And this contact will have a great significance. You will be fulfilling each other without destroying each other. You will be loving but not possessive. You will help but you will not enslave. You will support, but not to exploit – just out of your love, friendliness; out of your understanding whatever happens will be right.
Of course you will not be part of the big world of retarded people whose mental age is not more than fourteen. This is enough for being a postman or a stationmaster or a president – any trivia. I don’t see any difference between a stationmaster and a president of a country. Both are small flies pretending to be something great. You will not be in contact with these psychologically retarded people, but you will come in contact with real, authentic, intelligent, loving human beings who have understanding, who have compassion. And because they can love themselves, they can also love you.
My experience is very different. The moment my blindness disappeared, the moment I found my own being, I could not believe how people started coming to me: I had not advertised myself in any newspaper! Suddenly, walking on the streets, somebody would stop me. Feeling a little embarrassed that he is stopping an absolute stranger, he would say, “Something in you makes me feel to be friendly with you.”
I would say, “How many friends can I manage?”
One of the friends arranged a bungalow for me. It was big enough, but soon it was continuously full of guests coming from faraway places. I told the friend, “Something has to be done because we don’t have space.” I have suffered with space my whole life, and I am still suffering. A few sannyasins are continuously searching for more space because more people are coming, threatening that they are coming!
I have never found myself a stranger. On the contrary, I have found people who are on the same wavelength. I have found people who are filled with the same music. Slowly, slowly people started coming from outside India. Now perhaps this is the only gathering in the world that has its brothers, its sisters, in every country – and yet there is no church, no dogma, no belief system.
What is holding all these people together? I am not promising you any heaven or paradise, and neither am I threatening you with any hell: that if you don’t believe in me, “Beware of eternal darkness and hellfire!” Neither am I making you afraid, nor making you greedy for pleasures in heaven. I am not promising you anything – in fact I am taking away all the promises that others have given to you.
Why has this small commune of friends become an international commune?