"When Buddha was alive a commune grew around him; he called it sangha, another name for commune. The meaning of sangha is: where the initiates have dropped their egos and are no more functioning like islands but have become one with each other, where a communion is happening. Communication is between the heads; communion is between the hearts.

"Whenever so many hearts open, become flowers, a great fragrance is released. That fragrance surrounds a Buddha, you can call it a buddhafield. The energy is totally different: there is no politics involved in it.

"Politics belongs to the world of the ego. The game of politics is an ego number: how to be more powerful than the other. It is ambition in its ugliest form. It is sheer cunningness, exploitation. It is an effort to enslave others. It is not possible at all to the meditators, because for meditation the basic requirement is to drop the ego. You cannot play the games of the ego any more. There is no question of being higher, more powerful than the others. In fact, there is no question of 'the other'.

"The moment 'I' disappears, instantly the 'thou' also disappears. I and thou exist together; they are like two sides of the same coin. Drop your 'I' and you will be surprised that for you there is nobody who is other than you; the reality appears as one organic whole. But it is possible only with a center.

"When Buddha died his commune existed at least for five hundred years, but slowly died; slowly it withered away. It remained alive till…few people continued to become enlightened and went on replacing the Buddha. When there was nobody enlightened any more, when there was not the center, the whole field disappeared. When there is no sun, how can there be rays? It is an individual phenomenon.

"If Buddha is there, the commune is bound to happen; it cannot be prevented. It is inevitable. The real seekers will start moving towards the buddha from the farthest corners of the world. It is just like when a fragrant flower opens, bees start queuing from faraway places. Suddenly the fragrance becomes a magnetic pull – but only for the bees, not for everybody."