Jesus, the only forgotten son of god

Question 1:

GOD certainly is not a hypothesis.

A hypothesis can only be part of an objective science. You can experiment upon it, you can dissect it, analyze it.

That's what Karl Marx has argued: "unless God is proved in a scientific lab, I am not going to accept him." What Karl Marx is saying is that, "I can accept God as a hypothesis, but a hypothesis is not a truth. It has yet to be proved, and the proof has to be scientific."

But if God is put into a scientific lab, in a test tube, and dissected, analyzed, and we know all the constituents that make God, will it be the God who created the world? And if Marx is going to accept God only then, that means God has to be reduced into a thing.

Then what would be the difficulty in manufacturing God? Once you have analyzed all the constituents of God, all the chemicals, then there is no problem. Get your discovery patented, and start manufacturing God. But that manufactured God will not be the God you are asking me about.

God is not a hypothesis, cannot be a hypothesis, because the very word hypothesis takes the ground from beneath His feet. God is not to be proved. If science has to prove God then the scientist becomes higher than God. The poor God will be just like a white rat. So you play around and make boxes, and God moves from one box to another, and you find out how much intelligence God has.

Delgado, the psychologist, will be very happy to find God in a mousetrap, because all that psychologists have found about man is not about man, it is about mice. They first find out about the mice, and then they project it onto human beings - because it looks inhuman to dissect a human being, to torture him and to experiment upon him.

But it is very strange that the mouse gives clues which help to understand the human mind, human psychology. Certainly man is more developed. You can extrapolate but the basic idea you can get from a mouse.

God, according to the pseudo-religions, is the creator of the whole of existence. According to them, we are His creation. To make God a hypothesis means from now onwards He is going to be our creation. We are trying to reverse the roles, putting the creator as a creature and the creature as the creator. The pseudo-religions will not agree. I also do not agree, but our disagreements are basically different.

They cannot agree because God is above everything; nobody can be above God. The scientist has to be an observer, above, to watch, and then God becomes just a plaything in his hands. He will put electrodes in God's mind. He will have remote control so whenever he wants, God laughs; whenever he wants, God weeps; whenever he wants, God runs; whenever he wants, God stops.

The pseudo-religions cannot agree for this reason: that God is not a creature, not a thing; He is the creator. He has made you, you cannot be above Him, in no way.

My disagreement is that even for something to be a hypothesis a certain probability is needed - not certainty, but at least a probability. God is not even probable. My reasons are totally different.

A scientist starts with a hypothesis because he sees some probability in it, some possibility, some potentiality.

God is only a word without any substance in it; a hollow word with no meaning at all.

Perhaps we have to interpret the Bible a little differently. It says, "In the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God." In this reference perhaps it is true, that the beginning of God is nothing but a word. And then the word starts gathering moss around it; as time passes people go on giving more and more meaning to it. What meaning they give to the word is their need. You should remember it.

God is all-knowing, because man has felt in every direction that his knowledge is very limited - just a little light, a candlelight throwing a small circle. Beyond that circle all is darkness; and that darkness creates fear. Who knows what it contains? Somebody is needed who knows. If he is not present, he has to be invented.

God is an invention of man's own psychological need.

He is all-knowing. You cannot be; whatsoever you know, howsoever you know, you can never be all-knowing. Existence is so vast and man is so tiny, so small, that to conceive that your small brain will be able to know all - past, present, future - seems to be a fool's dream. Even a fool will not dream such a thing.

But to live in a world surrounded everywhere with darkness is difficult. You cannot be certain even of what you know, because the unknown is so vast, that who can say that if you know a little more, your known will not be found invalid.

In fact that has been the case. The more man knew, the more he became aware that the knowledge that was knowledge yesterday, today has become ignorance. What about today's knowledge?

Perhaps tomorrow this too will become ignorance.

It became a great psychological need to have someone who knows all.

The priests did a great job, perhaps the greatest job ever done, and did it perfectly well:

They invented God.

It helped in many ways. Man became more certain of himself, more stable, less afraid, because there is an all-knowing God, all-pervading God, everywhere present. All that you have to know is the key to turn God in your favor. And the key was with the priest, who was ready to part with it.

Every religion has been pretending that they have that key which unlocks all the doors, the master key.

And if you attain the master key, you will be just like gods; you will be all-knowing, you will be present anywhere you want, you will be all-powerful.

You just see in these three words, man's three needs.

His knowledge is very limited, very poor. What really do we know? Even small things can make you aware of your ignorance.

Our power... what power do we have? Perhaps man is the only animal in the world who has no power. Can you fight with a lion? - with a tiger? Forget about lions and tigers, can you fight with a dog or a cat? You will be surprised - what to say about a cat, if even a hundred thousand flies attack you, what are you going to do? You have never thought about flies attacking, but if they attack, if some fly turns political, you will be helpless, you cannot survive.

Forget about flies; in fact there are plants in South Africa which catch birds and animals, suck them completely and throw them away. There are science fictions about plants attacking men. They can catch men, they are big enough. If you are in their vicinity their branches can just catch hold of you like the trunk of an elephant, and crush you completely. And they have ways to suck your blood.

Very perfect surgery - all over your body their branches will start penetrating you. And how thick is your skin? lust a little scratch is enough and blood is available. And those trees live on blood; they are man-eating trees - the man is still alive.

There are science fictions about all the trees around you going crazy. They can go crazy because they have a certain kind of brain, a certain kind of mind. Now, it is a proved fact that they think, feel; that they have emotions, sentiments; that they love, they hate. Now there are scientific proofs about all this.

Buddha and Mahavira, twenty-five centuries ago, said not to hurt trees because they are as alive as you are. People at first laughed, that trees... and alive? But Buddha and Mahavira had no scientific proofs for it. It was only their experience in silence. Sitting under a tree, utterly silent, Buddha suddenly felt that the tree is not dead, that it is thriving with life. But these were their personal experiences; they could say it, but they could not prove it.

It was left to be proved by another Indian, Jagdishchandra Bose, who devoted his whole life to finding scientifically whether Buddha and Mahavira were right or wrong. And he conclusively proved that trees are alive. He was given a Nobel prize for proving trees to be alive. But that was only the beginning. Then more and more researchers went into it. Just to be alive is not enough.

Soon it was found that they have a different kind of brain system, but they do have one. You should not look for the same brain as you have. This is a stupid human idea, that your brain is the only kind of brain. If there can be so many kinds of bodies why can't it be that there can be so many kinds of brain? And soon it was found that they have a certain kind of brain system, and things went on...

Just a few years ago it was found that trees not only have a certain way of knowing which we call a brain, they have a heart too. Certainly it does not beat like yours, because they have their own kind of heart. If their surgeons come to look around you, they will find no heart in you, no brain in you, because they will be looking for their type of brain, their type of heart.

Trees feel emotions, sentiments. For example when a gardener comes to water the tree, the tree feels happy. Now, the happiness can be measured on a graph like the cardiogram. The graph becomes harmonious, as if it is a song, rhythmic. If somebody comes with an axe to cut the tree...

he is far away but the graph changes. The man has not even said that he is coming to cut the tree, he has only thought about it, but the tree somehow has become aware of his thought.

If he is not going to cut the tree, and has no thought of it, he can pass by the tree with the axe in his hand and the graph will continue the same. But if he has the thought to cut the tree, then the graph immediately changes, zig-zags, all the harmony is lost, there is no rhythm. The tree is shaking with fear And if he cuts the tree, then the graphs of other trees around start going berserk. They are feeling hurt because one of their fellows, friends, a neighbor, is being cut.

So it is not impossible - if they have sentiments, emotions, a certain kind of thinking... my idea is not outlandish: sometimes they can go crazy, because all these things are needed to go crazy. They have them; and man has done so much harm to them that it is time they should go crazy. And he goes on harming them. There must be a limit, and it is not far away....

Man has destroyed the whole environment.

After my graduation I went to the Hindu university in Varanasi to study, because that is the biggest university in India. But I stayed there only twenty-four hours. The man I was staying with was Doctor Rajbali Pandey; he was the head of the department of history. He tried to persuade me not to leave:

"Why? - you will not find a better place, at least not in India. It has the best scholars, the best professors, all the best facilities possible. You should think about it."

I said, "I am not going because of this university, I am going because of you."

He said, "What! What have I done to you?" He had stayed with me once, just accidentally. I was traveling in the same compartment to Jabalpur in which he was traveling. He missed the train that he had to catch from Jabalpur to Gondia - it was on a different line. Our train was late so he was very much worried, "Now, what am I to do?" Only after twenty-four hours - Gondia is a small place - would a very small train, a toy train go to Gondia, and the same train would come back. It takes twelve hours to go and twelve hours to come back, and it is not that far, just the train is such....

So I said, "Don't be worried, come and stay with me." I was staying with one of my uncles. So in this strange way we became known to each other. And in the morning I took him for a walk - Jabalpur is very green, so full of trees that you don't see the houses, you see only the greenery. And he said to me, "I hate these trees, because these trees are the enemies of man. If just for five years you stop cutting them, they will run over the whole city and destroy all the houses."

There is truth in what he was saying, that man has created all these cities by cutting the trees. And if you allow the trees to grow again, they are going to destroy your so-called civilization. He said, "Whenever you come to Benares, you are welcome to be my guest." After two years I had to go, so I stayed with him. And in the morning I was going for a walk, so he said, "I followed you in Jabalpur for a walk, so I will here also."

Benares is barren, no trees at all. The whole university is just buildings and buildings, beautiful buildings because all the Maharajahs of India contributed to make a great Hindu university. The idea was a Hindu university should be parallel to Cambridge, Oxford, or Harvard. So much has been done, and beautifully done; there are marble buildings, great buildings, beautiful hostels, but no trees at all.

I said to him, "Now I understand why you were so much offended by the trees that I love. I cannot survive here. It is true that trees had to be cut to make houses and cities, but that does not mean that trees have to be completely destroyed. Then you will die too. There needs to be a balance because the trees are continuously giving you oxygen. When you breathe in, you take oxygen; the oxygen is absorbed by your blood system and the carbon dioxide is thrown out.

Trees take the carbon dioxide; that is their food. That's why when you burn a tree you get coal. Coal is nothing but carbon dioxide in solid form, it is carbon. They live on carbon dioxide, you live on oxygen; it is a good friendship. Neither do they have to destroy the civilization, nor do you have to destroy them. You should live in coexistence; that's the only way to live - and here I don't see a single tree.

"And just twenty-four hours here and I am feeling dry. Without seeing greenery your eyes will lose luster. No, I cannot be in this university. It may have great professors, it may have great libraries, it may have great facilities, but I would prefer some huge, big, ancient trees." And I wandered all over India to find a university where there was something better than Jabalpur. And when I found Saugar I remained there, because Saugar is just unimaginably beautiful. It is a small city, but the city is away beyond a very big lake. The city is on one side of the lake, and on the other side there is a range of hills, and on the hills is the university. And all around, huge trees... and so silent. Benares was so crowded and so buzzing with ten thousand students in the university. Saugar is a small place, and the university was new. I remained there.

Rajbali Pandey once came to Saugar while I was still there to deliver a series of lectures on history, and he saw me and he said, "What happened? I thought you had gone back to Jabalpur."

I said, "First I tried to look all over, perhaps there was something better - and here, you see.... The trees in Jabalpur are good but not so huge and not so ancient. And these hills and this lake and those lotuses... it is the right place."

Man has done so much harm to nature, that when I say that one day it can go crazy, it is not only scientific fiction, it is possible. If all these trees that we have been cutting and destroying become just a little bit united... I don't think they know anything about trade-unions and things like that. They have not heard Karl Marx' famous slogan: "Proletariat of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains, and you have the whole world to gain." So just change the word proletariat: Trees of the world unite, you have nothing to lose, not even chains, and you have the whole world to gain!

If these trees start attacking you, do you think you will be able to survive, even with all your nuclear weapons? Impossible. And it has happened a few times, that's why the science fiction came into existence. In a few places it has happened. Once it happened in Africa, that a certain bird suddenly started attacking people, and it killed many people; before they could kill all those birds, a few people were killed.

It happened once in Indonesia with another bird; the whole community of that species started attacking people. They simply attacked the eyes and they made hundreds of people blind before anything could be done. Because we don't think about these things, we are not prepared.

You have a fire brigade because you know fire can happen. You have the police for the criminals; you have the army if somebody attacks... but if birds start attacking your eyes, by the time you get ready to do something, much harm would have happened. And it was only one kind of bird.

If all birds and all animals and all trees simply decide one day, "It is enough, now get rid of these people," I don't think man can survive, there is no way. All your armies will be useless, all your arms will be useless, all your nuclear weapons will be useless-and then you will understand how weak you are.

You have forgotten your weakness because of all these things. But think of the man in the beginning, when there was nothing, and he felt himself absolutely weak. lust think of before even fire was invented. What was the situation of man? The weakest animal on the earth.

Fire is perhaps the greatest discovery of man, not nuclear weapons, because it was fire that gave man tremendous courage. Then in the night he could make a bonfire and sleep around it; and the animals were afraid of fire so they would not come. Otherwise sleep was impossible - if you slept you were finished; any animal could take you away.

The whole day you are hunting, and in the night you cannot sleep. In the day you can somehow survive - you can go up a tree, you can hide in a cave - but in the night, when you are asleep, what can you do? And the animals of those days are no longer here - only a few specimens like the elephant, which is not that huge. There were animals ten times more huge than the elephant.

For example, the crocodile - there were crocodiles that were many times bigger, which are no longer here. They did not need to chew you if they ate you, they simply swallowed you, they were such big animals. You simply slipped down their throat - and gone! - there was no eating or anything.

With these animals, with all the darkness, the people who invented God must have done a service in the beginning. They gave courage. They said, "Don't be afraid. All that you have to do is to be prayerful, faithful." Certainly they took a certain amount of commission, and I don't think that it was bad, because business is business. They were giving you so much, and if you gave a little bit to those people, you should not be grumpy about it.

So a little bit was given to the priest and the priest gave you the confidence and an omnipotent God - omniscient, omnipresent - and you began to start feeling at ease in the world. The priest gave you the idea: "God has created man in His own image, so don't be afraid.... You are His special creation. All these animals He has created for you, all these trees He has created for you."

That's the Mohammedan logic still. You cannot talk about vegetarian food because they say, "Why did God create the animals then? The Koran says that God created the animals to eat. When the holy book says that the animals are created to be eaten, how can it be a sin or anything wrong?"

The priest made man, at least in his mind, stronger. Of course they exploited him, and slowly, slowly, there were many more psychological needs.

And they had found a great treasure in the word "god": it fulfilled all kinds of things, all needs.

The greatest need of man is to be needed.

If you are not needed by anybody in the world you will commit suicide, you will not be able to live.

Strange - perhaps you have never thought about it, that you are seeking continuously to be needed.

That gives you preciousness, some value, some meaning. Perhaps a woman marries a man simply to fulfill the need that she is needed. And the same may be the reason for the man... that he wants to feel that some woman needs him.

The man has tried to force the woman not to earn money, not to do any work, not to be educated. The psychological reason is - there are political, economical, and other reasons but the psychological reason is - he wants her to be dependent on him so she is always in need of him, and he can feel good that he is needed.

They will produce children and both will feel good that now these children need them... you have some purpose to live for. You have to live for these children, you have to live for your wife, you have to live for your husband: life is no longer meaningless.

And the priest has given you the greatest consolation - that God needs you; so much so, that He sends His son to save you from going astray.

He continually sends prophets, paigambaras, tirthankaras, incarnations, to save you, to keep you on the path. You are not neglected. He is constantly concerned about you.

Krishna in the Gita says, "Whenever there is a need, and whenever people are going astray, I promise you I will come back." Jesus says, "I will be coming back to take my flock." Why have people accepted these things? They wanted somebody to be concerned about them. And if God is concerned, what can be more fulfilling? And when you pray, and by chance if your prayer is fulfilled, then you know perfectly well that in this vast universe you are not just nothing. Your prayer is heard, it reaches to God; not only that, there iS a response.

In my neighborhood there was a temple, a temple of Krishna, just a few houses away from my house.

The temple was on the other side of the road, my house was on this side of the road. In front of the temple lived the man who had made the temple; he was a great devotee.

The temple was of Krishna in his childhood - because when Krishna becomes a young man he creates many troubles and many questions, so there are many people who worship Krishna as a child - hence the temple was called the temple of balaji. Balaji means...bal means child, and Balaji has become the name for Krishna. And then everything is simple because about his childhood you cannot raise all those questions which would be raised later on....

He becomes a politician, a warrior, manages the whole war and collects all those women - anything that you can imagine, he has done it. So in India there are many temples which are of the child Krishna. One of the greatest Krishna devotees, Surdas, a poet, simply sings songs only of the child Krishna; he never goes beyond that. Beyond that he cannot go. Beyond that it is much too difficult, particularly for Surdas.

Surdas was a monk, and he used to go to beg. It is not thought right for a monk to go again and again to the same house, because it may be burdensome to the family. They may not be so rich that every day they can give you food. But the woman who came to give him food was so beautiful that it was irresistible. If she had been only beautiful it would have been possible to resist, but what he saw in her eyes was a tremendous love towards him; that was more difficult - now the temptation became thousandfold. The fire was on both sides.

The next day he went again. The woman placed the food with great love, devotion. And the next day, again he was there; it became a routine. He saw that the woman certainly had fallen in love with him. Of course he was not courageous enough to accept the fact that he had also fallen in love with the woman; he was a monk, he was not supposed to do such things. But what was he doing, going for one month continuously to the same house?

One day is allowed; in certain difficult situations, three days are allowed, but that's all. You may be sick and you cannot go far away, then three days, but not more than that. So the next day when he went, he gathered courage and he asked the woman, "I have been coming here for one month. You have been giving me food every day, better and better more and more. What do you see in me, and why did you never remind me that this is not right for a monk? - one day is allowed, at the most three days. And I see so much love coming from you towards me. I would like to know the exact truth. What is the situation?"

Now, he is throwing all his lust, all his desire on the poor woman; and what the woman said was a great shock. She said, "I simply love your eyes, they are so beautiful and so silent, and I would pray you that you go on coming. We are not poor, but I want to see your eyes at least once a day. I have never seen such eyes." She was not concerned with Surdas at all. She was talking about the eyes as you would talk about a flower, a rose; she wanted to see those beautiful eyes - there was nothing else.

Surdas - that was not his name at that time. In India you don't call a blind man a blind man, because that looks bad, unmannerly; so all blind men in India are called surdas - Surdas means blind man.

That was not his name before; but he went home, took both his eyes out, went back with the help of another monk and presented those two eyes to the woman. He said, "You keep these eyes, because soon we will be moving and I will not be able to come every day. You can see these eyes, you can keep them, and for me anyway it is good that I don't have them."

That day he expressed his heart, "I was also feeling a certain desire arising in me. Now I will never see beauty. Now these eyes are closed. The world of beauty is no more there."

I will not support such a thing because you can be blind but you can still dream of beautiful women, which is more dangerous. Because no real girl is a dream girl, but all dream girls are real when you are dreaming, remember - very real.

You will get frustrated with any beautiful woman. She may be Cleopatra, Amrapali, anyone, but you will get fed up, actually fed up, because this desire for beauty is also a kind of hunger; you are feeding on it. It is a kind of food, a nourishment, but you cannot eat the same food every day. Sooner or later you are going to be fed up. That word fed up is very beautiful. The same food can bring nausea if it is given every day to you.

So just by destroying your eyes you cannot go beyond your desire - that is stupid. But Surdas did that, and he was writing only poetry about Krishna's childhood, because how can this man, who has taken his eyes out to avoid desire, think of his god dancing with girls, other people's wives, and living the life of the most materialist person possible? So for him, Krishna never goes beyond seven years; he remains just below seven. And in India many temples are called Balaji's temple, which means Krishna in his childhood.

This Balaji's mandir was just in front of the house of the man who had made it. Because of the temple and the man's devotion, continuous devotion.... He would take a bath - just in front of the temple was a well - he would take a bath there first thing. Then he would do his prayers for hours; and he was thought to be very religious. By and by people started also calling him Balaji. It became so associated that I don't remember his real name myself because by the time I had any idea that he existed, I only heard his name as Balaji. But that cannot be his name; that name must have come because he made the temple.

I used to go to the temple because the temple was very beautiful and very silent - except for this Balaji who was a disturbance there. And for hours - he was a rich man so there was no need for him to be worried about time - three hours in the morning, three hours in the evening, he was constantly torturing the god of the temple. Nobody used to go there, although the temple was so beautiful that many people would have gone there; they would go to a temple further away because this Balaji was too much. And his noise - it can only be called noise, it was not music - his singing was such that it would make you an enemy of singing for your whole life.

But I used to go there and we became friendly. He was an old man. I said, "Balaji, three hours in the morning, three hours in the evening - what are you asking for? And everyday? - and he has not given it to you?"

He said, "I am not asking for any material things. I ask for spiritual things. And it is not a matter of one day; you have to continue your whole life and they will be given after death. But it is certain they will be given: I have made the temple, I serve the lord, I pray; you can see even in winter, with wet clothes...." It is thought to be a special quality of devotion, to be shivering with wet clothes. My own idea is that with shivering, singing comes easier. You start shouting to forget the shivering.

I said, "My idea about it is different but I will not tell you. Just one thing I want because my grandfather goes on saying,'These are only cowards; this Balaji is a coward. Six hours a day he is wasting, and it is such a small life; and he is a coward.'"

He said, "Your grandfather said that I am a coward?"

I said, "I can bring him."

He said, "No, don't bring him to the temple because it will be an unnecessary trouble - but I am not a coward."

I said, "Okay, we will see whether you are a coward or not."

Behind his temple there was what in India is called an akhara, where people learn to wrestle, do exercises, and the Indian type of wrestling. I used to go there - it was just behind the temple, by the side of the temple - so I had all the wrestlers there as my friends. I asked three of them, "Tonight you have to help me."

They said, "What has to be done?"

I said, "We have to take Balaji's cot - he sleeps outside his house - we have just to take his cot and put it over the well."

They said, "If he jumps or something happens he may fall into the well."

I said, "Don't worry, the well is not that deep. I have jumped into it many times - it is not that deep nor is it that dangerous. And as far as I know Balaji is not going to jump. He will shout from the cot; sitting in the cot, he will call to his Balaji,'Save me!""

With difficulty I could convince three persons: "You have nothing really to do with it. Just alone I cannot carry his cot, and I am asking you because you are all strong people. If he wakes up in the middle it will be difficult to reach to the well. I will wait for you. He goes to sleep at nine o'clock, by ten the street is empty and eleven is the right time not to take any chances. At eleven we can move him."

Only two persons turned up; one didn't turn up, so we were only three. I said, "This is difficult. One side of the cot... and if Balaji wakes up.... I said, "Just wait, I will have to call my grandfather."

And I told my grandfather, "This is what we are going to do. You have to give us a little help."

He said, "This is a little too much. You have some nerve to ask your own grandfather to do this to that poor man who does no harm to anybody except that he shouts six hours a day... but we have become accustomed to it."

I said, "I have not come to argue about it. You just come, and anything that you want, anytime, I will owe it to you; you just say, and I will do it. But you have to come for this thing, and it is not much - just a twelve - foot road has to be crossed without waking up Balaji."

So he came. That's why I say he was a very rare man - he was seventy-five! He came. He said, "Okay, let us have this experience also and see what happens."

The two wrestlers started escaping, seeing my grandfather. I said, "Wait, where are you going?"

They said, "Your grandfather is coming."

I said, "I am bringing him. He is the fourth person. If you escape then I will be at a loss. My grandfather and I will not be able to manage. We can carry him, but he will wake up. You need not be worried."

They said, "Are you sure of your grandfather? - because they are almost of the same age; they may be friends and some trouble may arise. He may tell on us."

I said, "I am there, he cannot get me into any trouble. So don't you be afraid, you will not be in any trouble, and he does not know your names or anything."

We carried Balaji and put his cot over his small well. Only he used to take a bath there, and once in a while I used to jump into it, which he was very much against - but what can you do? Once I had jumped in, he had to arrange to take me out. I said, "What can you do now? The only thing is to take me out. And if you harass me, I will jump in every day. And if you talk about it to my family, then you know I will start bringing my friends to jump into it. So right now, keep it a secret between us.

You take your bath outside, I take my bath inside; there is no harm."

It was a very small well, so the cot could completely fit over it. Then I told my grandfather, "You go away because if you are caught then the whole city will think that this is going too far."

And then, from far away we started throwing stones to wake him up... because if he did not wake up the whole night, he might turn and fall into the well, and something would go wrong. The moment he woke up he gave such a scream! We had heard his voice, but this...! The whole neighborhood gathered. He was sitting in his cot and he said, "Who has done it?" He was trembling and shaking and afraid.

People said, "Please get out of the cot at least. Then we will find out what has happened." I was there in the crowd, and I said,"What is the matter? You could have called your Balaji. But you didn't call him, you gave a scream and you forgot all about Balaji. Six hours training every day for your whole life...."

He looked at me and he said, "Is that too a secret?"

I said, "Now there are two secrets you have to keep. One you have already kept for many years.

This is now the second."

But from that day he stopped that three hours shouting in the temple. I was puzzled. Everybody was puzzled. He stopped taking a bath in that well, and those three hours evening and morning he just forgot. He arranged a servant priest to come every morning to do a little worship and that was all.

I asked him, "Balaji, what has happened?"

He said, "I had told you a lie that I am not afraid. But that night, waking up over the well - that shriek was not mine." You can call it the primal scream. It was not his, that is certainly true. It must have come from his deepest unconscious. He said, "That scream made me aware that I am really an afraid man, and all my prayers are nothing but trying to persuade God to save me, to help me, to protect me.

"But you have destroyed all that, and what you have done was good for me. I am finished with all that nonsense. I tortured the whole neighborhood my whole life, and if you had not done that, I may have continued. I am aware now that I am afraid. And I feel that it is better to accept my fear because my whole life has been meaningless and my fear is the same."

Only in 19701 went for the last time to my city. I had a promise with my mother's mother that when she dies - she had taken it as a promise - that I would come. So I had gone. I just went around the town to meet people and I saw Balaji. He was looking a totally different man. I asked him, "What has happened?"

He said, "That scream changed me completely. I started to live the fear. Okay, if I am a coward, then I am a coward; I am not responsible for it. If there is fear, there is fear; I was born with it.

But slowly, slowly as my acceptance grew deeper, that fear has disappeared, that cowardliness has disappeared.

"In fact I have disposed of the servant from the temple, because if my prayers have not been heard, then how is a servant's prayer going to be heard... a servant who goes to thirty temples the whole day?"because he gets two rupees from each temple. "He is praying for two rupees. So I have disposed of him. And I am perfectly at ease, and I don't bother a bit whether God exists or not. That is His problem, why should I be bothered?

"But I am feeling very fresh and very young in my old age. I wanted to see you, but I could not come, I am too old. I wanted to thank you that you did that mischief; otherwise, I would have continually prayed and died, and it was all just meaningless, useless. Now I will be dying more like a man freed, completely freed." He took me into his house. I had been there before; all the religious books were removed. He said, "I am no longer interested in all that."

You ask me: if God is not a hypothesis, if God is not an idea, then what is God?

It is not a hypothesis because there is no way for science to discover God. Science does not move inwards, it moves outwards, and there you will find the world of things.

If you want to know consciousness, that center is within.

So God is not a hypothesis.

God is not an idea because an idea is a philosophical concept, and philosophers only go on weaving thoughts, ideas, rationalizations - and they create great systems of thought....

If you look into their systems of thought you will be immensely impressed. For example, Hegel or Kant... if you are not alert, you will be surprised at what a palatial system they have made - but there is no base. And it is not a palatial building either; if you come closer you will find it is made of playing cards. A little breeze and the whole palace falls down, because there is no base to it.

Philosophy is baseless.

It makes castles in the air.

Ideas are just ideas. You can project an y idea you like, nobody can prevent you; and once you project the idea you can find all kinds of rationalizations to support it. There is no difficulty.

One man came to me, he was an American. He was a professor in a Christian theological college.

Jabalpur has one of the greatest theological colleges in the whole of Asia, where they train ministers and priests and missionaries, and they go on sending them all over Asia to convert people to Christianity. There they teach everything - if you just go and see, you will laugh. I used to be invited there to speak on some subject.

This professor became interested in me. He took me around the whole college. In one class they were teaching how you have to stand up when you preach in church, in public; on what sentences you should put the emphasis, what words should be pronounced loudly, what gestures should be made with your hands.

I was simply amazed and said, "What are you doing? Are you making these people actors or ministers?" And these people go on doing that acting - every priest will do the same. It is a training, a kind of exercise; there is no heart in it.

If there is heart in your words, the emphasis will come on its own. If there is something that has to be expressed by your hands, the hands will take care of it, you need not do anything. If something comes to your eyes, it will come. You are not to bring it, otherwise the whole thing becomes hypocrisy.

He became friendly. One day he brought me a book which said that in America - I don't know how far it is true - number thirteen is thought to be something bad. He showed me that somebody had done this research in his theological college under him: that thirteen is really bad. So he had collected all the information about how many people die every month on the thirteenth. People die every day, but he had taken only the figures for the thirteenth: how many wars have broken out on the thirteenth, how many disasters, calamities, earthquakes. From the whole of history he had collected thousands of facts - that all this had happened on the thirteenth.

So the professor was saying to me, "This man has done a great job. He has really proved it." That professor told me - I don't know, because I have never stayed in any hotel, but the professor told me, "In America the thirteenth floor is simply missing because nobody wants to stay on the thirteenth floor." So after the twelfth comes the fourteenth! Great idea! Even deceiving God just by changing the number.

I told him, "You do one thing.... I would like to meet your student too. So tomorrow when I go to my university, I will be coming here at this time. You keep your student in your room."

I asked the student, "Have you thought about number twelve or number eleven? Before you submit this thesis... and this professor who is your guide for a Ph.D. thesis, he should have been intelligent enough to tell you that you should look for each date, and then only can you prove that the thirteenth is bad.

If on the first there were only five wars and on the thirteenth there were five hundred, then it proves something. If on the second only five people died, and on the thirteenth, fifty thousand people died, it proves something. You count the whole month; you have to present thirty-one days and compare them. There is no comparison here.

You have simply collected anything that is bad, that happened on the thirteenth. I can tell anybody to collect for the twelfth, or eleventh, or tenth, and the same kind of facts will be collected and the same number of facts. This is not a thesis, this is simply stupidity. You wasted your time, and your professor has been wasting his time." He had been working on this thesis for three years and he was getting a scholarship for it.

Once you get an idea - it may be the date thirteen, it doesn't matter - you can make a great philosophy out of it.

God is not an idea, although philosophers have tried... because philosophers are trespassers; they simply don't believe that any territory is not their territory. They will enter into every direction, into every dimension, and they have some idea for everything. A philosopher never says, "I don't know."

He knows! And not only does he know, but he will give you all the arguments and proofs that his knowledge is valid. So how can they leave out such an important area like God?

They have discovered four arguments for God. Christians have accepted those four arguments, but none of those four arguments has any validity. They are all bogus.

The first argument I have talked to you about is that everything needs a creator; hence God is needed. Now it is clear that this is not an argument. Immediately the question is shifted back - who created God? And then there is no end to it. But this is thought to be the most important argument brought in by philosophers in support of God.

It has been so easy for the atheists to laugh at these philosophers and these theologians: "What kind of arguments are these people giving?" But atheists have not been very different either.

One very famous atheist, Diderot, was speaking and he stood up and told the audience, "If God exists and you say He is all-powerful then let Him stop the clock, this very moment. I will wait one minute." He waited one minute. The clock did not stop. He said, "Now you see He is not powerful.

He cannot even stop the clock. He is not even courageous enough to accept my challenge."

But are these arguments? Some cunning person can manage to fix the clock so that at nine it will stop. And when it reaches nine, he stands up and says, "God, prove yourself If you are real let the clock stop within one minute; otherwise it will prove that you don't exist." And the clock stops; God is proved.... These are arguments? Neither the stopping of the clock nor the not stopping of the clock can make any substantial contribution to the proof of God.

Hence I say God is not an idea.

You ask me: Then what is God?

It is simply a word, a meaningless word, hollow inside, with no substance in it.

Samuel Beckett has written his masterpiece, WAITING FOR GODOT, a very small piece of tremendous importance. Two persons are sitting under a tree. Both are hobos. One hobo says, "It is getting late and he has not come yet."

The other says, "I also think that he must be coming." They are waiting for Godot who has never said to them, "I will be coming." Nobody knows who this Godot is. They have never met him, but just to pass time they have invented this idea of Godot, because those two hobos, what are they going to do the whole time? So they sit and they wait, and they argue, "I don't think he is a man of his word."

The other says, "No, I know perfectly well that if he has promised he will come. He may be a little late but he will come, don't be worried." This conversation continues, and then one becomes fed up and says, "I am going. It is enough. Now I cannot wait."

The other says, "Then I am also coming with you; we will wait there together, wherever you go.

Anyway what is the point? Do you think you will meet him there? We don't know where he is."

When I first came across this small booklet, I thought perhaps Godot is German for God - these Germans are just such crackpots that they can make anything out of anything - that they must have made God a Godot. But I enquired of Haridas. Haridas said, "No. In Germany we don't call God Godot, we call him Gott."

So I said, "I was not very far off: G-o-t-t, Gott." I said, "You have come very close to Godot. It is perfectly okay. My guess was not absolutely wrong, I was on the right lines that it must be some German idea of turning God into Godot."

But whether you call Him God or Gott or Godot, it doesn't matter because the word means nothing - so you can call Him anything. It is simply a word without any meaning at all, so you can play with it. And in fact that's what Samuel Beckett was doing. He means God. He doesn't say so, but it is a clear-cut indication - waiting for God; but then it would have lost some beauty. When he makes it waiting for Godot, you know who Godot is yet you cannot say that you are speaking against God.

Nobody has seen Him.

Nobody has met Him.

Nobody has heard Him.

Still everybody is waiting for Him... that now He must be coming, that it is time, He should be here.

What are the Jews doing? Waiting, waiting. And they were angry when Jesus said, "I have come."

He was disturbing their waiting. Just think if you had gone to those two hobos and you had said, "Okay, I have come.... They would have both killed you - "You think you are Godot? Do you know who Godot is? Are you trying to deceive us?"

They would have loved.... Even if Godot himself had come, they would not have believed that he was Godot - because how he can prove that he is Godot? They don't have any photograph. They don't have any address, a phone number. How can they recognize him? They have not seen him before.

That's one thing which should be clearly understood. When Moses sees God, nobody asks him, "How did you recognize Him? - because you have not seen Him before." Recognition needs you to have seen Him before; otherwise some charlatan or somebody may be deceiving you. "How, on what grounds...?"

When Jesus hears voices of God, or Mohammed hears them, how do they recognize that those voices are God's? Have they heard Him before? Their recognition is not valid. They may have heard some voices, many mad people hear them. They may have seen somebody, many mad people see somebody. You can go into any madhouse and you will see a madman alone talking to another who is not there, and not only talking, but answering also from his side.

There is a game of cards that one man can play. In trains, once in a while, I came across a person...

because I would not speak in the trains. That was my only time to be silent, otherwise in the cities with five meetings a day.... So only between two cities, on the train, was the time when I would be silent and rest. But I saw people playing cards, alone. I was puzzled: this was a great religious game! They had a partner, and for that partner's side they also played; they knew both sides and they knew both hands of cards.

Those two hobos were not doing anything new. All these religions for centuries have been doing just that, waiting for Godot, because waiting at least keeps you hoping that tomorrow... if not today, then tomorrow - but it is going to happen. And when so many people are waiting, somebody must know, somebody must have heard, somebody must have seen - he must have spoken to somebody! And then there are people who say, "He has spoken to me."

I used to receive... and even now, but I don't see the letters because I stopped looking at all this rubbish, I used to receive letters - and still they come but Sheela simply reports to me: "Fifteen or twenty letters of this type have come, saying that they have seen God and they want to meet You so that You can see whether their realization is true or not."

"They have seen God," I said, "they should have asked Him. Why should they bother me? I am absolutely unconcerned with you and your God; why should you bother me? If you have seen God then what is the suspicion? Why should you need a certificate from me?"

Just pure hallucinations, imagination, continual listening to idiotic sermons... millions of people waiting with great expectation - the imagination fires up: just a little effort and you will see God.

But remember, whatever you see is not you. Whatever you see is some object. And religion's basic concern is not objective. Its basic concern is your subjectivity. When all seeing disappears, all hearing disappears, and all thinking disappears... when all your senses are silent, in that silence it transpires.