---
section: Library
booktitle: "From Bondage to Freedom"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "BONDAG"
dategiven: "28 September 1985 am"
place: " in Rajneeshmandir"
chapternum: "Chapter #14"
chaptertitle: "No master, no disciple"
acode: "8509280"
shorttitle: "BONDAG14"
audio: "Yes"
video: "Yes"
esttime: "135mins"
displaytitle: "From Bondage to Freedom: Chapter #14"
---

```style
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  font-style: italic;
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}
```
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<p class="question">BELOVED MASTER,
YOU ALWAYS SAID THAT WOMEN ARE BETTER THAN MEN AS FAR AS RULING AND GOVERNING PEOPLE IS CONCERNED. YOU SAID THAT THEY ARE BETTER THAN MEN BECAUSE THEIR STARTING POINT IS FROM THE HEART.
CONSIDERING RECENT FACTS, DO YOU STILL HAVE THIS OPINION? DO YOU STILL TRUST IN WOMEN?</p>


Certainly. The proof is Ma Prem Hasya, Ma Anuradha. Just one Sheela does not make any difference to me. Does it make any difference that man has produced during history people like Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, Nadirshah, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin? Does that mean that all men are condemned?


One Sheela is just a dewdrop; it will evaporate in the morning sun. It has not made even a dent in my respect for womanhood. That's why I have replaced her with another woman -- far better, far more intelligent, far more loving. Sheela was sick. She needs to be forgiven. Whatever she did was out of a deranged mind. She has done many crimes, but still she deserves your compassion.


As far as I am concerned, one person cannot represent the whole womankind. Two billion women are on the earth. Are you going to decide about two billion women because of Sheela?


Just look at Anuradha, who has been with me longer than Sheela. She has never hankered for any power, carries no inferiority complex in her, is absolutely fulfilled as she is. All that she wants is to be here in my presence, whatsoever the cost.


Look at Vivek, who has been with me longest -- for fifteen years. When she first came, she was only twenty; now she is thirty-five. Almost half of her life she has been with me. And she has served me with an immense devotion, love, care, such that you can only find in ancient stories about women, not in reality. From the morning when I wake up, till at night when I go to sleep, she is running all around. She has no time of her own, every moment she is devoted. Just to serve me is her joy.


Sheela is not representative. And there are thousands of women who love me more than Sheela ever did. I don't think she is capable of love. Perhaps that early rape and pregnancy and the condemnation -- particularly in India -- have destroyed some part in her heart. She has become more violent, aggressive, hostile to the whole world.


Your asking the question is absurd. I have known many more women than any man has known, ever. I have been loved by so many women -- without any demands, without any jealousy. My respect for womanhood remains the same. Just one sick woman cannot destroy it. And she is certainly sick.


I had made her the president of the foundation for the simple reason that in a strange land you will be opposed, you will be continuously harassed. The whole of Oregon was hostile to you, which is simply man's animal nature: anything that is strange makes them afraid. And who can find more strange people than you? You are the strangest lot on the earth!


I have collected all the unfits, rebels, individuals who have refused to become just a cog in the wheel of the social mechanism, who have refused to believe in religious lies, in political cunningness, hypocrisy.


My people are not a society; it is a commune. And the difference between a society and a commune is tremendous. A society functions according to certain rules, regulations, morality, religion, politics. And anybody who does not fit becomes an outcast. A commune is a totally different phenomenon. It has nothing to impose upon you -- no ideology, no discipline, no religion, no culture. A commune simply helps you to be yourself.


So this is a group where individuals exist. And because they have allowed everybody else to be themselves, everybody else loves them as they are. There are no demands on them. You need not fulfill any conditions to be respectable; you are born respectable. Existence has respected you enough; otherwise, you would not have been here. Existence needed you; without you something would have been missing.


So the commune is nothing but a communion, a meeting of individuals who are able to meet, to love, and yet remain individuals. There is no need, no effort to dominate, to destroy the other.


All the people around the world in different societies, cultures, civilizations, are doing one thing. They may call themselves lovers, wives, husbands, parents, teachers, students -- but everybody is trying to destroy the other. There seems to be some fear, paranoia, that if you don't destroy the other, then the other is going to destroy you, so it's better to be first. And they have, down the ages, developed strategies. Those strategies have become part of their upbringing.


When the parents are trying to destroy their children -- they don't think they are destroying them; they think they are making them human; they are teaching them to be cultured; they are teaching them manners, etiquette, behavior. Whatever they are doing, they think they are doing for the children's sake. This was done to them by their parents, and for millennia every generation has been doing it to the coming generation.


Only in this last phase of the century has a generation gap arisen. It has never been in the world before, for the simple reason that people were not going to the colleges, to the university, and being away from their parents for such a long period -- ten years or more.


Those years they have been in the university is the gap. The parents could not condition them according to their ideology, and when they come back from the university -- twenty-five years old, twenty-six years old -- they are grown-ups. They have their own intelligence, their own thinking. Now it is not easy to force them to believe in things for which you cannot give any rational proofs.


You cannot tell them to believe in a God, you cannot tell them to believe in heaven and hell, for the simple reason that now they can think on their own, and your ideas look just stupid. This is the generation gap. It is growing wider.


You are the product of the generation gap; you could not fit in the society. You are fortunate. Others who have preceded you had to fit with the society from the very beginning. They never got a chance for their own individuality to grow. So the old type of human beings are bound to be very much against you.


Just the other day, from a very reliable source I have been informed that the governor has put the National Guard on alert against us. It seems so absurd; one of the greatest powers in the world is afraid of five thousand unfits? And you are not doing any harm to anybody -- you don't have any time to!


Living is so much, loving is so much, dancing is so much, singing is so much, rejoicing is so much -- who has time for anything else? From the early morning to late in the night you are engaged in an ecstatic journey.


In the outside world people work. Naturally, they are tired. You worship; you are not tired. You can dance after the whole day's work. You can still love after the whole day's work. Your girlfriend does not have to pretend that she has a headache. I don't see that headaches are happening here at all. There may be other aches, but no headache. Heads we have put aside!


To put the National Guard on alert against us is simply to show the impotence of the politicians, of the government. And if the Russians come to know about it -- and they must come to know about it -- what will they think?


This is a nuclear power; you can destroy my people. Just dropping one hydrogen bomb will make a beautiful Hiroshima in America. You miss it! It will be a good tourist spot. You are poorer than Japan. Japan has two tourist spots: Nagasaki and Hiroshima. You have nothing. I am offering you a chance. And you will see how people can dance and sing and rejoice and love and hug -- even while they are being destroyed.


My people are not afraid of death or destruction, for the simple reason that they have tasted life, love. The person who is afraid of death is the person who knows nothing of life. The more you know about life, the more deeply you live it, the more intensely you get absorbed in it, overwhelmed by it, the more you become aware that there is something in you which is deathless. No nuclear weapons can destroy it.


But for every reason we are strangers to these people. I had put Sheela in charge, knowingly. She was needed, she did much good to the commune. But there is always a risk, and she started doing harm too. The moment I became aware that she was doing harm also, and I saw that the commune was now established and Oregon has accepted that we are going to be here -- America or no America, we are going to be here -- Sheela was no longer needed. And that was hurting her ego very much.


Now we need a softer quality of people who can destroy all the hostility that Sheela has created, had to create. We need superior people who don't have any inferiority. We need more creative people, more healthy, more juicy.


You will have observed that I have put Americans in most of the power positions. In Sheela's group, most were non-Americans. The reason was, those non-Americans would be more able to fight for you against the Americans. That phase is over. Now we want friendship. We are now part of America. We are Americans, fresh Americans.


I have put more Americans in power, but they are still women. Man has his own qualities; they are different from woman's.


And I want to prove to the world that just as the woman is capable of managing a house beautifully -- a clean house, good food, good clothes, everything in place; can beautify the house, just by her presence can make it something of an art -- women can do the same to the commune. It is a bigger home.


Of course, they cannot be soldiers, and they should not be. They cannot be great scientists, and there is no need. But they can be good painters, poets; they can create great literature. And greatest of all, they can create an atmosphere of love, hospitality. This has to be proved existentially; otherwise the woman will remain always a slave.


For centuries she has been a slave, and now there are a few idiotic women who call themselves the women's liberation movement. And whatever they are doing is not liberation, but simply reaction. They are teaching women to be lesbians, against men. They are spreading hatred. But a woman who cannot love a man loses something.


That was the case with Sheela; she cannot love a man. She has been trying hard; she has changed many husbands, many boyfriends, hoping that perhaps somebody she can love. But she cannot love unless her deep-rooted hatred for men is dissolved. She needs psychotherapy. She needs to open her wounds so they can be healed.


The liberation movement is not really in favor of woman's future, it is against it. It is a reactionary movement. They are asking for equality with men. Why equality? Woman is woman, man is man; they are unique beings. They are not equal, they are not unequal either; they are simply different. They are opposite polarities.


Asking for equality, they are doing all kinds of idiotic things. Because man smokes, liberation women are smoking. Do you think this is intelligence? Man is doing something foolish, but to be equal, you have to do that foolish thing. Soon the women's liberation will tell women to piss standing! Equality? This is sheer nonsense.


I don't see that there is any problem. Women should behave like women, according to their nature. A woman smoking looks as if something has gone wrong. And please, at least don't start pissing standing. Equality does not mean that you have to do everything that man is doing.


Psychologically there is no equality; there is only uniqueness. The woman has to assert her uniqueness, and she has a different way of expressing herself.


It is not only when you make a painting that you are a creator; when you make delicious food, you are an even greater creator, because nobody can eat the painting. It does not help in any way.


You just have to make certain that whatever you are doing is done as a worship, as love, as creativity. Your creativity as woman is far more nourishing than man's creativity. What does he do? He paints, he makes sculpture, he writes poetry, novels. This is good, but it is only entertainment; it is not life.
Woman has to contribute more to life.


Why not make life more poetic? And just a small touch and life becomes poetic. Why not make life a little more musical? Why not make life more colorful? -- which will be the woman's way of painting. Why not grow beautiful gardens around your house? Why not bring thousands of flowers around your house? A flower is far more valuable than any sculpture. The sculpture is dead; the flower is alive, is full of dance in the wind, in the rain, in the sun.


The woman should not try to imitate man; otherwise she will be only a second-grade man. She will never become equal, she will be only a carbon copy.


Be original. And that's what I have been trying in my commune: giving women every opportunity to express their potentiality.


Sheela was not really a woman. She had lost her heart long ago, she was crippled. But I had chosen her for the simple reason that she is so full of hate, so hostile that she will be able to fight, and allow you meanwhile to become established.


She did her work. But when you give some work to a sick man or sick woman, you know it is risky. A madman may be useful; but a madman is, after all, a madman. When she got the taste of power, then rather than defending the society, the commune, the people that gathered here, she started becoming a criminal. She wanted to take revenge.


That was the time that I had to stop her. I had to wait for the moment when you were established. To remove her was not a problem. I had not even told her to get lost. I just started speaking, and she understood that now her power was gone. Her power was as my representative. Now, there is no need for any representative -- I am speaking myself.


Now I have given you another group. You need now a higher and better group which can create friendship. Even idiots can create enmity; not much intelligence is needed. But to create friendship, to make bridges, intelligence is needed, love is needed, grace is needed.


I have given you the group now. Support the group, help the group, for the simple reason that now we are no longer foreigners.


Right now we are the only people who are bringing in almost thirty thousand people per year, around the year. Nobody can claim that the thirty thousand tourists are coming because of them. Of course, these people spend money -- that goes to Oregon. If we are supported, we can bring thousands and thousands of people here. They should simply look at it.


And there are many experiments going on simultaneously....
I am trying to give woman her place.


I am trying to make the family disappear, so that people are not fixated on a very small, tiny group -- three, four, five people. Their loyalty should be wider and bigger. This small loyalty is dangerous.


We are trying to make the whole world know that five thousand people can live for four years without producing a single child. So why can't you do it? The world population has to be made less; otherwise, death is the alternative.


We have proved it perfectly, that people of all races, all religions, all nations, can live together without any difficulty. In fact, nobody even bothers, nobody even inquires of you, "Are you a Brazilian, or from Puerto Rico, or from Constantinople?" Nonessentials -- who cares about it? Are you a Catholic or a Protestant, Hindu, Buddhist, or a Mohammedan? Nobody bothers about it.


These five thousand people living together here, and similarly in other communes around the world, have proved that man by nature is not antagonistic to color, to religion, to race, to nation. These things are cultivated by the priest, by the politicians.


Here, nobody looks inferior, nobody feels superior. If Sigmund Freud had to come into this commune he would be in real difficulty, because he thought every person has to carry either an inferiority complex or a superiority complex. In this commune, he would have not found any example for his theory.


There is no need to feel inferior or superior. Everybody is just himself, there is no question of comparison. You are alone. There is nobody like you, so how can you be compared? It is comparison that brings inferiority, superiority, and then the complexes and the psychological problems, and the whole lot of it.


Simultaneously, many experiments are going on. And I can say to you with great joy that we are successful, and we will become a model for the whole humanity. What we can do can be done around the world without any difficulty.


Most of you have been brought up in nonvegetarian families. You have never thought or even bothered that you are eating something nauseating. Howsoever tasty it is, you have killed living beings.


Cannibals say that human meat is the most delicious. And you have to believe them, because they know the taste; they are not just proposing a theory about it. They have eaten all kinds of meat, but they say the best is of the human baby; nothing can be compared to its delicacy.


But I don't see any difference between cannibals and nonvegetarians. Maybe a difference of degree, but not of quality. If you can eat monkeys, who are your forefathers -- which is really ugly, to eat your own forefathers -- what is the difference? Cannibals are eating human beings, which seems to be more right; at least they are eating contemporaries, not forefathers.


But here, most of you are trying vegetarian food. In the future, that should be the food for all humanity. Life is not to be eaten. And when there is so much possibility for vegetarian food.... It has never been explored; otherwise there is so much possibility that there is no need for anybody to go hungry.


And life should be respected, whether the life is in you, or in a lion, or in a deer. The man who kills a deer has fallen from his humanity. He has destroyed a beautiful living being. Have you seen the deer jumping and running? So alive!


Have you watched one thing? From all the ranches around the deer have moved to this place. They seem to be more intelligent than the attorney general of Oregon. They saw that these people are harmless. Otherwise, for ten days every year Oregonians are free to kill deer, and for ten days they are all roaming around with their guns and killing the poor deer. All the deer slowly slowly have moved, because in this place we will not allow anybody to kill.


I have told President Hasya that I would like to make a deer park just near the Gurdjieff Dam where there is a waterfall. We are not using it, but any time we can use the waterfall. So the waterfall will become a small river, and the whole area should be made into a deer park. And they don't need anything much.


They eat a certain grass, alfa-alfa, so just.... They don't even ask about omega-omega, just alfa-alfa. Such simple people -- they have stopped at the first letter of the alphabet. So grow much grass for them, and they will be coming. And people can visit them in the daytime, in the night. And at least two, three thousand deer -- a whole commune of deer....


And once you are finished with deer, you have to make another place for my peacocks: a peacock park. Already in my garden there are three hundred peacocks. So I am willing -- you can take two hundred peacocks from there. And given good facilities, they grow fast. Soon, thousands of peacocks!


My idea of life in the commune is thousands of peacocks dancing, deer running, people loving, enjoying -- that seems to be human. And the peacocks and the deer, all have understood that there is nobody here who is going to harm them. They move freely without any fear. It gives me great joy that these innocent people -- peacocks, deer.... We have swans; I want to have more swans also. A place which has swans, thousands in the lake.... You can play with them and swim with them.


We have to be in tune with nature. We can make this place full of flowers, full of trees, full of animals, full of beautiful, unconditioned people. And this should be the model for the whole humanity.


Support the new people who are in power. They will be new to you, their methods will be new to you, so just be a little conscious of the change; it is for the better.


I don't believe in violent revolutions. I believe in a nonviolent evolution. And you can see it happen here. The old regime -- we have not even shot a single bullet -- has fled on its own. And we have changed the whole regime. This is evolution; this is not revolution. Nobody is killed, nobody is hit, nobody is harmed. But new people, a new group is now taking care of you -- a new phase, a new development. Support it, enjoy the change.


And now I am going to be available to you every day, so nothing can go wrong. Just my presence is enough so that nothing goes wrong.
My respect for women remains the same.


Every man should be respectful to women: they are your mothers, they are your beloveds.


Every woman should be respectful towards men: they are your children, they are your lovers.


There is no question of any conflict between man and woman: they are two sides of the same coin.
<p class="question">BELOVED MASTER,
THROUGH THE LAST EVENTS THERE HAS BEEN TREMENDOUS JOY AND PAIN. THE JOY IS TO SEE HOW YOU ARE THE ONLY REALITY THAT MATTERS. AND THE PAIN IS THAT MY CONNECTION IS SO SUPERFICIAL THAT I DIDN'T LISTEN TO YOU. AND SUDDENLY I CAME TO REALIZE THAT MY LOVE FOR YOU, HOWEVER BURNING AND INTENSE, IS MEANINGLESS, CHEAP AND WORTHLESS. I NEVER FELT SUCH A WOUND. IS THERE ANY WAY TO BE CLOSE TO YOU? AS I CAN'T REFRAIN FROM LOVING YOU, PLEASE TELL ME IT DOESN'T MATTER FOR YOU.</p>


It matters to me -- not that I am in any need of somebody to love me but because you are in need of expanding your love, of giving your love as high a dimension as possible.


It is good that you understand that your love is not as much, not as pure as it should be. This very awareness is a good sign. It means you can make it deeper, higher, more unconditional.
I am just an excuse.
Let me repeat: I am just an excuse.


I want your love to expand, to grow, so that you are overwhelmed with loving energy. Then it will not be only directed towards me, then it will be just like breathing. Wherever you go, you will be breathing; wherever you go, you will be loving.


Loving will become your simple state of being. Then only is it not cheap. Love as a relationship is always superficial and cheap.
Love as a state of being is invaluable.


But one has to begin with the first. You are already in the first stage. And because you are aware that it is cheap, there is every possibility you can transform the love energy. Use me as an excuse.
It matters to me because I love you.


It matters to me, because I know when love flowers, how much ecstasy it brings. It is my experience, and I want it to be your experience also.
I have discarded God. Now only love remains.
Your lovingness is your religion.


But remember the difference: to love a person is only to have a relationship. It is as if, when you are with a certain person, you breathe, and then when you leave the person you stop breathing, because how can you breathe without the person for whom you live? But that means the next time you don't find the person again, you will be dead.


And that's what has happened about love. Everybody is insisting, "Love me" -- and is very suspicious of you, that you may be loving other people too. This jealousy, this suspicion has killed love. The wife wants the husband to love only her.


While I was a professor in the university, a woman professor fell in love with me. I have never fallen in love with anybody. I only rise in love, I don't fall. So she was harassing me. It became difficult for me to sit in my university's common room because she was always waiting there. And she was a real woman: yakkety-yak, yakkety-yak.... And she asked me hundreds of times, "Do you love me?"
I said, "I have told you before -- yes!"
"But do you love me, only me?"


I said, "I have told you I love only you -- but this I tell to many women. Every woman wants to hear it -- what to do?" Since that day she disappeared.


The very question, "Love only me".... Then what are you going to do when you are out in the world meeting other people, on your job? You have to be alert not to show any love to anybody.


What to say of persons? Even if you are a very great lover of books, that's enough for your wife to create trouble for you, that when she is present you are still reading! When she is present you cannot read. When she is present, your reading means you love the book more than her. Women are known to take away books, throw them away. This type of behavior on the part of men and women has killed love.


In fact, if you really want to love your woman or your man, you have to be loving towards everybody you meet. You have to keep the flame burning. You have to keep breathing love. You have to keep radiating love; otherwise, when you meet your beloved, you only have just words to say: "I love you."


You know it is false, she knows it is false. You know she knows it is false; she knows you know it is false. Both know the reality, and both are trying not to see it. But what has happened? Why has the love disappeared? Because you made love a relationship.


Love cannot be made a relationship, love is a state of being. You are just a loving person. You love your friends, you love your books, you love paintings, you love the sunrise. You love many things. In all those things your love grows, expands; and the woman is benefited because now she has a man who is so full of love. The man is benefited if the woman also is in a state of love.


In my commune you have to learn loving -- not love relationships, but love as a state of your being, love as breathing. Just what breathing does to the body, love does to your soul.


Love is the breathing of your soul. The more you love, the more soul you have.


So don't be jealous. Don't prevent anybody, and don't try to monopolize love. There are a few things which cannot be monopolized.


You see a bird on the wing in the air, so beautiful -- the freedom, the joy. You can catch the bird, you can put it in a beautiful golden cage. Do you think it is the same bird? Apparently it is the same bird, but in reality it is not the same bird.


Where is the freedom? Where are those beautiful wings, balancing in the air? Where is that vast sky, the unlimited freedom? You have taken everything from the poor bird, and you think you have given him a great, precious cage, made of twenty-four karat gold! You have killed him.


That has been happening to love. The bird on the wing, free in the sky, is a beauty. The bird in a cage is dead, his spirit is dead. He still breathes; but he must be dreaming of the freedom of those beautiful moments rising higher and higher into the sky... of those beautiful mornings... the sunrise, the sunset. You have taken everything from the bird.


Love is a bird. Keep it free, don't try to monopolize it. It dies when you monopolize it. And that's why in the whole world everybody is saying, "I love you," and there seems to be no love at all anywhere.


The basic reason is, we have not allowed love freedom. We have tried to keep it in bondage -- and it is not possible. Then you can have only a hypocritical kind of love. It says, "I love you," because it has to be said; otherwise there is trouble. To avoid the trouble, the husband says, "I love you," the wife says, "I love you." But you can't see the shine, the gleam in their eyes, the aura on their faces. You cannot hear their hearts beating faster, you cannot smell the aroma of love around them. Everything is dead.
Love is the breathing of your soul.


Never allow your love to be dead, at any cost: you are killing your own spirit. And never do this harm to anybody else either.


Love gives freedom. And the more freedom love gives, the more loving the person becomes. This has to be the approach in my commune.
<p class="question">BELOVED MASTER,
YESTERDAY IN DISCOURSE, LOOKING AROUND RAJNEESH MANDIR, I THOUGHT THE REPORTERS AND THE STATE POLICE LOOKED SO TENSE, THEY COULD NOT SIT STILL FOR ONE MINUTE. HOW CAN WE BE OPEN AND LOVING TO THESE PEOPLE? IS IT POSSIBLE?</p>


In the first place, what the hell were you doing looking at them? I have never seen any police, any state officers. Why were you looking at them? Are you here to listen to me, or to look at police officers?


Secondly, if somebody is tense, fidgety, cannot even sit in one posture for one minute, he needs more compassion and more love. He is sick. He is not relaxed; something in him is not clean. He needs compassion and help, and you are asking, "How can we love them?"


I don't see any problem. The other person is tense, you are not tense. If you were tense, then the question would be meaningful: "I am tense, how can I love?" You are not tense; the other person is tense. This is like a doctor asking me, "Somebody is sick. How can I treat him?" The doctor is not sick, and the doctor's function is to treat the sick. No, when you saw them tense, you also became tense. When you saw them unrelaxed, you also became unrelaxed. Perhaps you became afraid, that's why the question: how can we love them? Otherwise, loving is no problem.


If you know love, you can love anybody. And particularly people who are tense are more in need. Your love will relax them. You should be more understanding.


Police officers, state officers, FBI officers, are bound to be tense here. They are almost on a different planet. They know how to behave with criminals; they don't know how to behave with lovers. They know how to behave with murderers; they don't know how to behave with meditators. It is understandable, their tension is understandable. They may have been hearing me for the first time. They may have been getting so many shocks from what I am saying....


Be compassionate to those poor people. They are not bad. At least they had the courage to come to the meeting, to sit with you, to listen to me, to try to understand what is happening here. But it is so new for them, so utterly unknown, that it is natural that they will get tense: what kind of people are these?


And one thing you should remember: the people in the police department, the FBI, the CIA, KGB, these people, and the people who are in the jails serving long sentences -- for ten years, fifteen years, twenty years, great criminals -- they are of the same quality.


A criminal employed becomes a police officer. A police officer unemployed becomes a criminal. It is only a question of employment. The police officer does crimes in the service of the government -- for which he is paid. The criminal is doing crimes independently. He is like a private detective, no government support. He is more courageous. But the quality of these people is not different.


If you are not a criminal, you will not be interested in becoming a police officer -- because you have to deal with criminals continuously. And your having to deal with the criminals means your having to learn their language, having to learn their strategies. You have to be a little better criminal than them; then only can you catch hold of them.


In a better world, there will not be criminals and there will not be any FBI, CIA, KGB.


It is a very strange conspiracy against humanity. Just think: if there are no criminals, what will the magistrates do? They will be out of a job. What will thousands of advocates do? They will be on the streets, beggars. The police, the magistrates, the advocates, all need criminals. It is a question of life and death. They all live on criminals. It is a very strange society... a great establishment of justice, thousands of people employed in it -- but they should all be grateful to the criminals. Those are their real masters.


Now these police officers you saw sitting here, the FBI people you saw sitting here, they had never come before. It is Sheela and her criminal group that have brought them here. It is Sheela who has provided their daily bread and butter. Naturally, they feel a certain sympathy with criminals. The innocent people they hate, because they don't give them anything.


And that is one of my insights, that the attorney general of Oregon is trying somehow to defend Sheela and her criminal group, to give them immunity so that they can point to innocent people and say that these are the people who have committed all the crimes. In this way they can destroy the whole commune.


We are not going to let them do any such thing. But that is their strategy. It is very apparent, because I should have been the first person for them to interview. They did not ask for my interview. I told them, "You have to take my interview first, because I have the overall, bird's-eye view of my commune."


Four times they gave appointments, and just before the appointment they canceled it. And the cancelation was from higher up. A phone call would come from the capitol, "Cancel it." They wanted to take time. They are delaying the whole process so that they can make some deal with Sheela and her group.


That's why I say criminals and the police and the politicians belong to the same category. They are not concerned what crimes Sheela and her people have done. Their interest is how to use this opportunity to destroy the whole commune. Do you see the cunningness of politicians and their criminal minds? We have been supporting them, we have been giving them every evidence of the crimes. They are not taking much interest in it; their interest is in how to destroy the commune.


But they cannot destroy the commune. I have my own ways. If any of my people are sent into jail, go joyously, and convert the people in jail to sannyas. So five hundred will go in, and at least five thousand sannyasins will be left behind.


Teach meditations in the jail. Take the books, take the tapes with you. We don't fight in a primitive way, we are intelligent enough to fight just intellectually. So it will be perfectly good. They cannot make you a criminal. They can keep you for a few days in jail, and that's a good opportunity to change all the people in the jail -- there may be thousands of criminals. Help them to meditate -- in the morning, start with Dynamic Meditation. There is no law against meditation. Nobody can prevent you, because it is our religious practice, and the government cannot interfere in any religious practice. So when you come out of the jail in ten or twelve days, you will have changed the whole atmosphere in the jail.


They will repent later on that they did a foolish thing. You have not committed any crime, and I will fight for you up to the Supreme Court, for every single sannyasin who has no crime on his hands.


There is no problem at all. It is a good opportunity to expose American politicians, that these are all third-class criminals. They are not worthy of being governors, of being attorney generals. And they are not according to the beautiful Constitution of America.


A strange fate... we are the latest Americans, but we have to fight for the American Constitution against the rotten old Americans. But we will fight for it, because the American Constitution is the only one in the whole world which has some hope for humanity.
<p class="question">BELOVED MASTER,
RECENTLY, YOU SAID THAT YOU WOULD BE BETRAYED BY SOMEONE VERY CLOSE TO YOU. I THOUGHT THIS COULD NOT HAPPEN HERE, YET IT SEEMS THAT ANYTIME LOVE HAPPENS, THEN HATE ALSO FOLLOWS. THE GREATER THE LOVE, THE GREATER THE HATE, AND HENCE, FINALLY, BETRAYAL.
THIS CAPACITY MUST BE INHERENT IN ALL OF US. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO BE WITH A MASTER, KNOWING THAT THE DEEPER THE LOVE, THE CLOSER I AM TO DESTROYING IT? IS THIS WHERE WE LET GO EVEN OF THE MASTER? I FEEL LIKE A MAN LOOKING OVER THE ABYSS, TRYING TO DECIDE WHICH DIRECTION TO JUMP.</p>


You need not decide at all, because I have decided already. I am not your master, and nobody is my disciple. You are all my friends.
Okay?
			

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> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
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