Naye Samaj Ki Khoj #10

I am not in favor of anyone’s committing violence. But if a human being is on the verge of dying, then out of sheer necessity one has to accept many forms of violence in order to live. Violence is bad, yes, but we have not yet arranged things on this earth so that nonviolence can be total. If human life falls into difficulty, we will have to bid the old cows farewell!

It can happen. And if you keep producing too many children, it will happen. This is a very harsh truth. It is very sad. But perhaps no other path will remain.

Just as today we retire a man at fifty-five or fifty-eight from his job. Why do we do that? So that the children coming up behind can get work; otherwise they won’t. It is not necessary that a fifty-five-year-old is no longer fit to work. In truth, removing an experienced fifty-five-year-old from work and giving that work to an inexperienced twenty-year-old is economically a loss, not a gain. But it is a compulsion. The fifty-five-year-old has to be set aside; otherwise how will the children get work?

As the situation worsens further, it may not be only retirement from jobs; we may have to decide that a person of sixty-five or seventy must retire from life. The responsibility for this will not lie with those who say a fifty-five, sixty, sixty-five, or seventy-year-old should be set aside, but with those who keep producing too many children. If it becomes difficult even to make room to live on the earth… you have no idea: at the rate at which the numbers are increasing daily, if for a hundred years—just a hundred years—the numbers grow at this rate, then each person will have one square foot of land in the whole world. In one square foot, stand if you like, or sleep, or sit, or live, or work. After a hundred years there will be no need to convene any assemblies. Wherever you are, an assembly will already be happening.

If such numbers gather on the earth, it will be no wonder if we are forced to bid farewell to the old. And you will also be surprised to know that there were moments in history and there were tribes who killed their elders—had to kill them. There were tribes who killed their children after they were born, because there was no way to keep them alive.

We have already become ready to kill children. Japan has legalized abortion. Any woman who wishes to have an abortion faces no legal obstacle; in fact, the government provides facilities. What does abortion mean? It means that the child who was now about to receive life—we end that life.

If children can be killed, how long will it take to kill the old? And if the choice arises between children and the old, then I too would say that children should be saved, the old should be killed. The old themselves will say, “We will die; let the children be saved.” What other path will remain?

So perhaps you asked in sarcasm whether even the old father should be sent off? If the talk of these “Mother Cow” people prevails, then the old father will also have to be sent off. Life is a continual choosing. It is not right to kill even a mosquito, but to keep human beings alive we have to kill mosquitoes. It is not proper to kill animals for food, but the earth does not have so much green produce that man can survive on it; he has to kill animals. Someday we may hope that arrangements can be made so that no animal has to be killed. But those arrangements have not yet been made. Therefore even the cow cannot be given special treatment.

And what is the reason to give special treatment to the cow? If violence is wrong, it is wrong. Whether you cut a goat or a cow, it makes no difference. If violence is wrong, it is wrong. And those who are very understanding, who have much experience in this matter, will even say: cutting down a tree is also violence. It is violence—there is life in a tree. And now science accepts that every plant has life. So when you cut a tree, violence is indeed happening.

There have been people who forbade cutting trees. There was Mahavira, who said that cutting a tree is violence. So the Jains stopped farming; all the Jains took to shopkeeping, withdrew from agriculture—because to farm you have to cut plants.

But what comes of your withdrawal? You will still eat the trees that others have cut; what difference does that make? There is life in the tree; it too has to be cut. In fact, the problem of human nourishment will not be resolved until we come to synthetic food. Until we can keep life going by eating a pill made in a factory, we will have to continue some form of violence. It is a compulsion, a necessary evil. But it is a compulsion, and it cannot be denied.

Why would I be in favor of meat-eating—meat hasn’t done me any harm. But there are three and a half billion people on the earth, and if we try to keep human beings alive only on greens and fruits, then almost three billion people would have to die! Only about five hundred million could survive! So either save the animals or let three billion people die. Choose one of the two.

If we swear that we will not eat meat, will not eat fish, then on whose head will be the violence of those three billion deaths? Those three billion will die! Because on this earth it is difficult to arrange pure vegetarian food even for fifty thousand people.

And you may think that milk is vegetarian; then you are gravely mistaken. Milk is part of non-vegetarian food; milk is blood. A strictly vegetarian person should not drink milk. In human blood there are two kinds of corpuscles, white and red. In the females, the breast has a mechanism that separates the white corpuscles from the red—whether in women or in the females of other animals. The apparatus of the breast separates the white corpuscles from the red; those white corpuscles become milk. Therefore by drinking milk your blood increases. It is blood, nothing else.

So a strict vegetarian cannot drink milk. Should not drink it. Now, cut milk out as well—if a human being has to live only on greens and fruits, how many people can you keep alive? This entire land will be filled with corpses.

The Jain monk drinks milk with great relish, without caring that he is committing violence, drinking blood. But it is a compulsion; there is no other way. Whoever is drinking milk is drinking blood. So don’t imagine you are taking a very pure diet. You fast all day and in the evening you eat sweets made of milk, and you think you are on a fruit diet. You are not on a fruit diet; you are on a non-vegetarian diet!

To save human life some food has to be taken. The cow cannot be saved. If you save the cow, human beings will have to die. And animals cannot be saved either; fish cannot be saved. Yes, but in the future we can hope that if science develops properly… this difference will not come from the development of religion, nor will meat-eating stop by gurus’ sermons! Through the development of science it could stop some day. The day science gives you a simple pill to eat, that day meat-eating can stop; before that it cannot.

With food the trouble is that life eats life—whether you eat the life of fruit, the life of plants, or the life of animals—life eats life. And the amusing thing is that when you fast, when you eat nothing, even then you are meat-eating: your own flesh gets digested. A person consumes two pounds in a day. The day you fast, you are eating your own flesh, nothing else. Where did those two pounds of your weight go? In a one-day fast you digest two pounds of yourself; you ate your own fat—two pounds. These are the truths of life. Without understanding these truths, talk cannot lead anywhere.

My own understanding is that the day will be very good when we will kill neither the cow nor the mosquito, neither the dog nor the cat, neither the deer nor the goat—a very good day indeed. But that day is not going to come through your Jagadguru Shankaracharya and the people who run movements to protect the Mother Cow. That day will come through scientific discovery; it will not come through the babble of religion. The day we can give synthetic food in place of food, that day will come; before that it cannot.

And keep another point in mind. The second point is necessary to know: in life all rules are determined by necessity. Today’s necessity… Life has become so difficult for man today that to save man we cannot even think of saving the fish. It is painful that to live, man has to kill fish! It is painful that some animal has to be killed! But this is the reality: for man to live there is no other way. Who bears responsibility for this?

Those in the world who talk about vegetarianism and being vegetarian—how many new ways of vegetarian food have they given the world? Not one. What research have they done, what discoveries, so that man might be saved through vegetarianism? No discoveries, no research. And a purely vegetarian person becomes physically weak; he can never be fully healthy—until some other medicines, some other vitamins are added along with a vegetarian diet. Otherwise a vegetarian cannot be healthy. His brain becomes weak, his body becomes weak, his lifespan becomes weak.

Western people have gone ahead of us in every way. Their meat-eating has a hand in that. Their lifespan is longer; their health is better. We have fallen behind. It is worth understanding that India has believed in vegetarian doctrines for thousands of years. And whenever a meat-eating people attacked India, India kneeled. Vegetarians have not yet defeated meat-eaters in any matter; they have always bent their knees. These are all truths; it is not easy to deny them.

And someone says that the cow is mother. The cow has never told you that you are her sons! You keep saying it yourself, keep imposing it—“the cow is mother.” Will the cow become mother because you write it in your book? In none of the cow’s books is it written. And I do not think the cow would agree to accept you as her sons. I do not see that we have that much worth that the cow would agree to accept us as her sons.

And if you think in some other sense, then all animals are our parents—both from the perspective of science and of spirituality. Spirituality says that man’s soul has evolved from previous wombs. Whichever wombs we have passed through, there must have been our parents in them. The relationship has become somewhat distant, but they would be there. Science says—Darwin says—that man’s body has come from monkeys, and the body of the monkeys from earlier animals, and in the end everyone’s coming began from the fish. So by Darwin’s reckoning the fish too is mother. Then later there will be other mothers and fathers.

So now if you set about saving all the mothers and fathers—save the fish, save the cow, this one, that one—then you will die, that is certain. So either decide that you have to save the parents—save the fish, the cow, so-and-so, so-and-so—save them all; all right, then you die; we will not object. But if you say, “Save us too and save Mother Cow too”—both are not possible right now.

But the country’s politicians are not courageous. They know that Mother Cow cannot be saved, but they are afraid that the voter is a devotee of Mother Cow. So they keep saying from above—“We will save her, certainly we will!” And those who run the Mother Cow movements are all clever too. They also understand that people can be roused with useless talk that Mother Cow is in danger.

That man is in danger here—this they do not care about. Whether people die—this they do not care about. That Mother Cow is in danger—this they care about. And they deviate from the real questions of human life; all such people are very dangerous. When there are real questions in human life, they will not seek ways to resolve them; they will raise pointless issues. The house is on fire, and they are talking of arranging the furniture: the furniture should be like this, this is the Hindu way; and that is the non-Hindu way; we will not allow that kind of furniture. And the house is on fire! However you arrange the furniture, everything will burn, when the house is on fire.

So we should also understand: what is the priority in front of life? What is the first important question? We do not even care about the important questions. The whole world laughs at us. When it learns that we are running a movement to save the Mother Cow, people all over the world are astonished—when will these people run a movement to save themselves! In twenty years they will be finished!

No, but we have nothing to do with human beings. Neither our Shankaracharyas care, nor our sadhus, nor our religious folk. They care about their books—what is written in their book! Everything must go according to that book.

No, books are not more precious than man. And if needed, all the books will have to be thrown aside; saving man is the first thing. Man is not for books; books are for man. And man is the first thing.

This does not mean that I am saying you should kill cows. I am saying: create such an arrangement in which you can be saved, the cow can be saved, the mosquito can be saved, the fish can be saved—that would be wonderful. But until such an arrangement has been created, man has the first preference: man must be saved first! After that, someone else can be saved. And if we ever think carefully, these things can become clear to us.

But we are not prepared to think. We shirk thinking, and we are afraid of it.

Your heart is very weak—how is that my fault! Take a few medicines to strengthen it! I said the yajna is useless; you prove that it is of use—then it will make sense to me. If you only say that calling it useless has jolted your heart, that is a difficult matter. Arrange treatment for your heart. But if you can prove that a yajna is meaningful, I will be the first to accept it. If a yajna can bring down rain, I would be crazy not to agree to have it done to bring rain—of course I would agree. But you cannot demonstrate it in a scientific laboratory.

Prove it and show. The issue is not whether it cannot happen; it simply has not happened so far. The laboratories of science stand across the whole country—every college, every university has a laboratory. Go there, perform a yajna, and prove your claim. If you prove it by doing a yajna, the whole world will touch your feet and say you have discovered a great method. We go through a lot of trouble; your formula is very easy. But prove it! That it is written in your book proves nothing. That you believe it proves nothing. That your heart is hurt proves nothing.
In the afternoon a gentleman wrote to me and handed me that...

I wasn’t at leisure; I was in a hurry. The gentleman left, so I couldn’t ask whether he was a lover of yajnas or a lover of shoes—who exactly was wronged? Later, when I thought about it, it occurred to me that the injustice was to the shoe. I should not have given that example. Because a shoe at least has some use; a yajna not even that much. A shoe serves some purpose; a yajna not even that much.

But our minds are occupied by emotions. We get flustered the moment we hear something—no readiness to think and understand.

If you display this weakness of thoughtful understanding, the world is not going to take advantage of your tender heart; you will simply be taken as unintelligent.

Demonstrate it through experiment! The laboratories of science are open; come along gladly and run the tests—make the rain fall and show us. We will all respect it, we will accept it; a science of yajna will be born. But nothing ever comes of it. Millions of rupees are burned up by poor, gullible people—ghee is burned, grain is burned—and no one asks, “The yajna is done; where is the water? The yajna is done; where is the world peace from it? The yajna is done; where is the peace in the world that came from it?” No one asks.

It’s a curious thing: we have performed so many yajnas—where are the results? And on this earth, India has performed more yajnas than anyone. If yajnas could bear fruit, we would be the most prosperous. But our faces themselves proclaim that today we are among the poorest in the world. And they—neither Russia nor America—performed any yajnas. God seems more pleased with those who don’t perform yajnas. And we have done yajnas till we are hoarse, yet there seems to be no pleasure taken in us. It even looks as if God is very angry with our intelligence.

In fact, God should be angry with unintelligence. He too would be astonished, seeing our yajnas. If he is anywhere, he must be thinking, “When will their brains improve? After five thousand years of doing this, will any sense ever dawn or not?”

I am not saying that yajna is wrong. I am saying: demonstrate it! The laboratories are open. Bring your pandits, bring your Veda-chanters, bring your yajna-havan performers, and prove it there through experiment! Science is an open world: whoever proves something is accepted. There is no insistence there.

So I have only said something scientific; there is no need to be hurt by it. And between the shoe and the yajna, neither is lesser nor greater. As much God is in a yajna, that much God is in a shoe. Over there, yajna-God; over here, shoe-God. All things are equal—there is no hierarchy of values here. So there is no need to be troubled.

In fact, wherever great affluence grows, there too a weariness with affluence arises. The day you truly become rich, you discover money is useless. The real “meaning” of wealth is understood mostly by the poor, not by the rich. The rule of life is: whatever we get becomes worthless; till we get it, it torments us. For the one living in a grand palace, the palace has lost its meaning; it is only the passerby on the street who imagines the palace-dweller must be in great bliss. The palace-dweller, having reached the palace, finds he worked hard for it, but no real fulfillment comes from it.

The greatest benefit of getting wealth is precisely this: you discover that wealth cannot give you everything—something remains which money can never buy. The day this is seen, restlessness begins. That restlessness is spiritual restlessness.

Today, for the first time a whole society—America—has reached a place where earlier only individual families sometimes arrived. For the first time an entire society is affluent. Hence American youth have become very restless. For the first time they have found that none of their needs are unmet—whatever they want is available. So they are in great difficulty: what now? The money is there, houses are there, cars are there, radios are there, food and clothes are there. There is no more “fight” left in life—so what to do?

Naturally the boys have become rebellious. If their fathers tell them, “Go study in college,” they ask, “What for?” The father says, “You’ll get a good salary.” The son replies, “You get a good salary—and we don’t see any peace in your life. So what will we do with a good salary?”

If a poor father tells his son, “Study,” the son understands, because he sees the father suffering without education. A poor father can say, “Go to college, otherwise you will starve,” and the son understands. But in America no father can say, “If you don’t study you will starve,” because even the one who doesn’t study is not starving. In America today, manual labor is paid so highly that a man can work seven days and rest twenty-one—no more work needed.

So the boys say, “Why study? If you say we’ll have a big car and a big house—well, you have all that. Tell us what you actually gained from it. If we have it too, what will we gain?”

Thus a new situation has arisen in America: because wealth is excessive, boredom with wealth has set in. The hippies are a rebellion against wealth. In my view, hippies are in the same inner condition as Buddha and Mahavira were: a rebellion against the father, against the “established” world where everything is fixed and stagnant. The boys are saying, “Your world is useless! What will you do with it? What is the point of building a big house? You built a big house, you have a big car, you have everything—so what? We see that outwardly everything is there, but inside your life there is nothing.”

That is why I consider the hippie highly significant, symbolic. It signals that the children of America, having tasted prosperity, have begun searching for a new world. When this search begins, accidents happen at first, because no one becomes spiritual overnight; a vacuum is created. In the life of American youth, an emptiness has come. The father’s world is useless, and the son does not yet know what to do.

So he drinks alcohol, takes mescaline and LSD, does drugs, dances, visits brothels, beats drums, lies in the forests. The father’s world is useless—and the son has no path.

But it won’t remain so for long, because these sons have begun to think, “What shall we do now?” Hence, today in America there is great interest in yoga, meditation, religion. So if your Maharishi Mahesh Yogi goes to America and becomes a guru, it is not so much his own prowess—here he would not find even ten disciples. The real point is different: the American situation is such that everyone is restless. They obtained wealth and found nothing in it. Now they are seeking another way—perhaps through meditation, perhaps through prayer.

You will be surprised to know that on the streets of New York and London, boys and girls are going around doing Hari-bhajan and kirtan. They have shaved their heads, kept long topknots, are beating drums, wearing tilak—chanting “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama,” dancing through the streets. Our minds feel very gratified hearing this. We say, “Good! Then we are on the right track.”

Do not fall into this mistake. If American youth are chanting Hare Krishna and Hare Rama, their reason is entirely different: the world has been gained and found to be empty; it does not give much. And if you do Hari-bhajan, you do not do it because the world is empty—you do it for worldly reasons: “May the girl I love marry me; may my court case be resolved; my son has no job—may he get one; my wife is ill—may she recover.” Our bhajan and kirtan are for worldly ends; their chanting is taking them beyond the world. So do not be overly pleased. Our minds get happy thinking, “Perhaps those people have come onto our path.”

They are not on “our path”; their situation is very different from ours. They cannot be on our path. We are poor, and our turning toward God is propelled by our poverty. If we could make little windows in people’s skulls and look inside in the temple, we would see that ninety-nine out of a hundred go there to ask for something worldly.

America’s “world” has become meaningless. This is a very fortunate state—that the world becomes meaningless. Someday I wish we too will have this good fortune; then we will go to God without asking for anything—unconditional. Then our prayer will be straight. We will not say, “Give us bread.” We will say, “Now we want only You; as for bread, we have no concern. If You need any, we can give it to You; we don’t need it.”

The hippie is a very valuable phenomenon. Whenever a society grows prosperous, such things begin to happen. Until now no whole society was prosperous; sometimes a family was—like the house of Buddha, the house of Mahavira. These were wealthy homes. From these homes, some son would become rebellious. He would say to his father, “Your kingdom is useless, your wealth is useless, your palaces are useless, the women you have gathered are useless—none of this means anything now,” and he would run away.

It is a curious fact that whatever we get always becomes useless. So if a lover gets his beloved, he repents; if he does not, love continues for a lifetime.

I have heard: A man went to study an asylum. The superintendent showed him a man behind the bars, holding a picture, tears flowing from his eyes, composing poetry. The visitor asked, “Why did this man go mad? He looks like a fine man.” The superintendent said, “He was a great lover. He didn’t get his beloved—so he went mad.”

That made sense. They went on. In the next cell another man was beating his chest and tearing his hair. The visitor asked, “What happened to him? Did he also not get his beloved?” “No,” said the superintendent, “he got his beloved—that’s why he went mad.” And he added, “It was the same woman both loved. The one who didn’t get her went mad from not getting; this gentleman went mad from getting.”

Life is very strange! If one doesn’t get wealth, one is crazed to obtain it; if one gets it, one finds, “All right—money has its use, but it is not the end of life.” When the stomach is empty, bread seems the goal; when the stomach is full, bread is forgotten. Who remembers bread with a full belly? Then the satiated person thinks of other things: Shall I play chess? Go fishing? Play the veena? Blow the flute? Meditate? What shall I do? New troubles begin at once.

In fact, man cannot live without troubles; he seeks new ones. I do not even consider this bad—one should seek troubles, challenges. The meaning of life is precisely this: new challenge. But let the troubles be of a higher kind—that much aspiration we can have. The aspirations of a poor country are of a low order; they circle around bread and livelihood.

A gentleman came to me today. He said, “My mind is very disturbed—please give me a way to peace.”

I said, “First tell me the cause of your disturbance.”

He said, “I have a debt of twenty thousand rupees.”

A twenty-thousand-rupee debt cannot be erased by meditation—there is no way. Twenty thousand will be erased only by twenty thousand. If he doesn’t tell me and I tell him, “Empty the mind; become thoughtless,” how will he become thoughtless? The figure of twenty thousand will keep revolving. And if he doesn’t tell me, I too will fall into error—I will think the unrest is of the mind. It is not the mind that is restless; it is the circumstances.

The day circumstantial unrest ends, that day mental unrest begins—that is a higher matter. Our minds are not restless; our bodies are restless. America’s mind is restless.

But Indian sadhus and renunciates explain here, “Look what the Americans have got! Their minds are so restless; they go mad; they go to psychologists; the number of mind-doctors is increasing.” We feel pleased.

But remember: compared to the number of doctors for the body, the higher the number of doctors for the mind, the more you should understand that man has moved from body toward mind. Doctors for the body should become fewer; doctors for the mind should increase. That is height, evolution, development. Now man has fewer bodily troubles; now his troubles are of the mind. And when he rises even above that, the troubles of the soul begin. It is the suffering of the soul that makes a person religious.

Right now America is one step ahead of us toward the suffering of the soul. We are one step behind. Our suffering is of the body. Only when our bodily suffering ends will the suffering of the mind begin—otherwise, it will not.

There are reasons. And I would say it would be good if you too arrived at that place. There are two or three reasons.

First: the moment the body is satisfied, the mind becomes dissatisfied. Naturally. If in life you get every comfort, you will start getting bothered even by comfort. Seat you in a palace—everything is available: food, drink, whatever you want is immediately there. Now you will begin to be troubled: What should I do now? There is nothing left to do. Your mind will start getting restless.

In America the mind is restless. But if the mind is restless, that is good. Quieting the mind is very easy, because the mind can be quieted through understanding. But the body cannot be quieted through understanding; to quiet the body, facilities are needed. Therefore America will very quickly bring its mind close to silence; there is not much hindrance in it.

Second: in America we perceive immorality and we take ourselves to be moral—that is a great delusion. The real difficulty is that our definitions of morality are very different. If a man smokes a cigarette, we say he has become immoral. But smoking has nothing to do with morality, not even remotely. A man draws smoke in and lets it out—how will that make him immoral? Yes, if he blows it into someone’s face or into someone’s eyes, then it can be immorality. If the poor fellow fills his own lungs with smoke and exhales it, that can be foolishness, but it cannot be immorality. It can be lack of understanding. The man is a bit soft in the head that he takes smoke in and throws it out—and spends money on the in-and-out of smoke. But there is no immorality in it. Where is the immorality in that?

In fact, the danger is this: if you make such a man swear in a temple, “Stop this business of smoke, otherwise you will have to go to hell!”—he is a fool, otherwise he would not be doing this—his foolishness will not change. He will stop the smoke, but he will begin some other foolishness which could be more dangerous.

You will be surprised to know that Hitler did not smoke, Hitler did not eat meat, Hitler did not eat eggs, Hitler did not drink alcohol—a very “good” man. But the amount of killing he did in the whole world, no one ever did. Now psychologists say that if Hitler had smoked a little, eaten a little meat, had a few drinks and gone to dance in some nightclub, the world would have greatly benefited. Because many of his illnesses would have been released that way, his stupidities would have fallen away rather than accumulating.

So what is our definition of morality? I do not accept that a man who smokes is immoral. I accept only this: that he is restless, unwise. He finds it difficult to be alone, so he has discovered a friendship with the cigarette—the occupation of puffing smoke—an innocent occupation, a completely harmless busy-ness. What is the evil in it?

Yes, if there is any evil, it is that this man suffers a little harm himself. If a man, for twenty years, smokes twelve cigarettes a day, and if the nicotine of all those cigarettes is collected and given at once, someone could die. Although no one dies from smoking one cigarette. Even after smoking twelve a day for twenty years, no one dies. Yes, perhaps his life is shortened by a year or six months. But that loss is his own. And a man has the right to harm himself; he has only no right to harm another. Immorality begins from the point where we begin to harm another.

Now if a man, every night, drinks a cup of wine and goes to sleep, why has he become immoral? In fact, throughout the world where alcohol is an ordinary beverage, the harms of alcohol are very few. In those countries where alcohol is not an ordinary beverage, the harms are very many. In countries where people commonly drink at home, take it with food, you will not find men fallen drunk on the streets. You will find people fallen drunk, abusing in the streets only in those countries where people have not made alcohol a commonplace drink. In fact, when a thing becomes ordinary its attraction decreases; when it is not ordinary its attraction increases greatly.

In India, the excessive ill effects that alcohol has are not because of the drinkers; they are because of India’s “mahatmas”—who keep preaching that alcohol is very bad, very bad, very... So a man restrains, restrains, restrains, and then one day when he drinks he drinks fully, and starts abusing right there on the street. That which is considered very bad should be given to everyone in small quantities so that the situation of taking it in large quantities does not arise. And alcohol is not bad anyway; a little alcohol is healthful for the body. Good-quality alcohol is beneficial for the body; bad-quality alcohol is harmful.

So if someone were to come ask me, I would say: if you want to drink, drink good-quality alcohol—and in small amounts, so that it brings benefit. Large quantities of bad-quality alcohol cause harm. But no “good” person is ready to say this. The good people go on shouting, “Drinking is bad.” The bad people go on drinking. There is no coordination between the two.

Governments go on shouting, “We will prohibit alcohol.” Wherever alcohol is prohibited, garbage liquor starts being sold. The nation is harmed more.

The government’s duty should be that the best possible alcohol be made available, at the lowest possible price, with maximum convenience, to the maximum number of people. Then all the harms of alcohol end. There is no harm in alcohol as such. And even if there is any harm, science has developed so much that we can take out of alcohol those elements from which harm arises.

To give a person the facility to forget himself a little is not bad. Because man is so restless and troubled that if he remembers himself twenty-four hours a day he can go mad. If, for a little while, he forgets himself, it is good.

You will be surprised to know that, generally, people who take a little alcohol are of a good sort. Those who neither smoke cigarettes nor chew betel, neither smoke bidis nor swear, neither drink nor go to hotels nor dance—generally this kind of person is of a very bad sort. It becomes difficult even to make friendship with such people. Such people cannot be friends. From within, such people are very hard and of a malicious type. And from their malice many ill effects arise.

Absolutely—I'm sitting here drunk twenty-four hours a day. But I’ve discovered a very fine kind of wine; you don’t have to buy it in the market! (The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
Please listen to me, please listen to me; if you don’t want to drink, then don’t.

(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
Please hear me out completely. It seems a couple of drunkards have turned up here, and they’re getting upset. Let them understand a little.

(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
Write down whatever you want to say and send it in. Do not behave unethically with so many people. Write it down and send it. Do not misbehave with so many people.

(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
Let me finish what I am saying, then you can speak.
I was saying to you: a man’s life has so many worries, so many tensions, that it is quite natural he would want to forget these anxieties and troubles for a little while. If a man cannot forget them, they can pile up to such an extent that the consequences become destructive. So there are only two ways. One way is that a man does not allow worries and troubles to arise in his life. Such people are very few; they have never needed to drink. A Nanak, for instance, would have no need for alcohol. But the reason is different: Nanak has drunk a deeper wine which is not available in the marketplace, and so no worries remain in his life.

But ordinary people have no idea of that wine. If they come to know that wine, then they need no other intoxication. As for the ordinary person—in all Europe, all America—leaving India aside, the whole world drinks quite casually. I do not call this casual drinking immoral. I don’t call it immoral because a person has the right to forget himself.

Yes, if in forgetting myself I harm you, then immorality begins. Immorality means the point at which I trespass, where I step out of my own life and enter another’s and cause harm—there immorality starts. As long as I remain within myself, I do not commit immorality. What I was explaining is that whether there is immorality in the West or not depends on our definition—on what we call immoral.

Now this appears immoral to us: that more people in the West drink alcohol. It appears immoral because our interpretation is that whoever drinks is immoral. But we don’t realize that in all cold countries it is almost impossible to live without alcohol. If someone tries to live in Tibet without alcohol, it’s difficult! In Siberia, to live without alcohol—one cannot! Because in Siberia alcohol doesn’t even bring intoxication; it only gives a slight tingling and a little warmth—nothing more. In countries like ours, hot countries, the alcohol made for cold countries certainly does harm. And the reason is not that alcohol in itself harms. The sole reason is that we have not developed alcohol suitable for hot climates. If we could develop alcohol suitable for hot climates, then all the harm of alcohol would be eliminated.

You will be surprised to know that hardly any tonic exists which doesn’t contain twenty percent, fifteen percent, or ten percent alcohol. But when you drink a tonic you never think you are drinking alcohol. All alcohol can be turned into tonic. What I am saying is not that you should start drinking. My friends were troubled because perhaps they thought I was teaching people to drink.

I don’t need to teach it—people are already drinking happily without my teaching. And no one has the power to stop them; no one is able to stop them. What I am saying is that if my point is understood, the damage from drinking can be reduced, the harm can be lessened. We can even develop such alcohol as is health-giving and does not cause harm.

And for those who want to drink—if they do not move beyond themselves to harm anyone else—no one has any right to stop them. The right begins exactly where they begin to harm another.

This harm can take many forms. If a man, drunk, goes and hits someone on the head, that is harm. If a man, after drinking, mistreats his wife, that too harms another. If a man, after drinking, leaves his job and his children begin to starve, that too harms others. In all such situations that drinking becomes immoral.

But if a man’s drinking does not injure his health; if, instead of spoiling, his relationship with his wife becomes better; if the next day he can go to the office and work more at ease, then I do not consider that such drinking has done anything immoral. Immorality means that through us someone else suffers harm. If no one is being harmed through us, then the word immorality has no meaning.

(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
I was saying to you: what should we call immoral? Our definitions of morality and immorality differ. In my view, immorality begins from the point where we start to harm another person. In fact, there can be two ways of thinking about morality and immorality.

One way is that we make rules to restrain the individual. I am not a supporter of such a morality. I take morality to mean only this: that by which no person is harmed, no misfortune is created, no one suffers damage. Our idea of morality should be formed in this way.

In the West the conception of morality has become positive. In the East it is still negative. We still think: this should not be done—that is considered moral. The West thinks differently. The West asks: what should be done that is moral? A man does not drink, a man does not smoke, a man does not eat meat—these are all negative statements. From them we learn nothing about what the man does; only what he does not do.