From my earliest years I was brought up, again fortunately, by my grandfather, my mother’s father, not by my father – a father is bound to be a disciplinarian; he is bound to be concerned about the future. My grandfather, maternal grandfather remember…because my father’s father was a totally different man…. My mother’s father had no other child, my mother was the only child, and once my mother was married he showered all his love on me. I lived like a king. He used to call me Raja. Nobody has called me that since. Raja means “the king.”

Although my grandfather was not very rich, he was the richest man in his village. On each of my birthdays he would bring an elephant. I would sit on the elephant and throw coins all around. That was his great joy. In his days there were golden coins, not paper notes. That’s what I have been doing my whole life: throwing golden coins all along. I am still throwing, sitting on an elephant.

So when I say something and you do not understand, please forgive me. I come from a totally different context. I am really a foreigner. In my own country I am a foreigner. My whole vision is in a way primitive, and in a way original. Original means primitive – of the origins.

This morning I said “the chawal in the lotus.” I know the right pronunciation, but what to do with a wrong man? I will still pronounce it in my way. Coming in I asked Vivek, “What is the right pronunciation, ‘jewel’?” I can easily understand jewelry, jeweler, jewel, but forgive me…I will say “the chawal and the lotus.”

I am a little bit stubborn, my type of people have always been so. If they are not stubborn they cannot work. To work with stupid people you have to be stubborn, really hard, steel hard.

And this beautiful mantra, Om mani padme hum, has been translated by the English fools. It seems unimaginable, but it has been translated. Even you will be shocked…they think it is something sexual! They think the mani represents the male sexual organ – look at the perversity of the so-called great psychologists – and the lotus represents the female sexual organ! Now, you cannot make the meaning that they make of it…. Om mani padme hum means to them male human organ into female human organ. Great! Great discovery! And these fools are thought to be scientists, biologists, psychologists, and all kinds of things, but they are just imbeciles, idiots.

I should not use the same word, fool, for them. They are not ordinary fools, they are idiots. An idiot is a fool who cannot be cured. A fool is an idiot who is already on the path to recovery. But I cannot call these people fools; they are idiots.

This morning, talking about Dostoyevsky’s book I called it “The Prince.” Forgive me, it is not titled “The Prince”; that is my own title for it, on my own book. I have titled it “The Prince” but the printed title is The Idiot. I avoided mentioning the word idiot this morning because I wanted to make the distinction. The idiot is incurable. The fool is available, ready, ready to change. The idiot is hard, very hard. For anything to penetrate into the head of an idiot is impossible. An idiot’s head is covered with steel, nothing can penetrate him. That is why I called the book “The Prince.”