Just the other day, I was reading a report. A few psychologists in England have discovered that by the time great politicians reach the highest posts, their intelligence is already withering away. Just think of a man of eighty-four becoming a prime minister! Those psychologists have warned the whole world that this is dangerous. People who have gone beyond sixty, seventy, eighty, they become prime ministers and presidents. This is dangerous for the world, because they have so much power and so little intelligence left.

But those psychologists are not aware of another thing that I would like to tell you. In fact people choose them to be prime ministers and presidents because they are no longer intelligent. People don’t like intelligent persons. People like people who look like them, who are like them; they feel they are not strangers. Intelligent people will be strangers.

I can’t think of any country which could choose Socrates to be the prime minister – impossible. He is so different, his approach to life is so different, his insight into things is so deep. No country could afford, or no country could be so courageous, as to make him the prime minister, because he would bring chaos. He would start changing each and everything, because each and everything needs to be changed.

This rotten society has to be destroyed completely; only then can a new society be created. Renovation is not going to help. We have been renovating the same old ruins for centuries. No more props, no more renovations, no more whitewash! All that is needed is to demolish it, and let us create a new society. Let us bring a new human being, Homo novus. Let us give birth to something new, a new mind, a new consciousness.

People choose dull dead persons to be in power because you can be safe with them. Now, India is very safe with Morarji Desai; he is not going to do a single thing. He will keep everything intact, he will keep this country’s ugly bureaucracy as it is. He will not change anything; his whole effort will be how to stop change. Jaiprakash Narayan was thinking of bringing about a total revolution, and what has happened is total failure.

Countries choose mediocre people to be in power, because they will save their tradition, their conventions, their prejudices. They will protect their poisons. Instead of destroying them, they will enhance them and strengthen them.

It is certainly dangerous to have unintelligent people in powerful posts. And it is becoming more and more dangerous, because they have more and more power and less and less intelligence. But why does it happen? There is a subtle logic in it. People don’t want to change. Change is arduous, change is difficult.

If you change your poisonous foods you will be surprised; a new intelligence will be released in you. And this new intelligence will make it possible not to go on stuffing yourself with nonsense. This new intelligence will make you capable of dropping the past and its memories, of dropping unnecessary desires and dreams, dropping jealousies, angers, traumas and all kinds of psychological wounds.