And unless we change the situation…either we make the conscious life of man so beautiful, so loving, so blissful, that he would not like to become unconscious – he would like to become more conscious; or we have to make man himself completely free from all these things that can make him miserable. Then he would not like to be unconscious. Then he would like to be more and more conscious, because the more conscious he is, the more life becomes juicy, the more life becomes an adventure, the more he comes to know of the mysteries of existence.
He wants to become more conscious, and this longing for more consciousness will not stop until he has attained absolute consciousness – until he is pure consciousness and there is not even a small corner of darkness and unconsciousness in him, until he is full of light, just light.
The whole history of man is a history of making man more and more unconscious, and drugs are not the only way. There are other things which make man unconscious. So it is possible that sometimes a man may not be interested in drugs, but that does not mean that he is interested in remaining conscious – he has found some other kind of drug which is not known as a drug, for example a man who is full of the lust for power. That is also a drug, but he cannot afford to be totally unconscious; he has to fight for power, and he has to remain conscious.
Politics is a drug of the same category as marijuana, LSD – perhaps more dangerous because the people who have been taking marijuana or LSD or hashish have done no harm to the world. They may have harmed themselves but they have not harmed anybody. But the politicians? They have done nothing but harm. The whole history is full of blood. Now, the people who have been taking marijuana and things like that, they don’t create history, they don’t create Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah, Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler. They don’t create those kinds of monsters. Their drug is very innocent in comparison to politics.
Somebody may be after money; money becomes almost a drug to him.
I used to know a man – I have never seen any man so addicted to money. If he would see a hundred rupee note in your hand, he could not resist touching it. And the way he would touch it, it was as if he was touching his beloved. He would look at it from all sides and he would touch it. And it was not his note, he had to return it.
He never gave money back to anybody he borrowed from; he simply could not do it. I will not call it a crime; it was simply impossible for him to part with money. He had enough money. He had seven houses which he had rented and he himself was living in a free house, a dharmashala, a caravanserai where you can stay for three days free. But the city was big and it had many caravansaries, so for three days he would stay in this caravanserai and then he would move to another caravanserai. And all his money was deposited in different banks. He was so afraid that some bank may go bankrupt – so it was better to keep the money in different places.