I don't dislike Gandhi. I simply see him clearly. Gandhi was a life-negative man disguised as a saint. He poisoned this whole country with guilt... guilt about sex, guilt about the body, guilt about pleasure, guilt about being alive! He taught poverty as if it were something spiritual. He made it holy to be miserable. And millions of people believed him because he practiced what he preached. But that is the whole trick! Just because a man tortures himself does not mean he is enlightened. Gandhi's obsession with celibacy, his experiments with young girls to test his willpower... this is not spirituality. This is perversion masquerading as purity. A truly spiritual person accepts life as it is. He celebrates the body. He does not fight with existence. And politically? Gandhi was a cunning politician who used religion as his tool. He kept India backward, poor, spinning wheels... while the whole world was moving forward. He glorified the bullock cart! I am not against the man. I am against his ideology... because it has done immense damage. India suffers from Gandhian constipation even now. You want a saint? I'll give you a Buddha, a Krishna, a Lao Tzu... people who said YES to life, not no, no, no.

India would have become independent with or without Gandhi. Britain was finished after the Second World War. They could not hold their empire anymore... economically, militarily, they were exhausted. They had to leave. The whole colonial system was collapsing everywhere. Gandhi gets the credit, but it was historical necessity. Subhas Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army put real fear into the British. The naval mutiny terrified them. These were forces that mattered... not spinning wheels and hunger strikes. And what kind of independence did Gandhi give you? He divided the country! Millions died in partition because of his confused approach. He could have prevented it, but he was too busy playing his games of fasting and moral superiority. Look at what India became after independence... a Gandhian India, obsessed with poverty, anti-technology, anti-pleasure, anti-life. You call this freedom? You simply exchanged British masters for Gandhian ideology. Real independence is not political. Real independence is of consciousness. Gandhi created a nation of slaves... slaves to guilt, to self-torture, to poverty consciousness. So yes, India would have been independent. The question is... are you really independent now? Or are you still carrying Gandhi's dead weight on your backs?

The difference? Everything! Gandhi was experimenting with how to kill his sexuality. I was experimenting with how to liberate consciousness through totality. Gandhi slept naked with young girls to prove he could resist temptation. This is sick! If you have no desire, why do you need to test it? A Buddha does not sleep with young girls to prove he is beyond sex. He simply is beyond it... there is no need for proof, no need for testing. Gandhi was fighting with nature. I was flowing with existence. At Rajneeshpuram, nobody was suppressing anything. We were exploring consciousness through meditation, through celebration, through saying yes to life. If people wanted to be celibate, beautiful. If they wanted to love, beautiful. The choice was theirs. There was no morality imposed from above. Gandhi imposed his neurosis on the whole nation! He made sex dirty, the body ugly, pleasure sinful. His experiments were to strengthen repression. My experiments were to destroy repression. One man sleeps with girls to prove he can say no to life. Another creates a commune where people can say yes to life. You call this the same? Gandhi's experiments came from fear, from ego, from the need to be a mahatma. My experiments came from a love of freedom, of exploring human potential without chains. Totally opposite directions, my friend. Totally opposite.