The Last Testament (Vol 5) ~ 02

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event type interview
date & time 10 Dec 1985 pm
location Manali (HP)
language English
audio Available, duration 1h 17min. Quality: good, but questions almost not audible. All audio sources: from 1:16:22 missing sounds for 14 seconds (under revision).
online audio
video Not available
online video
see also
online text find the PDF of this discourse
shorttitle LAST502
notes
synopsis
Interview. No announcement heard : unidentified Western interviewer, man.
CD-ROM on this chapter: Interview with Sunday Times, London, UK.
Question 1
Can I begin by asking you about what's happening now? Is this the beginning of another commune?
Question 2
But I've read reports Bhagwanji that you're looking or disciples or your followers are looking for something (inaudible).
Question 3
Seems to me that a great many people listen to you.
Question 4
What would you say the difference is?
Question 5
Doesn't understanding lead to belief?
Question 6
Would you describe yourself as a man who has beliefs?
Question 7
Did you have any belief in America when you went there?
Question 8
Then what drew you to America?
Question 9
How do you mean... old enough to form the society which has antagonistic ideas to you?
Question 10
What do you think America believes in?
Question 11
Such certainty? Was that a common experience for you in America?
Question 12
Do you differentiate between rotten Christianity and less rotten Christianity, or do you think all Christianity is rotten?
Question 13
I think very few Christians now hold that belief. I mean possibly fundamentalist Christians in Oregon did but I think that Christians (inaudible)
Question 14
But is this, is this the reason that you had to leave the United States? Do you believe it was some kind of Christian plot to make you leave?
Question 15
But can you deprogramme an agnostic or an atheist?
Question 16
So if an agnostic came to you, as Bhagwan, would that be a waste of his time?
Question 17
But isn't the search for truth a programme?
Question 18
And if you believe in something called truth, that's the beginning of a programme?
Question 19
But you believe in something called truth?
Question 20
So you know truth?
Question 21
To go back to America again, apart from the Christian pressure on you, what other pressures do you think were on you?
Question 22
Has all this made you feel very bitter (inaudible)?
Question 23
What kind of people were in jail with you?
Question 24
How do you explain that?
Question 25
Could it not be that black people are poorer than the white people? Poor people are more criminal than richer people.
Question 26
Talking of criminals or people who are accused criminal behavior, how do you explain the behavior of one of your former disciples, Sheela. What's your explanation on that?
Question 27
So it was just too big a temptation?
Question 28
Would you welcome her back if she came....?
Question 29
But the group of people who surround you or who are your friends, and you yourself, are concerned with the search for truth. But isn't it very sad and very ironic the reason that you're so famous now in the world has got nothing to do with the search for truth. It's got to do with court cases, secretaries who tried to poison, the number of Rolls Royces you have -- hasn't something gone terribly wrong....
Question 30
But your commune in Oregon certainly (inaudible)
Question 31
With your knowledge of the world's interested in titillation and sensation, specially the world's newspapers and world's television stations, isn't it in way perverse to have ninety-three Rolls Royces knowing that that what's the world will be interested in?
Question 32
So you would argue that the Rolls Royces were a kind of gimic which would interest people.
Question 33
Because the world's interested in you because you have a watch....
Question 34
This seems to be the opposite of the traditional Indian swami....
Question 35
.... Renounce this watch.
Question 36
So you would have no time for people like Gandhi, or....
Question 37
How about Swami Vivekanand?
Question 38
Rabindranath Tagore?
Question 39
So what would you blame, Hinduism, feudalism?
Question 40
Because they teach passivity and renunciation, that you are placid and renounce the material world?
Question 41
Would you say that any of this you owe to Hinduism?
Question 42
Would you say that any of your province you owe to Hinduism?
Question 43
Would you say that this assembly that now surrounds you with bare feet, sitting crosslegged, owes something to Hinduism?
Question 44
How would you feel if they all sat on chairs?
Question 45
But nonetheless, you are the guru and they are disciples.
Question 46
Has all this surprised you, the fact that you've become very famous, international fame, as a boy from Madhya Pradesh?
Question 47
I think in Manali seventeen years ago you spoke. Was that one of your first meetings?
Question 48
Is that what drew you back to this place?
Question 49
Do you think of yourself as an Indian?
Question 50
And your family, your mother and (inaudible). They are your sannyasins (inaudible). Has that been confusing; the fact that your mother is a disciple of yours as well as your own mother?
Question 51
Your mother is a lady of what, seventy-five or eighty?
Question 52
And your father was a cloth merchant?
Question 53
Did he wish that you went into the family business?
Question 54
You said in an interview last week or the week before that when you die you wanted to be forgotten as an (inaudible). Did you really say that?
Question 55
What does that mean?
Question 56
But the people who are gathered with you here obviously tend not to believe that....
Question 57
Do you try to dissuade them from the idea that you will somehow live on in some kind of philosophy or religion.
Question 58
But then Bhagwan why bother to write books?
Question 59
Then many books have been published in your name.
Question 60
Do you believe in any kind of life after death?
Question 61
Do you know anything?
Question 62
But do you think the spiritual side of yourself can exist after you have died, somewhere. Do you believe in transmigration of souls or (inaudible)?
Question 63
That is your goal?
Question 64
Is it disappearing? To disappear, to die.
Question 65
But not for some time yet.
Question 66
Where do you think you might end up? I mean, in this world. Do you think you'll end up in (inaudible) or some part of India? Do you think you'll find yourself here in the next ten years?
Question 67
But India is not a problem?
Question 68
If you keep quiet it will be okay?


(source:CD-ROM)


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