Koplen Phir Phoot Aayeen #7

Whatever is essential in life, whatever is mysterious, there is no way to express it. No word can speak it, no song can hum it; one finds oneself unable even to point toward it. Even tears are defeated there. Your question is lovely. Now there is no need for a salaam. If the hand does not move away from the heart, the salute is complete. It also happens that without walking the destination arrives; and it also happens that one walks and walks, for lifetimes upon lifetimes, and not even a glimpse of the goal appears.

I say something to you; it is not necessary that it is what I wanted to say. Words fall behind; meanings run ahead. You hear me; it is not necessary that what you hear is what you understand. Hearing happens—there are ears. But understanding happens when the heart beats along with the ears, when the heart also stands in silence, begging bowl outstretched...

Life is a poem in this sense. There is an incident from the life of the great English poet Coleridge. In his own lifetime his poems had begun to be taught in the universities. There must have been an honest teacher who got stuck midway through a poem and apologized to the students: “I could explain it—after all, the meanings of the words are in the dictionary—but my heart says it would be dishonest. Give me some time. Excuse me today. And we are fortunate that Coleridge is still alive. Let me go and ask him what you mean? The words, yes, they are understandable—words are precious, no doubt—but it seems the meaning is deeper.”

The very next morning he reached Coleridge’s door. Coleridge was in his garden, watering the flowers. The professor said, “Forgive me, I have fallen into a difficulty. This poem is yours, and we are required to explain its meaning. For years people have been explaining it. I too can explain it—but my conscience won’t agree. It feels unjust. And since you are alive, why shouldn’t I ask you? Please look and tell me what it means.”

Coleridge read the poem and said, “You have come a little late. When I wrote it—or better, when it was written through me, because even to say ‘I wrote it’ is a lie. I am an ordinary man—where would I bring such depths from? Some unknown, unseen power held my hand and wrote it. When this poem happened, two knew its meaning. Now only one knows. So I tell you, you are a little late.”

The professor said, “No harm,” naturally assuming that when Coleridge said two knew it then and now only one knows, that one would be Coleridge himself.

Coleridge said, “You misunderstood. When I wrote it, God knew and I also knew. Now only He knows. I no longer know. If you happen to meet Him, then ask. This much is true: your sense that something is hidden beyond the words—I affirm it. I too seek it, but it eludes me. In rare heights, in moments of peace, in some hour of love, you grow wings and touch those realms which later you can call nothing but a dream.”

I have understood your question. The hand stops at the chest—how to salute? But now there is no need of any salute. If the hand has reached the chest, the salute is done. Even if the hand does not reach the chest, if only the feeling reaches the chest, even then the salaam has happened.

I was in Kathmandu. Every evening thousands would come for darshan. One man—he must have been a Muslim—perhaps felt uneasy that in such a crowd of Hindus what will people say, that being a Muslim... To hide his “sin,” because in small eyes this is kufr, whenever I passed him he would shout, “Bhagwan, while everyone else is doing pranam, I am doing salaam.”

I told him, “If there is any difference between pranam and salaam, then you are doing nothing. Pranam is the heart’s feeling to bow—before some Gaurishankar, before a sunrise, in a sunset. And salaam is the same. The language may differ; the feeling does not.”

So I said to that man, “Do not say this again. I understand why you are saying it: so that the people of your village will recognize that although you have come for the darshan of a non-Muslim, you are still a Muslim. If even in a moment of love it still occurs to you that I am a Muslim, I am a Hindu, I am a Jain, I am a Christian, then that love is not worth two pennies.”

It is enough that your hand has reached your chest. And the hand has reached the chest only because the feeling has arisen in the heart. The salaam has happened, the pranam has happened, the prayer has happened, the meditation has happened. All the mantra-like, mysterious experiences of life happen in that small instant. Now do nothing more. Because if you do something more, then you will be the doer. This hand you did not raise; it rose by itself. And this chest you did not make beat; it beat by itself. If you add anything to it, things will only be spoiled; they will not be made.

Coleridge comes to mind again. When he died, forty thousand unfinished poems were found in his house. In some, one line more would have completed them; in some, two lines. And marvelous poems! All his life his friends—poets themselves—would say, “Coleridge, you are mad. The poem is complete; just add one more line.”

Coleridge would say, “You will never understand. So many lines have descended by themselves. They do not bear my signature. On them is the shadow of the sky; in them the glimmer of the stars. What I add will have the dust of the earth. I could add from my side and make them complete, and I could deceive the world too—no one might even notice. But how will I deceive my own soul? And if ever I face the Source from which these poems descended, how will I show my face? How will I lift my head? Let not forty thousand, even four hundred million poems remain unfinished—before the Source from which they arrived I will stand with dignity, with honor, with pride. I have sung only what He wished; I have added nothing. I was only a hollow reed of bamboo. When He played, it became a flute. When He fell silent, what is a hollow reed to do now?”

Whatever essential experiences there are in life, they happen, they befall you. The moment you begin to do them, that is when the false begins; then everything becomes untrue. So what is happening is enough—more than enough; do not add anything. It is because of this adding that all religions have been destroyed. A tiny ray descended, and they wove a web of imagination and made a sun. In their imagined sun that ray of truth was lost. The world gained nothing from it; humanity did not grow by it.

To those who love me, I want to say only this: my being with you and your being with me is only for as long as God keeps it so. Not more. More than that is wrong.

Whenever something happens in life that cannot be bought in the marketplace, your intellect will begin to raise doubts. Your intellect is useful in the marketplace; it is useless in the temple. And the tavern you speak of—whenever a temple is alive, it is a tavern. If a temple is not a tavern, it is only a tomb—once a tavern, once there was life there.

But we are strange people. Temples, mosques, gurdwaras, churches—dead corpses all. For the flute no longer plays there, the song no longer arises, the anklet-bells no longer ring—the very things that once made those places sacred. Yet we are worshippers of the dead. And having worshipped the dead so long, our habits have become such that whenever a living temple stands up again, doubt arises, suspicions awaken, skepticism stirs.

Drop doubt. The time and energy you are wasting in doubt—why not spend that very time, that very energy, drinking the nectar that is at hand?

Your question is beautiful, but it belongs to one who is watching from afar. You see some people swaying in ecstasy—without drinking. You see those who had not come to drink, and yet, having drunk, they stagger in bliss. But you yourself remain neutral, still standing at a distance. You are still outside the temple, thinking about others: What is happening to them?

If you would understand, there is only one way: the doors are open—come in. There is a wine that makes you unconscious, and there is a wine that awakens your awareness. There is a wine in which you break and are destroyed, and there is a wine that brings you home to your forgotten house.

Do not make this an intellectual question. Those who made it an intellectual question were deprived of this incomparable flavor. The intellect has no creative offering—only a negative answer. In the end the intellect will pronounce: a crowd of madmen, crackpots! Does anyone sway in rapture without drinking? And the logic of the intellect will satisfy you. Before the intellect drags you away, climb the temple steps. Make only one thing the criterion in life: experience.

If so many are swaying, staggering, and rejoicing in this tavern, then by stepping into this stream for a little while—by a little taste—all your doubts will disappear. Doubt is dispelled only by experience, not by argument.

There is an old story. A pregnant lioness leaps from one small hill to another, and in mid-leap her cub is born. Below, a flock of sheep is on its way into the forest; the cub falls among them. He grows up among the sheep, behaves like a sheep. When the sheep, frightened by a wild beast’s attack, scatter and run, he too scurries with them. Naturally so—he has never thought himself anything else. Now and then some sheep grew suspicious; sometimes he too felt a doubt, for he kept growing taller, longer. But they all consoled themselves that in nature mistakes also happen.

One day an old lion attacked that flock. He stood stunned in disbelief: a young lion running in the midst of sheep! He had seen much in life, grown old, yet never such a sight. No sheep feared him, and the young lion did not for a moment consider that he was not a sheep. The old lion gave chase and, with difficulty, caught him. The youngster began to bleat, “Let me go. Let me go back to my people.” The old lion said, “I will let you go—but after a small task. There is a pond nearby; come with me.” Reluctantly, unwillingly—what can a sheep do before a lion?—he trudged along to the pond. Standing at the edge, the old lion said, “Look down and see.”

In the still water of that lake, the young lion saw he was not a sheep. Until now he had only seen sheep. In the world of sheep there are no mirrors. He had never seen his own face. Now he saw his own face, saw himself, and saw also that there was no difference between him and the old lion—save youth and age. Without any explanation, without any instruction, a roar—long buried in his chest since birth—burst forth, echoing through the hills. In a single instant he was no longer a sheep; he became a lion. The old lion said, “My work is done. Now it is up to you. Do you wish to return to your old family, or come with me?” He said, “What old family? A mistake has broken, a sleep has shattered, a dream has dissolved.”

Do not stand outside. Do not think about those who look like madmen—those who are intoxicated without drinking. Come a little closer. Let these intoxicating winds surround you. Let a little of this rain of nectar fall on you. A slight drizzle—and all doubts will wash away, all suspicions will fall. Right now this temple is alive. Right now this temple is in touch with existence. When temples die, their connection remains with scriptures, not with existence—only with words, not with experience. Then someone is quaffing the Bible, someone the Koran, someone the Gita. The result is nothing: no dance enters life, no joy, no ecstasy.

Yes, those who entered the temple with Krishna entered a tavern. Now those are faded memories. Carry these corpses as long as you like—they are only a burden. Wherever you sense the living Ganges of life flowing, do not miss it. At least take a dip or two. One dip is enough—you will be new. Then you will no longer be astonished at why this is happening, because it will have become your own experience. It happens because if even one person among you is connected to the very source of existence, his very shadow can intoxicate you.

Your question is useful, but you ask me how to remove your doubt. There is only one way: I can call you, invite you—come inside. Lose yourself in this crowd of revelers.

And remember, no temple stays alive forever. Every temple, sooner or later, becomes a house. Every temple, sooner or later, becomes a shop. And the amusing thing is: when temples become houses or shops, you freely come and go—because there is no fear. Neither a house nor a shop can change you. But when a temple is alive—when a temple is a tavern—then fear arises. Because a single sip can drown you in intoxication for a lifetime. No second sip is needed. One sip proves the truth of life; no other is required. If you wish, in your merriment you can drink the whole Ganges—that is your play.

The real matter is the first sip. After that, you will drink and drink. And for that first true sip, courage is needed. What a predicament! Even to be blissful, courage is needed. Here people can be miserable—no courage is needed; the whole world is miserable. You can be anxious—no courage is needed; the entire flock of sheep is with you. But here, to drink even a single sip of truth, you need guts and a stout heart. Because afterward you can no longer belong to this flock of sheep. Then, for the first time, individuality arises in your life, soul, the rapture of oneness, a freedom—and for the first time a love-alliance with existence. Then you are no longer Hindu or Muslim. Then, for the first time, you become a human being.

And in this world, to become a human being is the greatest act of courage. For the crowd is not of humans, but of sheep. And the crowd has power; the man is left alone—hence the fear. Out of this fear your question has arisen—shall I reassure you that there is nothing to fear? Come.

There is something to fear. I cannot reassure you. There is danger. But what kind of man is he who does not learn to play with dangers, who does not turn life into challenges, who does not sacrifice everything to climb the peaks of consciousness!

So, with all the difficulties, I call you. For even a single sip of peace, of joy, of silence is so precious that a man can endure a thousand hardships—even death.

So do not ask questions. While the tavern is alive, seize the chance. Who knows whether tomorrow the tavern will be there or not.

There is no question that has no answer. And there is not a single question whose answer is not within you. Do not be surprised that a question arises in you only because its answer is already present. It is because the answer is there first that the question is born. Ordinarily people think, “A question has arisen in me, so I must search somewhere, ask someone, read something.” That outlook is naive. A question arises in you only when its answer is already present. But you do not have the courage to move with your answer. You want reassurance: “Is the answer I feel within truly the answer?” If the same answer is found in the scriptures, your courage grows. If a true Master also gives the same answer, your courage grows. If the same answer echoes from everywhere in society, you are ready to follow it with confidence. But in truth, within every one of your questions the answer is present.

And because of this, a complication arises. Scriptures, society, and your so-called saints will repeat only those answers that you will find easy to accept; the very answers you are already eager to accept; the answers you actually wanted to accept in the first place. In this way, those saints and those scriptures become pleasing to you.

But it is not necessary that such an answer is the one hidden in your innermost being. It is not necessary that it is your answer. That is why those who are truly your friends—who do not want merely to please you, but to transform you—will give you a method, some technique of meditation, so that slowly, slowly, you can find your own answer. Only your own answer can liberate you. Another’s answer will only become a chain. The very fact that it is someone else’s is proof that it will bind. And because it is another’s, it can touch only your surface—never your soul, your depths, your heights. Yes, it has one convenience: it will satisfy you; it will console you.

And in this world, consolation is the greatest poison, because it keeps you stuck where you are. Consolation creates the illusion that all is well. These hundreds of millions across the world—all could have been transformed; all can be transformed. Within each is as much light as ever shone in a buddha. Yet they live like extinguished lamps, because everywhere around them are people offering consolation, people offering comfort.

I cannot give you any answer that arrests you where you are. Every answer should become a new trial by fire for you. Passing through every answer, you should become new. That is why I have traveled the world making enemies—because people want consolation, not transformation. They want someone to tell them, “You are perfectly fine as you are. What could be better than this? Let us stamp you with an official seal: you have arrived, you are accomplished.”

I had an acquaintance when I was a university teacher. He too taught at the university—Sanskrit. No one studies Sanskrit anymore. Two or three boys who are not permitted in any other subject, and especially girls who don’t care for any subject, who only want to marry and need a degree—only they enrolled. But even before those two or three girls he would tremble while lecturing.

He trembled for two reasons. First, anyone can start trembling on a stage. Who knows what it is—what sickness overtakes a man on a platform! The same person can chatter for hours and not let you go even if you beg for mercy. If you meet him on the road, you try to dodge him—“God, let me escape; otherwise at least an hour my head will be banged.” Such talkative fellows—just put them on a stage and their tongues tie. They want to say one thing and another slips out.

The reason is psychological; it is not in the platform. A thousand eyes are watching you. They are not merely watching; a thousand people have suddenly become judges and hung you on the cross. You have become an unnecessary Jesus. Those thousand eyes are waiting for you to slip, to blurt out some nonsense. And you know how much nonsense you carry within; it could pop out any moment. So you suppress the nonsense within, while those thousand eyes seem to be saying, “Let it come!”

That was one of his troubles. The other was that he was a Brahmin and a lifelong celibate. And only girls were registered in his class. A celibate is more afraid of girls than he is of cancer. And what harm were those poor girls going to do him? Still... he seated them at a considerable distance. He would ask me: “What should I do? I cannot sleep at night. I keep fretting about the next day. I prepare a precise lecture, and everything gets messed up. The moment I see the girls, my celibacy wobbles. And the saintly men have already warned, ‘Don’t even look.’ How were they to know I would have to be a teacher and would have to look? Please, tell me some trick!”

I told him, “Do one thing. Whenever I am free and you come by, we’ll set this platform here; you climb up and lecture on whatever you like. I’ll be your student.”

At first he hesitated, “This doesn’t look right. If the neighborhood finds out, what will they say?”

I said, “They’ll say nothing. Whoever finds out, we’ll invite them too.”

He said, “Don’t do that. It’s the crowd I’m afraid of.”

I said, “I’ll arrange it. I’ll hang a sign outside: ‘No entry at this time.’”

With great difficulty I would get him to agree and stand on the platform. The very sight of that signboard gathered the whole neighborhood. Without the sign, they wouldn’t even know when the lecture would happen. It became a circus. Some peeped through the window, some through the mesh of the door. Some befriended my servant and started slipping in from the back. And his condition was worth seeing—sweating profusely, though the house was air-conditioned. Drenched in sweat. Less worried about what he was saying, more worried about who might be watching. He would blurt out all sorts of things. I would tell him, “Don’t worry. Let all the nonsense come out. People are enjoying themselves—the cinema money is saved. They even thank me for starting such a nice show. And once the nonsense is out in one go, your fear will also go.”

Whenever he was mid-lecture, I would slip a paper into his hand—a question. The beauty of paper is this: if the hand is trembling and you give someone a sheet to hold, it will shake in a way that leaves no doubt. Even if you can’t see your hand shaking, the paper tells you your hand is shaking. He told me more than once, “Look, this is unfair. Don’t hand me questions in the middle. I stand with both hands in my trouser pockets, and because of your question I have to take them out.”

I said, “You don’t realize—I get your hands out to save you. Because your trousers are shaking.”

He said, “I never thought of that. If that was the case, why didn’t you say so earlier?”

What could I say? “They’re your trousers, you put your hands in them, you make them shake. What can I do? And people are watching your trousers more than they’re watching you.” I told him, “Find another line of work. This job is not for you. First, the disease of celibacy; on top of that, teaching girls; on top of that, standing on a stage—it’s too much. You are dying needlessly.”

A man is so devoid of trust in himself—he has no confidence at all. He is empty within, and he tries to fill that emptiness by asking others.

Girls want people to tell them they are beautiful. A handful of fools to say it—that’s all it takes—and you’ll always find such fools loitering on the seafront; no matter what she looks like—even if she resembles Kali of Calcutta, motherly and forbidding—some fool will still exclaim, “Ah, what beauty!” It feels good when someone says, “You are intelligent!” You gather your self-image from others’ borrowed opinions. You ask their questions and paste on their answers. You call this your knowledge. All of it stale and borrowed...

No—no one else can give you knowledge. No one else can answer your questions.

The one who truly wishes you well, who truly wants you to become a flame of life, will tell you: the answer to every one of your questions is within you. Therefore the way is to sit silently and go inward. And a moment comes, as you keep finding the answers, when neither answers remain nor questions remain. Only a hush, only a silence remains. A peace beyond anything remains—as if a blank, pristine sheet of paper. In that state you will taste a little of the nectar you see people drinking here, swaying here.

Their joy is not because of the answers I give. Their intoxication, their radiance is not from what I am saying. Speaking is only my device. When I speak, unknowingly you become quiet to listen. It is your silence that begins to release your inner nectar—not my words. My words are only the excuse, the strategy. But to listen to me, you fall silent. Your silence, your inner quiet, connects you with the springs of your own sweetness.

Life does not want an answer. Nor can there be an answer to life. Life is an infinite mystery, and will always remain an infinite mystery. In your silence, you become connected with that mystery. The waves of that mystery begin to ripple within you.

So I say to you: if you want to ask, ask—only so that you may grow silent while listening, so that I can give you a small taste of silence. Once you taste the joy of being silent, you can be silent anywhere. Then you need not ask me anything, nor ask anyone else. Wherever you sit, there it is—a winehouse. Wherever you become silent, the door opens.

Do not worry about questions; do not worry about answers. Yes, keep asking while I am here—because you have not yet tasted your own silence. If I fall silent, the whirlpool within you will begin its own work again.

This is only my method, and it has been greatly misunderstood. People think I am answering your questions. I am only using your questions as a pretext to indicate silence. Those who have not heard me have a hard time, because I have answered the same question in thousands of ways. For them it becomes serious: “These two answers contradict.” I am not concerned whether they contradict. I cannot even remember, after thirty years, what answer I gave to which question. You ask, and whatever comes in my playful mood I say. The point is something else: that you become silent, at least silent enough to listen to me. In that brief span, perhaps silence draws a line of stillness within you. Perhaps you catch that line; and sometime, alone at night on your bed, following that line, you are led far inward—into your own self, into your emptiness. The day you become empty, that day you become all. For me, emptiness is divinity. And you will become empty only when you get a little taste of that nectar. And sometimes, to give that taste, one has to create arrangements that seem to have no direct connection.

I have heard: A man’s house caught fire. He had small children. His wife had died. The children were so little that they mistook the flames rising all around for a game. They danced and jumped. They had never seen such fun. They had seen Diwali fireworks, but this Diwali was astonishing. The whole village gathered and shouted, “Come out! You fools, you’ll die! This is no festival!” Perhaps the noise and the commotion were such that the children could not even make sense of those voices. They were absorbed in themselves, and the flames had grown high.

The father returned from the city. People told him, “Your children won’t come out. They seem delighted. We can’t understand it. We explained that the house is on fire, but there is such a clamor—who knows if they even understand? And they are so absorbed, and the flames are rising.”

The father came up close and, from a window, shouted, “You fools, what are you doing inside? The toys you asked for—I’ve brought them all!”

All the children ran to the window. He lifted them out one by one. Then they asked, “Where are the toys?”

He said, “I didn’t bring the toys, but there was no other way to get you out. I’ll bring toys tomorrow. But fools, this is not a game—this is a fire; the house is burning—you would all have died. Forgive me for my lie. My lie is more valuable than a thousand truths.”

So the question is not what your question is, nor what my answer is. The question is whether, between the question and the answer, you come to the window from which I can lift you for a moment out of the flames that are consuming your whole house, your whole life. Then you will forgive me. Even if I have said something that was not “true,” you will forgive me—because you will understand I said it to bring you out of the fire.

There is no life in questions, and none in answers. The life is in the silence that is beyond both.

It is our misfortune that we have taken gloom, seriousness, and self‑mortification to be saintliness. The more a person tortured himself, the bigger a saint he became. We have worshiped those who opposed life. We could not follow them—going against life is not easy—but by worshiping them we certainly poisoned our own lives.

Up to now a game filled with great foolishness has gone on in human history. We kept honoring those who kept moving away from life. And because of our reverence they withdrew even farther, for the pleasure of respect became a plank for their ego. They dried up to the bone. They not only abandoned all the juices of life; they began to teach that others should abandon them too. A life‑denying movement has surrounded humankind till now. Its ill‑effects were inevitable—and they have come. Those whom we made into saints turned into the worship of ego. And the ego leads nowhere except to hell. Since their denial of life gratified their ego, they condemned us as much as they could—because we were still savoring life. They poisoned all our flavors.

I want, definitively, to take religion away from sadness, self‑mortification, and self‑torture, and make it a celebration of joy. I want life to laugh—and to laugh in such a way that thousands upon thousands of flowers shower. There is nothing in life that is worthy of condemnation. Nor is there anything from which one needs to run away. Yes, there is much in life that is like a hidden treasure; or like gold freshly brought from a mine. It needs cleaning, refinement, a polish to make it shine.

Let religion and life not be two opposite dimensions, but one united current. Let religion dance, laugh, sing. Let religion be creative. Let it not remain bound to the worship of those whose entire art ends in tormenting themselves. Those whom you call saints needed psychological treatment—and you worshiped them. The future will be astonished at you. Instead of getting the deranged treated, you tried to adopt their teachings. A healthy religion and a healthy life cannot be in opposition. They will be like the two wheels of a cart; if even one wheel is lost, the cart stops. That is exactly what has happened. The saints held one wheel, their worshipers held the other; the cart did not move at all—it got stuck.

Your question is apt. My effort is precisely that the two wheels be joined again so that life’s cart can once more sing, dance, and rejoice. This existence—just look around a little—is overflowing with flowers. This ocean—look at its waves. This sky—look at its stars. Among them you will not find a single monk or a single saint.

I want to see you joined as an organic part of this vast existence. I want to see stars rising within you, flowers blooming within you. I want to see waves surging. Let the note of condemnation end, let the age of condemnation end. Let the tradition of repression end, and let the ecstasy of life become our future. Those who can understand will love what I am saying. Those who cannot will become enemies of what I am saying. And the crowd lacks understanding. Educated, schooled, stuffed with hollow knowledge—but without even a tiny ray of insight. I have traveled the whole world trying to see whether the very person for whom I wish to create the new human being is at least willing to listen. To say nothing of understanding—he is not even willing that others be allowed to hear me. This is not my defeat; it is his.

Today the parliaments of all the major countries have made rules that I cannot enter their lands. I have never entered those countries, I have broken none of their laws, I have done nothing against their constitutions. I have never even been there. In the parliaments of such countries—whose very names I had never even heard; I heard them for the first time—rules have been passed against me.

What is this panic? What kind of panic is this? And it is your country, your crowd; I am a single man. If I am wrong, say I am wrong; and if I am right, then at least show enough loyalty to your own intelligence to accept the truth. But there lies the hitch. They too can see that there is no ground beneath their feet. And they do not want anyone to come and tell them, “There is no ground beneath your feet.” They know they are trying to save themselves by clutching at straws. Hence the anxiety that someone might come and say, “What are you doing? With these straws you will not be saved. You will drown these straws too.”

This journey around the world has been very significant for me. I will continue traveling, because governments will change, parliaments will change... and my sannyasins in every country are fighting court cases against the rules passed in those parliaments. Nothing could be more absurd than this: a man who has never even come to your country—on what charge can you obstruct his entry? But I understand their predicament. Buddha never went outside Bihar, so he did not suffer such trouble. Jesus never went outside Judea; Muhammad never left Arabia; the seers of the Upanishads lived in their hermitages. Otherwise they too would have had to face these difficulties.

In this sense I am beginning a new era. Now, whoever wishes to speak the truth must attempt to present his truth before the whole of humankind. Much will be decided in that very attempt.

All the nations of the world claim to be democracies and to give great respect to freedom of speech. And I was asking nothing more of them, and nothing to remain forever. I asked for the right to speak in a country for three weeks. They could not muster even that much courage—to listen to me for three weeks. Clearly, knowingly or unknowingly, they are well aware of their weakness. It is also clear that in three weeks I can reduce to dust the rules, religions, and moralities they have built over two thousand years—because there is no life in them. And this is not what I am saying; they themselves are admitting it.

In Greece a young sannyasin—very close to the president, who helped him in every way during the election because she is an actress and influential in Greece—persuaded the president to allow me to enter Greece for four weeks. The greatest film director in Greece has a very beautiful and very ancient palace on the seashore. I stayed in that palace for two weeks. I did not even go outside the palace. Yet within two weeks I do not know how the roots of the Greek church began to shake. I do not speak Greek. Among those who came to listen to me in that palace, the only Greeks were my sannyasins—who had already heard me—and other sannyasins had come from various European countries. There was no question of corrupting them; I had already corrupted them.

The archbishop of Greece threatened the president that if I were not expelled from Greece at once—after two weeks there—then the palace where I was staying, and where many other sannyasins were lodged, would be burned down with all those people inside.

This is the twentieth century! And these are the words of Christianity! And he is the highest Christian priest in Greece. And in the churches the teachings will continue: love your enemy; if someone slaps you on one cheek, offer the other.

I sent a message to the president of Greece: I have not even given the first slap yet. As for enmity—I do not even know this man. There is no friendship; enmity is far away. And to speak of burning people alive, from the mouths of those who have protested for two thousand years against Jesus being crucified, does not befit them. And that too against a man who has neither traveled in Greece, nor addressed the people, nor gone into your churches, nor caused any disturbance.

But politicians are politicians; their panics are their panics. I was forced to leave Greece at once. I was sleeping in the afternoon; I was arrested in my sleep. A young woman who was my secretary in Greece said, “At least let me wake him. Let him wash his hands and face, change his clothes.” She was shoved, dragged along the road, thrown into a car, and sent to the police station. When I woke up, I could not make any sense of what was happening. The whole house was surrounded by police, and they were lifting huge rocks and smashing centuries‑old precious windows, breaking doors. I was on the upper floor. It felt as if someone were exploding bombs downstairs, so many stones were being hurled. From there I could see nothing. When I asked them, “By what authority are you throwing these stones? Do you have a warrant to arrest me?”

They had neither any warrant nor any warrant to enter the house. Only one of them said, “We have nothing except the president’s phone call that you must be removed from the soil of Greece immediately, because we are frightened by the archbishop’s threat. Elections are near, and if the Christians turn against us, it will be hard for our party to win.”

People care neither for truth nor for untruth; neither for man nor for his humanity.

On the way, while taking me to the airport, they handed me documents they wanted me to sign. They stated that I was being expelled from Greece because my presence was a danger to Greece’s religion, morality, traditions, and culture.

I told them, “This is a certificate for me. If what you have been able to build in two thousand years I destroyed in two weeks—and two weeks still remain—then what you have built is a sandcastle. I will come back. For anything so rotten that its custodians are so afraid of its collapse, the right thing is that the rotten thing be demolished.”

From the village—the island named Nicholas—where I was staying, the villagers sent word: “What can we do? We are poor people.”

I told them, “You can at least do this much: let all the people of Nicholas gather at the airport to see me off, so the archbishop can know who stands with him and who stands with me. Although you do not know me, nor recognize me, nor have you heard me.”

I myself was astonished. The police were astonished. The entire population of Nicholas—three thousand people—were present at the airport, and only six old women were present in the church. In the church the bells of victory were being rung, because the church authorities of Nicholas had been told that when I was expelled it should be considered a great victory—that they had defeated the enemy of their culture, religion, and traditions.

I told the chief of police, “Please go and tell your archbishop that these six old women—and perhaps even they were bought—and the town’s three thousand people are at the airport bidding me farewell and laughing at these bells. Tell him that on the strength of these six women you will not be able to keep the church standing. This church has fallen.”

The old religion is ready to fall of its own accord; it only needs your push. And that religion is not outside you; it is the rubbish inside you. Throw it out and it will be finished. And it is necessary to announce a religion that can sing, that can laugh, that can rejoice, that can savor the juice of life. If God has a taste for sustaining life, then those great souls who try to spread poison against life must be stopped.

Thank you.