Once, Yakusan asked his disciple, Ungan, “What are you doing?”
Ungan said, “I am carrying water.”
Yakusan asked, “What about that fellow?”
Ungan replied, “He is here.”
Yakusan then asked, “For whom are you working?”
Ungan replied, “I’m busy on behalf of that fellow.”
Yakusan asked, “Why don’t you let that fellow work with you?”
Ungan said, “Osho, don’t make a fool of him!”
Yakusan said, “Don’t say that! Has he ever carried water?”
Once, Yakusan said to Dogo – Ungan’s brother – “I have a very special phrase, which I have never told anybody.”
Dogo observed: “It is already following you.”
On another occasion, Ungan asked Yakusan, “How do you express the phrase?”
Yakusan said, “It is not a question of expression.”
Dogo commented, “Now, you have expressed it.”

Friends, the Prime Minister of India, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, has made a few very significant statements. They have to be discussed, not only here but around the world.

He has said that India is suffering from an alien influence coming from the West, materialism. Hence we should, according to him, reject materialism and enhance our spiritual heritage.

I want Mr. Rajiv Gandhi, with all due respect to him, to know clearly: India is not suffering from materialism. It is suffering from a strange disease which the West is also suffering from.

India is suffering because it has accepted only half of man.

Man is both matter and spirit, the earth and the sky, the outer and the inner. Reject one and you will suffer.

The West is suffering by rejecting the inner. The inner has its own needs; they have to be nourished, evolved, brought to their ultimate peak in an awakened soul.

The East, particularly India, is suffering by rejecting materialism; and Rajiv Gandhi is again insisting on the same fallacy.

India is the oldest country in the world, but it has not developed science, it has not developed technology, it has not developed medical science. It has lived in utter poverty.

This poverty cannot be dispelled without scientific, technological development. If you reject materialism, science is rejected automatically. By rejecting materialism, where will you land up?

In his election propaganda he was talking of bringing the country into the twenty-first century. And now? – he wants to reject materialism. That means falling back thousands of years. You will have to reject electricity, you will have to reject trains, you will have to reject cars, you will have to reject your nuclear plants. Has he forgotten that he has been working hard to create nuclear plants? They don’t belong to spirituality.

You will have to reject all medical science, all surgery. You will have to reject all birth control methods. Do you want to kill this whole country, to commit suicide?

And what is this heritage you are bragging about? From where does it start? From the Rigveda? That is the ancientmost scripture, it can be taken as a milestone.