That moment in Indira Gandhi’s life must have been of tremendous honesty and sincerity. One cannot expect politicians to be sincere, but there are moments. One becomes tired of insincerity, tired of dishonesty, tired of hypocrisy. She was alone and forgot that she was a politician, and answered, “My only hobby is power.” But then she must have recognized immediately what she had said. She implored the man, “This is off record, it is just a personal chit-chat: You cannot put it in the book you are writing.” The politician is back.

Somebody’s happiness is power: power over people, domination, destruction. What are the constituents of your happiness? If you watch intelligently, you will be full of contempt. And your reason…. Everybody thinks that he is a very rational being. But have you ever thought that you have so many superstitions which are a solid evidence of the absence of reason, not the presence of reason.

A man of reason cannot have a belief in God. Do you believe in God? A man of reason cannot believe in heaven and hell. Do you believe? A man of reason cannot be a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Buddhist, because these are different kinds of superstitions. Their differences are not based on any valid evidence. Their differences are so stupid that if you have reason, you will not be able to believe that millions of people are living with these superstitions, believing that they are rational.

In my university, there was a department for yoga, because the vice-chancellor was very much interested in yoga. He thought that he is being very rational, far ahead of his time, because he was the first to introduce yoga as a department in his university. No other university in the whole world had a yoga department. He bragged about it.

One day I could not resist the temptation and I said, “Enough is enough. I have heard you bragging about this yoga department and you think you have done a great rational service to humanity. Now I want rational proofs. All kinds of distortions of the body, how they are going to help man’s spiritual growth? What relationship is there? And if spiritual growth happens through these distortions, then the head of the department of yoga, who knows all yoga exercises to perfection, he should be a giant like a Gautam Buddha, or a Mahavira.

“But he is a stupid man. He is a proof that all those distortions of the body do not help spiritual growth; perhaps they destroy spiritual growth.” And I have reasons to believe that they destroy. Standing on your head for hours is going to destroy your very fragile brain cells, because so much blood will be coming to the mind, like a flood. And your small head has millions of cells, so tiny and so fragile.

Animals have not been able to develop intelligence, for the simple reason their head and their body is in the same horizontal line. Too much blood runs through their head and does not allow the delicate framework of a brain to develop. Because man is standing on his feet, blood has to go against gravitation towards the head, so a very small amount reaches. That is enough for the nourishment of those cells. It is not a flood, it is just the right proportion.

I asked him, “Do you use a pillow when you sleep, or not?”

He said, “I use a pillow, but what does that have to do with yoga?”