Your discourse on politics, and the poison it is, was extraordinary! I have lived in many communities, all sincere and well-meaning, yet everywhere I was appalled at the unconscious political ambition and intrigues which are underlying and dormant but come up in spite of the good intentions.

How are you handling it here? Are you allowing it free play so that people can work it out of their systems or are you nipping it in the bud and weeding out those that show the slightest tendencies?

My humble experience is that some people can never, never get anything going without politics – without getting themselves higher and higher in the power game. They are all over – perhaps even here – spreading their poison.

I don’t believe in repressing anything, not even the poisonous politics, because repressed it remains in your system – sooner or later it will take you over. And the longer it has been repressed, the more dangerous it becomes, because the deeper it goes into your unconscious, the deeper it goes into your very source of being. And if you are poisoned at your very source, at the very center, then it becomes really difficult to uproot it.

My approach about everything is to bring it to the surface. So I never nip anything in the bud, I help it to become a flower. And after the flowering, the flower starts withering of its own accord. That’s the natural way.

So in my commune, nothing is prevented. Ambitions are allowed, accepted, as a part of human beings – their ignorance, their unawareness. But I make my people aware that these are games, so play them but play consciously, become more and more alert, and never let them become serious. If they don’t become serious, there is no need to be afraid of them. The problem is, when a game becomes so serious then you forget completely that it is a game.

That’s where the politician is lost: he thinks he is doing something very serious. He is doing something very silly, but he thinks he is doing something very serious. All that is needed is to make him aware that this is a game; if you want to play it, play, but don’t become so serious about it. Keep a little bit of humor. A sense of humor is one of the greatest keys to transform human personalities.