... that she was a witch; and once she accepted that she was a witch, she had to be burned alive. Thousands of women they burned alive! Now suddenly their interest is in non-violence: abortion is violence. And the same pope's predecessors blessed Benito Mussolini in the second world war. That was not violence? The archbishop of Canterbury in England blessed the British forces - and that was not violence...

...? - that was perfectly good? One wonders at what point abortion becomes violence. At what point...? A child is conceived this moment - is he alive or dead? He is alive, but from where has the life come? He was alive in the semen cells before he became conceived in the mother's womb; the semen cells are all alive. They have a small life span, just two hours, so if within two hours they can find a female...

... a question of care. It is something far more deeper. My sannyasins are my extensions. This commune is an organic whole. We are not only living together, we are growing together. We are creating our future together, and we will not allow anybody to disturb it. And we have the means to stop.* We are not violent people so we will not do any violence to anybody, but innocence has its own power...

... man talking about non-violence. But looking at his life one can see that his non- violence is only a political strategy. He himself is very violent. To his wife he was violent, to his children he was violent, to his disciples he was violent, and in very ugly ways. To himself also he was violent. So he was a kind of sado-masochist. In this reference I was saying that I have a certain respect for...

... father's feet, asked for his blessings, which Mahatma Gandhi could not give. I cannot see non-violence and love. In these small acts you can find the real person, not in speeches, public performances. The boy left. He lived with one of his uncles, studied, many times wanted just to come and see his mother but was refused. He graduated, and just to see how much Gandhi means that Hinduism and Mohammedanism...

... son, and I don't want him to see again." And in India when somebody dies and his funeral pyre is lit with fire, the eldest son puts the fire. So Gandhi made it his will that "Haridas is not my son and I emphasize the fact that after my death he should not put the fire into my funeral." What anger! What violence! I have known this man, Haridas Gandhi. He was really a lovely man. And he...

... leaving, says: I find that I have an extremely violent streak in me. I wondered if I should do some more groups or the Dynamic meditation.] [Osho said that on his return he should do some groups, and for the moment should continue Dynamic meditation... ] It will go. Violence is never part of nature. Nobody is born violent; one learns it. One is infected by a violent society, by violence all around and...

... one becomes violent. Otherwise every child is born absolutely non-violent. There is no violence in your being itself. It is conditioned by situations. One has to defend oneself against so many things and offence is the best method of defending. When a person has to defend himself so many times, he becomes offensive, he becomes violent, because it is better to hit first than to wait for somebody to...

... twelve years -- a war. He accumulates so much anger, so much rage, so much violence, that nothing short of a war will give him release. So, war after war, there is a gap of only ten to fifteen years. That gap is a kind of relaxation. But again you start accumulating, because the same psychology is working -- the same jealousy, the same violence. And man is basically a hunter; he is not by nature...

... disagreement with himself. So whenever he can find a chance -- for a beautiful cause; freedom, democracy, socialism -- any beautiful word can become an umbrella to hide his ugly unconscious, which simply wants to destroy and enjoys destruction. Now the world war has become almost impossible; otherwise there would have been no terrorism. Enough time has passed since the second world war; the third world war...

... if it happens it won't relieve people, it will only destroy people. So individual violence will increase -- it is increasing. And all your governments and all your religions will go on perpetuating the old strategies without understanding the new situation. The new situation is that every human being needs to go through therapies, needs to understand his unconscious intentions, needs to go through...

... of violence to anybody, including yourself. Secondly, you have to hit him harder because you respect the other person; if he gives you one rupee's worth, you give him two rupee's worth. You don't make him inferior, you make him superior. I will not say, "Turn the other cheek." I will say, "Hit on his cheek as hard as you can so he learns a lesson; otherwise, he will start hitting...

... other people's cheeks. And you will be responsible for all that violence." So nonviolence does not mean that you have just to be there, beaten. Then you are allowing violence. This kind of nonviolence has deprived this whole country. For example, Jainas will not go into war. No Jaina will enter into armies because they are nonviolent people. But if they are nonviolent people, why do they accept...

... anybody else to kill you either. So my idea of nonviolence is different from Mahavir, Buddha, Gandhi. My idea is nonviolence should be out of an abundance of power. Don't use that power to kill, to destroy; but use that power to create, to protect. And if anybody tries to harm you or anybody else, do everything to prevent that harm. Violence has to be completely removed from the world, but it can happen...

... it and your need is nil, so you become afraid. You know that the energy is not cooperating with you, so it is almost a violence on your being. How can you enjoy it if it is violence ? You cannot be total in it. And you will feel nervous and you will feel shaky, because you are moving into a certain space which is not needed by you. You have to move to some higher spaces. And your energy is ready to...

... will be more aesthetic, less sexual. The sexual love remains a little coloured with violence; it remains a little crude. It can't be very soft; it can't have grace and dignity. It is anger; it is our animal heritage. So don't feel unnecessarily miserable. In the East, people try hard to attain this state, and if somebody is born with it he is put very high. And their understanding is right, their...

... afraid of the conflict. He is trying to destroy the part. If you destroy the part, in the destruction of the part the very possibility to move to the whole is lost. But fortunately nobody can destroy the part, you can only think that you have destroyed it: it always remains hidden in you. At the most you can suppress it, that's all. You cannot destroy it. Destruction is not possible in this world. You...

... can neither create anything nor can you destroy anything, because destruction means something was there and now it has become nothing. Something cannot become nothing, there is no way to reduce something to nothing. And there is no way to create anything, because creation means to bring something out of nothing. There is no way. Something can change into something else, but there is no creation and...

... no destruction. You cannot destroy the part, because in fact the part never belonged to you - who are you to destroy it? The part belongs to the whole, how can you destroy it? You never created it. Can you create the ego? If you cannot create the ego, how can you destroy it? Don't be stupid. All that you can do is to create a gestalt or to destroy a gestalt. This German word is beautiful. Out of...

... and destroyed. But that became the destruction of my identification. Since then I have been in the valleys, and I have been to the peaks, but I remain aloof. I can still hear - whenever I go to the peak I can still hear the laughter of Junnaid's wife behind the screen. She is still laughing. I never get identified." Soon after this situation Shibli became an enlightened man. What is...

... became independent, and the whole country was on fire - violence everywhere, destruction everywhere... even his own followers, intimate followers, were no longer listening to him - he said for the first time, "Now I don't want to live one hundred and twenty-five years." Perhaps when Nathuram Godse shot him, he felt relieved, because he was carrying a burden. He could not show his face to...

.... But this happens to all great leaders: when they succeed, then comes the moment of their failure. It happened in India. Mahatma Gandhi led the country for forty years and made the people believe, "When independence comes all your problems are solved. There will be no poverty, no suffering, no riots, no violence. These Hindu-Mohammedan riots in which thousands of people are killed, burned alive...

... suddenly there was a tremendous outburst of violence such as India had never seen before, perhaps no other country has seen ever before. Gandhi was shattered. Now the British were gone, but the violence was a million times more, because the British had a certain discipline, power, and they had managed the country for three hundred years. Now there was nobody; everybody was free to do whatsoever he wanted...

... more destruction. That's what your scientists do, that's what your politicians do. I have heard a beautiful story: After the second world war, God was very puzzled. He could not believe his own eyes. Seeing Hiroshima, Nagasaki - he could not believe that he had created this kind of man. He started to think again, as if he had committed a mistake: he should have stopped with animals, he should not...

... have created Adam and Eve - because man was becoming so destructive. To give a last chance he called three representatives from the world, one Russian, one American, one English. Those were the powerful people after the second world war. He asked the Russian, "Why do you go on preparing for more and more destruction? If you need something, you just ask me and I will fulfill it immediately. But...

... no more destruction." The Russian looked very arrogantly at God and said, "Listen, first we don't believe that you are! We have our own trinity - Marx, Lenin, Stalin" - a very unholy trinity, but communists have that trinity. "We believe in them, we don't believe in you. But if you want us to believe in you, you will have to give us proof." "What is the proof?"...

... gentlemanly - and he was! God asked him, "What is your desire? What do you want?" The Englishman said, "We don't have any desire. Fulfill the desires of both of these simultaneously, and our desire is fulfilled!" But this is how man has existed, down the ages: much more interested in destruction, destroying the other, than in living oneself, than in enjoying life. Man seems to be death...

...-obsessed: wherever man moves he brings death, destruction. This neurotic society exists because individuals are neurotic. This world is ugly because you are ugly! You contribute your ugliness to this world. And everybody goes on pooling ugliness, neuroses, and the world becomes more and more a hell. You need not go anywhere else; this is the only hell there is. But you can come out of it. By...

... question: "Your sannyasins will become a burden to the world because you don't allow them to do anything, because every action in some way involves some kind of violence... " You will be surprised that Mahavira is not against sex in the same way as other religions are. He is against it because sex kills millions of living sperm. It is a question of violence, not of sex. If you look at his...

... cultivation. That's why Jains don't cultivate - because if you cultivate you will have to cut the trees, the plants, and that will be violence. You cannot be warriors, you cannot be soldiers. And brahmins won't allow you to be brahmins. A brahmin is only born a brahmin. You cannot be a brahmin, no matter how learned you are. Naturally, all the Jainas became businessmen. There was nothing else left; that...

... seemed to be the least violent way. In fact it is not so. Because they became the richest people in the country - that means they sucked more blood than anybody else, they exploited people more than anybody else. It seems that because their violence was not allowed in any other way, their whole violence was focused on the poor customer. Mahavira was asked again and again, "Your sannyasins will be...