... to be strong in spirit.] ... You will have to understand the paradox. If you want spiritually to be strong you have to be absolutely weak. That's why I was insisting on knowing what you meant by being strong, because if you want to be strong in the world, there are other ways. You have to have a very strong ego, will power, resistance. violence, aggression, ambition, competition, greed. You have to...

.... But this is a totally different kind of strength. Jesus is strong in this sense. He was crucified. His disciples were waiting for some miracle. Their idea of strength must have been a wrong idea - not at all spiritual. They were thinking that Jesus will show his power - he will do some miracle - but nothing happened. Jesus simply died in a tremendous surrender, in a total let-go. And at the last...

... will for me to die, then I welcome it. If you want me to survive, you decide. I am nobody to interfere.' The spiritual strength arises when you stop interfering with God... when you don't have any will of your own, when you simply trust. Trust is power, but not your power - it is always God's power. You become a vehicle, a passage. Kabir has said that a man becomes like a bamboo flute - empty, just a...

... science and religion: science tries to make man powerful; religion tries that the man should be completely powerless so that God's power can flow through him. So be empty! That's what sannyas is all about. And if in that emptiness you feel that you are defeated, then that is God's will. Enjoy your defeat... celebrate it! And that will be your gift. [The Tao group are present. The leader says: People...

... had to wait for the right moment. They crucified him in the end, but they had to wait for the right moment. And the right moment came, when they could persuade the political power that this man was not talking religion, that this man was not a rebel - this man was a revolutionary. They persuaded the political powers: "This man is not talking about the kingdom of God - that is just a strategy...

.... This man is talking about this kingdom on the earth. This man is not trying to lead people towards God; this man is trying to possess power; the kingdom of this earth, for himself He is against the government." When they could persuade the government, only then.... And remember, there is always a conspiracy between the priests and the political leaders. They have always been in conspiracy; they...

... help each other. Whenever the politician needs his position sanctified by religion, the priest comes to help. He says, "The king is no ordinary human being. He is an incarnation of God." He says, "He is made king by God himself. His authority is not in himself but in God; he's just a representative of God on earth." That's how the priests help the king, the political power, and...

... king is afraid; the priests help. The priest is afraid; the king helps. The priests and the political power both joined together to kill this innocent man who had no power at all; or, his power was not of this world - his power was that of a meek and humble man; his power was that of a realized man. The power is not violent. His power is that of love, what Lao Tzu calls 'the man of tao'. He is...

... powerful, because he is powerless. He is supremely high, because he lives at the lowest point. He's at the peak, because he lives in the darkest valley. He's great, because hc does not claim greatness. The power of the meek, the power of the humble, the power of the egoless, the power of one who is not... then the power of God enters. Then he becomes the vehicle for the whole. The last thing: be alert...

... THERE HE BECAME A DISCIPLE. SEEKING for something, desiring for something, is the basic disease of the mind. Not seeking, not desiring, is the basic health of your being. It is very easy to go on changing the objects of desire, but that is not the way of transformation. You can desire money, you can desire power... you can change the objects of desire - you can start desiring god - but you remain the...

... THE COMPANY OF A DISCIPLE FOR A DISTANT PROVINCE. ON REACHING THE TENRYU RIVER THEY HAD TO WAIT FOR AN HOUR BEFORE THEY COULD BOARD THE FERRY. JUST AS THE FERRY WAS ABOUT TO LEAVE THE SHORE A DRUNKEN SAMURAI RAN UP AND JUMPED INTO THE PACKED BOAT, NEARLY SWAMPING IT. A DRUNKEN SAMURAI... He may not be ordinarily drunk, but a samurai is always drunk. A samurai is a man who is after power. A samurai...

... is a warrior. A samurai is drunk with the ego. He may not be drunk ordinarily - that is not the point. He may have been drunk, but all people who are after power are drunk. The more you are after power, the more you are unconscious, because only unconsciousness can seek power. Consciousness lives life. Consciousness does not bother about power, because what is the use of power? The use of power is...

... that you can live someday through it. First you collect power... maybe it is hidden in the money, or in the sword. First you prepare - power is a preparation - and then someday you will live. ... A DRUNKEN SAMURAI RAN UP AND JUMPED INTO, THE PACKED BOAT NEARLY SWAMPING IT. HE TOTTERED WILDLY AS THE SMALL CRAFT MADE ITS WAY ACROSS THE RIVER. THE FERRYMAN, FEARING FOR THE SAFETY OF HIS PASSENGERS...

... is the religious consciousness. The more people become religious, the more politics loses lustre. The politician is after power, and the religious man is not after anything. The religious man wants to live herenow, and the politician is always preparing for some future - future which never comes. The politician is always after some utopia, chasing it... after some dream. It never comes. All...

... happy with it he is not disturbed. Whatsoever happens on the periphery makes no difference to the center. He remains the center of the cyclone. 'WHAT!' BAWLED THE SAMURAI, 'ME BE PATIENT? LISTEN HERE, IF YOU DON'T JUMP OFF THIS THING I SWEAR I'LL DROWN YOU." A politician, a power-oriented person, cannot be patient. The more impatient he is, the more possibility of succeeding in the world of power...

..., the politicians, the power-addicted people, they could not tolerate this humble and simple man. He was not doing any harm to them. In fact he was teaching people harmless things. He was teaching them to become innocent like children. He was teaching them 'blessed are the meek'. But they became infuriated. They had to kill him, because his very presence became very humiliating to them. Such a tower...

... your tranquility, you remain centered and rooted in your being, sooner or later the other is going to relax. Because silence is such a power, silence is such a transforming force, silence is so alchemical... it is the only magic in the world... the other is bound to be transformed. Just wait a little. Don't be in a hurry. The other will take a little time. Give him opportunity. The samurai ran, fell...

... cannot be absolutely sure that when you have overthrown one political tyranny, it will not be replaced by another. You can fight with the United States and its ugly attempt to keep South Korea under its power - to destroy people and their freedom. Now they are killing your people, calling them communist. Tomorrow... it is going to happen out of necessity, because history moves like the pendulum of a...

... strange fate, but it has a subtle logic in it. The people who have been revolutionaries become accustomed to being revolutionaries; and any regime is anti-revolutionary. It may be the regime created by the revolutionaries themselves, but the moment people come into power, they become anti-revolutionary, because now revolution goes against their power. They were in favor of revolution, because revolution...

... was bringing power into their hands - it is simple logic. And the revolutionaries cannot believe that this is the freedom they have been fighting for. Only the people have changed, but everything remains the same: the same bureaucracy, the same ugly politicians, but now they will be South Koreans, not Americans. And these people will forget all the promises that they had given to the people to...

... support the revolution; they will start exploiting the same people. Naturally, many revolutionaries of the past start drifting away from the people who have come into power. Once they were all fighting with the enemy, shoulder to shoulder. Now they start drifting away, because the revolution has been betrayed. And now the revolutionaries who have come into power - and power simply destroys all their...

... Soviet Union, it does not matter. Tyranny is simply tyranny; it is murderous, it is criminal. So rather than waiting for a beautiful future, when America is gone out of South Korea and South Koreans themselves are in power... don't trust it too much. History teaches something else; the people will remain in the same ugly situation, under the same horrors. Only the butchers have changed, but the murder...

... house arrest. My uncles could not complete their education, because the time they were going to spend in the universities was spent in the jails. And every kind of torture... but there was great hope that this night, however long, would end. It has ended, but the day has not come. This is the miracle. The British imperialists have gone, and those who have come into power were fighting against British...

... are the same. Their clinging to power is the same, their exploitation of people is the same. The bureaucracy has become stronger, and the country has gone through a shock: "What happened to the freedom for which we fought? For which our youth was crucified? For which thousands of people were jailed, killed? Is this the freedom for which all these sacrifices were made?" Certainly, that is...

... not freedom. Perhaps in the political world that kind of freedom can never come unless the rebel is born, not the revolutionary. The revolutionary has failed, utterly failed; and not one time, but hundreds of times. Now it can be accepted as a rule: the revolutionary talks of great things, promises paradises, and when he comes into power, he proves a greater tyrant than the previous ones. My hope is...

..., those who want you to remain enslaved forever... this is their device. A man who is whole cannot be oppressed, cannot be exploited and cannot be reduced to a slave. And there are people whose only ambition is for power. Power seems to be their only cause for living. Friedrich Nietzsche died in a madhouse. It is an unfortunate thing... while doctors were declaring him mad, priests were declaring him...

... mad, his own friends and family were declaring him mad, he was writing his greatest book - in the madhouse. The name of the book is THE WILL TO POWER. Looking at the book and its greatness, anyone can see that all those people who forced him into the madhouse were simply trying to get rid of someone whose every word was an arrow. They were not able to bear the height of his being. They wanted him to...

... be completely forgotten and ignored. Certainly he was not mad; otherwise the greatest book of his life could not have been written in the madhouse. He himself never saw the book published - it was published posthumously. I have looked into all his works. It seems in THE WILL TO POWER he has put together everything that was scattered in many books of his writings. Each statement is so pregnant that...

... that they have been clinging to as wisdom. He is proving that it is sheer stupidity. Kahlil Gibran was immensely impressed by Friedrich Nietzsche. In his work, THE WILL TO POWER, he has opened the heart of humanity: Why is there no music, but only misery? The reason is that the priests of all religions, and politicians of all kinds of ideologies, are so desirous of power that they don't want humanity...

... have all the opportunities to be powerful in the world, but empty inside. Those rare souls who choose passion, love, the heart, are aflame inside with beauty, blissfulness, fragrance, but on the outside they have no power. The priestess is asking one of the fundamental questions: SPEAK TO US OF REASON AND PASSION.... What is your approach to these two things? Both exist in man, and both appear - at...

... least superficially - contradictory. A choice has to be made; otherwise man will be riding on two horses, and the ultimate result cannot but be a disaster. She was not aware that Kahlil Gibran has a far deeper insight than the priests and the priestesses, the politicians and the people who have power - either of money or of prestige. AND HE ANSWERED, SAYING: YOUR SOUL IS OFTENTIMES A BATTLEFIELD...

... clever device. If you are together and one, you have the integrity, individuality, and energy to fight against anything that wants to destroy your freedom, and if the whole humanity has that integrity, dictators will disappear. Politicians have no place in a right human society. In a cultured society, what is the need of laws, of courts? The judges, the police commissioners lose all their power. So as...

... not to lose the power, they have to keep you divided. Nietzsche spoke directly, and suffered for it. Nietzsche is one of the greatest sacrifices humanity has made - because of power hungry people. But they are not bothered about Kahlil Gibran. People will read him as a poet, a beautiful entertainment, but nothing more. YOUR SOUL IS OFTENTIMES A BATTLEFIELD, UPON WHICH YOUR REASON AND YOUR JUDGMENT...

... LONGER USED BY MANY SANNYASINS, WHO RESPOND TO THE QUESTION, "WHY NOT?" WITH THE JUSTIFICATION THAT THESE MEASURES WERE ONE OF SHEELA'S POWER TRIPS. SOME SANNYASINS HAVE TAKEN OFF THEIR MALAS AND THEIR RED CLOTHES, AND THEY ASK OTHER SANNYASINS WHO CONTINUE TO WEAR THEM IF IT STILL MEANS SOMETHING TO THEM. SOME SANNYASINS SEEM TO USE YOUR WORDS TO JUSTIFY THEIR EGOTISTIC BEHAVIOR. TO ME, IT...

... SEEMS THAT NOT ONLY YOUR THERAPISTS, BUT ALSO A LOT OF OTHER SANNYASINS ARE WALKING THE SO-CALLED PATH OF FREEDOM THAT YOU TALKED OF IN CONNECTION WITH SOME OF THE SANNYASIN THERAPISTS. OSHO, WHAT IS HAPPENING TO SANNYASINS? There are many questions in the question. First, the precautions for AIDS had nothing to do with anybody's power trip. In fact, all the precautions that were taken in the commune...

.... With the change of all the individuals, the society is automatically changed. It was only a name. Prince Kropotkin was a beautiful man, very innocent, and his idea is perfect, but his technique to bring his idea into reality is faulty. It is childish. It can never succeed. The same happened with Karl Marx. He thought that first the poor will take over the power and will create a dictatorship of the...

.... Now there is no class of the bourgeois, the rich; everybody is equally poor. It is time, past time, for the dictatorship to disappear. But Marx never thought that the people who would be in power would not like to lose their power. Why do people who have money not want to share it? - because money is power. It is the same, simple thing. Now the people who are in power in the Soviet Union, why should...

... they want their power to be lost and they become just ordinary citizens? They want to cling to the power, and now there seems to be no possibility of revolution in Russia. Even if Karl Marx wants to enter Russia he will not be given a visa because he is a dangerous man. He will start talking about dissolving the dictatorship of the proletariat - it is no longer needed. Never in the whole history have...

... rich people done any harm compared to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Just Stalin alone killed one million people to distribute wealth. No rich man has had that much power. So for the first time a very powerful government has come into existence in the name of a classless society, in the name of dispersing all power. And what they have been doing with people is really unimaginable. One man got a...

... your heart will understand. Whether your mind understands or not is of no significance. The fifth question: Question 4: MORARJI DESAI SAYS THAT STUDENTS SHOULD NOT TAKE PART IN POLITICS. WHAT DO YOU SAY ABOUT IT? Remember always: whatsoever the politicians say, it is always politics. Whenever a politician reaches to power he always starts telling the students not to participate in politics - but only...

... when he is in power. When he is not in power he is all in favor - students SHOULD participate in politics. How has Morarji reached to power? Basically, it was a students' movement in Gujarat and Bihar; on that tidal wave of the youth movement he has reached to power. Now he must be afraid; now if students continue to participate in politics he can be toppled. This is something beautiful to be...

... understood: whenever politicians are out of power they provoke the students. The same politicians, when they reach to power, they start telling the students, "Please, this is not your work. You should go to the colleges, to the universities. Politics has to be avoided. Don't be distracted by politics!" Because that is the bridge, that bridge has to be broken. Otherwise others will be coming. And...

... is the orientation there is rebellion, revolution. And the people who are in power are always afraid of any kind of rebellion, of any kind of revolution. So remember, when politicians say, "Participate in politics," then too it is politics. When they say, "Don't participate in politics," then too it is politics. They always speak politics, whatsoever they say. Even in their...

... youth, and the power went into the hands of the very rotten old. This is strange - that the stir was of the youth but the people who came into power are all above seventy, and a few are even above eighty. One sometimes wonders why dead people can't get out of their graves and become prime ministers and presidents... they will prove to be even better! I was reading a story: Three old friends met for...

... behind you. But now, naturally, once you have reached to power you become afraid. But you ask me, "What do you say about it?" I also say to you to avoid politics, don't take part in politics - not for the same reason, of course. First, I am not a politician. Second, I am not in power. I have nothing to be afraid of in your taking part in politics. So, the reason why Morarji Desai says, "...

... don't leave it to others who cannot do anything else, those others will become criminals. The criminal and the politician are the same type of people. If the criminal becomes politically successful he is a great leader. If the politician cannot succeed in being in power he becomes a criminal. They are destructive people: their whole effort is to dominate others. The really creative person is not...

... smile becoming smaller and smaller, disappearing - because you cannot fulfill the promises that you have made to the people. And you always make big promises. Without making big promises you will not reach to power, so you give fantastic promises that you know you cannot fulfill - but who cares! Once you are in power, then we will see. Then we will see how they can take you out of power; you will...

... cling, and you will have all the powers to cling and the whole bureaucracy and the whole government machinery will be with you. Once you are in power who cares about the promises? The leaders forget all about their promises. And don't remind them! They feel very hurt and very annoyed. But people start seeing that the promises are not being fulfilled: "These people have cheated us!" The image...

..., but the people around them are the people who are in the habit of following, following anybody. A follower hasn't a judgement of his own. In fact, the brainless becomes the follower. Those who have their own intelligence stand on their own feet instead of blindly following others. After the death of a mahatma, someone from the second rank wants to occupy the first position and the race for the power...

... starts. Similarly, the people who assembled around Gandhiji were of second rank. They had some 'reflections' of the original mahatma but now that generation is also gone and the national power is in the hands of the third rank people. These are the people who used to spread beds in the Gandhian Era and used to go from village to village to announce that the mahatma was coming. This is not unique of the...

... to be. But, why do we put them onto the throne? Why do we give them power, prestige and position? If we stop satisfied at the analysis of the Gandhian, we will again hand over the country in the hands of other morons. Their faces will be different, the banners will be different; only they may be around some other mahatma to come. And we shall initiate the same mistake and shall suffer as we have...

... prescription. Life is moving forward and the follower is dragging it backwards. The followers who assembled around Gandhiji were broadly of two kinds: Political minded and theoretical minded, later turning into the autocratic and the pedantic. The former is busy exercising power, the latter is busy spinning Gandhian scriptures. The Gandhian in power killed truth, non- violence and all, the Gandhian in ashram...

... killed satyagraha, mass resistance, non-cooperation and all. The Gandhian in power came to know that power could be sustained only untruth and violence. He harps on truth and non-violence, and very loudly too. The loudness is necessary to camouflage what actually, in practice, he is doing. Abstinence is talked about but the possessions of all kinds are being acquired. The Gandhian in power has...

... man will not eat but food and taste will haunt him day and night. Unnatural suppression is perversion. In true tradition of our melancholic culture, Gandhiji was, unsubtly, opposed to any ind of joy, happiness. We revere more those who renounce more; clothes, wealth, power. We call him devout who indulges in self-repression. But, unhappiness, pain, is against our nature. No man desires privation...

... Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. [A sannyasin asks about the pattern her relationships seem to fall into: I feel very attracted to a kind of power, aura, and then in the end it's very destructive for me.... I find myself loving that person a lot and then they tell me that they don't really think that they're interested in me.] There are a few things to be understood.... One is, you have...

.... Enforced, it is not going to change, by will power it is not going to be changed - just by awareness. There is a difference to be understood: will always divides and awareness always unites. When you are aware, you are one; when you will something, you are two. It is as if the moment you will, you become the rider on the horse. The horse and the rider are two: the rider trying to force the horse in some...

... direction and the horse resisting. When you try through will, you are a rider on the horse, you are divided into two: then your mind is one and your body is another. There is a continuous conflict, a fight, and that fight dissipates much energy. Rather than helping it, it makes you more and more weak, and again and again you will feel frustrated. Because the horse is powerful, the real power belongs to...

... the horse. The rider has no power really; it is just a mind thing. The real power belongs to the horse but the rider has the idea 'I am the master'. The idea of the master is in the rider and the real power is in the horse, so again and again the rider is going to be frustrated. And the more you get frustrated - the more you feel it is impossible, that you cannot do it, it is not going to happen...

... creativity they are absolutely blind, color blind. Just as there are color blind people who can't see certain colors, politicians can't see creativity. But destruction? - their eyes magnify it. There is some psychological background to it, because they are all people running after power. Will- to-power is their god, and certainly nothing gives you more of a feeling of power than destruction. When you...

... destroy something you have a tremendous feeling of power. So once in a while, when you have the immense feeling of power and nothing to do, you start destroying things that you know perfectly well.... You may destroy the chair, you may destroy the mirror, you may start throwing things in the room because you are so full of anger - which is a quality of power, a dimension of power. You know perfectly...

... well that what you are doing is stupid; it is your own mirror that you are destroying and tomorrow you will be going to the market to purchase another, and bothering about the price, and haggling about the price. You know all that, but that is far away in the background; what you need now is to feel power, that you are not impotent. And in the second world war, Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, were...

... estimated. "Why so much hurry? If we have been fighting for five years, and in two weeks' time the war is going to end, let it at least end in a human way, at least the way it has always been. Don't make it into something even more inhuman." But Truman, who succeeded Roosevelt, and the other people who were in power, and who had then the atom bomb in their hands, could not wait. This was not the...

... time to wait, because if they waited for two weeks more then where were they going to try out the atom bomb? Where were they going to see the glory of their power? And how were they going to show these enemies, with whom they had been struggling, that once and for all it had to be decided who was the most powerful. The atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on two cities in Japan, for...

... programmed. Once we can split the living cell then any program can be put into it. But who knows whether that great act of creation will also be used in the same way as Albert Einstein's atomic research has been used? Most probably it will be, because the people who have the power would like to program man according to their desire, and they will not miss such an opportunity. This is the opportunity they...

... think about his reasoning, anybody with just a little bit of intelligence.... Just the other day I was listening to a news item. He has been, since he came to power, continually slaughtering people. Corporal punishment is an ordinary thing: every day on every crossroad you will find people hanging naked, beaten, blood flowing from their bodies. For any small thing corporal punishment is immediately...

... simply sitting, doing nothing. There is not even ideation - no thinking, because that is enough to take you far away, farther away than the stars. You have to be simply nobody because just a little bit of an idea of who you are, and the politician comes in, the power trip begins. I am nobody, and that's the truth. It is not that I am saying it out of humbleness, because if you say "I am nobody...