Koplen Phir Phoot Aayeen #1

There is something within you which you yourself also know. It was the same in childhood, and even before you were born it was the same. Much water has flowed in the Ganges, but you stand on the bank and remain the same. Even if tomorrow you are not visible, you will still be the same. Forms will be new, shapes will be new; perhaps you will not even recognize yourself. Names will be new, introductions new, attire new; still I say—you will be the same. You have always been the same, and you will always remain the same. This eternal, everlasting—call it God if you wish, or call it your very being. Many waves come and go upon it, but the ocean remains the same.

Change is false. But we have taken change to be true and made a world out of it. If only we could understand that change is false, there would be no difference between thief and saint, because that which is within both is neither thief nor saint; then there would be no difference between Hindu and Muslim. Their languages will be different, but hidden within their languages there is a witness. Their actions will be different, but behind those actions something is hidden that is forever the same. And the search for that eternal is religion.

We should be asking people—“You haven’t changed, have you?” But the world is upside down, its rules inverted, its talk topsy-turvy. And since the crowd goes along believing such things, others accept them too. You look at your face in a mirror and think you have seen yourself. If it were that easy, everyone would have attained self-vision. You hear your name and think you know your name. If it were that cheap, there would be no need for religion in the world. That name is not yours; it is borrowed and stale. You came without a name and you will go without a name.

When we carry a corpse to the cremation ground we say, “Rama’s name is truth.” No one speaks the name of the man who has died. All his life that name was the “truth,” and today, suddenly, it becomes false. He was born without a name, and in dying he has made Rama’s name true and his own name false. All life long—“Rama’s name is truth”—and at every moment man is already on the bier. Your journey toward the cremation ground can begin at any moment.

There is an English saying: Do not ask for whom the church bells toll. When someone dies, the church bells ring to inform the whole village. Do not ask for whom the bells toll—they always toll for you, whoever dies. The funeral procession is always yours; why not set out carrying the bier yourself? The burning body on the bier is yours—why not be the one to light it?

The greatest dilemma of life is that we have taken the changing to be true and forgotten entirely that which is still.

I am the same. There is no way to be anything else. Even if you wish, you cannot become something else. All your life you strive to become something. All ambition, all running around, is only this—to become something. And what is the misfortune of the whole of life? That no one becomes anything. And the wonder is that what you were, you always were; however much you ran and rushed, you remained the same. Yet even up to the final moment people do not become aware of this.

The day awareness arises that “I have not to become anything; I have only to discover what I am,” the moment of revolution has arrived in your life; the hour of the divine has come; you have reached the temple doors. Now your bier cannot be raised; now your name cannot be changed. Now centuries will come and go, stars will rise and set, but your being has reached that place where everything is unmoving, all is quiet, all is silent; no stir, no wave, no ripple. The name of this waveless music is samadhi. This becoming a void is what it means to become truth.

People come to me to become something. And my difficulty is that I want to erase them, so that only what they are remains. That is existence’s gift. And whatever we fabricate are sandcastles—one little gust and the houses fall. They are lines drawn on water—you have scarcely made them and they are gone. Yet you go on making. You do not even look back to see that everything you built is erased, all is lost.

And not once, but a thousand times; not in one life, but in thousands of lives you have done the same. How long will you go on doing it? A mistake made once is forgivable; twice, it becomes unforgivable. But we have done it thousands of times. By now we know only how to make the mistake. Now we revolve only in the cycle of mistake. And so many mistakes, such a crowd of mistakes, that what gets lost in them is your real being.

From the day I recognized myself, since that day I have found no change. Everything else has changed and will keep changing, but within, someone stands silently—in health and in illness, in success and in failure—exactly the same.

In America’s prisons I had many experiences that perhaps would not have happened outside. I was kept in about five prisons—without cause, without any crime. But perhaps I am wrong; what I do not consider a crime, they consider a crime. To think is a crime, to be peaceful is a crime, silence is a crime, meditation is a crime. Truth is perhaps the greatest sin in this world. That was what they were punishing me for. But their discomfort was this—which every jailer told me when releasing me—that thousands of prisoners have passed through our prison, but the one thing that didn’t let us sleep was that we were harassing you and you were enjoying it!

I told them it was beyond their understanding, because the one they were harassing was not me, and the one enjoying it was me. I am watching the play going on around me.

And when journalists outside would ask, “How are you?” and I would say, “Exactly as I always am,” it was beyond the American journalist’s comprehension. He would say, “You don’t feel any difference between being in prison and being outside?” I would say: there is a great difference between the prison and the outside—but you asked something else. You asked about me; you did not ask about the prison. Inside prison and outside prison, I am the same. The prison is different and the outside is different. Bound in handcuffs I am the same, and freed from them I am the same. How can handcuffs change me? How can prison walls change me?

While leaving the last prison, the warden said: this is the unique experience of my life. I have seen people enter prison cheerful, but I have not seen them leave cheerful. You are going as you came. What is the secret? I said: that is precisely my crime—that I was explaining that very secret to people. Your government—and no government in the world—wants people to understand that secret. Because the moment that secret is understood, all the powers of governments over you come to an end. Prisons become useless, guns meaningless, unfired bullets become as useless as spent ones; fire no longer burns you, and the sword no longer cuts you. Therefore those who sit upon your chest with sword and fire do not want you to recognize who you are. All their power is destroyed. Your recognition is their death. And it is no surprise that whenever, in any age, someone has tried to remind you of yourself, governments have stood in the way, and vested interests have stood in the way.

When Socrates was given poison, the charges leveled against him were that he was teaching people to be immoral. He was only teaching people who they are. But to the custodians of morality it seemed that if people came to know who they are, what would become of their custodianship!

So never ask anyone, “How are you?” Ask only this: “Have you yet recognized that which never changes, or not?” And we must increase the number of such people in the world who never change. They are the salt of the earth. They are the essence. Their being is meaningful. Those who have recognized existence have repaid existence’s debt.

Whatever the questions… all questions spring from not-knowing, so do not hesitate. There is no such thing as a question of wisdom. But by asking questions born of not-knowing again and again, a person becomes wise.

Bhadra, show at least a little foolishness! (waves of laughter...)

I understand. I say “we are foolish” deliberately. The moment I separate myself from you, I become your enemy. And there is no hurry yet to drink poison. Among madmen it is wiser to count oneself mad. My business is a little difficult: it is the business of selling spectacles in a world of the blind. And to tell the blind, “I have eyes and you are blind,” is dangerous. There is a crowd of the blind—a blind, blindly charging crowd! And no blind person likes someone to claim he has eyes and call others blind—especially when the majority is on their side.

It happened in a small mountain region of South America in the early part of this century. This is a historical incident. A tribe of three hundred people—every one of them blind. Astonishing. Children were born with eyes, but within four or six months they went blind. In that valley there was a fly whose bite blinded infants. If for six months that fly didn’t bite them, their eyes could be saved; then they became strong. But the fly was so abundant in that valley that no child could escape.

A young scientist, on hearing this, went to find out what was happening. For three hundred people to be entirely blind—amazing. He studied and found that every child was born with eyes, but while he still had eyes he could not speak; and six months is a long time, the fly is everywhere—common, in every home—so within six months it blinded them. By the time a child could speak, he was already blind. While he had eyes, he had no words. Therefore that tribe had no idea that such a thing as “eyes” exists.

The fly bit the young scientist too, but he was far beyond six months—its poison had no effect on him. He decided somehow the fly must be eradicated. And he was amazed to see that those three hundred blind people managed even without eyes: they did small farming, arranged for their food—hard and difficult. But if that is life, what else can be done? We too are doing the same. However hard, however troublesome, however tangled—what to do? This is life. And all around, everyone is living the same way.

While studying the fly, the young man fell in love with a blind girl—beautiful, only without eyes. He asked the tribe’s chief for permission to marry her. Do you know what the chief said? First, drop this delusion that you have eyes. Such a thing has never been seen or heard here. Give up these lies. Permission can be granted on one condition: what you call eyes, we will gouge out. If you agree to be blind, the marriage can happen. Then you will be of our people. Think it over. And if you want to remain with eyes, forgive us—you belong to some other world, not to our tribe. Tell us your decision in the morning.

All night he thought: What should I do—should I lose my eyes? But it is because of these very eyes that he went mad over that woman’s beauty. These eyes are what let him see beauty. If he loses them—whether that woman is beautiful or ugly—what difference would it make? And he had to decide before morning. Just before sunrise he fled, as fast as he could run. The tribe pursued him: Catch him, don’t let him escape, because he will go out and spread the false news that I have eyes and others are blind.

It was that scientist who told the world the story. Other scientists went and gradually eliminated the fly. Now children there too have eyes. Those three hundred people, blind in the first decades of this century, have grown old and died. That tribe has dissolved. Now all have eyes.

But to say among the blind, “I alone have eyes and you are all blind,” is unseemly, uncivil.

I have understood your point. You understand mine too. I am with you. Even if you are asleep, I am with you; after all, a waking man can also sit with a sleeping man. And what is the difference between the sleeping and the awake? A very small difference: if the sleeping man’s eyes open, he too is awake. But while living among the sleeping, it is better at least to keep up the pretense that you too are asleep. Don’t annoy them unnecessarily. They have the crowd. They have the society. They have the world. You are alone. And that is not the point anyway. The point is to awaken them. So we must not create enmity; we must create friendship. That is why I do not say, “You are blind.” I say, “We are blind.”

But only one who has eyes can say, “We are blind.” A blind person cannot even say, “I am blind.” Perhaps you have never thought about this; or if you did, you thought wrongly. People imagine that a blind person must be seeing only darkness. You are mistaken. Even to see darkness, eyes are needed. When you close your eyes, you see darkness because you have eyes. You have seen light; therefore darkness also appears to you. A blind person sees nothing at all—neither darkness nor light. He is worthy of sympathy, of compassion and love. He has to be awakened very gently. Cool water has to be sprinkled on his eyes very, very softly. Do not make him angry. And the difference is not big. The one asleep is the same as the one awake. Only the eyes open—and the world changes.

In Gautam Buddha’s life he told many stories of his past births. One is very dear. At that time he himself was not awakened, not yet a Buddha. But someone else had become a Buddha, and he heard of it. He went for darshan. He bowed and touched his feet—which is an extraordinary gift of the East. The East has given much to the world for which no value is recognized. Such a man, in Greece, would be given poison; in Judea, hanged on a cross; in Arabia, cut into pieces. India has given the world something wondrous. Here even the blind have such tolerance that they will agree to touch the feet of the one with eyes, and they do not feel insult—they feel honored. They feel: I am greatly blessed that I had the chance to touch the feet of a man with eyes. My eyes may not be right, but at least there was someone with eyes whose feet I touched. Is that not enough?

Buddha touched his feet, and as he stood up he was astonished. That person, that great awakened one, bent down and touched this sleeping man’s feet. Buddha said: What are you doing? What sin are you loading on me? You are awakened; it is my good fortune to touch your feet. But by touching my feet, to what hell are you consigning me?

That Buddha-man said: I am not sending you to hell. Until yesterday I too was asleep like you; today I am awake. Today you are asleep; tomorrow you will awaken. Between you and me there is no fundamental difference. The difference that is, is very superficial, very small. To show that the difference is small, I am touching your feet. I am not bowing to your blindness; I am bowing to your future—to that golden day, that golden dawn when you too will be awake. And also so that you remember, when you awaken, do not forget that it is not only the blind who may touch your feet; you must also touch theirs. You too are part of their clan. What does it matter if someone woke up an hour earlier and someone an hour later? In this eternity, hours are not counted.

Therefore I will continue to use “we.”

Because of you. At least they did not try to kill me by throwing knives—you did! They did not try to disrupt my gatherings by throwing stones—you did. And when one’s own people cannot understand, it is not reasonable to expect so much from outsiders.

Besides, for the last two thousand years you have been slaves. Your slavery and your poverty have given the West the idea that you are worth nothing, that you are not even alive—you are a congregation of the dead. And those who went to the West before me—Vivekananda, Ramtirtha, Yogananda, and other Hindu sannyasins—none of them were insulted there. No doors were closed to them. Because they took the support of untruth. They compared Jesus with Buddha; they compared the Upanishads with the Gita, the Gita with the Bible. They further glorified the West. You were slaves, you were poor. Your renunciates proved you spiritually impoverished as well, because they dragged your heights down to the West’s ordinary low levels and stood them there.

My position was entirely different. I told the West that India is poor today, but it was not always poor. There was a time when it was called the “golden bird.” And the heights India has reached, you have not even dreamt of. What you call religion cannot even be called religion when placed before those heights. Jesus eats meat; he drinks wine. No Indian religion can accept that its supreme man eats meat and drinks wine—one who lacks even so much compassion that he destroys life for his food, one who shows so little reverence for life that he treats it as mere food. And a person who drinks cannot attain the heights of meditation. It is the unhappy who drink, the troubled, the tense. The very quality of alcohol is to make you forget the state you are in. If you are troubled, afflicted, unhappy, by drinking you forget for a little while. The next day the sorrow stands there again. Alcohol does not erase suffering; it only makes you forget. Meditation erases suffering; it does not make you forget. And meditation and alcohol are opposites. In Christianity there is no place for meditation.

But your Vivekanandas and Yoganandas and Ramtirthas—just to win Western applause—kept trying to explain that Jesus belongs to the same category as Buddha and Mahavira. That was a lie. And since I spoke only what was true, naturally door after door kept closing to me. I do not accept that any of Jesus’ sayings has the kind of height found in the Upanishads, or that there is any excellence in his life comparable to that in the life of Buddha. His excellences are ordinary. Even if a man can walk on water, at most he can be a magician. And to begin with, that he ever walked on water is mentioned nowhere except in the Christians’ own book. If Jesus walked on water, what spirituality is there in it? First of all, he did not. But if he did, the Pope should at least demonstrate it on some swimming pool. Leave a swimming pool—on a bathtub. That much proof would suffice, because he is the representative and infallible—he cannot err. And even if someone did walk on water, what has that to do with spirituality?

A man once came to Ramakrishna. He was an old yogi, older than Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna was sitting on the bank of the Ganga, and the man said, “I have heard people worship you. But if there is truly spirituality in your life, come—walk with me on the Ganga.” Ramakrishna said, “You’re tired; sit a while, then we will go. There’s no need to go anywhere right now. In the meantime, let us become acquainted—we don’t even know each other. How long did it take you to learn to walk on water?” The man said, “Eighteen years.” Ramakrishna laughed and said, “I have not walked on water—because for two paise I can cross the Ganga. I consider it stupidity, not spirituality, to spend eighteen years learning something worth two paise. And what spirituality is there in your walking on water? What mystery of life have you found through it?”

One event comes to mind that will help you understand the difference. It is said of Jesus that he brought a dead man back to life. Just think: people die every day. He revived only one! A man who could raise the dead—it is a bit surprising that he brought to life only one, and that too his own friend, Lazarus. The whole thing is made up! Lazarus is lying in a cave. And Jesus, standing outside, calls out: “Lazarus, arise! Come from death into life!” And immediately Lazarus comes out. Now many things are worth considering. First, this man was Jesus’ childhood friend. Second, a man who has returned after dying—some revolution ought to happen in his life. No revolution happened in Lazarus’ life. Apart from this episode there is no mention of Lazarus anywhere. Do you think a man dies, sees the world beyond death, returns, and remains exactly the same? And if Jesus could give life to one man, then why did anyone in Judea need to die?

I take this incident only because a precisely similar incident happened in Buddha’s life. He came to a village where a woman’s only son—her husband had died, her other children had died—her one son, on whom her life depended, also died. You can imagine her condition; she went almost insane. The villagers said, “Going mad won’t help. Buddha has arrived. Take your son, lay him at Buddha’s feet, and ask him: You are the fully enlightened one; bring him back to life. Everything has been taken from me. I was living by the support of this one son—now even he is gone. Now nothing remains in my life.”

Buddha said to the woman, “Certainly, I will revive your son by evening. But before that you must fulfill one condition. Go to your village and bring a few sesame seeds—from a house where no one has ever died. Bring those seeds, and I will revive your son.”

Naturally, in her madness she ran. She went to this house and that. People said, “You ask for a handful of seeds—we can pile up cartloads of sesame. But our seeds won’t do. In our house, who knows how many have died.” By evening the entire village had given her the same answer: “Take as many seeds as you like, but these seeds will not do.” Buddha had set a reverse condition. What house is there in which no one has died?

The day’s experience became a revolution in the woman’s life. She returned, touched Buddha’s feet, and said, “Forget about whether the boy has died. Whoever has come here will have to die. You have given me the right instruction. Now, before I die, I want to know who it is within me that is life. Initiate me.” The one who had come asking for the boy’s life now stood asking to be acquainted with her own life. She became a sannyasini, and among the disciples of Buddha who attained the ultimate state, she was foremost. This is what I call revolution. Even if Buddha had brought the boy back to life, what then? One day he would die anyway. Lazarus too must have died one day. But Buddha took that situation in a spiritual direction, gave it a new dimension.

We do not look at everything from the superficial, outer level. I hold that what Buddha did is great, and what Jesus did is ordinary, of no value. These words of mine frightened the West. The cause of the panic was that the West had become habituated to one idea: the East is poor—send Christian missionaries and make the poor into Christians. And millions are becoming Christians. But those who are becoming Christians in the East are all poor: beggars, orphans, tribals, the hungry, the naked. They have nothing to do with religion. They need schools, hospitals, medicines; they need education for their children, clothes, food. Christianity is buying their religion with bread and clothes.

They saw me as an enemy because I did not go after the West’s poor, orphans, or beggars—and there is no shortage of beggars there; in America alone there are thirty million beggars. Those who are busy turning other beggars in the world into Christians do nothing for their own beggars, because they are already Christians. The people I influenced were professors, writers, poets, painters, sculptors, scientists, architects—gifted people. And this was alarming: if the gifted people of the country are being influenced by me, it is a sign of great danger. Because these are the people who set the path for others. Seeing them, others walk those paths. Their footprints will lead others along the same ways.

And I did not tell anyone to leave his religion. I did not tell anyone to accept a new religion. I only said: Try to understand—what is religion and what is irreligion. Then it is your choice. You are intelligent and thoughtful.

I have only one offense, only one crime: that for the first time in those countries I created the inquiry that the very East to which they are sending thousands of missionaries to make people Christian has touched the high skies. We are not even fit to crawl on the ground. Compared to those heights, their Bible, their prophets, their messiahs appear very childish, very petty, unripe, immature. This produced panic and restlessness.

There is not a single one of my statements for which the West has an answer. I was ready to discuss at the White House with President Ronald Reagan on an open platform, because he is a fundamentalist Christian. He believes Christianity is the only religion and all others are hollow. I invited the Pope many times: I am ready to come to the Vatican; I want to discuss your religion among your own people, and warn you that what you are calling religion is not religion—and what religion is, you have no idea. Naturally I appeared to them like an enemy.

A single man has never before been able to create enemies all over the world to this degree. The parliament of every country has decided that I must not be allowed to enter their country—because I am a dangerous man; I will destroy their morality; I will destroy their religion.

If a tourist for two weeks can destroy your religion—two thousand years of your labor—then that labor is not worth saving. Let it be destroyed.

Anyone who has even a little understanding to think, who has even a small eye to see, I need not tell them what their duty is. Their duty is, first, to stop the false religions spreading in this country. Second, to make the real religion of this land blossom again like a flower. It is true that as the number of my enemies has increased, so too has the number of my friends. There is a balance in nature. And the enemies are enemies out of unintelligence, so there is no need to fear them. Friends are friends out of understanding; therefore one friend is more precious than ten enemies. We will win over those enemies, because they have nothing. Inside them there is sheer emptiness, meaninglessness. There is neither peace nor joy.

Your duty is that you do not yourself forget what this country has attained over thousands of years. Otherwise, how will you remind the world? And you are forgetting. Your pandits, your priests, your swamis have no concern. They worry only about keeping their profession and their trade going. They have no awareness of the vast movements happening on this earth and in this immense world. They are not even able to save their own religion in this country.

Christianity today has become the third largest religion in this land. If not today then tomorrow, Christianity will raise the demand for a separate nation. And if Muslims can demand separation, Christianity also has the right. It is number three. And their numbers are increasing daily. And the ways in which their numbers are increasing are such that you are not even able to understand. They come and persuade people that birth control is against religion. And you do not realize that if birth control is against religion, then you will grow poorer and poorer. And the more poverty increases, the more Christianity will increase. The more orphans there are, the more Mother Teresas there will be.

You need to see that the great net being cast to spread Christianity under the cover of religion is yours to stop. Your children will become Christians, because starving children will have no other path left but to become Christian. But if you are told to practice family planning, then immediately your pandits and your Shankaracharyas also oppose it, without thinking that what they are doing is playing into the hands of the Christians—unknowingly, like blind men.

In Western countries—France or Sweden—their populations have stabilized. There new children are not being born, or as many are born as old people die. So their economic condition rises by the day, and your economic condition falls by the day.

Muslims made people Muslim at the point of guns and swords. Christianity is more clever. It brings neither sword nor gun. In one hand it brings bread, and in the other hand the Bible. And the hungry do not notice that the bread comes attached to a Bible.

If this country is to be saved from irreligion, the first task is to make every effort to stop this growing population. Do not listen to your pandits, nor your Shankaracharyas. Do not listen to the Pope, nor to Mother Teresa. But what a surprise! They will be given Nobel Prizes, doctorates, Padma Shri honors, made Bharat Ratna. And all their poison depends on just one thing: to persuade you that having children... They should go and persuade Sweden, where having children has stopped; where the government is ready to provide facilities for every new child, because they fear their population is falling—lest it fall too much and they become weak. It is surprising—Mother Teresa sits in Calcutta; she should be going to Sweden. No, but what is the use of going to Sweden? Everyone there is already Christian. There is a need to stay in Calcutta, because there are orphans there who must be made Christian; and to ensure more orphans can be produced, you must be persuaded.

So the first task is to curb this country’s numbers. The second task is to give a fresh chance to the great flights this land undertook in its days of highest glory—flights that have nothing to do with being Hindu, nor Jain, nor Buddhist, but with the very essence of being human, with its truth. Your schools have no provision for meditation, which is unbelievable. All Christian schools have provision for Christian religious instruction. Your schools have no provision for religion or for yoga. You are still running the same factories under the name of universities that Britain established—factories that produce only clerks, nothing else. You will have to produce those people whose light can make the world feel that apart from spirituality, there is no real attainment in life.

And you will have to learn to fight with courage. Fighting does not mean fighting with guns. When I was in the American jail, protests—letters, telegrams, telephone calls, telexes—came by the thousands from all over the world, except from India. Many important people around the world—musicians, poets, dancers, actors, directors—put pressure on the American government that what was being done to me was unjust. But the Indian government remained absolutely silent. India’s ambassador did not go to meet the American President to say that injustice must not be done to an Indian. And you made no effort to put pressure on the government in Delhi. Is this a parliament or a congregation of eunuchs? Throw these eunuchs out!

On the contrary, the very day I was released from jail, a man from the Indian ambassador came to me—asking, “How can we assist you?” I said: You, assist me? Now that I’m out of jail! Where were you for twelve days? Where was your ambassador? Where was your government? I need none of your assistance. If you or your government need any assistance from me, let me know.

And when I came to India, the American ambassador put pressure on India’s government that I could stay in India—on two conditions. First, that my passport be seized so I could not leave India. Second, that no non-Indian, especially journalists, be allowed to reach me. And the Indian government accepted both conditions. Because of the acceptance of these conditions, I had to leave India immediately. With such conditions, whether it is an American jail or an Indian jail, it comes to the same.

You will have to be alert. I will travel again and again around the world. And again and again, every country’s jail will have to see me. And you will be shown that to speak the truth is the greatest sin in this world, and to speak of religion is to enter the most dangerous situation. Your duty is not to let your government remain a government of eunuchs. There should be pressure on this government.

But the pressure on this government is reversed. There is pressure from America upon it.

I have just returned to India. I had no luggage. Even so, they made me sit at the airport for three hours. I said to the officer, “It is written here at the airport—Welcome to India. I am Indian. For what reason have you kept me sitting here for three hours? What is the cause? I have no luggage. Those who do have luggage, I am leaving behind.” But he said, “Forgive us, what can we do? Orders from above are like this; we obey them.”

These orders from above must be broken. Who are these people who are “above”? They are your servants. They are beggars who asked you for votes and today sit above you. And for no reason... After three hours those officers asked my forgiveness. I said: There is no question of your forgiveness. Your government should ask forgiveness. What right do you have to spoil three hours of my time? If there had been some reason, it would be fine. But with no reason at all, you kept me sitting here for three hours.

I have returned to India for only one reason: so that I can alert the people of India that when I again go out on a world tour—and I will face difficulties in many places—at least you should put pressure on India’s government that if even an Indian, who is utterly innocent... Two days ago the Attorney General of America, the highest law officer, in reply to journalists said that they could not keep Bhagwan in jail, because there was no crime against him. Yet they have fined me six million rupees. India’s government should ask: if there is no crime against me, then how has a fine of six million rupees been imposed? For what has the fine been imposed? They have banned my entry into America for five years—on what basis? And for ten years, if in America I commit any small offense, its punishment will be ten years’ imprisonment, and I will not be allowed to fight any case in court. And America’s top law officer, the President’s Attorney General, says in his reply that they could not keep me in jail because they had no evidence against me and I had committed no crime.

The second thing he said was that they wanted to destroy the commune that Bhagwan had established in America. And it could not be destroyed while Bhagwan was present, so Bhagwan had to be removed.

What was the crime of that commune? Its “crime” was that we transformed a desert, barren for years, into a lush green garden. Five thousand sannyasins built their own houses, made their own roads, and proved that even a desert can be made into paradise. This irked America’s politicians deeply. Because people were asking them: if these people from outside can make a desert into a paradise, what have you been doing all this time? Therefore the commune had to be destroyed. And while I was there, destroying the commune was difficult, because five thousand sannyasins were determined that I could not be arrested without killing them.

And the third thing the Attorney General said was that they could not keep Bhagwan in jail because they did not want him to become a prophet in the eyes of the world. If he were imprisoned, his stature would be that of a martyr. In his sannyasins’ hearts, the same zeal and fervor would arise as arose after Jesus was crucified. But their heart’s desire was to kill me. They could not, because there was opposition all over the world—except in India. In India there was a small, token protest. That token protest has no value. And India’s government had no hand in even that small protest. For India’s government worries more about how to obtain from America the techniques and materials to make nuclear bombs than about how to transform America spiritually.

Your duty is to choose, in the coming elections, those who are engaged in the effort to transform the world spiritually, not those who strive to cripple the world, to make it a cremation ground. Your strength is great, because I experience that if I, a single man, can fight the governments of the whole world, you can fight too. The power of governments is strength at a very low level.

Let me give you an example. In Uruguay, the President of Uruguay—who has been reading my books and is interested in me—invited me. I was ready to reside in Uruguay permanently. Immediately the American President threatened the Uruguayan President that if Bhagwan did not leave Uruguay within thirty-six hours, then all the loans you have taken from us in the past must be returned. Those are billions of dollars—impossible for a poor country like Uruguay to return. And if you cannot return them, the rate of interest will be doubled. Second, if he is not expelled within thirty-six hours, the billions of dollars we promised to give you in the future will be canceled.

The President’s secretary came and told me that for the first time he saw tears in the eyes of the President of Uruguay. And these were the President’s words: that at least one thing has happened because of Bhagwan’s coming—the breaking of our illusion that we are independent.

The old kind of imperialism has ended; a new kind has spread. America gives money to every country—money that no country can repay. It promises more money that no country can refuse. This is an easier slavery. It is invisible. Your tricolor flag flies, and yet, within, the American flag is planted in your soul.

This flag must be uprooted. It is better that we be poor. It is better that we die and India be wiped from the face of the earth. But it is not better that money buy us and buy our souls. Your duty is to save this country from selling its soul.

Thank you.