one worships “daridra-narayana,” then one should ride a donkey, the poorest creature!

From the day India chose against aishvarya, poverty set in. In Krishna’s time there was zest, dance, song—the rivers flowed with milk and curd. Where have they gone? Where are those beautiful people? No flute sounds on Yamuna’s banks; no rasa in Vrindavan. Even our Holi and Diwali are hollow—a ritual without the inner flame. Life’s lamps unlit—what is the point of lighting festival lamps? They are false and meaningless.

Know this: the rishis’ ashrams were prosperous. There is a tale: King Janaka announced a great debate; the winner would receive a thousand cows, with golden horns studded with jewels. At noon Yajnavalkya arrived with his disciples. Seeing the cows sweating in the sun, he said, “Boys, drive them to our ashram—I’ll handle the debate.” The disciples herded them away. Janaka and the scholars were aghast—this was the prize to be awarded after the debate! Yajnavalkya said, “Don’t worry—I’ll settle the debate; what’s there to debate? But why torment the cows?”

An ashram that can house a thousand cows with golden horns—you think it was a slum? Thousands studied at the gurukulas. Do you think the rishi-munis were fugitives from life? They had wives and children—and surely beautiful wives; the stories say even gods coveted them—Indra, Chandra sneaked in. Not a single story says the gods coveted kings’ queens; they coveted sages’ wives—because beauty deepened by meditative grace becomes a thousandfold. Sometimes a disciple fell in love with the guru’s wife; boys and girls both studied in the gurukulas. Remember Shakuntala? Kings were enchanted by students of the hermitages. There was beauty, splendor, a style of living—not poverty, not shrinking.

Our shrinkage began under the influence of Jains and Buddhists. With them came negation and denial—and with them our decline began. Not Kalinga’s fall alone, but India’s, due to their denial of life. The country lost its power. So many invaders came; the land kept losing.

If Morarji is right, only Kalinga should have fallen. Why did the whole country? Because the will to live and expand disappeared. Life’s adventure was lost. Thus we lost—to Turks, Mughals, Huns, Pathans, then the English, Portuguese, French, Spanish. And still we shrink. We do not accept life as God’s gift.

I want you to begin anew: accept life in all its colors, sing, dance, love. Certainly beyond love and song there is meditation and samadhi—but that is the crest. First build the temple—then we can place the golden pinnacle. Without the temple, where will you raise the spire? Upon life’s temple alone does the urn of samadhi sit.

My words will offend, because today they are solitary. What I say is what the Vedas and Upanishads said—but between them and me lies a gap of two or three thousand years, in which much was ruined. And power still lies with the old mindset.

Life has its laws: once a wrong idea becomes dominant, we live under its spell and refuse to hear anything else. The world grows prosperous while we cling to the spinning wheel. Morarji still spins. Has any nation prospered by the spinning wheel? If it could, why did we become poor—we’ve been spinning for millennia. We need high technology; prosperity comes through technology. One machine can do the work of thousands; production multiplies a millionfold.

But Gandhi sits on this nation’s chest; he is worshipped. Whoever takes his name climbs onto our chest. You are poor, habituated to poverty; you like whatever matches your poverty. I want to break your poverty; I will not please you.

You love to hear that Gandhi traveled third class. What difference did that make? Did it make the whole nation travel first class? It only crowded third class even more—and when he traveled, an entire carriage was reserved for him! If I go naked and beg on the streets, will it bring prosperity? If that were so, we have enough naked beggars—why hasn’t prosperity come?

We are lost in such foolishness. If I became a naked beggar, crowds would cheer me—though I would be of no use to them; but now, when I could be useful, they cannot cheer because I contradict their three-thousand-year-old conditioning.

I want industry, technology, science to descend; I want growth. But it will happen only when we accept life in all its forms. Life-denial is suicidal; life-affirmation is nectar-giving. Within that affirmation, I accept even sexuality.

To Mr. Morarji Desai I say: because of the empty babble of people like you, this country’s misfortune grows dense. Have compassion! Reconsider. Give the nation enthusiasm, not despair. Breathe life into its dead soul, circulate new blood. That is what I am doing. That is why my words resonate more in the West—because they love life and expansion; their minds and mine meet.

People ask why few Indians are seen here. Because, over three thousand years, India has formed a wrong habit of thinking. I do not fit it. Only those Indians who are a little modern, a little reflective, eyes open to the world, can come. No country is condemned to poverty now. If we remain poor, it is by our own doing. Science has created such means that every nation can prosper. If we are poor, there is an error in our philosophy, our thinking.

I say: life is God. Live it and you live God. Life is prayer, worship—embrace it in joy and celebration. Do not think you were sent into life to pay for sin. Do not listen to Gandhi—listen to Rabindranath, who said on his deathbed: “O Lord, send me again and again; your life was so sweet!” He did not ask to be freed from birth—he asked to return.

One who seeks escape from the cycle cannot live rightly; there is suicide hidden in his attitude.

I am giving you a new religion, a new proclamation. To make it clear, I want to found a small town. I am working for it. But Morarji-bhai and company try every way to obstruct it. What is their problem? Let me build a small village to show the nation how people can live. They fear “ruin”—as if ruin has not already happened! What is left to be ruined? What do you have to lose? Your “mahatmas” have already ruined it—and whatever remains, you are finishing! What is left for me to ruin?

I want to build a small town of ten thousand sannyasins—a model to show how much prosperity and joy are possible, how life can be drenched in rasa. I define God as rasa—Raso vai sah! The more you become filled with rasa, the nearer you are to him. I want you to dance, sing, love—to become like flowers, birds, moons and stars. Let anxieties evaporate. All this is possible; there is no obstacle now. Perhaps once it was not—but today science has freed the means. Yet we keep shrinking.

Their fear is precisely this: if I can build such a town and demonstrate it, they will be exposed. Then they cannot say I bring ruin; I will have proof. That is why they do not want it to exist.

You would be surprised at the legal tangles they raise daily. I must keep five or seven lawyers busy just handling their petty legal harassment. They cannot confront me directly, but they can in the courts—small tricks to delay, to stall. I don’t even tell people about all this; it serves no purpose.

The town will be built, because it already has God’s sanction. It will stand as a proof. And then I will invite Morarji-bhai and the gang around him: come and see.

Anand Bharti! Your question is right, but it stands on a misunderstanding, on a small mistake.
You asked: “When all those who have arrived, the perfected ones, call out to God, then I cannot understand—what remains of them to do the calling?”

Keep two things in mind.
First: the devotee calls to God only until he has not yet reached God; therefore he calls to God. When he arrives—and the devotee becomes God—then it is no longer the devotee who calls to God. Then, through the devotee, God calls to the world. Then it is God who calls from within him. These are two different callings. One is the devotee’s cry: “Come, take me into yourself; it has been so long; I can bear no more delay; I weep, I implore you; do not be estranged; be gracious; open the door; how long it has been—I have been weeping and calling for lifetimes—where have you disappeared!” This is the devotee’s cry, these are the devotee’s tears. The devotee still calls; the devotee longs to be absorbed—like a river calling to the ocean, for if it dissolves into the ocean it will be freed of boundaries, freed of anxieties.

Then, when the river has merged into the ocean, the ocean will thunder. The river has become part of the ocean; it is no longer separate. Now the river is not left to do any calling; now the river is the ocean. Now even the river’s water becomes the ocean’s roar and crash. Just so, when the devotee reaches God, when he is fulfilled, he too “calls”—but now it is not the devotee who calls; now God calls. Now it is the ocean’s thunder; now God calls others.

From this, confusion can arise. As in these very words of Wajid—Wajid says: “Says Wajid—call!” This call that Wajid utters is now God calling through Wajid. It is no longer Wajid calling; Wajid is long gone. When you become hollow like a bamboo reed, then you are worthy to be placed upon his lips. Then notes will sound! A song will burst forth from you! Then his breaths will flow through you. Then the flute will call to others; the flute’s long-drawn note will summon others.

First the devotee calls to God; then God, through the devotee, calls those who have gone astray on other paths, who are stuck in the dark. These are two different calls; do not take them to be one and the same. In the first call there is duality: there is the devotee and there is God, with distance between. In the second call there is nonduality: now there is no devotee, nor a God separate. There is only One—and only that One resounds: the roar of the ocean!

Enough for today.