we are just stating the facts. They are tortured human beings, with their
discipline. They detach themselves, or they are tremendously devoted to God,
whatever that word may mean, to their own visions, to their own ideas, to their
own culture that has brought them to believe in God. If they were born in
communist Russia they wouldn’t believe in God. There would be no saints; they
would be Marxists. They would become marvelous bureaucrats. And they may in
the future be the great saints. [Laughs]
Now, sir, I don’t read Mahabharata and Ramayana and Gita and all the rest of
these books. Why do you read them? Do you read them for the literature, for the
beauty of language? Or do you read them as the most terribly sacred thing, and
think by reading you will achieve nirvana or heaven or whatever it is? Do you
read them as escape literature?
Q: [Inaudible]
K: Yes, sir. The gentleman says Mahatma Gandhi and the greatest men have read
the Gita and so on. I don’t know why you call them great because they read the
Gita. You call them great because they fit into your pattern. Right? They fit in
according to your culture.
Q: No! For their love of mankind.
K: Right. For the love of mankind. They loved mankind and therefore you love
them? Which means you love mankind? No, sir, be honest about all these things.
[Laughter] Sir, if you want to turn this meeting into an entertainment and merely
a debating society, the speaker will withdraw. What we are asking is why you
read these books. If you read the book of yourself, that’s far more important than
any other book because your book, the book which is you, contains the whole of
mankind, all the agonies we have been through, the misery, the love, the pain, the
joy, the suffering, the anxiety. There is that book in you, and you go and waste
your time reading somebody else’s book. And that you call love of mankind, and
you say men are great because they come in the pattern of your particular culture.
Q: What is the reason for the grievances that sex has brought to the world in spite
of the fact that it is the greatest energy of man?
K: All right, let’s go at it. Have you noticed throughout the world, and therefore
in your own life, how sex has become extraordinarily important? Have you
noticed it? You are all very strangely silent. Talk about the Ramayana and the
Gita, and you all burst with energy. Talk about your daily life, and you subside.
Why has sex, the act, the pleasure, become such a colossal thing in the life of
everybody? In the West they put it out in the open; in India you all hide it, are
ashamed of it; you duck your head when you talk about sex. Look at your faces.
It’s so obvious. [Laughter] You are frightened; you are nervous, embarrassed,
shy, guilty, which all shows that it has become tremendously important in your