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Part V : Osho's interaction with the Rich and the Royal
All over the world there are socialist parties, and their only
function is to prevent people from becoming communist. They are
being paid by the capitalists - as far as India is concerned
I am absolutely certain. I know, because the same man offered
me money also....
The head of India's biggest super-rich family was Jugal Kishore
Birla*. He was giving monthly salaries to Jaiprakash Narayan,
who was the head of the Socialist Party of India. Seeing my meetings,
where fifty thousand or one hundred thousand people would attend,
he was immensely interested.
And I used to stay in Delhi with one of the members of parliament
from my constituency, Dr. Seth Govindadas. Both Seth Govindadas
and Jugal Kishore Birla belong to the same caste, of Marwaris - they
are the Jews of India - so he had found a medium to reach
me. He asked Govinddas, "A meeting is absolutely necessary.
You arrange it."
Govinddas said to me, when I was staying with him in Delhi for
a few days, "It will be immensely helpful for your work."
I said, "In what way can Jugal Kishore Birla help my work?
My work is to destroy Birlas, and Tatas, and Sahus" - the
three great super-rich families of India - "how can he
help me?"
He said, "But there is nothing wrong in meeting the man."
I said, "Okay."
So I met the man, and he immediately made an offer to me: "I
will give you a blank check, as I have given to Mahatma Gandhi."
And he had been supporting the freedom movement, and had a very
clear vision of the future, that sooner or later these people
would be the presidents, the prime ministers, so whatever he was
giving them was an investment. Then he would take the advantage - and
he was taking advantage, after the freedom of India. People who
had been on a monthly salary from him...he had purchased their
souls.
He told me, "Jaiprakash Narayan is on my payroll."
I said, "If you can give me a blank check without any conditions,
I will be grateful to you. But I don't accept any conditions.
I cannot sell myself."
He said, "Conditions are bound to be there; otherwise why
should I give you a blank check? I am a businessman."
I said, "You may be a businessman, I am not."
He said, "But my conditions are very simple: preach Hinduism
to the world. And the second condition is, create a great movement
in India to protect the cows from being slaughtered."
I simply got up and I said, "Throw your blank check to the
dogs! I am going." Govindadas was very much embarrassed,
because they all felt great respect for his money and his support.
And I told him, "You have asked me to come, and you have
insulted me! Nothing can be more insulting than offering money
as a bribe, trying to purchase a man. You cannot purchase me - nobody
can purchase me. I am going to speak against Hinduism my whole
life! You have strengthened my idea; you have reminded me that
I have to take care of Hinduism. And I am going to fight with
all those people who are trying to stop cow slaughter."
That's how I came to be the arch-enemy of the Shankaracharya of
Puri, because he is the head of the movement to stop cow slaughter.
So I know from the very man himself, Jugal Kishore Birla, that
the head of the Socialist Party and perhaps other leaders were
on his payroll.
Why was he paying the socialists? What is the function of the
socialist? The function is to divide the proletariat, to create
barriers so the proletariat, the poor people, the labor unions,
don't go to the communists. fire06
*Note: there are 4 big industrial houses/families in India: Birla,
Sahu, Tata, Bajaj
I have told you that the richest man in India, Jugal Kisore Birla,
had offered to give me a blank checkbook if I was ready to spread
Hinduism to the world at large, and create a movement in India
to force the government to ban cow slaughter. When I refused him
he said, "Young man, you think twice because Jawaharlal gets
money from me, Jaiprakash Narayan gets money from me, Ram Manohar
Lohia gets money from me, Ashok Mehta gets money from me."
All these were the topmost leaders.
He said, "And every month I am giving them money, as much
as they need. Even to Ashok Mehta who is the president of the
socialist party of India, which is against the rich people - even
he is my man." He said, "I give to all party presidents,
important people; whoever comes to power he will be my man. Let
them talk what they talk; talking does not matter - I have
purchased them."
I told Indira about Jaiprakash, just in that conversation in which
I talked about Morarji - to throw him out. She was shocked!
She could not believe it because she called him uncle; he was
almost like a brother to Jawaharlal. He had been Jawaharlal's
secretary for many years and their relationship was very close.
And Indira was brought up in front of his eyes. When she was just
a small child she used to call him "Kaka" - uncle.
And when I said, "Jugal Kisore himself has told me, and I
don't think that old man was telling a lie. In fact, how does
Jaiprakash maintain himself? - because he does not belong
to any party. He does not have any group of supporters; he has
renounced politics. He does not earn a single pai. How does he
manage to have two secretaries, one typist? How does he manage
to travel in airplanes continually? Money must be coming from
somewhere, and he has no visible source. My feeling is that Jugal
Kisore was not lying."
Indira mentioned this to Jaiprakash: "Do you get a salary
every month from the Birla house?" And that was the thing
that hit him hard; that was when he decided that Indira could
no longer be tolerated. He willingly became a partner of Morarji
Desai's and all the people - it always happens whenever you
are in power that you manage to create enemies - all the enemies
were together. But Jaiprakash was the key. Morarji is not capable
of gathering anybody - he is simply retarded - but Jaiprakash
was an intelligent man.
He managed to overturn the government and to show his last renunciation:
that although he had overturned the government, he was not going
to be the prime minister. He wanted to prove that he was higher
than Jawaharlal. That was his only, his deepest longing - to
be higher than Jawaharlal. So he placed Morarji Desai in the prime
ministership just to show to history: "Somebody was trying
to place me as premier, but I don't care about these premierships - l
can create my own premiers." But it was all ego.
I used to speak in Patna - Maitreya will be aware of the fact - and
because Jaiprakash also belonged to Patna, his wife used to come
to attend my meetings. I was puzzled. I enquired of my host, "The
wife comes, but I never see Jaiprakash."
He laughed, he said, "I asked the same question of Prakashwati,
Jaiprakash's wife. She said, 'He comes but he sits in the car
outside and listens from there. He cannot gather courage to come
in and let it be seen by people that he has come to listen to
somebody."'
The ego is so subtle and so slippery. And the politician is sick
because of his ego. ignor15
The first time I spoke in Bombay was on Mahavira's birthday.
At least twenty to thirty thousand Jainas were present....
I had come for the first time to this city. The man who invited
me was a very rare man, rare in the sense that there was not a
single important person in India who was not respectful towards
that old man. And the reason was that that old man...his name
was Chiranjilal Badjate and he was the manager for Jamnalal Bajaj.
Jamnalal Bajaj had invited Mahatma Gandhi from Sabarmati, Gujarat
to his own place in Wardha, and had made a beautiful ashram for
him there.
He gave Gandhi a blank check; whatever he wanted to spend, whatever
he wanted to do with the money, he could do. He never asked, "Where
does the money go? What happens to it?" And because Mahatma
Gandhi was in Wardha, all the great freedom fighters in India,
writers, poets, were going to see Gandhi, to meet Gandhi. And
for them Jamnalal Bajaj had made a special guest house for five
hundred people to stay together at one time. Chiranjilal was his
manager, so he was the link between Mahatma Gandhi and Jamnalal
Bajaj, Jawaharlal Nehru, Motilal Nehru, Madan Mohan Malaviya.
All these people were respectful towards the old man.
He was the man who invited me to Bombay.
I had spoken at a Jaina conference, and as I came down from the
stage - it was a cold night, he was covering himself with
a blanket - he threw the blanket on the ground, took hold
of me and asked me to sit down, just to sit down for five minutes
with him.
But I said, "Your blanket will become dirty."
He said, "Forget about the blanket - you just sit down - because
I don't have anything else." And I had no idea who this man
was. He introduced himself; then too I had no idea, just his name.
He said, "I am inviting you to Bombay for a conference, and
you cannot say no." Tears were in his eyes; he said, "In
my whole I have heard life all the great orators of this country,
but I have never felt such deep harmony as I have felt with you,
although what you were saying was against my conditioning. I am
Mahatma Gandhi's follower. I am the manager for Jamnalal, and
I have lived my whole life according to Mahatma Gandhi's principles - and
you were speaking against them. But still somehow I felt you are
right and I have been wrong."
And he must have been seventy years old, but with great courage
to say, "My seventy years were wrong"; and he had listened
to me only for ten minutes. "And you cannot say no. This
conference is absolutely important because I want you to be introduced
to my friends in Bombay and then to my friends all over India."
So I said, "I will come."
I knew nobody in Bombay, and somehow.... Because he was an
old man with thick glasses, in the night perhaps he could not
see me perfectly well. He described me to the organizers of the
conference here, but somehow he told them that I used a Gandhi
cap. Just seventy years continuously seeing Gandhi caps, Gandhi
caps - he had not seen anybody else without a Gandhi cap - so
it must have been somehow completely fixed in his mind.
I was standing at the door; all the passengers had left. At least
twenty-five people were running from this side to that side. They
would look at me from up and down, from down and up, and just
as they saw my head they would rush on. I said, "What is
wrong with my head? Up to the head they look as if things are
going right, and the moment they see my head they are simply gone!"
But finally, I was the only passenger left, and those were the
only people left who had come to receive anybody.
One of them came to me and asked, "Have you not put on your
Gandhi cap today?"
I said, "Now I understand what the problem is. But who told
you that I have ever used a Gandhi cap?"
And Chiranjilal had got caught somewhere in the traffic. He was
coming running! - a seventy year-old man. He said, "Yes!
This is the man, but where is the cap?"
I said, "You created this whole trouble. I am standing here
for half an hour these people are running all over the platform
looking for the Gandhi cap. If you had told me I would have put
on a Gandhi cap! You never mentioned it."
He said, "My God, just old age, and I must be getting senile - just
seeing these Gandhi caps day and night...even in dreams I
see people with Gandhi caps! Even in my dreams I don't see people
without Gandhi caps, so just forgive me."
This man, a simple man, a loving man who had known all the great
thinkers of this century in India, leaders in different professions,
but he could feel immediately some synchronicity, as if the parts
of a jigsaw-puzzle had all fallen together in one piece and the
puzzle had disappeared. He had lived with Mahatma Gandhi for twenty,
thirty years and it had not happened.
There are people who can speak beautifully about the unknown,
but if you are a little alert you can see that their words are
empty and they don't touch your heart, they don't stir your being.
And there are mystics who are complete, whose journey has come
to an end. upan13
Gwalior's palace is a very big palace, and has acres and acres
of greenery around it, and small bungalows, and it is all in a
walled garden. Almost half of the city belongs to the palace.
And just behind the palace is a huge mountain where they run a
school for all the princes of the country and even outside the
country. That school belongs to the palace. It was created just
for Gwalior's sons and daughters in the beginning. Then it became
a royal school for all the royal states of India. celebr06
I was staying in the palace of the Maharani of Gwalior, who had
invited me. It is one of the most beautiful palaces in India and
perhaps in the world, with miles and miles of beautiful gardens
around it. It has everything: lakes, gardens, fountains, and many
small cottages for guests. The main palace is all marble. She
had chosen a very beautiful cottage for me to stay in, just half
on the lake, half on the ground.
Every day, for seven days, they were having religious discourses.
There was a big congregation because it was a palatial function;
nearabout twenty thousand people were there. Her son heard me
and was immensely impressed. She was also impressed, and the next
morning she came to see me and she would not sit on the chair.
I told her, "You are old." She said, "No, I cannot
do that. Please don't stop me sitting at your feet. And first
I have to confess one thing: that I have prevented my son from
coming to you. Forgive me. I was afraid because he seemed too
much excited by last night, and he is continuously talking about
you and what you said.
"I became afraid he may get too impressed by you. And we
are a traditional family, royal family, and he is my successor.
I cannot allow him to be impressed by you, although I myself am
impressed, but I am mature enough that I can intellectually be
convinced by you, yet I will go on doing whatever I was doing.
That has been our tradition, and I cannot betray that tradition."
I said, "You can betray your intelligence, and you cannot
betray some dead ancestor thousands of years old who has made
rules and regulations for you? But you are ready to betray your
intelligence.... And you say you are impressed, and still
you prevent your son from meeting me?"
She said, "I am sorry, but I will not allow him. And he cannot
go against my wishes because he knows I can deprive him of the
inheritance and the inheritance can go to his younger brother."
With this threat he had been prevented. Later on, after five,
six years, he met me in Delhi - he had become a member of
parliament - and he said, "I have been trying hard since
you stayed in my house, but my mother - if she comes to know
that I met you in Delhi, she has threatened that she will deprive
me, and it is too much a risk. She is one of the richest queens
in India, and I will have to wait till I succeed her, and then
my first thing is to come to you and be with you. All sorts of
nonsense has been told to me; all kinds of religious teachers
and saints go on coming to the house, but you were the first man
I became interested in. They are all boring, but I have to listen
to them because of the inheritance."
I said, "You are also a coward. If you had really the mind
of a seeker, you would have said to your mother, 'Keep your inheritance
yourself. I renounce it.'"
He said, "Yes, I don't have that much guts, but it has left
a wound in me that my mother is threatening me. And she is also
impressed by you. She does not say that you are wrong, she says
that a young person should not come in contact with such a person:
'He can be dangerous. You are immature. You first become mature.'"
I said, "So that you can become a hypocrite, in other words;
so you can intellectually say it is right, but I am going to do
what I am expected to do." last214
One man was asking me - I was in Calcutta, and he was one
of the richest men of India, Sahu Shanti Prasad; he had the greatest
palace in Calcutta. We were walking in his big garden...because
he has, in the middle of Calcutta, at least a hundred acre green
garden. The palace once used to belong to the viceroy of India,
when Calcutta was the capital. When the capital shifted to New
Delhi, the palace was sold. Now the president of India lives in
the same kind of palace in New Delhi, with a one hundred acre
garden.
So we both were walking and he asked me, "I always wanted
to ask you what happens after death."
I said, "Are you alive or not?"
He said, "What kind of question is this? I am alive."
I said, "You are alive. Do you know what life is?"
He said, "That I cannot answer. Honestly, I don't know."
I said, "When you are alive, even then you don't know what
life is. How can you know death when you are not dead yet? So
wait. While you are alive, try to know life; and soon you will
be dead, then in your grave contemplate about death. Nobody will
be bothering you. But why are you concerned what happens after
death? Why are you not concerned what happens before death? That
should be the real concern. When death comes we will face it,
we will see it, we will see what it is. I am not dead so how can
I say? You will have to ask somebody who is dead what happens.
I am alive. I can tell you what life is, and I can tell you how
to know what life is."
"But," he said, "all the religious teachers I go
to listen to talk about death; nobody talks about life."
They are not interested in life, in fact; they want you all not
to be interested in life. Their business depends on your interest
in death. And about death, the most beautiful thing is that you
can create any kind of fiction and nobody can argue against it.
Neither you can prove it, nor can anybody disprove it. And if
you are a believer, then of course all your scriptures are in
support of the priest, the monk, the rabbi, and he can quote those
scriptures.
I would like you to remember: Live, and try to know what life
is. unconc29
The Nizam of Hyderabad in India had five hundred wives - just
in this century. This is so stupid and ugly. Women are treated
like cattle.
And that Nizam of Hyderabad was an old man, but he went on marrying
young girls. Perhaps he was the richest man in the world, because
in his state is the biggest mine of diamonds. All great diamonds
have come from Hyderabad - the Kohinoor and others. He himself
had so many diamonds that once a year they had to be put into
sunlight and given air. They were not counted because counting
was impossible, he had so many.
His whole palace had basements which were filled with diamonds,
and they would be taken out and spread on all the terraces of
his temple. I have seen the terraces; the palace is one of the
biggest palaces in India. He had all the money, he had all the
power. He was old, but he could purchase any woman. He could give
enough money to any man and purchase his daughter. I don't think
he even remembered the names of his five hundred wives, and I
don't think that all the wives had seen him. Perhaps the early
ones may have seen him.
And he was not worth seeing anyway, an ugly man, and so superstitious
that you will not believe it - in the night he used to put
one of his feet in a bucket full of salt, the whole night. The
reason was that he was very much afraid of ghosts. And Mohammedans
believe that if one of your feet is in salt, ghosts don't come
close to you.
When I went there he was dead, but I asked his son, "Have
you put the bucket in his grave? - because ghosts in the palace
are not many, but in the graveyard there are ghosts and ghosts
and nobody else, and in the dark night that old man.... "
The son said, "You are right! We forgot completely about
the bucket of salt."
I said, "It is not too late." Mohammedans don't make
marble graves or anything, just mud graves - to show humbleness.
So I said, "Just arrange with the gravedigger to put one
of his feet into a bucket of salt."
He said, "I will do it. I myself sleep with a bucket because
ghosts are very dangerous; and certainly in the graveyard there
are only ghosts and nobody else." transm32
I know many famous hunters in India. The king of Bhavanagar in
his palace has hundreds of lions' heads hanging all around the
walls. I have been with him when he went hunting. He said, "But
why are you interested? You are not for violence, you are against
hunting."
I said, "I simply want to see how, with your powerful automatic
rifle, you face a lion who has no weapons." And it was significant
that I went because there I saw that even with guns man is so
powerless.
First a stage was made up high in the trees - and you have
the gun! A stage is made for the king and for the friends who
had come with him, far away. The lion cannot climb up the tree
that far. Then all the branches of the tree below the platform
were cut, so even if some crazy lion tries, he has no support
anywhere. Then a cow was tied underneath the tree.
I was seeing the whole scene; silently I watched the whole scene.
Of course when the lion smells that a cow is nearby, he comes;
that cow is an invitation card. And the poor lion cannot see that
far above in the darkness there is platform, and his death.
But they don't shoot the lion before he jumps on the cow and starts
eating her. They wait, because when a lion is eating he does not
want to be disturbed by anything, he is total in his act. The
cow could have been saved. I said to the king, "The cow could
have been saved. When the lion was coming closer, you could have
used your rifle."
He said, "You don't know hunting. Even sitting on this platform
I am shivering with fear, although I have killed hundreds of lions.
Just to see the lion is enough to freeze you!"
And lions are very agile people. If you hit the lion - and
you can miss, then you lose the game - the lion will jump
into a bush, into a trench. He has to start eating the cow, because
that is the habit of lions: while they are eating they don't want
to be disturbed. And they become so absorbed in eating that it
is easier for you to kill them.
I asked the king on the way, "If this is how you have collected
those hundreds of heads of lions, please remove them - they
are all proofs of your cowardliness. Have you ever thought,"
I asked him, "that you call hunting a game, when the other
party has no weapons and is not even aware of you, that you are
hiding above in the trees? You call it a game? Is it fair?
"You should be on the ground; you should be without a gun,
because the lions cannot use guns. Then even a single head would
have been enough to prove that you are a brave man. These hundreds
of heads, they don't prove anything except cowardice. If this
is the way you have collected them - that's why I wanted to
come with you to see.... " dless23
One of my friends was a colonel in the army, and his wife was
my student in the university. She introduced me to the colonel,
and after Jabalpur, where I was a teacher, they were transferred
to Poona, so I used to come here and always used to have at least
one meal in their house.
The colonel was very much influenced by me, and he had a big regiment
in Jabalpur, so he invited me one day.
His wife said, "Do you understand what you are doing?"
He said, "He is a nice fellow."
The wife said, "That's true, he is a nice fellow, but he
will teach disobedience to your regiment."
He said, "Are you going to teach my regiment disobedience?"
I said, "Certainly!"
He said, "Then the program is canceled. My God! If my wife
had not told me..."
I said, "I want to teach all the armies of the world disobedience.
If they disobey, then let the presidents and prime ministers have
wrestling matches, boxing matches. They can enjoy, and we will
enjoy on television - but there is no need for millions of
people to be killed continuously." christ04
I used to stay in the house of a very unique man, Sohanlal Dugar.
He was unique in many ways. I loved the man - he was very
colorful. He was old - he died seven years ago. When he met
me first, at that time he was seventy years old, but he lived
to ninety.
He met me in Jaipur, that was his home town, and he invited me
to Calcutta because that was his business place; from there he
controlled the whole silver market, not only of India but of the
whole of Asia. He was called the Silver King. I had heard about
him, but I had no idea who the person was. When he came to me
for the first time in Jaipur, he touched my feet - an old
man dressed in the Rajasthani way with a yellow turban, very ancient-looking
in every way - and took out bundles of notes from the pockets
of his coat and wanted to give them to me.
I said, "But right now I don't need them. You just give me
your address; whenever I need I will enquire and if you are still
in possession of wealth and in the mood to give, you can give.
But right now I don't have any need, so why unnecessarily give
me trouble? I am going now to travel for thirty-six hours, and
I will have to take care of these notes. I cannot even sleep,
anybody may take them. So please keep them." He just started
crying, tears pouring from his eyes. I said, "But I have
not said anything that hurts you so much."
He said, "Nothing else hurts me more. I am a poor man because
I have only money and nothing else. I want to do something for
you - l feel so much for you - but I am a poor man; except
money, I have nothing. And if you refuse my money, then you refuse
me because I don't have anything else. So you take this money.
If you want to burn it, burn it here right now. If you want to
throw it away, throw it away right now - that is your business.
But remember: never again refuse money from me, because that means
you are refusing me. And I have nothing else to offer." His
tears were so sincere and authentic, and what he said was so meaningful,
that I said, "Okay. You give me this money, and take out...you
have more in your pockets."
He said, "That's right. That's the man I have been in search
of." And he took it all out. He showed me his pockets, inside
out, and said, "Now, right now, I don't have anything else,
but this is the man I have been in search of!" And he invited
me to Calcutta. ignor02
I used to stay with a very rich man in Calcutta, Sohanlal Dugar.
He was an all-India fame, rich man, and he was always sad. His
wife told me, "He listens to you, he reads to you, you stay
with us but he is always sad. And sad for strange reasons that
I cannot understand."
Sohanlal said, "You will never understand. I have lost five
crore rupees and you want me to laugh?"
I said, "If that is the situation, then let him be sad."
But the wife said, "You don't understand the full situation.
In a deal in which he has not invested a single rupee, he was
hoping to get ten crores and he has got only five crores. So he
is sulking for those five crores that he has lost."
I said, "This is idiotic." But this is how human mind
functions. Just in his imagination he has ten crores, now he has
got only five crores, five crores are missing.
But it is really amazing to watch people's minds: how they work
and how they make themselves miserable and they go on weaving
their misery deeper and deeper and more complex and more complex,
to a point from where they cannot get out. And it is all their
imagination. last509
One of the richest men in India told me that he feels very guilty.
The country is dying in poverty and his riches go on growing.
And he is not courageous enough to stop this growing of riches;
deep down he still wants more. On the one hand he can see the
country is suffering from poverty, on the other hand is his desire
to have more and more; between these two he is crushed. nansen08
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