We need in the world more creativity to balance the destructive forces. We need in the world more enlightened people to balance the blind politicians. For this there is still time enough, because enlightenment can happen within a second. It does not need time; it needs only a total longing for it, a longing as if your life is at risk.

I can understand why you are feeling a paradox. You would like to do something, but things have gone beyond your doing. What can you do to prevent the Soviet Union or to prevent Ronald Reagan? And soon nuclear weapons will be in twenty-five countries, with pygmy politicians. What can you do?

The only thing possible is: forget doing.

Think of being.

You can be more joyful, you can be more loving – that is within your capacity. No Ronald Reagan can prevent you. No nuclear weapons can prevent you. People have never thought this way. They have always tried to protest against wars – nobody has listened to them.

I am suggesting a totally new solution. And in the circumstances, that is the only alternative possible: forget doing, grow into your being. And the growth of your being is contagious; it will help many people to light their unlit torches from your life fire.

If we have people around the world who know the beauty of life, of creativity, of poetry, of music, of painting, of dancing, of love, then nobody – no politician – will have the guts to force humanity into a war. So rather than going against war, you create the balancing force – which is in your hands. If the warmongers have nuclear weapons, then you have to create something equivalent, or more powerful – and enlightenment is certainly more powerful than any nuclear weapon.

In the Old Testament, there is a beautiful story of two cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. God became very angry with these two cities, because in both people were practicing perverted sex. In Sodom people were making love to animals; hence sodomy has become the word for making love with animals. In Gomorrah people had become homosexuals, and all kinds of perversions…God finally decided to destroy both those cities completely, and in the Old Testament he did destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.

It does not look right of God, but the Jewish God is an angry God. That is our projection: it is not a question of whether God is angry or not. God is a hypothesis – you can make anything out of it, whatever you want. God declares in the Jewish scriptures, “I am a very angry God, very jealous. I will never forgive you if you go against me; I am not your uncle, I am not a nice man.”

But in Judaism there is a rebellious stream, a very small minority stream of Hassidic mystics. The orthodox Jews don’t accept them as religious at all, but as I understand it, they are the only religious people in the whole Judaic tradition. They are people who dance, sing, love, play music. They are very joyous people and they have interpreted Judaism according to their own joy and blissfulness.