presents

I Am the Rich Man’s Guru

There is a perception that you and your religious following are extremely wealthy.

My people

are rich.

In fact, only the very rich,

educated, intelligent,

cultured

can understand what I am saying.

Beggars cannot come to me,

poor people cannot come to me;

the gap is too big.

They can hear me but they cannot understand me.

So it is natural:

I am the rich man’s guru.

Isn’t that a contradiction with the traditional

perception of a life of austerity led by religious leaders and ascetics?

I simply think those traditions just rubbish.

There is no question of contradiction;

I am simply against them.

I don’t want to be consistent with them,

I want to drop all connections with the past.

They have done enough harm.

My

conception of a beautiful,

flowering being

is not that of austerity, it is of luxury.

He will enjoy all that is beautiful in the world

great paintings, great music, poetry.

I don’t conceive of him standing on his head in the hot sun of Oregon,

fasting,

slowly destroying himself.

To me, all religions of the world up to now

have been sadomasochistic.

My religion is, for the first time, life-affirming.

One thing I think people on the outside

remember about you

when they read stories or see you on television

is the fact that you own so many, or have so many Rolls Royces. Why is that?

How many?

Eighty?

No.

Forty?

Ninety.

And they are not so many.

For me there is nothing…

Why do you need ninety?

I don’t need even a single one.

And they don’t belong to me, either.

But my people want,

they 365, one for every day. And I go for a drive only for one hour.

But if my people want it, if they are happy and rejoice doing it,

I don’t want to destroy their joy.

It is perfectly okay.

Couldn’t you tell them to give their money for something else, other than for Rolls Royces?

All other religions are doing that. Let them do that as their work, let me do my work.

All other religions are looking after the poor. At least leave me alone to look after the rich.

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