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needed as a substitute. Your possessions give you that false identity.
When Alexander the Great was coming back from India he remembered that his master, Aristotle, had asked him to bring a sannyasin from India. Aristotle had heard about sannyasins. Rumors from business people, travelers, adventurers, were reaching him that a strange kind of man exists in India: the sannyasin. It was absolutely unbelievable because a sannyasin is possible only when a certain civilization reaches its very peak, not before that. A primitive society cannot have sannyasins.
Only a very superior culture, rich, can become fed up with richness, fed up with culture, fed up with civilization. You cannot be fed up with something which you don't have. To be fed up with something, you need to have it so much that it loses all meaning.
There is a continuous loss in meaning. For example: if you have one million dollars, do you think when you have ten million dollars the dollar will have the same value for you? It will be ten times less. But if you have one hundred thousand million dollars, then in the same proportion the dollar will go on losing its value for you. You can think of a situation where the dollar loses all meaning, it becomes just dust unto dust. But that is possible only when you have so much.
A country poor, hungry, starving cannot have real sannyasins. Yes, India still has sannyasins but that is just the dead corpse of sannyas carried on by tradition. Otherwise sannyasins disappeared at least two thousand years ago in India -- they don't exist.
My effort was the first after two thousand years to bring the sannyasin back in his true color. That became a conflict because the old sannyasin is dead, but he holds the power of tradition, of the past; my sannyasin is alive, but he has no power of the past, no power of tradition, no authority from the scriptures. There was going to be conflict. And the old were afraid: although they knew they had all the authority, one thing was certain -- that they were not alive. They may have all the authority but they are a corpse.
My sannyasin may not have any authority, but he is alive, and life is the only
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