I have called you here for two reasons. First, Shri Narendra is doing research—scientific research—on meditation. All the experiments in meditation that I am conducting around the country, he is observing them from a psychological angle and preparing a Ph.D. thesis. He has an M.A. in psychology, he teaches psychology, and he wishes to investigate meditation in a scientific way. For his inquiry, it is essential that a few friends continually watch their minds, report their mental states, and share what changes meditation is bringing about in their minds. Only then can he complete that research. So I have called you partly because for the last two years he has been requesting many people for help. In our country, first of all, hardly anyone is willing to fill any questionnaire—he thinks, who knows what may come of it... And even if he agrees to fill it, he does not fill it truthfully. If a question asks, How many times a day do you get angry? he will not be willing to write, Ten times. He will say, Not at all. Then research becomes very difficult. What difference meditation has made—no one writes that truthfully either. Whether meditation is making any difference or not—no one writes that either. So he has run into trouble. Therefore I decided to call people under twenty-five; from them there is more hope of truthfulness. After that, the likelihood of untruth keeps increasing.
He will give you his questionnaire. Fill it with great integrity, because it is a scientific study. Its result can become worldwide. Until now there has been no scientific research on meditation. What differences can meditation bring in a person’s personality? What changes can occur in his mind? Can his memory increase, can his understanding deepen, can his consciousness awaken, can he become more peaceful, more blissful? Can greater integration arise in his personality? As one becomes more tranquil, by how much does the possibility of going mad diminish? All these questions can have far-reaching consequences for the whole world.
In our land, meditation has been alive for thousands of years, yet no scientific research has been carried out on it. So he is doing important work. You should support him. He will give you the questionnaire—fill it honestly. And then, through the year he will keep sending you the questionnaire two, four, ten times—keep filling it honestly, reporting what differences are happening in you. This will bear a double fruit: he will benefit in his research, and you will also get an opportunity, over a year or two, to observe yourselves.
Again and again, What difference is happening in me? Is anything happening or not? Thus your answers over two years will also become a study of yourselves for two years. After two years you too will be able to see whether anything has changed in you or not—whether any revolution has come into your personality or not. Am I more peaceful than before, more joyous, more loving, more filled with compassion, or not? How far have my hardness and my violence receded? So it will be useful for you as well. Establish a steady connection with him. Whoever takes the forms should give him your address, so that he can correspond with you and gather all your information. He wishes to do a continuous study on at least fifty friends for two years. And from this study the Ph.D. thesis he is about to present at the university will be very useful. It will serve the whole world. As soon as his thesis is ready, it can be published and made available to all. Your names will not be mentioned in it, so there is nothing to worry about—How can I write my weaknesses? There will be no mention of your names in the thesis, nor will he refer anywhere to matters connected with your names. The information you give him will remain completely confidential. But it can become the foundation of his thesis.
So this much I say on his behalf—extend a little help to him. Second, as I travel around the country these days, I feel the condition of the young has become a vacuum, a void. They have no goal in life, no art or vision for shaping life, nor any view of what the society of the future should be. They hang in darkness and in suspension. They have no plan for life. If the young have no plan for life, the future of the whole country and the whole world can become dark. For tomorrow all the powers will pass into your hands. Tomorrow you will build the country—or destroy it. Tomorrow it will be up to you what you want to do. Therefore, before power comes into the hands of the young, it is essential that they gain a clear vision of how to transform and create life and society—so that when strength comes into their hands, they can mould life in a new way.
And our life, all of it, has gone wrong. No limb of our life is healthy. All the limbs have to be changed. The entire arrangement of life has to be given a new form. Who will do this? None other than the young men and women can do it. And they have no vision, no life.
So a thought has been growing more intense in me day by day—that across the country, separate organizations of young men and women should be raised—like a Youth Force. There we shall meet to reflect, to discuss, to study, to think—and whatever we find right, we shall try to spread it far and wide. Then I wish to hold separate camps for the young—camps only for the young—so that I can speak plainly on the issues of young people’s lives: what questions stand before them.
Certainly the elderly face different questions, the young different questions, children yet different questions. What is a problem for the elderly is not a problem for the young. And what is a problem for the young, the old have passed beyond—it is no longer a problem for them. Therefore it does not please me that one camp should be for all. That is not right. For the elderly, the greatest problem is death: What is death? What will happen after death? Will life survive or not? Is there an inner soul or not? Is there a heaven? Is there Moksha or not? Will the fruits of our actions remain or not? Will we remain or not? As soon as a person grows old—and when tomorrow you become old—death becomes the greatest problem, because it alone appears before the eyes.
But for the young, death is not the problem; death is not yet even visible. Their problems are different. For them the problem may be love—What is love? How can I make life loving? The problem may be marriage. The problem may be—How do I create my life? So I want separate camps for the young, so that there can be a direct and clear discussion on the matters that touch their lives. They can ask their questions and receive answers. But that will be possible only when there are organizations of the young in every village. And I do not want to hold small camps for the young. If there are camps for the young, then ten thousand young men and women should gather—only then will those camps have meaning. So that they may then spread across the land with that message and carry it into every village.
So I would like you, wherever you come from—whichever village—raise a circle of friends, young men and women. Establish a youth wing of the Life Awakening Center. Study there, reflect on literature, hold discussions. Tapes are available—arrange to play there whatever I am speaking around the country. And those who become very interested can go and play them in people’s homes as well. Take the news into every college and school. And wherever you feel that a wind among the young has begun to rise, I am always ready to come. Leaving fifty programs of the elderly, I will be ready to come to your program. Wherever you raise the wind—at the university, in a college, in a school—I am always ready to come, so that I can make full use of that wind there, say the whole thing. And now I wish to speak directly with the young. For tomorrow all power will pass into their hands. And if the country is to be saved, set on course, life transformed—you must prepare for it.
Therefore I have called you here separately, that this thought may arise in you—that you must make the utmost use of my energies. Make the utmost use of my vision. And whatever hope I have is fastened on you—on none other.
Wherever you return, carry the news of this camp, carry the wind, carry the literature, carry the tapes, let people hear them, start conversations, and take up the concern to establish centers there. And as soon as you create a little atmosphere there, I am always ready to come. And from there I may speak with the young directly—have a direct dialogue with them—this is my concern.
Here you get lost in the background. Even now, when you were called here together, I came to know that so many young men and women have come. There, in the crowd, one does not even realize—you all get lost—nothing can be seen, who is who, who is where. Only now, seeing you here, did it strike me—else I would have arranged for a microphone; we would have sat in a larger place. I had thought it would do here—there would be very few. There you get pushed to the back, and the questions and problems of the older people become prominent. I cannot even touch your problems. They cannot be discussed.
So, raise separate centers quickly, and quickly organize the young—and through those organizations we shall begin to arrange separate camps that are yours alone. There, ten thousand young men and women gather—stay four or five days, or seven days. There we think, we understand, we experiment—and then disperse across the country and carry that message to the whole land. If a spark arises in the minds of the young, within ten years we can change the whole wind of the country, we can break all despair, break all misery. Today the country is tottering, and the whole power of the country has fallen into wrong hands—completely wrong hands—the power of the country has reached those who are destroying it. Within ten years, that power can be placed in the right hands. And within ten years we can set the country moving on a right path.
We are people of a very unfortunate country. For some five thousand years our land has been afflicted and harassed. You can see it—within five thousand years we have not been able to remove our country’s poverty. America, within three hundred years, has created so much wealth—only three hundred years of history—and they have become the richest people in the world. Our history is ten thousand years old, and today we are still begging. It is a blot on a ten-thousand-year history—that in ten thousand years what did people do, that even now they could not arrange bread, could not arrange clothing? For a thousand years we were slaves. In the history of the world, no nation has remained enslaved for so long. To be enslaved for a thousand years means that within us there is no yearning for freedom, no thirst. And even today we are begging.
Even today, of all the money in circulation in India, two rupees out of every three are America’s—loans—and only one rupee is ours. Within five years even that one rupee will be America’s loan. Within five years we will be entirely indebted. The whole country has gone bankrupt. And if the boys think of nothing—then what, how will anything be?
By 1978, the possibility of a great famine in India is so strong that two hundred million people may have to die. This is not an ordinary possibility; it is almost certain. Between 1975 and 1978, in those three years, India will face a famine in which two hundred million will have to die. No way out is visible. Leaders do not speak of it, because if they speak, their entire leadership will collapse. Therefore they are silent—they are busy with futile matters. Some fool says, Cow slaughter should not happen. Meanwhile the whole country will die within fifteen years, and they are busy with whether cow slaughter should happen or not. Someone says, The Punjabi state should be separate; someone says, This district should not be in Bombay... someone says, It should be in Gujarat. In such foolishness the leaders are engaged. And they are entangling the country’s mind in petty matters so that the real questions do not become visible. Because if the real questions become visible, we will pull them down and throw them out—for they are taking our lives. And within fifteen, ten years, when two hundred million people die in the country, what will be the condition—it is hard to imagine. Out of six hundred million, two hundred million die—those who remain alive will find life worse than death. But that event is approaching, because our numbers keep increasing, our wealth keeps decreasing, our production keeps decreasing, and the numbers keep rising. Within fifteen years we will reach a condition where we will have to die. Who will save us from this? Not the leaders. The leaders are completely dishonest. Their whole effort is to keep their leadership going as long as possible; after that, whatever happens, happens. They have no understanding of what to do; therefore even to raise the issue now seems unwise to them.
Every issue of our life is filled, unfortunately, with misfortune.
A Russian thinker returned from India. In his diary he wrote a line; when I read it, I felt some printing error must have occurred. He wrote, India is a rich country where poor people live. I thought, Something is wrong. But reading further I understood he was jesting. He was saying: The land is very wealthy, but the people are foolish—hence they are poor. Otherwise, the country is so wealthy that it could have created unfathomable prosperity. The rivers are rich, the soil is rich, the sky is rich, vast hidden treasures are there. But the people are unwise. And their philosophy is wrong. For thousands of years we have been taught: Pull your feet in according to the blanket you have. Any country that speaks such things will become poor. Always stretch your legs beyond the blanket, so that the idea to enlarge the blanket arises. Stretch your legs beyond the blanket, so that your feet feel the cold and you get the thought that the blanket must be enlarged. If you keep withdrawing your feet, you will keep shrinking within, and the blanket will grow smaller every day—because every day you are growing larger within.
So the country is growing larger, the blanket smaller and smaller. And the country’s counsel is: Tuck your feet in further, and further. If five rotis are not possible, then eat four, then three, then two. Fast on Mondays. Such foolish talk! No, not by this.
If the country is to become prosperous, if a prosperous nation is to be built, we shall have to set fire to our entire thinking about poverty—the whole philosophy of poverty. It will not do. The country that thinks in the language of poverty becomes poor. Think in the language of prosperity, and you can become prosperous. I want to talk with you about all these issues. For you, today, the question is not so much of the Atman or of the Paramatman; for you the question today is how life can become beautiful and blissful—how we can make this earth a heaven. But we can speak of that only when a connection is made between you and me, a closeness. For that I have called you. Remember: I am for you. And the day you need me, I am eager to talk with you about all your issues, to kindle insights in your minds, to light a fire of revolution within you—such that in fifteen or twenty years we can do the incalculable.
The life of any nation can be changed in twenty years, because in twenty years the old generation departs and a new generation arrives. The lifespan of a generation is twenty years—not more. If we can teach new children a vision, then within twenty years those children will come into power, and they will be able to do something.
Do not lose this time. So when you return to your village, make it your concern there—and always remember: all my energies are for you. I am not as interested in the Atman, nor as interested in the Paramatman, as I am in the young and in the future of the country.
Let this enter your hearts—that you may feel you can create closeness with me. For this I have called you here for a little while.
Osho's Commentary
I have called you here for two reasons. First, Shri Narendra is doing research—scientific research—on meditation. All the experiments in meditation that I am conducting around the country, he is observing them from a psychological angle and preparing a Ph.D. thesis. He has an M.A. in psychology, he teaches psychology, and he wishes to investigate meditation in a scientific way. For his inquiry, it is essential that a few friends continually watch their minds, report their mental states, and share what changes meditation is bringing about in their minds. Only then can he complete that research. So I have called you partly because for the last two years he has been requesting many people for help. In our country, first of all, hardly anyone is willing to fill any questionnaire—he thinks, who knows what may come of it... And even if he agrees to fill it, he does not fill it truthfully. If a question asks, How many times a day do you get angry? he will not be willing to write, Ten times. He will say, Not at all. Then research becomes very difficult. What difference meditation has made—no one writes that truthfully either. Whether meditation is making any difference or not—no one writes that either. So he has run into trouble. Therefore I decided to call people under twenty-five; from them there is more hope of truthfulness. After that, the likelihood of untruth keeps increasing.
He will give you his questionnaire. Fill it with great integrity, because it is a scientific study. Its result can become worldwide. Until now there has been no scientific research on meditation. What differences can meditation bring in a person’s personality? What changes can occur in his mind? Can his memory increase, can his understanding deepen, can his consciousness awaken, can he become more peaceful, more blissful? Can greater integration arise in his personality? As one becomes more tranquil, by how much does the possibility of going mad diminish? All these questions can have far-reaching consequences for the whole world.
In our land, meditation has been alive for thousands of years, yet no scientific research has been carried out on it. So he is doing important work. You should support him. He will give you the questionnaire—fill it honestly. And then, through the year he will keep sending you the questionnaire two, four, ten times—keep filling it honestly, reporting what differences are happening in you. This will bear a double fruit: he will benefit in his research, and you will also get an opportunity, over a year or two, to observe yourselves.
Again and again, What difference is happening in me? Is anything happening or not? Thus your answers over two years will also become a study of yourselves for two years. After two years you too will be able to see whether anything has changed in you or not—whether any revolution has come into your personality or not. Am I more peaceful than before, more joyous, more loving, more filled with compassion, or not? How far have my hardness and my violence receded? So it will be useful for you as well. Establish a steady connection with him. Whoever takes the forms should give him your address, so that he can correspond with you and gather all your information. He wishes to do a continuous study on at least fifty friends for two years. And from this study the Ph.D. thesis he is about to present at the university will be very useful. It will serve the whole world. As soon as his thesis is ready, it can be published and made available to all. Your names will not be mentioned in it, so there is nothing to worry about—How can I write my weaknesses? There will be no mention of your names in the thesis, nor will he refer anywhere to matters connected with your names. The information you give him will remain completely confidential. But it can become the foundation of his thesis.
So this much I say on his behalf—extend a little help to him. Second, as I travel around the country these days, I feel the condition of the young has become a vacuum, a void. They have no goal in life, no art or vision for shaping life, nor any view of what the society of the future should be. They hang in darkness and in suspension. They have no plan for life. If the young have no plan for life, the future of the whole country and the whole world can become dark. For tomorrow all the powers will pass into your hands. Tomorrow you will build the country—or destroy it. Tomorrow it will be up to you what you want to do. Therefore, before power comes into the hands of the young, it is essential that they gain a clear vision of how to transform and create life and society—so that when strength comes into their hands, they can mould life in a new way.
And our life, all of it, has gone wrong. No limb of our life is healthy. All the limbs have to be changed. The entire arrangement of life has to be given a new form. Who will do this? None other than the young men and women can do it. And they have no vision, no life.
So a thought has been growing more intense in me day by day—that across the country, separate organizations of young men and women should be raised—like a Youth Force. There we shall meet to reflect, to discuss, to study, to think—and whatever we find right, we shall try to spread it far and wide. Then I wish to hold separate camps for the young—camps only for the young—so that I can speak plainly on the issues of young people’s lives: what questions stand before them.
Certainly the elderly face different questions, the young different questions, children yet different questions. What is a problem for the elderly is not a problem for the young. And what is a problem for the young, the old have passed beyond—it is no longer a problem for them. Therefore it does not please me that one camp should be for all. That is not right. For the elderly, the greatest problem is death: What is death? What will happen after death? Will life survive or not? Is there an inner soul or not? Is there a heaven? Is there Moksha or not? Will the fruits of our actions remain or not? Will we remain or not? As soon as a person grows old—and when tomorrow you become old—death becomes the greatest problem, because it alone appears before the eyes.
But for the young, death is not the problem; death is not yet even visible. Their problems are different. For them the problem may be love—What is love? How can I make life loving? The problem may be marriage. The problem may be—How do I create my life? So I want separate camps for the young, so that there can be a direct and clear discussion on the matters that touch their lives. They can ask their questions and receive answers. But that will be possible only when there are organizations of the young in every village. And I do not want to hold small camps for the young. If there are camps for the young, then ten thousand young men and women should gather—only then will those camps have meaning. So that they may then spread across the land with that message and carry it into every village.
So I would like you, wherever you come from—whichever village—raise a circle of friends, young men and women. Establish a youth wing of the Life Awakening Center. Study there, reflect on literature, hold discussions. Tapes are available—arrange to play there whatever I am speaking around the country. And those who become very interested can go and play them in people’s homes as well. Take the news into every college and school. And wherever you feel that a wind among the young has begun to rise, I am always ready to come. Leaving fifty programs of the elderly, I will be ready to come to your program. Wherever you raise the wind—at the university, in a college, in a school—I am always ready to come, so that I can make full use of that wind there, say the whole thing. And now I wish to speak directly with the young. For tomorrow all power will pass into their hands. And if the country is to be saved, set on course, life transformed—you must prepare for it.
Therefore I have called you here separately, that this thought may arise in you—that you must make the utmost use of my energies. Make the utmost use of my vision. And whatever hope I have is fastened on you—on none other.
Wherever you return, carry the news of this camp, carry the wind, carry the literature, carry the tapes, let people hear them, start conversations, and take up the concern to establish centers there. And as soon as you create a little atmosphere there, I am always ready to come. And from there I may speak with the young directly—have a direct dialogue with them—this is my concern.
Here you get lost in the background. Even now, when you were called here together, I came to know that so many young men and women have come. There, in the crowd, one does not even realize—you all get lost—nothing can be seen, who is who, who is where. Only now, seeing you here, did it strike me—else I would have arranged for a microphone; we would have sat in a larger place. I had thought it would do here—there would be very few. There you get pushed to the back, and the questions and problems of the older people become prominent. I cannot even touch your problems. They cannot be discussed.
So, raise separate centers quickly, and quickly organize the young—and through those organizations we shall begin to arrange separate camps that are yours alone. There, ten thousand young men and women gather—stay four or five days, or seven days. There we think, we understand, we experiment—and then disperse across the country and carry that message to the whole land. If a spark arises in the minds of the young, within ten years we can change the whole wind of the country, we can break all despair, break all misery. Today the country is tottering, and the whole power of the country has fallen into wrong hands—completely wrong hands—the power of the country has reached those who are destroying it. Within ten years, that power can be placed in the right hands. And within ten years we can set the country moving on a right path.
We are people of a very unfortunate country. For some five thousand years our land has been afflicted and harassed. You can see it—within five thousand years we have not been able to remove our country’s poverty. America, within three hundred years, has created so much wealth—only three hundred years of history—and they have become the richest people in the world. Our history is ten thousand years old, and today we are still begging. It is a blot on a ten-thousand-year history—that in ten thousand years what did people do, that even now they could not arrange bread, could not arrange clothing? For a thousand years we were slaves. In the history of the world, no nation has remained enslaved for so long. To be enslaved for a thousand years means that within us there is no yearning for freedom, no thirst. And even today we are begging.
Even today, of all the money in circulation in India, two rupees out of every three are America’s—loans—and only one rupee is ours. Within five years even that one rupee will be America’s loan. Within five years we will be entirely indebted. The whole country has gone bankrupt. And if the boys think of nothing—then what, how will anything be?
By 1978, the possibility of a great famine in India is so strong that two hundred million people may have to die. This is not an ordinary possibility; it is almost certain. Between 1975 and 1978, in those three years, India will face a famine in which two hundred million will have to die. No way out is visible. Leaders do not speak of it, because if they speak, their entire leadership will collapse. Therefore they are silent—they are busy with futile matters. Some fool says, Cow slaughter should not happen. Meanwhile the whole country will die within fifteen years, and they are busy with whether cow slaughter should happen or not. Someone says, The Punjabi state should be separate; someone says, This district should not be in Bombay... someone says, It should be in Gujarat. In such foolishness the leaders are engaged. And they are entangling the country’s mind in petty matters so that the real questions do not become visible. Because if the real questions become visible, we will pull them down and throw them out—for they are taking our lives. And within fifteen, ten years, when two hundred million people die in the country, what will be the condition—it is hard to imagine. Out of six hundred million, two hundred million die—those who remain alive will find life worse than death. But that event is approaching, because our numbers keep increasing, our wealth keeps decreasing, our production keeps decreasing, and the numbers keep rising. Within fifteen years we will reach a condition where we will have to die. Who will save us from this? Not the leaders. The leaders are completely dishonest. Their whole effort is to keep their leadership going as long as possible; after that, whatever happens, happens. They have no understanding of what to do; therefore even to raise the issue now seems unwise to them.
Every issue of our life is filled, unfortunately, with misfortune.
A Russian thinker returned from India. In his diary he wrote a line; when I read it, I felt some printing error must have occurred. He wrote, India is a rich country where poor people live. I thought, Something is wrong. But reading further I understood he was jesting. He was saying: The land is very wealthy, but the people are foolish—hence they are poor. Otherwise, the country is so wealthy that it could have created unfathomable prosperity. The rivers are rich, the soil is rich, the sky is rich, vast hidden treasures are there. But the people are unwise. And their philosophy is wrong. For thousands of years we have been taught: Pull your feet in according to the blanket you have. Any country that speaks such things will become poor. Always stretch your legs beyond the blanket, so that the idea to enlarge the blanket arises. Stretch your legs beyond the blanket, so that your feet feel the cold and you get the thought that the blanket must be enlarged. If you keep withdrawing your feet, you will keep shrinking within, and the blanket will grow smaller every day—because every day you are growing larger within.
So the country is growing larger, the blanket smaller and smaller. And the country’s counsel is: Tuck your feet in further, and further. If five rotis are not possible, then eat four, then three, then two. Fast on Mondays. Such foolish talk! No, not by this.
If the country is to become prosperous, if a prosperous nation is to be built, we shall have to set fire to our entire thinking about poverty—the whole philosophy of poverty. It will not do. The country that thinks in the language of poverty becomes poor. Think in the language of prosperity, and you can become prosperous. I want to talk with you about all these issues. For you, today, the question is not so much of the Atman or of the Paramatman; for you the question today is how life can become beautiful and blissful—how we can make this earth a heaven. But we can speak of that only when a connection is made between you and me, a closeness. For that I have called you. Remember: I am for you. And the day you need me, I am eager to talk with you about all your issues, to kindle insights in your minds, to light a fire of revolution within you—such that in fifteen or twenty years we can do the incalculable.
The life of any nation can be changed in twenty years, because in twenty years the old generation departs and a new generation arrives. The lifespan of a generation is twenty years—not more. If we can teach new children a vision, then within twenty years those children will come into power, and they will be able to do something.
Do not lose this time. So when you return to your village, make it your concern there—and always remember: all my energies are for you. I am not as interested in the Atman, nor as interested in the Paramatman, as I am in the young and in the future of the country.
Let this enter your hearts—that you may feel you can create closeness with me. For this I have called you here for a little while.
Now we must go there.