Old cultures and civilizations rot slowly. And the older they grow, the more malignant their illnesses become. Ours is one of those unfortunate civilizations whose everything, turning old, has become almost lifeless. If it were said that upon this earth we are the only dead civilization, it would be no exaggeration. Other civilizations were born and died, and in their place new civilizations arose. Our civilization dropped even the art of dying. And therefore it lost the capacity to be born anew. It is necessary that the old should pass away so that children may be born. If, in some country, it ever happened that the old refused to die, then the birth of children would also cease. This very misfortune has befallen our civilization: we have refused to die. In the illusion that if we refuse death, perhaps life will be available to us in its full perfection. The opposite has happened. By refusing death we have also lost the capacity to live. We did not die, but we go on living half-dead. And to live half-dead is a thousand times worse than to die. Because with death comes birth again, rebirth happens. Not only individuals are reborn; civilizations and cultures are also reborn.
India has undertaken a unique yet unfortunate experiment: we have come to a standstill, we have become inert, stagnant. We have become so rigid that the sprouts of life can no longer emerge from us—like a seed that has turned to stone. Surely such a seed has one advantage: it will not have to break. If a seed becomes a stone, it will neither crack nor scatter. But then no sprout will ever be born from it.
So, first of all, at this gathering of youth, I want to say: we must prepare India for a rebirth—for a re-birth. We must prepare so that India can be born again. And India’s rebirth will have two aspects: one, the death of old India; two, the birth of new India. Of these two, death must come first, birth will follow. We have to bury the old India somehow, so that a new India can be born. And we must reflect, ponder, on how we have preserved the old; and how we may lay it to rest.
How is India to be reborn? I would like to give you a few sutras.
First, the rebirth of any nation happens when its eyes turn away from the past and begin to look toward the future. New birth happens only when a people begin to look forward and withdraw their gaze from behind. Our country is a backward-looking country that, for thousands of years, keeps looking further and further back. We have no imagination of the future, no longing, no dream. We have memories, not imaginations. We have experiences of the past, but no plans to give birth to the future. And when a people become bound to the past, it is no wonder if they are unable to move ahead. Birth will be in the future—but birth can only be in the future when we free ourselves from the mortuary, from the cremation ground of the past.
In 1917 the people of Russia decided to bow to the world behind them and to give birth to a new civilization. In fifty years Russia generated a power that five thousand years of old Russia had never produced. And the secret? The secret is not Communism. The secret is a small thing: in 1917 the youth of Russia decided that from now on we will not look back—we will look forward.
America is the newest people upon the earth. America’s total history is three hundred years. And we feel no shame that before a three-hundred-year-old civilization—three hundred years old is itself wrongly said; we should say three hundred years young—before such a civilization, we who have been upon the earth for ten thousand years stand with our hands outstretched in beggary. This is worth pondering—somewhere a mistake has been made. What is the reason that so much prosperity has poured upon America, that so much power could be accumulated? There is only one reason: America has no past to look back upon. America has no past. If they go very far back, they cannot go beyond Washington. If they recollect much, except for two or four names—Washington, Lincoln—they have hardly anything to remember.
Because America has no ways to go backward, it was compelled to go forward. Russia did have the ways to go back, but it broke those roads and the way forward opened.
Today China too, in ten years, has moved with astonishing speed. In a decade, from one of the most backward corners of the earth, China has put its hand to the wheel of the earth’s leading powers. It stands today among the major powers of the world. The reason is no other: the moment a people are able to withdraw their eyes from their past, the door of the future opens. The energy that is squandered in useless brooding over the past begins to engage itself in the making of the future.
So the first task before this country, before its youth, is to free India from its past. If once our energy returns from the rear and begins to move toward the front, no one can say that within twenty or twenty-five years we may not be a great power upon the earth.
Fifty years ago no one could have imagined that Russia could become a power. Fifteen years ago no one imagined that China could become a power. No one imagines today that India can ever become a power. But India can also become a power. Yet if we do not understand the science of how the human mind works, it will not be possible. We still go on looking backward. Our entire personality is past-oriented, past-centered. Remember: looking back is a symptom of old age. You will never see an old man looking to the future. And if you do find an old man looking to the future, know that age has not been able to make him old.
The old man looks to the past. He sits in his easy chair, retired, gazing behind—at the days he lived, the loves that came and went—the glory, the ranks, the titles, the dust raised along the road behind—he keeps looking back.
Looking back is the mark of old age. Children look to the future. In truth, looking to the future is the formula for being new, fresh, youthful. If an entire people begins to look backward, that people will die; it will rot slowly and come to its end.
We who have had civilization upon the earth for ten thousand years cannot arrange even our bread and livelihood. We cannot provide clothes. We cannot manage our food and drink. As for other things, they are impossible, because all else is born of surplus energy. Until a people can arrange bread, clothing, livelihood, nothing else can be done. Only when these are in place does consciousness rise upward—then it moves into dharma and science and music and art and literature. We stand like beggars, utterly poor and destitute. And must we stand so even tomorrow? This question must be asked.
Today if four American farmers labor, the wheat of one farmer reaches us. Out of every four farmers in America, the toil of one we receive; thus somehow we remain alive. But how long can America give us this wheat? The American people themselves have fallen into worry and concern. Great American thinkers have begun to ask: how long can we feed a vast country like India? Not after 1975—this is a declaration a major American thinker has just made. The day America stops giving wheat to India, on that day there will be such a famine here that even ten crores may die.
I was in Delhi. I told a prominent leader this. He said, “1978 is very far. For now, if 1972 passes, that is enough.” He is engrossed in the anxiety of 1972. For India’s leaders there is no question more important than elections.
India’s youth will have to think—and rightly so. Perhaps by 1978 none of the leaders who rule Delhi today will remain. So for them the question does not even exist. They are all concerned with how to secure power, and how the state may arrange their burial with honors. This is their concern.
Thus no old man wants to vacate his chair, because if he dies in the chair he dies with the respect of the state. If he dies after stepping down, the newspapers may not even note when he died—or whether he was alive at all.
All leadership in India is old. And old leadership has no concern for India’s future. Each is busy with the orderly plan of his own dying—busy calculating who will be interred at Rajghat. But India’s youth must think. They must live tomorrow, and live with a world that grows stronger by the day.
America has landed on the moon, and to place a man’s foot there they had to spend one hundred eighty billion rupees. On one side, such abundance! It is pure luxury; there is no immediate purpose in landing on the moon. But so that a man may step on the moon and the first flag be America’s, they can spend that fortune.
On the other side, we have not even the capacity to spend what is needed to fill our stomachs. We go on becoming indebted to the whole world; we go on begging before the whole world. Our stature has become that of a universal beggar—a world mendicant! In ancient times our great men lived by bhiksha. But even those great ones—neither Buddha nor Mahavira nor Vinoba—ever imagined a time would come when an entire nation would become a beggar, an entire nation would live on alms. Our shastras say that the way of bhiksha is the most sacred; in other occupations one may be compelled to resort to theft or lies. Begging is pure. It seems our scriptures’ statement has been accepted by the whole country: we have taken upon ourselves the work of begging from the entire world.
How long can this continue? Not long. And it should not. I say, those who assist us are not our friends. The whole world should refuse to aid us. The whole world should say to us: understand, this is your work. You are the great spiritual people, the great knowers, the Jagatguru—arrange your affairs yourselves. Your culture is great—now save it yourself.
Not a single grain of wheat should come from the world to India—and not even a glance of sympathy. Then perhaps, in that distress, we will reflect, and perhaps begin to act.
But their pity is proving very costly for us. Beneath their pity we have become so complacent—like a traveler in a desert who sits under a passing shade-tree and forgets that all around is the burning sun and the desert. This shade will not last long, for borrowed shades never last long. And borrowed shades can quickly become dangerous.
So I say to you: the Yuvak Kranti Dal should create a climate of thought throughout the country—so that India may be freed from the past and turned toward the future. A revolution of thought is essential. In this land, a revolution of thought has never happened. We do not even understand what it means.
Second: we must create an atmosphere for a revolution of ideas. A revolution of thought means that the very ideas upon which we have lived until now must somewhere contain a fundamental error. Otherwise we would not be so crushed, afflicted, enslaved, passing through humiliation. Somewhere, at the roots of our basic ideas, there is a mistake. We have raised the edifice of our country upon a wrong way of thinking.
Let me suggest a point or two. For thousands of years India has condemned and neglected matter. The people who condemn and neglect matter will become poor and destitute—this is certain. If a people begin to condemn the body, they will become physically weak, mean and lowly—this is no surprise. For millennia we have stood opposed to the body and to matter. Remember: the temple of the Atman cannot be raised anywhere except by means of the body. And also remember: if the heights of spirituality are to be touched, even those heights can only be reached upon the foundation of matter.
Someone wants to build a temple but says: in our temple we shall only have golden spires; we will not lay stone foundations. Such a temple will never stand. Temples are not raised by golden spires; a foundation of stone must be laid. The foundation disappears into the earth, unseen; only then can golden finials be mounted above.
Spirituality is the golden finial of life. Body and matter are the foundation of life.
For thousands of years this country has been denying body and matter. Therefore we could not give birth to science. And he who cannot give birth to science will slowly become powerless, poor and destitute. For science is the device for becoming healthy; science is the device for becoming prosperous; science is the device for becoming powerful. The denial of matter has made us unscientific. And if the denial of matter had made us spiritual, even that would be fine—but that too has not happened. For the destitute cannot be spiritual. Spirituality is the final luxury. Spirituality is the last repose of abundance. When all the needs of life are fulfilled and no need remains, then the need for Paramatma arises. That is the last need—the final requirement born in a man.
Therefore I tell you: within the coming fifty years, Russia will be compelled to become spiritual—though Russia’s leaders do not think so. They think Russia is purely materialist. But in the next fifty years Russia will go on becoming more and more spiritual. It will have to. In the coming fifty years, ever-new temples of spirituality will arise in America. The reason is this: when a people become fully prosperous, when the lower needs of life are fulfilled, the remembrance of higher needs begins. When the belly is full, music is born. When the body is covered, the idea arises to cover the soul. When all earthly conveniences are in place, the eyes begin to lift toward the sky.
Man is a continuous search. Man is a quest. When the search for matter draws to completion, the search for Paramatma begins. By denying matter, wealth, prosperity, India could not become spiritual; and of science there can be no question. To create a revolution of thought in this country means: we must shake the very foundations upon which we have thought and understood ourselves until now.
So I say to you: India needs an inevitable wave of materialism. Remember, there is no conflict between materialism and spiritualism. There is no enmity between body and soul. If body and soul were in conflict, they could not remain together even for a moment. Nor is there any antagonism between Paramatma and matter—otherwise, is Paramatma mad to give birth to matter? Nor can there be any conflict between samsara and Moksha—otherwise samsara would have vanished long ago and only Moksha would remain.
They are steps, not opposites. Body is the first step; matter is the first step; Paramatma is the second. Traveling through the body one reaches the soul, and journeying through matter alone one reaches Paramatma.
India has made a fundamental mistake—of living only in God. The result has been very costly. We must change all the foundations of our thought. We must think afresh. India needs the birth of a materialist outlook—not against spiritualism, but as the foundation for it.
Second: for thousands of years India has lived in such sorrow and pain that slowly it began to give honor to sorrow and suffering. And when a society begins to honor pain, its search for joy ceases.
India has suffered so much that slowly it has taken suffering itself to be life. We have begun to think that suffering is life. When one thinks that suffering is life—when one thinks that illness is health—then all remedies for health will stop. When one thinks that to be miserable on earth is inevitable, that happiness cannot be attained here, then the labor, effort, and resolve to create happiness on earth will cease.
Living continuously in sorrow, we have begun to honor it. We have coined new names for suffering. If a man is miserable, poor and lowly—and instead of doing anything to end his misery, his poverty, his destitution—he adopts them, then we say he is a param santoshi. We call this utter deadness ‘param santoshi.’
The intelligence of man rests upon how much he can reduce his suffering and how much he can increase his happiness. The journey of human life is the journey of increasing happiness—first from suffering to happiness, and then from happiness to bliss. But he who lives in suffering will not reach happiness; and he who does not reach happiness will never reach bliss.
He who escapes suffering, one day arrives at happiness. When he arrives at happiness, he suddenly finds that happiness too is but another name for suffering. Then he moves on toward the journey to bliss. We have become content with suffering. If a man is content in suffering, we honor him greatly. If such people are honored, then the way out of suffering will be lost.
Not only this: there are those who voluntarily impose suffering upon themselves—we call them tapasvi, we say they are engaged in tapascharya. Those who live in suffering and manage to live quietly we call tolerant, contented. Those who go beyond even this—who invite suffering, who spread thorns and make a bed, who stand naked in the sun, who starve or fast—we say they are doing tapascharya. We accord them supreme honor.
When a people begin to honor those who invite suffering into their homes, that people is going mad—becoming deranged. It is a symptom of madness, nothing else. A healthy man seeks freedom from suffering. An unhealthy mind invites it. No healthy psyche ever calls suffering. A healthy mind makes continuous efforts to rise above it. A sick mind—a neurotic mind—invites suffering.
If a thorn pierces a man’s foot, a healthy man will remove the thorn. But there may be a man who consoles himself, “A thorn has gone in—fine.” We would honor him. And because we have, little by little, given so much honor to the thorn-stuck man, those who don’t have thorns go and pierce themselves—because in this country one cannot be honored without being miserable.
If someone starts traveling on foot, we accord great honor. We give great respect to the padayatri, as if a great work is being done. We do not see that in a country where padayatris are honored, rockets will not be born. All the foot-travelers are enemies of that land, because they will not let rockets be developed. If we honor the padayatri, we are saying that man as nature made him is worthy of honor. Then there remains no way for development. Development becomes possible only when we change our points of honor.
So I say to you: our honoring of the miserable is taking our very life—it is suicidal. We must increase the dignity of happiness. We will have to change our code of values. We must stop honoring the miserable man. We must stop calling the one who chooses suffering, “he is absorbed in tapascharya.” And I say to you: the day you stop honoring them, ninety-nine out of your hundred tapasvis will vanish instantly. No one will know where they went. Your reverence keeps them fixed in their stupidity.
If you begin to honor any foolish thing, people will arise in the village to perform it for you.
In Gandhi’s ashram there was a gentleman, Bhansali. He would live for six months eating only cow-dung. Gandhi himself honored him, the whole ashram honored him—“a great tapasvi.” Then his madness went on growing—he ate only cow-dung. When he saw that by eating cow-dung his tapascharya was becoming widely famous, it came to such a point that when anyone visited Gandhi’s ashram, they first went to have darshan of Bhansali, for he was great. Gandhi was not so renunciate—he did not eat cow-dung.
If a country were intelligent, it would send people like Bhansali to an asylum for treatment. But the country is unintelligent. It has devised strange rules by which it goes on honoring such people. Then their madness grows; their derangement increases; they begin to invent new modes of affliction for themselves.
We must not invent suffering. We have suffered enough. Now we must invent joy. And if joy is to be invented, we will have to stop honoring suffering and tapas. The fundamental hand in keeping India poor is that of India’s tapasvis. Until a whole people fall in love with happiness, the means of happiness cannot be created. Until an entire people engage themselves for happiness, the instruments of happiness will never be produced.
We are people frightened of happiness. The seeker of happiness appears a sinner; the virtuous appears to be he who seeks suffering. Shall we keep this definition of sin and virtue, or shall we change it? The youth will have to move to change it.
A happy person needs no self-condemnation. In India the opposite holds: if someone discovers happiness, he condemns himself. He thinks, “I am weak, sinful, driven by desire—therefore I seek joy. Otherwise I too would do tapascharya.” Hence you will see the happy man placing his head at the feet of the miserable. The naked sadhu of India receives the bow of India’s millionaire. There is no other reason: he is self-condemned. “I am a great sinner; he is a great virtuous one. I am weak. Not this life—but in the next life—I too will do tapascharya. Until then, at least I should touch the feet of the tapasvi.”
In India happiness has no prestige. Happiness is un-prestigious. How then will we produce it? The whole world gives happiness a certain dignity. And remember, I want to say one thing more: those who honor suffering slowly begin to take pleasure in making others suffer—they become sadists; or they become masochists—either they suffer themselves or make others suffer. He who condemns happiness can never grant happiness to another; what one condemns, how can one give? Remember: only he who can be happy himself can become a companion in the happiness of others. Otherwise, never. The whole country is eager to inflict suffering on each other; by a thousand devices we give pain to one another. We care less for our own joy than we worry that someone else might become happy. We remain busy figuring out how to make another miserable. A kind of deranged disease has arisen—of making everyone unhappy, of seeing them unhappy. The reasons are psychological: we have not given honor to happiness, thus this situation has come to be.
So I say to the youth: let them channel the mind of the country toward happiness. Only a happy person—one who seeks his own joy—also cares for the happiness of others.
Now, a fakir lies naked on the road—hungry, in the sun. Go tell him: “India is very poor.” He will say, “What poverty? What does poverty mean? Here too we are in great bliss.”
A naked fakir can never conceive that if the country is naked it will be in misery. He who has accepted his own misery becomes hard toward the misery of others—insensitive. Only when we have the taste of happiness, and we feel the sting of our own suffering, can we be sensitive to the suffering of others.
When famine strikes India, no great pain arises in the Indian heart. More pain arises in America, Switzerland, England. Why? Because they are relishing happiness and moving toward it. It is beyond their imagination that millions would starve. For us there is no discomfort in the thought—we are all starving anyway. Having accepted starvation as life, we feel no ache in our hearts.
If a beggar is seen asking on the street, there is no pain in our heart. The Western mind is pained—it seems inhuman that a man should have to beg. If someone begs in Surendranagar, the people of Surendranagar do not feel it is the town’s humiliation. No one is touched in the heart. And if someone gives the beggar two paise, he feels himself a virtuous man—thinks he has done a great punya.
No one feels: “Because a beggar lives in our village, we are sinners.” No one feels that because one man must beg, the whole village is somehow responsible.
Our sensitivity has grown dim. And we take the killing of sensitivity to be great sadhana—that as a man becomes more numb, more dull, his sensitivity dies; the sun is not felt as sun, cold is not felt as cold, a thorn is not felt as thorn. If the sun is not felt as sun, we call him a siddha, a Paramahansa.
But what does such a man mean? It means his sensitivity is dead. He who has lost sensitivity toward himself loses it toward all. Therefore, for countless years there have been sannyasis and sadhus in India, yet no pain arises in their hearts for the poverty and destitution of India. It cannot. They themselves have become utterly hardened toward pain.
We must make the Indian mind desire happiness. We must give it a plan to rise above suffering. We must increase the honor and prestige of joy. We must increase sensitivity, not decrease it. The more sensitivity grows, the more beautiful and happy life can be made.
But we call that man a Paramahansa who defecates where he sits and there itself eats—and we say: the supreme knower! He sees no difference between latrine and kitchen. But if such ‘supreme knowers’ go on increasing in a country, then remember: our food and our filth will become almost the same. Slowly the outcome will be that what we eat will be something no one in the world is willing to eat—what we call food will be refused even by Western cows and buffaloes.
Their dieticians would refuse to give it to cows, saying it is unfit even for cattle. But we will never inquire that the very honors we have bestowed within have led us to all this. What we eat today no one upon earth would agree to eat; there is nothing in it. If food is not right, the body becomes unhealthy, weak. If food is not right, the brain’s brilliance withers. No wonder we cannot produce an Einstein; we cannot produce him at all. From where will the immense energy needed by the brain come? Have you ever thought why tribal peoples have not produced a Buddha, a Mahavira, a Krishna? Not a great mathematician, not a great scientist?
The brain too is made of matter. The energy that enters the brain comes from matter. If it does not receive the right proteins, the right vitamins, nothing can descend from the sky to help.
Even the soul depends, in many ways, upon food. But this country has created strange conditions. They must be broken. To break them, a radical rethinking is needed. So I say to the youth: tear out the old roots from the mind of the country. Compel the country to re-think each root. Refuse to accept anything now without examination. In this, some right roots may also get broken—no matter. If, to save them, wrong roots remain, the danger is greater. I hold that even if a few right things break in the tearing of the old net, there is no need to worry—we can replant the right again and again. But such filth has gathered in the house that if, in the cleaning, some good things are also thrown out, do not worry. Once the garbage is cleared, the right can be reconstructed. But our nation is very frightened; it says, “What if some right thing is broken?”
I have heard: when Mao came to power in China he made a rule—a very valuable one. The rule of courts in the whole world is: even if a hundred criminals go free, not one innocent should be punished. Mao changed the rule entirely. He said: even if a hundred innocents are punished, we shall not let a single criminal go free.
Its impact was immense, radical. The worry of punishing an innocent was set aside—no concern. Let an innocent hang, but we shall not spare the criminal. The results were far-reaching: it became almost impossible for criminals to remain alive.
In life we too keep saying: “What if one right thing is lost?” Then, to save that one right thing, we end up saving a hundred wrong things. This rule we must change.
I say to you: even if a hundred right things break, break them—but do not let a single wrong thing survive. Only then can we be free of the wrong; otherwise not. Remember: the right can be created again—because we need the right every day; without it we cannot live. We will create it.
Around every right thing, a mesh of a hundred wrong things stands. To save that one, we have to save the hundred. We must gather courage for demolition. Only then can we create; otherwise, creation is not possible.
So my single message for the Yuvak Kranti Dal is this: prepare the country for demolition in every way. Enough of constructive programs—let us be forgiven for them now. Remember: a constructive program is always an addition to the old. A constructive program is always an addition to what exists. Now the country needs a program of demolition—not constructive, but destructive.
Vinoba ran constructive programs for so long; Gandhi ran constructive programs for so long. The word ‘constructive’ sounds very sweet—we feel, “something constructive!” People come to me and ask: “Please suggest some constructive program.” Why? Constructive means adding something to what is present. But what is present is so rotten that nothing should be added to it anymore. The only outcome of adding is to help the present survive—nothing else. A house is about to collapse and someone says, “Give us a constructive program.” What is that? “Put a prop against the wall, add four bricks, give it support—that is a constructive program!”
No. I say this country’s building has become so frail and tattered that to spend even one brick on its construction now is madness. The whole house will fall; along with it, the bricks we spent on ‘construction’ will be wasted. This is not the time to build. First, let this nation’s house fall completely once. Then creation can happen—only then. If the mind of the country is prepared for demolition, only then can construction happen. Demolition will be the first step; creation the second. Let us not talk of creation now. The dead mind is very much appealed to by the talk of creation. It says, “Tell us something to add; do not tell us to erase. Add something, construct something, build something.”
For five thousand years we have done exactly this. The final result is that the house built five thousand years ago still survives, because we kept adding ‘constructive’ supports. Now it is difficult to live in these houses; they can collapse any day. It is hard to live inside, but outside we keep running constructive programs: “Add four more poles, put a fresh coat of paint, a new whitewash. Diwali has come—let’s smear it again so it looks new.”
But this will become costly now. The whole world has changed its houses; only we remain clinging to the old. Either we bring this house down—or there is the danger that we all will be buried under it. It will fall. Beware lest we be crushed beneath it.
I will share more with you on this. For now I only want to say: let the youth carry in their hearts a reverence for demolition too. Reverence for creation is natural; reverence for demolition is a very revolutionary step. Every revolutionary mind, every radical thinker, first prepares for demolition. He says, “We want to break. We will build—but first we will break. First we erase that which torments us; then we shall create the new.”
New temples must be built; it is difficult to live without temples. But we must not even raise the topic of building new temples without bringing the old down. If we talk of new temples without demolishing the old, the danger is that all the old temples will slap on a new coat of paint and proclaim, “We are new now—what need is there for newer?”
The old mimics the new; it wants to present itself as new by paint and polish—so that the need for the truly new does not arise. We must search for the old roots in this country’s depths and tear them out. The whole tree may fall—so be it. Living peoples never worry about what may fall, because living peoples always carry the courage to build again. Only dead peoples are afraid: “Something may fall, something may break—then we will not be able to build again.” This fear prevents them from demolishing; and the more they fear, the less space remains for the new—no path remains to create the new.
Remember: so long as the old stands, the need to create the new does not become painful enough that we set out to build it. If the old house is present, we somehow manage.
We must break the old culture. We must break the old civilization. And finally, India must somehow be freed from ‘Indianness.’ Until India is freed from ‘Indianness,’ it cannot become modern. To be modern, it must be freed from ‘Indianness.’ In freeing ourselves from ‘Indianness,’ our very breath will be pained—because our whole ego is tied to being Indian. That ego will not survive in the world.
...There were Chinese, Japanese, Germans, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains—there was no such thing as simply ‘man’ in the old world. There was no such thing as ‘humanity.’ The world was splintered into a thousand fragments. Now it has become impossible for the world to remain fractured in thousands.
For a few days more the politicians’ game may continue, because the human mind is old, and politicians go on exploiting that old mind. Until then nations will persist. But the persistence of nations has become very costly. Now their very existence is dangerous. Our humanity lies in their non-existence. And so long as the play of the religious leaders continues, Hindus and Muslims will persist. But their game too cannot last long, though they keep inventing new tricks. If a Hindu-Muslim riot breaks out, they do not say it happened because of Hindus and Muslims. They say: it happened because of goondas. Who this goonda is is very hard to find. Where he is is hard to find. I tell you, all quarrels happen because of the ‘great men,’ not because of goondas. The goondas get caught at the end. The ‘great men’ are very clever: they sow the seeds of conflict; when the riot spreads they also form Peace Committees and pacify the riot.
If a cow’s tail is cut in some village, there will be a Hindu-Muslim riot. And we will say goondas started it. But the truth is: the root is those ‘great men’ who taught that the cow is a mother. If the cow is not a mother, her tail being cut will not cause a riot. In truth, if the cow is not a mother, perhaps no lunatic will cut a cow’s tail either. The tail is cut because of the ‘great men,’ and the riot is because of them too. But they then come to explain—clever explanations: they do not say the riot is because of Hindus and Muslims; they say, be a true Hindu and the riot will not happen; be a true Muslim and the riot will not happen. When the pseudo-Hindus and pseudo-Muslims create so much disturbance, how much greater disturbance will the ‘true’ ones create is hard to calculate. If these pseudo ones cause so much, what will the real ones do? Still, they go on explaining.
A good man like Gandhi tried to unite Hindu and Muslim, but failed. The reason is not Jinnah; the reason is not Hindus and Muslims. The reason for Gandhi’s failure is that he was a staunch Hindu.
Even a good man like Gandhi could not gather the courage to say, “I am only a man.” Now Khan Abdul Ghaffar goes on explaining to people, but he is a staunch Muslim: “Hindus and Muslims should unite.” But he does not say, “Let Hindu and Muslim vanish.” I say to you: India’s youth should not get entangled in the problem of Hindu-Muslim unity. A good man like Gandhi failed utterly.
Now the youth of India must say: we will erase Hindu and Muslim. Not unite them—they cannot be united. Their very existence is the mischief. Their existence itself is the danger. The coming youth should declare: I am only a man—I am neither Hindu nor Muslim. Then let us see how a Hindu-Muslim riot happens.
But then there will be a double loss. The ‘great men’ who cause the riot will be out of business; and those who pacify it will also be out of business. Between these two ‘great men’ there is collusion—the one who foments the quarrel and the one who calms it.
I have heard: two men in a village started a new business—window and glass cleaning. One of them used to roam by night and splash tar on people’s windows. Two or three days later the other would walk through the village shouting, “Windows cleaned?” People would come out: “You came at just the right time! We were worried—who splashed this tar?” They were partners.
Here, one ‘great man’ foments the riot; there, another pacifies it. Both would be out of business. Hindu and Muslim must be erased. Now we must not talk of Hindu-Muslim unity. Now we must strive that Hindu and Muslim should not remain at all. Now we must strive that only man remain—not Hindu, not Muslim; not Christian, not Jain; not Indian, not Pakistani. The children of India are harmed; the children of Pakistan are harmed. There is no sense in India and Pakistan fighting. Nothing could be more foolish. All our strength goes into this—while both India and Pakistan could be prosperous, and together could be more prosperous. If this whole stretch of land were united, a paradise could be created on earth today. Science has given all the means, and if human stupidity does not prevail, we can give man heaven here itself—no need to search for any heaven beyond.
All diseases can be removed. All poverty can be eradicated. All ignorance can be dispelled. Man can be given everything the rishis and munis imagined in heaven. What stands in the way? Only one thing: the boundaries of nations, the boundaries of religions, the boundaries of ideologists. Remember: when old religions become stale, new religions arise. Communism is a new religion; Hindu and Muslim have gone stale—the riot no longer has spice—so America and Russia have raised new ideologies, new religions. For some, the Kremlin too is a Mecca. They go on pilgrimage there and return elated.
As a Muslim returns from Hajj, so a communist returns from Moscow; his prestige rises—he has become a Haji. He has visited the Mecca-Medina of the communists. He has had darshan of new gods. New disturbances arise. Can man not be saved from all these disturbances? I will speak to you about this in the afternoon.
You have listened to me with such peace and love—that gladdens me deeply. In the end I bow to the Paramatma seated within all. Please accept my pranam.
Osho's Commentary
India has undertaken a unique yet unfortunate experiment: we have come to a standstill, we have become inert, stagnant. We have become so rigid that the sprouts of life can no longer emerge from us—like a seed that has turned to stone. Surely such a seed has one advantage: it will not have to break. If a seed becomes a stone, it will neither crack nor scatter. But then no sprout will ever be born from it.
So, first of all, at this gathering of youth, I want to say: we must prepare India for a rebirth—for a re-birth. We must prepare so that India can be born again. And India’s rebirth will have two aspects: one, the death of old India; two, the birth of new India. Of these two, death must come first, birth will follow. We have to bury the old India somehow, so that a new India can be born. And we must reflect, ponder, on how we have preserved the old; and how we may lay it to rest.
How is India to be reborn? I would like to give you a few sutras.
First, the rebirth of any nation happens when its eyes turn away from the past and begin to look toward the future. New birth happens only when a people begin to look forward and withdraw their gaze from behind. Our country is a backward-looking country that, for thousands of years, keeps looking further and further back. We have no imagination of the future, no longing, no dream. We have memories, not imaginations. We have experiences of the past, but no plans to give birth to the future. And when a people become bound to the past, it is no wonder if they are unable to move ahead. Birth will be in the future—but birth can only be in the future when we free ourselves from the mortuary, from the cremation ground of the past.
In 1917 the people of Russia decided to bow to the world behind them and to give birth to a new civilization. In fifty years Russia generated a power that five thousand years of old Russia had never produced. And the secret? The secret is not Communism. The secret is a small thing: in 1917 the youth of Russia decided that from now on we will not look back—we will look forward.
America is the newest people upon the earth. America’s total history is three hundred years. And we feel no shame that before a three-hundred-year-old civilization—three hundred years old is itself wrongly said; we should say three hundred years young—before such a civilization, we who have been upon the earth for ten thousand years stand with our hands outstretched in beggary. This is worth pondering—somewhere a mistake has been made. What is the reason that so much prosperity has poured upon America, that so much power could be accumulated? There is only one reason: America has no past to look back upon. America has no past. If they go very far back, they cannot go beyond Washington. If they recollect much, except for two or four names—Washington, Lincoln—they have hardly anything to remember.
Because America has no ways to go backward, it was compelled to go forward. Russia did have the ways to go back, but it broke those roads and the way forward opened.
Today China too, in ten years, has moved with astonishing speed. In a decade, from one of the most backward corners of the earth, China has put its hand to the wheel of the earth’s leading powers. It stands today among the major powers of the world. The reason is no other: the moment a people are able to withdraw their eyes from their past, the door of the future opens. The energy that is squandered in useless brooding over the past begins to engage itself in the making of the future.
So the first task before this country, before its youth, is to free India from its past. If once our energy returns from the rear and begins to move toward the front, no one can say that within twenty or twenty-five years we may not be a great power upon the earth.
Fifty years ago no one could have imagined that Russia could become a power. Fifteen years ago no one imagined that China could become a power. No one imagines today that India can ever become a power. But India can also become a power. Yet if we do not understand the science of how the human mind works, it will not be possible. We still go on looking backward. Our entire personality is past-oriented, past-centered. Remember: looking back is a symptom of old age. You will never see an old man looking to the future. And if you do find an old man looking to the future, know that age has not been able to make him old.
The old man looks to the past. He sits in his easy chair, retired, gazing behind—at the days he lived, the loves that came and went—the glory, the ranks, the titles, the dust raised along the road behind—he keeps looking back.
Looking back is the mark of old age. Children look to the future. In truth, looking to the future is the formula for being new, fresh, youthful. If an entire people begins to look backward, that people will die; it will rot slowly and come to its end.
We who have had civilization upon the earth for ten thousand years cannot arrange even our bread and livelihood. We cannot provide clothes. We cannot manage our food and drink. As for other things, they are impossible, because all else is born of surplus energy. Until a people can arrange bread, clothing, livelihood, nothing else can be done. Only when these are in place does consciousness rise upward—then it moves into dharma and science and music and art and literature. We stand like beggars, utterly poor and destitute. And must we stand so even tomorrow? This question must be asked.
Today if four American farmers labor, the wheat of one farmer reaches us. Out of every four farmers in America, the toil of one we receive; thus somehow we remain alive. But how long can America give us this wheat? The American people themselves have fallen into worry and concern. Great American thinkers have begun to ask: how long can we feed a vast country like India? Not after 1975—this is a declaration a major American thinker has just made. The day America stops giving wheat to India, on that day there will be such a famine here that even ten crores may die.
I was in Delhi. I told a prominent leader this. He said, “1978 is very far. For now, if 1972 passes, that is enough.” He is engrossed in the anxiety of 1972. For India’s leaders there is no question more important than elections.
India’s youth will have to think—and rightly so. Perhaps by 1978 none of the leaders who rule Delhi today will remain. So for them the question does not even exist. They are all concerned with how to secure power, and how the state may arrange their burial with honors. This is their concern.
Thus no old man wants to vacate his chair, because if he dies in the chair he dies with the respect of the state. If he dies after stepping down, the newspapers may not even note when he died—or whether he was alive at all.
All leadership in India is old. And old leadership has no concern for India’s future. Each is busy with the orderly plan of his own dying—busy calculating who will be interred at Rajghat. But India’s youth must think. They must live tomorrow, and live with a world that grows stronger by the day.
America has landed on the moon, and to place a man’s foot there they had to spend one hundred eighty billion rupees. On one side, such abundance! It is pure luxury; there is no immediate purpose in landing on the moon. But so that a man may step on the moon and the first flag be America’s, they can spend that fortune.
On the other side, we have not even the capacity to spend what is needed to fill our stomachs. We go on becoming indebted to the whole world; we go on begging before the whole world. Our stature has become that of a universal beggar—a world mendicant! In ancient times our great men lived by bhiksha. But even those great ones—neither Buddha nor Mahavira nor Vinoba—ever imagined a time would come when an entire nation would become a beggar, an entire nation would live on alms. Our shastras say that the way of bhiksha is the most sacred; in other occupations one may be compelled to resort to theft or lies. Begging is pure. It seems our scriptures’ statement has been accepted by the whole country: we have taken upon ourselves the work of begging from the entire world.
How long can this continue? Not long. And it should not. I say, those who assist us are not our friends. The whole world should refuse to aid us. The whole world should say to us: understand, this is your work. You are the great spiritual people, the great knowers, the Jagatguru—arrange your affairs yourselves. Your culture is great—now save it yourself.
Not a single grain of wheat should come from the world to India—and not even a glance of sympathy. Then perhaps, in that distress, we will reflect, and perhaps begin to act.
But their pity is proving very costly for us. Beneath their pity we have become so complacent—like a traveler in a desert who sits under a passing shade-tree and forgets that all around is the burning sun and the desert. This shade will not last long, for borrowed shades never last long. And borrowed shades can quickly become dangerous.
So I say to you: the Yuvak Kranti Dal should create a climate of thought throughout the country—so that India may be freed from the past and turned toward the future. A revolution of thought is essential. In this land, a revolution of thought has never happened. We do not even understand what it means.
Second: we must create an atmosphere for a revolution of ideas. A revolution of thought means that the very ideas upon which we have lived until now must somewhere contain a fundamental error. Otherwise we would not be so crushed, afflicted, enslaved, passing through humiliation. Somewhere, at the roots of our basic ideas, there is a mistake. We have raised the edifice of our country upon a wrong way of thinking.
Let me suggest a point or two. For thousands of years India has condemned and neglected matter. The people who condemn and neglect matter will become poor and destitute—this is certain. If a people begin to condemn the body, they will become physically weak, mean and lowly—this is no surprise. For millennia we have stood opposed to the body and to matter. Remember: the temple of the Atman cannot be raised anywhere except by means of the body. And also remember: if the heights of spirituality are to be touched, even those heights can only be reached upon the foundation of matter.
Someone wants to build a temple but says: in our temple we shall only have golden spires; we will not lay stone foundations. Such a temple will never stand. Temples are not raised by golden spires; a foundation of stone must be laid. The foundation disappears into the earth, unseen; only then can golden finials be mounted above.
Spirituality is the golden finial of life. Body and matter are the foundation of life.
For thousands of years this country has been denying body and matter. Therefore we could not give birth to science. And he who cannot give birth to science will slowly become powerless, poor and destitute. For science is the device for becoming healthy; science is the device for becoming prosperous; science is the device for becoming powerful. The denial of matter has made us unscientific. And if the denial of matter had made us spiritual, even that would be fine—but that too has not happened. For the destitute cannot be spiritual. Spirituality is the final luxury. Spirituality is the last repose of abundance. When all the needs of life are fulfilled and no need remains, then the need for Paramatma arises. That is the last need—the final requirement born in a man.
Therefore I tell you: within the coming fifty years, Russia will be compelled to become spiritual—though Russia’s leaders do not think so. They think Russia is purely materialist. But in the next fifty years Russia will go on becoming more and more spiritual. It will have to. In the coming fifty years, ever-new temples of spirituality will arise in America. The reason is this: when a people become fully prosperous, when the lower needs of life are fulfilled, the remembrance of higher needs begins. When the belly is full, music is born. When the body is covered, the idea arises to cover the soul. When all earthly conveniences are in place, the eyes begin to lift toward the sky.
Man is a continuous search. Man is a quest. When the search for matter draws to completion, the search for Paramatma begins. By denying matter, wealth, prosperity, India could not become spiritual; and of science there can be no question. To create a revolution of thought in this country means: we must shake the very foundations upon which we have thought and understood ourselves until now.
So I say to you: India needs an inevitable wave of materialism. Remember, there is no conflict between materialism and spiritualism. There is no enmity between body and soul. If body and soul were in conflict, they could not remain together even for a moment. Nor is there any antagonism between Paramatma and matter—otherwise, is Paramatma mad to give birth to matter? Nor can there be any conflict between samsara and Moksha—otherwise samsara would have vanished long ago and only Moksha would remain.
They are steps, not opposites. Body is the first step; matter is the first step; Paramatma is the second. Traveling through the body one reaches the soul, and journeying through matter alone one reaches Paramatma.
India has made a fundamental mistake—of living only in God. The result has been very costly. We must change all the foundations of our thought. We must think afresh. India needs the birth of a materialist outlook—not against spiritualism, but as the foundation for it.
Second: for thousands of years India has lived in such sorrow and pain that slowly it began to give honor to sorrow and suffering. And when a society begins to honor pain, its search for joy ceases.
India has suffered so much that slowly it has taken suffering itself to be life. We have begun to think that suffering is life. When one thinks that suffering is life—when one thinks that illness is health—then all remedies for health will stop. When one thinks that to be miserable on earth is inevitable, that happiness cannot be attained here, then the labor, effort, and resolve to create happiness on earth will cease.
Living continuously in sorrow, we have begun to honor it. We have coined new names for suffering. If a man is miserable, poor and lowly—and instead of doing anything to end his misery, his poverty, his destitution—he adopts them, then we say he is a param santoshi. We call this utter deadness ‘param santoshi.’
The intelligence of man rests upon how much he can reduce his suffering and how much he can increase his happiness. The journey of human life is the journey of increasing happiness—first from suffering to happiness, and then from happiness to bliss. But he who lives in suffering will not reach happiness; and he who does not reach happiness will never reach bliss.
He who escapes suffering, one day arrives at happiness. When he arrives at happiness, he suddenly finds that happiness too is but another name for suffering. Then he moves on toward the journey to bliss. We have become content with suffering. If a man is content in suffering, we honor him greatly. If such people are honored, then the way out of suffering will be lost.
Not only this: there are those who voluntarily impose suffering upon themselves—we call them tapasvi, we say they are engaged in tapascharya. Those who live in suffering and manage to live quietly we call tolerant, contented. Those who go beyond even this—who invite suffering, who spread thorns and make a bed, who stand naked in the sun, who starve or fast—we say they are doing tapascharya. We accord them supreme honor.
When a people begin to honor those who invite suffering into their homes, that people is going mad—becoming deranged. It is a symptom of madness, nothing else. A healthy man seeks freedom from suffering. An unhealthy mind invites it. No healthy psyche ever calls suffering. A healthy mind makes continuous efforts to rise above it. A sick mind—a neurotic mind—invites suffering.
If a thorn pierces a man’s foot, a healthy man will remove the thorn. But there may be a man who consoles himself, “A thorn has gone in—fine.” We would honor him. And because we have, little by little, given so much honor to the thorn-stuck man, those who don’t have thorns go and pierce themselves—because in this country one cannot be honored without being miserable.
If someone starts traveling on foot, we accord great honor. We give great respect to the padayatri, as if a great work is being done. We do not see that in a country where padayatris are honored, rockets will not be born. All the foot-travelers are enemies of that land, because they will not let rockets be developed. If we honor the padayatri, we are saying that man as nature made him is worthy of honor. Then there remains no way for development. Development becomes possible only when we change our points of honor.
So I say to you: our honoring of the miserable is taking our very life—it is suicidal. We must increase the dignity of happiness. We will have to change our code of values. We must stop honoring the miserable man. We must stop calling the one who chooses suffering, “he is absorbed in tapascharya.” And I say to you: the day you stop honoring them, ninety-nine out of your hundred tapasvis will vanish instantly. No one will know where they went. Your reverence keeps them fixed in their stupidity.
If you begin to honor any foolish thing, people will arise in the village to perform it for you.
In Gandhi’s ashram there was a gentleman, Bhansali. He would live for six months eating only cow-dung. Gandhi himself honored him, the whole ashram honored him—“a great tapasvi.” Then his madness went on growing—he ate only cow-dung. When he saw that by eating cow-dung his tapascharya was becoming widely famous, it came to such a point that when anyone visited Gandhi’s ashram, they first went to have darshan of Bhansali, for he was great. Gandhi was not so renunciate—he did not eat cow-dung.
If a country were intelligent, it would send people like Bhansali to an asylum for treatment. But the country is unintelligent. It has devised strange rules by which it goes on honoring such people. Then their madness grows; their derangement increases; they begin to invent new modes of affliction for themselves.
We must not invent suffering. We have suffered enough. Now we must invent joy. And if joy is to be invented, we will have to stop honoring suffering and tapas. The fundamental hand in keeping India poor is that of India’s tapasvis. Until a whole people fall in love with happiness, the means of happiness cannot be created. Until an entire people engage themselves for happiness, the instruments of happiness will never be produced.
We are people frightened of happiness. The seeker of happiness appears a sinner; the virtuous appears to be he who seeks suffering. Shall we keep this definition of sin and virtue, or shall we change it? The youth will have to move to change it.
A happy person needs no self-condemnation. In India the opposite holds: if someone discovers happiness, he condemns himself. He thinks, “I am weak, sinful, driven by desire—therefore I seek joy. Otherwise I too would do tapascharya.” Hence you will see the happy man placing his head at the feet of the miserable. The naked sadhu of India receives the bow of India’s millionaire. There is no other reason: he is self-condemned. “I am a great sinner; he is a great virtuous one. I am weak. Not this life—but in the next life—I too will do tapascharya. Until then, at least I should touch the feet of the tapasvi.”
In India happiness has no prestige. Happiness is un-prestigious. How then will we produce it? The whole world gives happiness a certain dignity. And remember, I want to say one thing more: those who honor suffering slowly begin to take pleasure in making others suffer—they become sadists; or they become masochists—either they suffer themselves or make others suffer. He who condemns happiness can never grant happiness to another; what one condemns, how can one give? Remember: only he who can be happy himself can become a companion in the happiness of others. Otherwise, never. The whole country is eager to inflict suffering on each other; by a thousand devices we give pain to one another. We care less for our own joy than we worry that someone else might become happy. We remain busy figuring out how to make another miserable. A kind of deranged disease has arisen—of making everyone unhappy, of seeing them unhappy. The reasons are psychological: we have not given honor to happiness, thus this situation has come to be.
So I say to the youth: let them channel the mind of the country toward happiness. Only a happy person—one who seeks his own joy—also cares for the happiness of others.
Now, a fakir lies naked on the road—hungry, in the sun. Go tell him: “India is very poor.” He will say, “What poverty? What does poverty mean? Here too we are in great bliss.”
A naked fakir can never conceive that if the country is naked it will be in misery. He who has accepted his own misery becomes hard toward the misery of others—insensitive. Only when we have the taste of happiness, and we feel the sting of our own suffering, can we be sensitive to the suffering of others.
When famine strikes India, no great pain arises in the Indian heart. More pain arises in America, Switzerland, England. Why? Because they are relishing happiness and moving toward it. It is beyond their imagination that millions would starve. For us there is no discomfort in the thought—we are all starving anyway. Having accepted starvation as life, we feel no ache in our hearts.
If a beggar is seen asking on the street, there is no pain in our heart. The Western mind is pained—it seems inhuman that a man should have to beg. If someone begs in Surendranagar, the people of Surendranagar do not feel it is the town’s humiliation. No one is touched in the heart. And if someone gives the beggar two paise, he feels himself a virtuous man—thinks he has done a great punya.
No one feels: “Because a beggar lives in our village, we are sinners.” No one feels that because one man must beg, the whole village is somehow responsible.
Our sensitivity has grown dim. And we take the killing of sensitivity to be great sadhana—that as a man becomes more numb, more dull, his sensitivity dies; the sun is not felt as sun, cold is not felt as cold, a thorn is not felt as thorn. If the sun is not felt as sun, we call him a siddha, a Paramahansa.
But what does such a man mean? It means his sensitivity is dead. He who has lost sensitivity toward himself loses it toward all. Therefore, for countless years there have been sannyasis and sadhus in India, yet no pain arises in their hearts for the poverty and destitution of India. It cannot. They themselves have become utterly hardened toward pain.
We must make the Indian mind desire happiness. We must give it a plan to rise above suffering. We must increase the honor and prestige of joy. We must increase sensitivity, not decrease it. The more sensitivity grows, the more beautiful and happy life can be made.
But we call that man a Paramahansa who defecates where he sits and there itself eats—and we say: the supreme knower! He sees no difference between latrine and kitchen. But if such ‘supreme knowers’ go on increasing in a country, then remember: our food and our filth will become almost the same. Slowly the outcome will be that what we eat will be something no one in the world is willing to eat—what we call food will be refused even by Western cows and buffaloes.
Their dieticians would refuse to give it to cows, saying it is unfit even for cattle. But we will never inquire that the very honors we have bestowed within have led us to all this. What we eat today no one upon earth would agree to eat; there is nothing in it. If food is not right, the body becomes unhealthy, weak. If food is not right, the brain’s brilliance withers. No wonder we cannot produce an Einstein; we cannot produce him at all. From where will the immense energy needed by the brain come? Have you ever thought why tribal peoples have not produced a Buddha, a Mahavira, a Krishna? Not a great mathematician, not a great scientist?
The brain too is made of matter. The energy that enters the brain comes from matter. If it does not receive the right proteins, the right vitamins, nothing can descend from the sky to help.
Even the soul depends, in many ways, upon food. But this country has created strange conditions. They must be broken. To break them, a radical rethinking is needed. So I say to the youth: tear out the old roots from the mind of the country. Compel the country to re-think each root. Refuse to accept anything now without examination. In this, some right roots may also get broken—no matter. If, to save them, wrong roots remain, the danger is greater. I hold that even if a few right things break in the tearing of the old net, there is no need to worry—we can replant the right again and again. But such filth has gathered in the house that if, in the cleaning, some good things are also thrown out, do not worry. Once the garbage is cleared, the right can be reconstructed. But our nation is very frightened; it says, “What if some right thing is broken?”
I have heard: when Mao came to power in China he made a rule—a very valuable one. The rule of courts in the whole world is: even if a hundred criminals go free, not one innocent should be punished. Mao changed the rule entirely. He said: even if a hundred innocents are punished, we shall not let a single criminal go free.
Its impact was immense, radical. The worry of punishing an innocent was set aside—no concern. Let an innocent hang, but we shall not spare the criminal. The results were far-reaching: it became almost impossible for criminals to remain alive.
In life we too keep saying: “What if one right thing is lost?” Then, to save that one right thing, we end up saving a hundred wrong things. This rule we must change.
I say to you: even if a hundred right things break, break them—but do not let a single wrong thing survive. Only then can we be free of the wrong; otherwise not. Remember: the right can be created again—because we need the right every day; without it we cannot live. We will create it.
Around every right thing, a mesh of a hundred wrong things stands. To save that one, we have to save the hundred. We must gather courage for demolition. Only then can we create; otherwise, creation is not possible.
So my single message for the Yuvak Kranti Dal is this: prepare the country for demolition in every way. Enough of constructive programs—let us be forgiven for them now. Remember: a constructive program is always an addition to the old. A constructive program is always an addition to what exists. Now the country needs a program of demolition—not constructive, but destructive.
Vinoba ran constructive programs for so long; Gandhi ran constructive programs for so long. The word ‘constructive’ sounds very sweet—we feel, “something constructive!” People come to me and ask: “Please suggest some constructive program.” Why? Constructive means adding something to what is present. But what is present is so rotten that nothing should be added to it anymore. The only outcome of adding is to help the present survive—nothing else. A house is about to collapse and someone says, “Give us a constructive program.” What is that? “Put a prop against the wall, add four bricks, give it support—that is a constructive program!”
No. I say this country’s building has become so frail and tattered that to spend even one brick on its construction now is madness. The whole house will fall; along with it, the bricks we spent on ‘construction’ will be wasted. This is not the time to build. First, let this nation’s house fall completely once. Then creation can happen—only then. If the mind of the country is prepared for demolition, only then can construction happen. Demolition will be the first step; creation the second. Let us not talk of creation now. The dead mind is very much appealed to by the talk of creation. It says, “Tell us something to add; do not tell us to erase. Add something, construct something, build something.”
For five thousand years we have done exactly this. The final result is that the house built five thousand years ago still survives, because we kept adding ‘constructive’ supports. Now it is difficult to live in these houses; they can collapse any day. It is hard to live inside, but outside we keep running constructive programs: “Add four more poles, put a fresh coat of paint, a new whitewash. Diwali has come—let’s smear it again so it looks new.”
But this will become costly now. The whole world has changed its houses; only we remain clinging to the old. Either we bring this house down—or there is the danger that we all will be buried under it. It will fall. Beware lest we be crushed beneath it.
I will share more with you on this. For now I only want to say: let the youth carry in their hearts a reverence for demolition too. Reverence for creation is natural; reverence for demolition is a very revolutionary step. Every revolutionary mind, every radical thinker, first prepares for demolition. He says, “We want to break. We will build—but first we will break. First we erase that which torments us; then we shall create the new.”
New temples must be built; it is difficult to live without temples. But we must not even raise the topic of building new temples without bringing the old down. If we talk of new temples without demolishing the old, the danger is that all the old temples will slap on a new coat of paint and proclaim, “We are new now—what need is there for newer?”
The old mimics the new; it wants to present itself as new by paint and polish—so that the need for the truly new does not arise. We must search for the old roots in this country’s depths and tear them out. The whole tree may fall—so be it. Living peoples never worry about what may fall, because living peoples always carry the courage to build again. Only dead peoples are afraid: “Something may fall, something may break—then we will not be able to build again.” This fear prevents them from demolishing; and the more they fear, the less space remains for the new—no path remains to create the new.
Remember: so long as the old stands, the need to create the new does not become painful enough that we set out to build it. If the old house is present, we somehow manage.
We must break the old culture. We must break the old civilization. And finally, India must somehow be freed from ‘Indianness.’ Until India is freed from ‘Indianness,’ it cannot become modern. To be modern, it must be freed from ‘Indianness.’ In freeing ourselves from ‘Indianness,’ our very breath will be pained—because our whole ego is tied to being Indian. That ego will not survive in the world.
...There were Chinese, Japanese, Germans, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jains—there was no such thing as simply ‘man’ in the old world. There was no such thing as ‘humanity.’ The world was splintered into a thousand fragments. Now it has become impossible for the world to remain fractured in thousands.
For a few days more the politicians’ game may continue, because the human mind is old, and politicians go on exploiting that old mind. Until then nations will persist. But the persistence of nations has become very costly. Now their very existence is dangerous. Our humanity lies in their non-existence. And so long as the play of the religious leaders continues, Hindus and Muslims will persist. But their game too cannot last long, though they keep inventing new tricks. If a Hindu-Muslim riot breaks out, they do not say it happened because of Hindus and Muslims. They say: it happened because of goondas. Who this goonda is is very hard to find. Where he is is hard to find. I tell you, all quarrels happen because of the ‘great men,’ not because of goondas. The goondas get caught at the end. The ‘great men’ are very clever: they sow the seeds of conflict; when the riot spreads they also form Peace Committees and pacify the riot.
If a cow’s tail is cut in some village, there will be a Hindu-Muslim riot. And we will say goondas started it. But the truth is: the root is those ‘great men’ who taught that the cow is a mother. If the cow is not a mother, her tail being cut will not cause a riot. In truth, if the cow is not a mother, perhaps no lunatic will cut a cow’s tail either. The tail is cut because of the ‘great men,’ and the riot is because of them too. But they then come to explain—clever explanations: they do not say the riot is because of Hindus and Muslims; they say, be a true Hindu and the riot will not happen; be a true Muslim and the riot will not happen. When the pseudo-Hindus and pseudo-Muslims create so much disturbance, how much greater disturbance will the ‘true’ ones create is hard to calculate. If these pseudo ones cause so much, what will the real ones do? Still, they go on explaining.
A good man like Gandhi tried to unite Hindu and Muslim, but failed. The reason is not Jinnah; the reason is not Hindus and Muslims. The reason for Gandhi’s failure is that he was a staunch Hindu.
Even a good man like Gandhi could not gather the courage to say, “I am only a man.” Now Khan Abdul Ghaffar goes on explaining to people, but he is a staunch Muslim: “Hindus and Muslims should unite.” But he does not say, “Let Hindu and Muslim vanish.” I say to you: India’s youth should not get entangled in the problem of Hindu-Muslim unity. A good man like Gandhi failed utterly.
Now the youth of India must say: we will erase Hindu and Muslim. Not unite them—they cannot be united. Their very existence is the mischief. Their existence itself is the danger. The coming youth should declare: I am only a man—I am neither Hindu nor Muslim. Then let us see how a Hindu-Muslim riot happens.
But then there will be a double loss. The ‘great men’ who cause the riot will be out of business; and those who pacify it will also be out of business. Between these two ‘great men’ there is collusion—the one who foments the quarrel and the one who calms it.
I have heard: two men in a village started a new business—window and glass cleaning. One of them used to roam by night and splash tar on people’s windows. Two or three days later the other would walk through the village shouting, “Windows cleaned?” People would come out: “You came at just the right time! We were worried—who splashed this tar?” They were partners.
Here, one ‘great man’ foments the riot; there, another pacifies it. Both would be out of business. Hindu and Muslim must be erased. Now we must not talk of Hindu-Muslim unity. Now we must strive that Hindu and Muslim should not remain at all. Now we must strive that only man remain—not Hindu, not Muslim; not Christian, not Jain; not Indian, not Pakistani. The children of India are harmed; the children of Pakistan are harmed. There is no sense in India and Pakistan fighting. Nothing could be more foolish. All our strength goes into this—while both India and Pakistan could be prosperous, and together could be more prosperous. If this whole stretch of land were united, a paradise could be created on earth today. Science has given all the means, and if human stupidity does not prevail, we can give man heaven here itself—no need to search for any heaven beyond.
All diseases can be removed. All poverty can be eradicated. All ignorance can be dispelled. Man can be given everything the rishis and munis imagined in heaven. What stands in the way? Only one thing: the boundaries of nations, the boundaries of religions, the boundaries of ideologists. Remember: when old religions become stale, new religions arise. Communism is a new religion; Hindu and Muslim have gone stale—the riot no longer has spice—so America and Russia have raised new ideologies, new religions. For some, the Kremlin too is a Mecca. They go on pilgrimage there and return elated.
As a Muslim returns from Hajj, so a communist returns from Moscow; his prestige rises—he has become a Haji. He has visited the Mecca-Medina of the communists. He has had darshan of new gods. New disturbances arise. Can man not be saved from all these disturbances? I will speak to you about this in the afternoon.
You have listened to me with such peace and love—that gladdens me deeply. In the end I bow to the Paramatma seated within all. Please accept my pranam.