Communism

 

 

Question 1 :

According to your Vision, What exactly is Communism?

 

 

Communism simply means moving private property into the hands of the collective -- because private ownership of property creates classes, the oppressed and the oppressors. Money brings more money, attracts more money; poverty attracts more poverty. And a man who sees all around him people having money, beautiful houses, cars, and he has not even food to eat... his dignity as a human being is destroyed. He starts feeling subhuman, inferior, unsuccessful, and to create this feeling in millions of people just for the sake of a few who will be rich is against the whole of humanity.

 

Communism brings dignity to everybody because all the properties, the land and everything, belong to the collective. Nobody can be richer than you and nobody can be poorer than you. Equality is equivalent to communism, and equal opportunity for everyone to blossom into whatsoever he has hidden in his potentiality.

 

Communism is only the first step of a great experiment. Once people are without inferiority complex, once religions are removed -- that is part of communism, that there is no god and the so-called religions are just the opium of the people. Once religions are removed, soon a tremendous vacuum will be felt by everybody, because these religions have been stuffing you with systems of belief which are all fiction. But they help you to feel that you are full.

 

I have come across poor aboriginals in Bastar, in the central provinces of India, who sometimes don't get even one meal in a day. And without food, sleep becomes absolutely difficult. The stomach is asking for food, goes into cramps, and you cannot sleep. I have seen with my own eyes, people just drinking water to fill the stomach, to deceive the stomach, and putting a brick on their bellies and binding it around themselves with a rope, so the stomach feels that it is not empty -- inside water, outside the brick. You can deceive the stomach by such false methods, but that is not going to give you nourishment. So they are just skeletons.

 

Religions have been giving you false ideas, fictions, to console you.

 

Communism means removing all fictions from the human mind, giving it a good cleaning of all the past that has filled it with rubbish.

 

Marx's vision never reached beyond that, but my understanding and my vision is far more perfect. To me, communism is only the first stage -- not the last. And as communism succeeds, people will drop the inferiority complex -- which is needed by the priests, which is needed by the people who are driving humanity into different kinds of slavery. And when there is no God, there is no guilt -- without guilt no organized religion can live. It is guilt that takes people to the churches, because they become afraid: they have committed sins, now they will suffer hellfire for eternity. So something has to be done to remove the guilt. All religions provide fictions.

 

In India just now there has been a kumbha mela; it is going on in Allahabad. Millions of people -- perhaps this is the biggest fair in the world -- just go to the Ganges.... To take a dip in the Ganges means all your sins are taken by the Ganges and you come out absolutely clean. That does not mean that you will stop committing sins; that simply means you have found a very cheap method to get rid of your sins and guilt, so you can commit as many sins as you want! There is no problem, just a small journey to Allahabad, take a dip in the Ganges, and all your rapes and murders, and anything that you have committed, the Ganges takes away. This is the Hindu strategy to keep you feeling guilty.

 

And the priests are there, you cannot take the dip alone. The priest has to take you into the Ganges in a boat. And he will be reciting mantras, and then you take the dip, and you have to pay the priest. The priest is the agent of the God who does not exist.

 

In the Catholic religion, you have to go to the priest to confess your sins, and for just ten dollars and five "Hail Marys" your sins are erased. God has forgiven you.

 

I have always wondered that not a single Catholic theologian -- and they have great theologians, very intellectual -- has raised the question that when a man rapes a woman and God forgives him just because he has given ten dollars to the priest and done five "Hail Marys," is God absolutely unaware of the woman who has been raped? The criminal is forgiven -- and the victim? Not a single theologian of any religion has ever thought, "What about the victim who has suffered?"

 

A man kills someone and he goes to the priest and he is forgiven. He goes to the Ganges, gives some money to the priest, takes a dip, and he is forgiven. What about the murdered?

 

God does not seem to be just. He is in favor of the criminals and sinners. For them he is a father who forgives -- but what about the victims? There is not a single word in any scripture of the organized religions which takes note of the victims. God seems to be favorable to the sinners, to the criminals, but not favorable to the victims. He has no sympathy for the victims.

 

Just today I received a letter from a sannyasin who has been abused by her father in her childhood, sexually abused. And now she suffers continuously the nightmare that her father exploited her innocence. She did not know anything about sex, and her own father....

 

Now that father must have gone to the church and been forgiven by God. What about this girl, who is suffering even now? God has no consideration for this girl. Because the father has abused her, she has become afraid of sex, so she cannot fall in love. The image of the father comes in between. So she is suffering because of the father, she has nightmares about her father and all the abuse that he has done to her, and because of all that, she has become frightened of love. If anybody approaches her she will escape, so she will suffer more because she will never be nourished by love. Because her own father has destroyed her trust in love, her trust is completely finished. If the father cannot be relied upon, then on whom are you going to rely? But God has no consideration....

 

This God is an absolute fiction created by the priests. Communism dissolves these priests, dissolves organized religion, takes away all the opium that they have been giving to the people. Marx was not aware that this was not going to be the complete phenomenon. I can see with more clarity than any Karl Marx or Lenin or Stalin.

 

Communism has created a vacuum. You must be surprised, you must be continuously talking amongst yourselves; Amrito informed me that in the canteen it seems like the early days of the Soviet Union before the revolution, when all the young people were discussing about communism and revolution. The whole Soviet Union before the revolution was agog; everybody was talking about what this revolution is going to be -- "What is communism?" And there were anarchists like Prince Kropotkin and Bakunin, who were talking about a world without the state, without government, without any kind of domination, and all this was discussed.

 

For all these days you have been discussing -- only the Indians had disappeared. They have come back today, knowing that this is the last day. Such cowards -- and they think they are spiritual! And if any problem is going to happen, it is going to happen to me, not to them. They are just listeners, nobody is going to put them in jail, and they are not going to be shot, but they all disappeared. I have been watching. Already there are no more than half a dozen people who come from Poona, but they also disappeared, seeing the danger.

 

Communism creates a vacuum -- that is why I support it. My whole vision is that that vacuum can be only filled by meditation. And I am against Gorbachev because he is filling it with Coca-Cola, bringing the priests back, opening the churches. I have some fundamental reason to oppose him because he is opening the doors to all the rubbish that took the communists seventy years to finish.

 

Now is the time that meditation should be introduced in the Soviet Union. The door should be opened only to the people who are awakened, enlightened -- the buddhas -- because they can fill the vacuum, not with any fiction but with your own potential growing into the vacuum and blossoming into lotus flowers.

 

So communism is a first step. The second step is spiritualism, and the third step is anarchism. Anarchism is not possible unless people are really, authentically spiritual. Prince Kropotkin, Tolstoy, Bakunin -- all were unaware of the fact that they were talking about the flowers but they had forgotten about the roots and the trunk. You cannot create flowers without roots, without a trunk.

 

Communism is just the roots, and the trunk will be meditation. And the flowers will be a world without any domination, without any interference with individual growth -- a world without states, a world without boundaries. Just a world consisting of individuals -- not organizations, not nations, not races.

 

These are the three steps, and I can see them clearly because I have no identification with any -- neither communism nor spiritualism nor anarchism. I am just a witness. I have no involvement with anybody. I am just a mirror who can reflect the whole situation as it is, and even the future as it can grow if the right nourishment is given. So don't think that I am a communist. I don't identify with anything. Don't think that I am an anarchist. I don't identify with anything. Don't think that I am a spiritualist. I don't identify with anything.

 

I am just a pure awakened being, just a mirror who reflects -- who has no involvement, no commitment to anything.

 

I don't belong to any organization, I don't belong to any party, I don't belong to any 'ism'.

 

You have to understand clearly: I simply see things because I have gone beyond thoughts. My no-mind is just a pure space in which I can see the actual growth of consciousness and how it should happen. So communism, to me, is just a basic ground. It is the roots. Spirituality is going to be the trunk and the branches and the foliage. And then at the highest peak comes the absolute freedom from all kinds of dominations, oppressions, suppressions, from all priests, from all politicians. You blossom like a buddha.

 

My only interest is to bring out your buddha as a fully-opened lotus in the early morning sun, with small dewdrops shining so beautifully that even real pearls cannot compete with them. I am not a politician, but that does not mean that I am not interested in human welfare. And I will say things which may hurt your prejudices. I want to destroy your prejudices completely. I want to create a vacuum. That vacuum is absolutely needed; otherwise you don't have space to grow your potential. You are filled with religious rubbish, you are filled with political rubbish, you are filled with economic rubbish, all kinds of ideas that you have borrowed. You are not having your own insights -- that rubbish prevents it, it keeps you blind, it gives you a sense of fulfillment which is false.

 

So remember it. It will be very difficult for outsiders to understand me, almost impossible. Misunderstanding is the only possibility for me as far as the outside world is concerned. But at least you should not misunderstand me. I have no interest in Stalin, and I have no interest in Gorbachev. My interest is in you! And when I see that you are filled with a certain prejudice I have to bring that prejudice to the surface so you can see it. All kinds of moral, puritan programming -- I have to fight so many enemies that you are nursing within you! But my whole concern is to make you utterly empty.

 

So I am not preaching anything; I am not supporting anything. I don't have any doctrine, no philosophy, no cult, no creed. My whole effort is to clean your inside completely from all that the society, the education, the religion, the family, have forced into you. Unless you get rid of it you cannot grow in meditation. You cannot become a buddha. Communism is a better opportunity than any other kind of social structure because it is negative, because it is without God, without heaven, without hell, without the idea of reincarnation. And it creates a certain equality of opportunity for man and woman.

 

I have told you just a few days ago that Gorbachev cannot succeed in prohibition. You cannot succeed in prohibition even in India, a hot country which does not need any alcohol. It is absolute nonsense in a country like the Soviet Union which is half the year covered with snow. Taking poor people's vodka, which keeps them warm, is an absolute impossibility! He started with a wrong policy. That shows he does not understand simple arithmetic. If he wanted to be successful he should have declared that nobody can drink his own urine. He would have been successful -- of course you are allowed to drink anybody else's, but not your own -- and he would have been hailed as a messiah! Only one person, Morarji Desai in India, would have felt a heart attack, but who cares about Morarji Desai? In fact, he needs a heart attack! That program would have successful immediately. The whole of the Soviet Union would have hailed Gorbachev as the greatest man of their history.

 

Just choose the right things, which are going to be a success. Gorbachev is choosing wrong things. Now his second policy is that women should go backwards. No woman is going to go back to the kitchen. Women are professors, women are engineers, women are doctors. They are pilots in the army, and they proved in the second world war that they could fight shoulder to shoulder with any man on every front. They were bombers, they were flying planes to bomb. Now you cannot force them back. It is as impossible as... once you have taken the toothpaste out of the tube, then try to force it back, and you will understand how unsuccessful Gorbachev is going to be. Just a small experiment you can do in your bathroom -- nobody will know about your failure....

 

Now these women who have lived as professors, doctors, and engineers and pilots and scientists and academicians -- you want them to go back to the kitchen? It is impossible! The whole of womankind in the Soviet Union will oppose Gorbachev.

 

I have heard that his wife is very intelligent, is a law graduate just as he is a law graduate. In fact, she should start a revolution against Gorbachev! She can understand the situation of women far better than Gorbachev.

 

And for what is he doing this? Again reducing women to a second-class category of citizens -- what is the reason? Just those six percent... If women are forced back into kitchens and imprisoned to take care of the babies and the husband, and their financial independence is destroyed, there will be more posts vacant for men to occupy. It is because of this small unemployment that is creating a certain undernourishment -- just to give men more opportunities, withdraw all women from the status that they have gained. Do you think he can succeed in it? A woman who has lived as a free individual, not dependent on her husband's bank account... Only in the Soviet Union do women have their own bank accounts, their own salaries, their own way of living. Only in the Soviet Union are women free to move. They have their own clubs, they have their own societies, they have everything they want.

 

All over the world the woman is immobile. She is completely crushed, and her birthright to freedom of movement has been taken from her. She can go only to the church -- that's why in churches and temples you will find only women.

 

Once I was addressing a meeting on the birthday of Krishna, and I was amazed: there were only women! It was a huge temple devoted to Krishna, and the speaker of the assembly in that state where the meeting was held was the inaugurator of the meeting. And that's why I say these politicians are retarded.... He was the speaker and the chancellor of the university. And he was inaugurating the meeting, not even seeing that these women were sitting keeping their backs towards him because they were gossiping with each other and looking at each other's clothes and each other's ornaments. Who cares about Krishna? They have only this possibility, only this chance to meet with other women.

 

There must have been at least twenty thousand people, maybe one thousand men and nineteen thousand women. And they were grouped in separate small groups, because you cannot talk with nineteen thousand women, so four women, five women were making a group. The whole meeting was divided into small groups, and great gossip, and so much noise!

 

And that idiot speaker... his name was Pandit Kunjilal Dube. Kunji means key, but it can also be kunj. Kunj means a beautiful grove of flowering trees. So the name was given by his parents because Krishna used to play his flute by the side of the Jamuna River in a beautiful kunj, in a beautiful grove of mango trees. So he was named after Kunjbihari, which is another name for Krishna. His parents must have given him the name `Kunjilal' thinking that kunj is a sacred word for the worshippers of Krishna.

 

But in Hindi kunji also means key -- and chabi means key. But with kunji there is a difficulty, it can also mean kunj. So the whole university where he was the chancellor called him Pandit Chabilal Dube, because chabi exactly means kunji, exactly means "key." No problem about chabi, there is only one meaning to it.

 

... So Pandit Chabilal Dube was inaugurating the meeting, and I pulled on his shirt and I told him, "To whom are you talking? Nobody is listening! Women are sitting, keeping their backs to you -- what kind of retarded mind have you got? Perhaps the students are right when they call you Pandit Chabilal Dube. You are just retarded!"

 

And he was very angry with me, because I was in his university -- a professor in his own university...! But he knew me, and that if he makes any fuss, I will take him to task and I won't care about any professorship. I used to carry my resignation always in my pocket. And I used to show people that, "Only the date has to be signed. Any moment you want my resignation it is here. I keep it -- typed -- in my pocket. Who knows at what time...?"

 

I refused to speak. The organizers were very much disturbed. They said, "What to do with these women?" They were shouting on the mike again and again, "Stop gossiping! Turn towards the speaker!" Nobody was interested. Everybody knows about Krishna, what are you going to say about Krishna?

 

And I simply refused to speak. I said, "I am not an idiot. And this is my last time. I will never again accept any invitation by any organized religion. Anyway you are fortunate that I am not speaking, because I was going to condemn Krishna as much as possible! So these women have saved you. I am going." And I told Pandit Chabilal, "You come with me. Why are you sitting here? You have inaugurated, just be finished! Come with me."

 

I had to call him out because he had the car. And out of fear he started calling me "Panditji." I said, "Never use that dirty word for me. You are Pandit Chabilal, I am not. I am not a pandit!" -- Pandit means rabbi, bishop, priest. "You think it is honorable -- I think it is a four-letter word. You just drop it. Don't ever use that word for me, otherwise I will hit you" -- in his own car!

He said, "Don't say it so loudly, the chauffeur is there."

 

I said, "I don't care! He knows absolutely about you, who you are." And the chauffeur started laughing. It was a limousine, so he immediately closed the window; he said, "You are a dangerous man -- in my own car...?"

I said, "This car belongs to the state, it is not your own car. It belongs to me as much as it belongs to you."

He said, "What?"

I said, "Yes! It is owned by the state, and I am as much a citizen of this state as you are. And you are a public servant -- I am the public."

He started looking out the window just to avoid me. But I said, "I will continue -- you have to listen. Why have you taken me in your car?"

 

He said, "Strange. You called me out!"

I said, "I had to call you, because I have not brought my car. The organizers brought me in their car; now that I have told them I am going to speak against Krishna, they are not going to give me their car. I needed a car, I don't need you. You can get out if you want! And your chauffeur is in my favor: you saw how he laughed."

He said, "You don't understand that I am also the chancellor of the university."

I said, "I don't care about chancellors and vice-chancellors." I showed him the card that was my resignation.

He said, "Why are you showing me this card?"

I said, "I have just to put the date, and finished! You are no more my chancellor and I can throw you out of the car. I am just being courteous to your old age, because the danger is you may be finished if I throw you out. So keep quiet, and don't harass me."

 

He said, "Strange!? You are harassing me -- in my own car!"

And it used to happen with that Pandit Chabilal Dube in many places, because he was a speaker of the state and a great scholar of Hinduism, and the chancellor of the university. Just by virtue of holding the office, every speaker of the parliament becomes the chancellor of that particular university where I was a professor.

So I told him, "You are not really even worthy to be a lecturer in the university. You are only B.A., Ll.B. -- that too, third class."

He said, "Who told you?"

 

I said, "I have my sources -- your wife. She showed me your certificates also. I have taken photocopies of them, and if you make any trouble for me I am going to publish all those certificates in the newspapers. A third-class B.A., Ll.B. who is not even a postgraduate is the chancellor of the university!"

 

He said, "It is better not to fight. I am sorry that I disturbed you, but don't publish anything." I had no copies of the certificates or anything, but I knew he was a third-class Ll.B. and had become a politician because he could not succeed in the court.

 

The same was the situation of Mahatma Gandhi. He became a politician because the first time he entered court... The whole night he had been preparing and preparing his first appearance in the Bombay High Court. And he was a barrister from England. As he entered the court, his legs started trembling, and he could speak only two words -- "Your Honor" -- and he flopped down perspiring and had to be carried out. That's why he became a politician!

 

But nobody bothers about the realities of life. These failures become politicians because politics needs no qualifications, has no standards. This is the only profession which any idiot can enter.

 

Communism, to me, is a very significant step towards the ultimate buddhahood.

 

- Osho, "Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind, #7, Q1"