"Anybody shaking hands with you will immediately take his hand back: your hand is bourgeois.' It is true. I have never done anything with my hands.

"I was joking with the journalists, but idiots can't understand any sense of humor. The attorney general of Oregon has immediately put the National Guard on alert. It is good. To be alert is always good. That's my whole teaching! Keep the National Guard, your armies, twenty-four hours alert. That's what I want. And I can go on making statements so that you have to keep them alert.

"But just for you – privately, don't tell it to anybody – we are nonviolent people, vegetarians: we don't do such things.

"There is no need to do it. Our joy, our laughter, our love, our silence, our meditation, are a far bigger force than nuclear weapons. They can try, they can kill our bodies; they cannot kill our spirit. And the moment they kill our bodies they are really getting into greater danger, because then our spirits are free to go around the world, with no visa, no passport, no green card. I am preparing you for that.

"Hijacking planes or throwing stones at embassies is for retarded politicians.

"We have nothing to do with politics.

"We are the only group of people in the whole world which is apolitical.

"So you have to understand; you get confused. I am always speaking the truth – sometimes in a way that looks like a joke, sometimes in a way that looks like a contradiction, sometimes in a way that looks like a lie; but I am always saying the truth, and truth alone.

"Those who understand me have no difficulty, no conflict, no confusion. So meditate a little more; otherwise I will send you to Poland. Po stands for Poland, where everybody is confused. Nobody knows what is right, what is wrong. Nobody knows when to say yes, when to say no.

"Here, you have to attain to clarity, to insight into everything, and I am giving you all the opportunities to see. And I will be giving you bigger and bigger opportunities to see yourself, understand yourself. Right now, you have missed the point."