But anybody from the outside will think that I am the dictator; that is absolutely wrong. People are here working out of their love, nobody is ordered. And if they ask me and I say something, it is always a suggestion, never an order. They are free to accept it or not accept it. They always accept it – the credit goes to them; it has nothing to do with me. If they don’t accept it they are perfectly free to do that way.

In a real commune, the commune of my vision, the highest becomes the center. In the communism of Karl Marx, the lowest dominates; it is the dictatorship of the proletariat. Naturally, these are two different things, polar opposites.

When the highest…and by “highest” I simply mean one who is no more, one who has become one with the whole, one who has no more any separate existence. one who is no more pushing the river, one who is flowing with the been, one who is in a deep let-go, one who is just a vehicle, a hollow bamboo on the lips of God. And if God sings, of course the hollow bamboo becomes a flute, but it all depends on God. The song does not belong to the flute, it belongs to the singer.

Through the buddha, through the enlightened person, God starts flowing. It is the highest, the suprememost that creates a real commune. The communism that exists in Russia and China is dominated by the lowest. Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong belong to the lowest type, the most violent, murderous people that have ever existed on the earth.

The name of Joseph Stalin means a man of steel; that was not his real name. Stalin means a man of steel; it is not his real name, it is because of his hardness.

A buddha is represented by a lotus flower, not by steel. The lotus flower has been in the East the symbol of all the buddha’s – very fragile, very delicate, with a subtle perfume, not aggressive at all.

If you surrender to a buddha it is your decision, it is your freedom; you are not made to surrender. And when many people surrender to a buddha they are really surrendering to their own future, to their own ultimate potential. Buddha simply represents what can happen to them. He is just a reflection of their ultimate flowering.

When you surrender to a buddha you are really surrendering your lower reality to your own higher reality; the buddha is just an excuse. Then a real commune comes into existence. It is out of love, out of meditation and prayer. It is not based on violence; it is not rooted in the lower qualities, animal qualities of man.

In that sense you are right, that a real commune is happening here, but it is the not the first experiment, remember it. The experiment has happened many times before. But it always looks like that. When you fall in love you think, “Such kind of love has never happened before; it is something unique.” And in a way it is – for you it is a new experience. You have never been in love with a buddha, so to you it is a new experiment. Otherwise, for thousands of years humanity has existed, and many times small oases in the desert have arisen. But the desert is vast and hard…