Gandhi lived many years in Africa and there he learned the whole art of fighting non-violently. And when he came to India in the 1920’s he was a perfectly trained leader of non-violent revolution, and he immediately took over the whole country, for the simple reason that he was conventional, traditional, religious. Nobody could say that he was not a sage, because he was following rules of five thousand years before, laid down five thousand years before. In fact he was preaching that we should turn the clock backwards and we should move to the days of Manu – five thousand years back. To him the greatest and the latest invention was the spinning wheel. After that, no science ... science’s work finished with the spinning wheel. Of course he became the leader of those people who are not contemporary.
You are asking me how to save humanity. From whom? I will say from Mahatma Gandhi and people like him.
Yes, save humanity: Save it from the popes, shankaracharyas, imams. Save it from Jesus Christ, Mahavira, Gautam Buddha. Save it.
But I know your question is not about saving it from Jesus Christ. You are asking just the opposite: you are asking me how to save it for Jesus Christ, not from Jesus Christ. But why? And have you tried to think – are you saved? Can you say that you have come to the point beyond which there is no growth? Can you say that you are utterly contented, that you don’t need even a single moment more to live because there is nothing left for you?
Are you saved from all anxiety, anguish, misery, suffering, anger, jealousy?
Are you saved from your own ego?
If you are not saved from all this rubbish hanging around, all this poison in your being, you have some nerve to ask how to save humanity.
And who are we to save humanity?
On what authority?
I can never conceive myself as a savior, as a messiah, because these are all ego trips. Who am I to save you? If I can save myself, that is more than enough.
But it is a strange world. People are drowning themselves in shit and crying loudly, ”Save humanity!”
From whom? From you?
It is psychologically understandable. You start all these ideas of redeeming, saving, helping, serving, just to do one thing: to escape from yourself.
You don’t want to face yourself.
You don’t want to see where you are, what you are. The best way is, start saving humanity so you will be so much involved, engaged, occupied, worried about great problems that your own problems will look negligible. Perhaps you may forget all about them. This is a very psychological device, but very poisonous. You want somehow to be as far away from yourself as possible so you need not see the wounds which are hurting. The best way is: serve.
I used to go to speak in Rotary Clubs, and on their desk they have their motto: We serve. And that was enough to trigger me. ”What nonsense is this? Whom do you serve and why should you serve?
Who are you to serve?” But Rotarians all over the world believe in service; just believe .... And once in a while they do little things, very clever.
The Rotarians collect all the medicines which are left in your house, unused because the sick person is no longer sick. Half the bottle is left – what are you going to do with it? Have some bank account in the other world; give it to the Rotary Club!
You are not losing anything, you were going to throw it anyway. What were you going to do with that medicine, those tablets, injections or any other things that are left? You just give it to the Rotary Club. The Rotary Club collects all kinds of medicines from everybody and has all the top people of the city. It is a prestigious thing to be a member of a Rotary Club, to be a Rotarian, because only the top man in a certain profession .... Only one professor will be a Rotarian, only one doctor will be a Rotarian, only one engineer will be a Rotarian – only one from every profession, vocation.
So the doctor who is the Rotarian will distribute those medicines to poor people. Great service! The doctor takes his fee and finds out from this junk that they have collected what medicine may be in some way useful. He is doing great service because at least he is giving this much time in finding the medicine from out of the junk: ”We serve.” And then he feels great inside that he is doing something of immense value.
One man has been opening schools in India for aboriginal children his whole life. He is a follower of Gandhi. Just by chance he met me, because I had gone into that aboriginal tribe. I was studying those aboriginals from every view, because they are living examples of days when man was not so much burdened with all kinds of morality, religion, civilization, culture, etiquette, manners. They are simple, innocent, still wild, fresh.
This man was going and collecting money from cities, and opening schools and bringing teachers.
Just by the way he met me there. I said, ”What are you doing? You think you are doing great service to these people?”
He said, ”Of course!”
So arrogantly he said, ”Of course!” I said, ”You are not aware of what you are doing. Schools exist in the cities, better than these: what help have they provided for human beings? And if those schools cannot provide, and colleges and universities cannot provide any help to humanity, what do you think? – your small schools are going to help these poor aboriginals?
”All that you will do is, you will destroy their originality. All that you will do is, you will destroy their primitive wildness. They are still free: your schools will create nothing but trouble for them.”
The man was shocked, but he waited for a few seconds and then said, ”Perhaps you are right, because once in a while I have been thinking that these schools and colleges and universities exist on a far wider scale all over the world. What can my small schools do? But then I thought it was Gandhi’s order to me to go to aboriginals and open schools, so I am following my master’s order.”
I said, ”If your master was an idiot, that does not mean that you have to continue following the order. Now, stop – I order you! And I tell you why you have been doing all this – just to escape from your own suffering, your own misery. You are a miserable man; anybody can see it from your face. You have never loved anybody, you have never been loved by anybody.”
He said, ”How did you manage to infer that? – because it is true. I was an orphan, nobody loved me, and I have been brought up in Gandhi’s ashram where love was only talked about in prayer; otherwise, love was not a thing to be practiced. There was strict discipline, a kind of regimentation.
So nobody has ever loved me, that’s true; and you are right, I have never loved anybody because in Gandhi’s ashram it was impossible to fall in love. That was the greatest crime.
”I was one of those whom Gandhi praised because I never fell in his eyes. Even his own sons betrayed him. Devadas, his son, fell in love with Rajgopalchary’s daughter, and then he was expelled from the ashram; they got married. Gandhi’s own personal secretary, Pyarelal, fell in love with a woman and kept the love affair secret for years. When it was exposed it was a scandal, a great scandal.”
I said, ”What nonsense! But Gandhi’s personal secretary ... that means, what about others?” And this man was praised because he never came in contact with any woman! Gandhi sent him to the aboriginal tribes and he had been doing what the master had said.
But he said to me, ”You have disturbed me. Perhaps it is true: I am just trying to escape from myself, from my wounds, from my own anguish.”
So all these people who become interested in saving humanity, in the first place are very egoistic.
They are thinking of themselves as saviors. In the second place, they are very sick. They are trying to forget their sickness. And in the third place, whatever they do is going to help man become worse than he is, because they are sick and blind and they are trying to lead people. And when blind people lead then you can be certain sooner or later the whole lot is going to fall into a well.
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