Hell hath no fury like a Christian scorned

Question 1:

IT is an absolute necessity to be retarded if you want to be a Christian.

Any religion, any ideology, that is based only on belief, faith, is bound to cripple your intelligence.

A belief system is nothing but poison to your capacity to understand.

Good words are used to hide ugly things.

These Bible-bashing Christians are not doing anything unexpected. For two thousand years they have been doing the same thing. They are full of anger if you are not ready to follow them; they are full of love if you are ready to follow them. Their love is conditional, and any love that is conditional carries with it hate, anger, cruelty - everything that is against love. They give you the choice: either you follow them, or you will have to be a victim of their anger, hatred, cruelty.

Right now they can only be angry, but in the past they have killed millions of people, burned people alive. This anger is nothing. Now it is difficult for them to show their real face totally, but still something of it comes out even though they try to hide it. You cannot hide a few things; for example, you cannot hide your love. You cannot hide your anger either.

Christians are absolutely unable to listen to anything that goes against them. That's why I say retardedness is a categorical necessity.

Only the open mind can be ready to listen to something that goes against it.

The closed mind can listen only to that which supports it.

The closed mind has only one dimension open, that is: everything that supports it is allowed in, welcomed in. All other dimensions are kept closed because there is fear. Things may enter you which may shake up your belief system, disturb your so-called peace of mind; they may sabotage your faith. No person who is a believer can afford to be open.

You can be open to all kinds of thoughts, because I am not giving you any belief system.

I am simply helping you to open up in all the dimensions, even if you feel that they are going against your ideas that you have held up to now. Even then, in fact more so, you will be available to them because this is a chance, an opportunity, to judge whether whatsoever you have been thinking is right or not. It is a golden moment when you are encountered by something contrary to your ideas, thoughts, which up to now you have been thinking are rational. But if they are really rational then what is the fear?

It is fear that keeps these people closed.

They can't hear you - they are afraid to hear.

And their anger is really their fear upside down.

It is only a person who is full of fear who becomes immediately angry. If he does not become angry then you will be able to see his fear. Anger is a cover-up. By being angry he is trying to make you afraid: before you get any idea of his fear, he is trying to make you afraid. Do you see the simple psychology of it? He does not want you to know that he is afraid. The only way is to make you afraid; then he is completely at ease. You are afraid, he is not afraid - and there is nothing to be afraid of in a man who is afraid.

Their anger is an effort to deceive themselves.

It has nothing to do with you.

And these people.... You ask me what Jesus has done to deserve these people. You ask me a wrong question. In fact, whatever Jesus has done, he deserves only these people. The problem is not these people. The problem is the people who have some intelligence and still are Christians.

That is a miracle: having intelligence and yet being a Christian.

Perhaps these intellectuals who are still Christians are schizophrenic: their one part is intelligent and their other part is Christian. And they never meet, there is no communion between these two parts.

When these Christians are in their lab as a scientist they function not as a Christian, remember, they function as an intelligent being.

But when they are out of the lab and praying in a church, don't think that they are the same people.

They are not the scientists, not the discoverers, they are not the intellectuals any more. They are just as retarded as these Bible-bashing Christians - no difference. Perhaps they are even more closed.

They have a Berlin wall within their being, dividing themselves in two.

Galileo discovered that the earth moves around the sun. But he was a believing Christian, and when the pope told him that because it went against the HOLY BIBLE he had to change it, Galileo said, "Of course. Whatever you say is my joy to do." And now you can see how a person can be schizophrenic.

He touched the feet, kissed the feet of the pope - Galileo, a man of tremendous intelligence! And this pope was just a third-rate mind who had never done anything intelligent. You would not have even known that he ever existed; it is only because of Galileo that his name is remembered. That's all that he has done to be remembered.

But Galileo touching his feet, kissing his feet, asking his forgiveness.... And then he said, "I am going to do it. I will change that statement and I will correct it exactly according to the BIBLE: I will write that the sun goes around the earth. But beloved master, I can change the text, but neither the earth will listen to me, nor will the sun: the earth will still go around the sun."

Do you see the schizophrenia? Galileo's one side is kissing the feet of the pope. His other side reminds the pope that he can change his statement - that is not difficult, it is his book. Whatsoever Galileo wants to write, he can write. But what about the earth? What about all his experiments?

What about his discovery which proved that the earth goes around the sun, not vice versa? In that one simple statement, Galileo's split personality is clear. Perhaps the dividing wall was very thin.

Perhaps there was a little corner where both sides used to meet, just like neighbors taLking from the windows, the balconies, over the fences.

And that's what he did. He changed the statement, put a star on it, and in the footnote with the star he wrote, This is what I believe as a Christian. But as far as reality is concerned, the earth goes around the sun. About that I cannot do anything because I am just an ordinary man. It is not within my powers." That footnote - from where does it come? And the change of statement - from where does it come? There are two persons certainly in Galileo, but he is not capable of seeing this split.

Every believer is bound to be split.

There is no way to avoid it because the moment you believe in something you have decided not to listen to reason any longer.

But it is reason which finds facts, realities, indubitable truths.

So what are you going to do? Either you destroy your rationality completely - that's why these people, these Bible-bashing Christians, shout and go on talking; they won't even give you a chance to speak. You may be speaking - they go on reading from the BIBLE and flipping the pages.

They don't care whether you are listening, whether you are questioning something, whether you are asking something, whether you are saying something, no. This whole thing shows their fear that if they really listen to you, they know what they have repressed in themselves: By their belief they have repressed their own reason, and your reason can call up their reason.

There is a certain synchronicity.... This law has to be understood, the law of synchronicity. This is the only contribution of Carl Gustav Jung to the modern world. It is something that is not yet scientifically verifiable, but still it can be understood quite reasonably.

For example, sometimes seeing a stranger, for no visible reason you suddenly feel a tremendous surge of lovingness, or hatred, or anger, or compassion. It seems to be that something between you and him has transpired without any physical traces being behind it. Perhaps it was just in the vibe. It means that one man's energy is quite capable of arousing a similar type of energy in the other man, so that they both start vibrating in the same climate of feeling.

Carl Gustav Jung came upon it very accidentally. He had two old grandfather clocks. They both stood by the same wall and they always kept the same time. They were very old and they were not expected to have such accuracy. Jung changed the time of one clock to be half an hour slow, and the other to be half an hour fast. But within twenty-four hours they had come back to exactly the same time. It was mysterious and puzzling, but he thought that perhaps subtle vibrations from both clocks helped them to come to a synchronicity.

That accidental discovery Jung tried on human beings, and it proved really to be a profound revelation. He showed that there is a certain law which is not yet known to science - perhaps we're not yet capable of finding instruments subtle enough to check it, but it is perfectly reasonable and there are hundreds of facts which will prove it. For example, if you are very loving towards a person, you need not even say to him that "I love you" - because in fact that is needed only when you do not love. That statement, "I love you," is required by a husband, by a wife, at least three, four times a day - the more the better.

I have told you that a goldsmith used to live in front of my house. He was a little eccentric - that is far better than being retarded - and an absolutely harmless person. But he used to get into fights with his wife once in a while. That too is common... nothing abnormal about it. What was abnormal and eccentric was that they would fight right in the shop with the doors open, and a crowd would gather there.

And their fighting was not just verbal, it was physical. He would hit the wife and the wife would hit him, because she had learned that there was no other way with this man: unless you hit him hard he was not going to stop. He would catch hold of her hair, and she would catch hold of his hair, and they would be standing there, with a crowd of hundreds of people gathered around. And what I used to do was phone the police, because the police station was not far away.

I would simply phone from my house saying, "A great drama is happening here. There are hundreds of people, and if this thing goes any further there may be a murder or something. Come immediately."

They were not far away, just one furlong from my house. So the inspector and the police constables would come running. And when they came, they would catch hold of these people holding each other's hair and hitting each other.

Immediately the goldsmith would start smiling and say, "There is no problem - we were just having a conversation." That was the only eccentric point worth listening to again and again: "We were just having a conversation, just a family conversation. There is no problem."

He would immediately be angry with the people who were standing outside: "What are you fools doing here? Don't you have wives? Don't you have family conversations? It was simply a dialogue that became a little physical, that's all." And he would tell the inspector, "you need not be worried - and I know who has phoned you because it happens again and again."

The inspector would say, "Who phoned is not important; what is important is that you are making a public spectacle. If it is a family dialogue at least you can close your doors and have the dialogue - and as physically as you want. It is your wife and you are her husband. She does not seem to be afraid of you at all, she hits you far better than you hit her, so we are not worried about her, that you can do any harm to her. But by collecting a whole crowd it becomes a public affair; then we have to interfere. Next time we find you in this public family conversation, I am going to put both of you behind bars."

Once when they had gone and the crowd had left I asked, "goldsmithji, everything was perfectly good, just.... You call it a dialogue? Have you heard the name of Martin Buber?"

He said, "no."

I said, "You should read Martin Buber - or it would be better if Martin Buber comes and studies you, because he is continually after dialogues. His whole life's work is to convince people that they should have dialogue. He may not have even thought that the dialogue can be physical. You are very existential. He thought only of verbal dialogue, but you are realistic, pragmatic, practical."

The goldsmith said, "i know you support me, and you are the person who phoned, because only you have a phone here in this whole neighborhood. And whenever the police come you are missing; the whole crowd is there but you are not. That is enough proof And after the crowd has gone, you come and support me."

I said, I certainly support you because I want people to be more physical, more grounded. This Martin Buber knows nothing about dialogue. He thinks of just talking, yakkety-yakkety-yak-that is not a dialogue. This is real dialogue: you make it from a fiction into a fact."

These Christians have been in such a dialogue for two thousand years. They are far more dangerous than this poor goldsmith because no bloodshed ever happened with him; it was just a mock fight.

But Christians have killed millions of people, and that was their way of making conversation. They were telling you, "We can prove our belief by killing you."

Now, by killing somebody you simply prove that you are a brute, primitive. It does not prove that you are right, that what you are saying is true. It simply proves that whatsoever you are, you are just not yet out of the jungle. You should not even utter the word truth; it is not right from your mouth. And from the Christians, Mohammedans learned the art of conversation, dialogue.

I asked Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, when he was prime minister in India, "Can you allow me to have my commune in Kashmir?" - because Kashmir is the most beautiful place, not only in India but perhaps in the whole world. When Babar, the first invader who remained behind to rule India....

Other invaders came and went away; that had been routine for thousands of years. Invaders would come and loot the country. They would take the beautiful women, they would kill and burn people, and they would go away with all their loot - the gold, the diamonds, and everything that they could get.

Babar was the first man who decided not to leave. He said, "This is foolish, to come once in a while and loot these people and go away. It is better to remain here and rule these people and go on exploiting them. Why, what is the need to go back?"

When he entered Kashmir... the first words that he uttered have become very famous. On his horse, looking back from a very high hill top at the beauty of the Kashmir valley, Babar said, "I have never believed in paradise, but if there is any paradise it is here." And certainly Kashmir is paradise.

I asked Jawaharlal, "Kashmir has enough land - it is all mountains - you can give me a place."

He said, "I can give you a place but I am afraid, because ninety percent of people in Kashmir are Mohammedans. You will be killed, you cannot remain alive there. The little bit I know about you is enough to convince me that you will be killed, and I am not letting you settle in Kashmir because I would not like you to be killed. Mohammedans will not be able to stand you even for a single day."

From Christians, Mohammedans have learned that it is the sword that decides who is right. Might is right! So if you are powerful, you are right. If you are not powerful, if you don't have a sword or a gun in your hands, then your belief system is wrong. But this was given by Christians to Mohammedans.

Mohammedans accept Jesus as one of the great prophets. Their only quarrel with the Christians is on a very small point, which is negligible. But even that negligible point has caused a constant fifteen-century struggle between Mohammedans and Christians. You will be simply surprised - and then you will not think that I am exaggerating when I say that these people's basic qualification is retardedness.

The negligible point is that Mohammedans don't believe that Jesus had a virgin birth - and perhaps they are right. They say his father was not his father, that much is certain; somebody else fathered him. The Holy Ghost they don't recognize, they believe that this is just garbage. And it looks like garbage. It seems to be a cover-up story. It seems Mary became pregnant by somebody, and then to make it mysterious, the Holy Ghost was introduced.

Mohammedans accept Jesus as a great prophet of God, but they name him Jesus ibn Mariam - Jesus the son of Mary. And that is the problem, these three words: Jesus ibn Mariam - Jesus, the son of Mariam, because Mohammedans always use the father's name with their name. If he were the son of joseph they would have called him Jesus ibn Joseph; that would have been his full name.

But because he is not joseph s son-that much Christians agree-he is the only person in the whole of history of whom the Mohammedans say the mother's name has to be used instead of the father's!

We certainly cannot say Jesus ibn Holy Ghost!

This is the only difference, otherwise they agree on everything. But this simple, negligible, absurd, irrelevant thing has caused thousands of wars, crusades, jehads - holy wars - amongst Mohammedans and Christians. Now, both need to be absolutely retarded. What business is it of Mohammedans to be bothered in the first place, whether Jesus is bin Mariam, or bin Joseph? All three can go to hell! What business is it of Mohammedans?

And Christians cannot prove anything about the Holy Ghost without any evidence, any eyewitness who has seen the Holy Ghost coming to Mary. Even Mary was not aware of when she was made pregnant. The Holy Ghost must have used some instruments which mankind has not yet discovered.

Perhaps it was an injection, artificial insemination, but even then she would have awakened while being given an injection. Perhaps it was with chloroform.... But then Christians have to provide all these facts: in some way they have to make an arrangement to explain how Jesus got into Mary's womb.

You ask me why, what poor Jesus has done to deserve such stupid idiots as his followers. You are asking without understanding Jesus. Jesus, and only Jesus, is responsible for all these idiots - nobody else. It is not that he has done anything wrong, but his whole life and his approach towards life is appealing only to retarded people.

For his whole life Charles Darwin was looking for the missing link. By the missing link, he means that when monkeys became man it could not have been that a monkey jumped and became a man; there must have been a link in between, where he was half monkey and half man. Evolution happens as a process, not as a leap or jump - that you jump from monkey and become man, no. But what is the missing link?

If I had had the opportunity to meet Charles Darwin - now there seems to be no hope - he was also a very sincere Christian, and I would have suggested to him that Christians are the missing link. Where are you looking? You can go to any church: if any intelligent man is found there, then he has to be immediately put into a psychiatric ward; the remaining ones are the missing link. Monkeys have not just jumped and become men, first they become Christians; without becoming Christians there is no way.

Jesus gives no logic to whatever he is saying. When Buddha says something, he gives logic to it, it is absolutely rational. And he is ready for a dialogue - not for a physical dialogue, he is ready to argue with you. He welcomes argument, and if you can rationally convince him, he is willing to follow you. That has been the tradition in the East.

I am reminded of a beautiful story of Shankara's life. Shankara is one of the most intellectual, rational persons you can find. In the West only Kant can be compared to Shankara, but not totally. He falls a little short because Shankara was one thousand years before Kant, and still his arguments are far more refined than Kant's. Shankara traveled all over India challenging everybody, whoever wanted to argue with him. The only condition was: "If you defeat me, I follow you; if I defeat you, you follow me." It was not like boxing, otherwise Muhammad Ali would have forced Shankara to follow him - and Muhammad Ali is a religious man. And I am now going to hurt a few people's religious feelings.

Muhammad Ali goes once in a while to Mecca, to do hajj. Hajj is the Mohammedan's holy pilgrimage, and Mohammed has said at least once in a life every Mohammedan has to do hajj. If you miss hajj you will not be allowed into paradise. So truth is not important, love is not important, compassion is not important; what is important is a pilgrimage to Mecca. And you can do everything else you want, but you should do hajj. Once a person does hajj he is called hajji. And that is a title that makes his paradise a certainty; all hajjis go to paradise. So even poor Mohammedans....

In my village I have seen such poor Mohammedans collecting money, eating only one time a day so that at least once in their whole life... because it will need their life's savings. And I have seen people selling their houses, their land, borrowing money and remaining always in debt because they could not even pay the interest - there was no question of paying the original money. And they have taken it at such high interest; nobody is going to give it to them at a low interest because everybody knows the money is never coming back. And there is every possibility that this man may die because hajj, in the old days, was almost a suicidal pilgrimage. Now it is a little better, but not much better.

So at such a high interest, perhaps twenty-five percent per month, they have sold themselves for their whole lives, they have become slaves. Their house is gone, their land is gone, and whatsoever they earn they have to give in interest; but people will take this risk because without becoming a hajji there is no hope.

Do you think these people have any intelligence? And who is responsible for this? - nobody but Mohammed, because he made it a rule. Rather than telling his people to be truthful, to be honest, to be sincere, to be open, to be intelligent, he requires them to do a pilgrimage.

And there is nothing in Arabia but desert, suffering, heat, sickness, because millions of people every year gather at a certain period - their holy days, Ramadan - for one month, and there are no hygienic arrangements, no hospitals. Nobody bothers about what they are eating, what arrangements are made by the government for their toilets, for their bathrooms - nothing, no question arises. Millions of people are coming from all over the world, and thousands die every year just in the pilgrimage, either going or coming back.

But Mohammed made it the one absolute necessity. And what logic does he provide? There is no logic in it, because this place that they worship is far older than Mohammed. It used to be a temple with three hundred and sixty-five beautiful statues. It was one of the most beautiful temples in the world, with these three hundred and sixty-five statues of God - one statue for every day of the year.

So one statue was worshipped on one day, the next day the next statue, around the year. It was a round circle of beautiful statues and in the middle was this stone, a black stone which they call kaaba.

Mohammed destroyed all those beautiful statues which were pieces of art perhaps ten thousand years old: a great historical evidence of art, that it was not only Michelangelo.... Ten thousand years before him there were people as skillful as Michelangelo. Mohammed destroyed all those statues because he was against statues. He said, "There cannot be any statue of God. God should not be given a form."

But what right have you... if somebody wants to give God a form, and a beautiful form, who are you?

What right have you to destroy somebody else's statue? But religious fanaticism.... Mohammed was thinking that he was helping those people, by destroying their statues, to come closer to God. He was removing the statues, the forms, so that they could know the formless God. But he saved the black stone which was in the middle of the temple, and now they are worshipping that stone as God.

And Mohammed started the worship!

These people cannot even see what they are saying, and what they are doing to others, and what they are doing to their own people. Mohammed taught those people to come to kaaba at least once in a lifetime: unless you do it you are going to fall into eternal hell. And Mohammed told people that you have to convert people at the point of the sword. When so much easier methods are available, why bother about convincing, arguing?

When just a sword put on your chest is enough to convert you to the right path, then why bother about arguing? So Mohammedans have been converting people at the point of the sword. But that was not the case in the Eastern religions. These three religions, Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, are sister religions. Moses started the game and he is responsible for all these three kids.

Shankara went around the country arguing. He came to a place called Mandala - I have been to Mandala many times. It is just a two-hour drive from Jabalpur, situated in a very beautiful place.

Narmada, one of the holy rivers of the Hindus, falls in one thousand streams. The mountain is such that the river is divided into one thousand, exactly one thousand, streams. It is a beautiful scene.

The story is that there was one monster who had one thousand hands. Narmada is the only river in India which is virgin, other rivers are married. This Sahasrabahu - one thousand arms.... That is the meaning of the name: Sahasra means one thousand, bahu means arms - sahasrabahu means a one-thousand-armed man. He said, "I am going to marry this girl. She cannot escape me. I have got one thousand hands; where is she going to escape?"

So he tried to catch hold of the river with his one thousand hands. But to destroy the virginity of a woman, according to Hindus, is the greatest sin possible. Christians would have rewarded him, given him some place in their trinity: another holy ghost. But Hindus have punished him - at least in the story it is so; he turned into a stone. And really the whole mountain does look as if the Narmada is falling through one thousand hands.

So Mandala has been an ancient place of pilgrimage and has always been a seat of great Hindu scholars. One Hindu scholar had in his youth moved around just like Shankara; Mandan Mishra was his name. Mandala was called after his name, Mandan, because he lived there. He was so famous that the name of the place was changed and called after him.

When he was young he had moved all around the country and defeated all the scholars and philosophers. He was old when Shankara was young, just thirty years of age - he died when Shankara was thirty-three. After defeating everybody Shankara was a little reluctant to go and challenge Mandan Mishra because Mandan was so old. But without defeating Mandan he could not declare that he had conquered the whole country and convinced everybody that what he was saying was true. Reluctantly he went.

Outside the town, at the we]l, a few women were drawing water. Shankara asked them, "can you tell me where the house of Mandan Mishra is?"

And all those women giggled and laughed, and they said, "You need not ask. You just go into the town and you will find it, because even the parrots in front of his house recite the VEDAS. You need not ask anybody, you just go. The very atmosphere around his house will tell you that you have come close to Mandan Mishra."

Shankara was a little afraid - he had never heard of parrots reciting the whole of the VEDAS. And in the end he went and he saw with his own eyes a row of parrots in the mango trees reciting the VEDAS in perfect Sanskrit. He thought, "this man seems to be difficult. But there is no way to avoid it." He went in, touched the feet of the old man with respect, and challenged him.

Mandan said, "I am too old, but if you feel that it is necessary, then I am ready. But I feel a little reluctant myself arguing with a young man. You are too young, and I am too old, too experienced and I have won all over the country. You should think twice. Right now you have not been defeated by anybody, but those are the people I defeated in my youth, myself; so think twice."

Shankara said, "I never think twice. I first take the jump and then think. Are you ready or not? If you are not ready then you will have to become my follower."

Mandan said, "There is no problem for me; I enjoy a dialogue, I enjoy discussing - and with a man like you it is really joyful. Even to be defeated is a great blessing. To have found someone who has more intelligence than you is not a disgrace. But," Mandan said, "one thing has to be decided. You will have to find somebody who can preside; otherwise the decision will be very difficult."

Shankara had heard that Mandan's wife was as great an intellectual as Mandan himself In fact, in Mandan's youth they had a six-month-long discussion, and only then was Mandan able to defeat the woman. But the woman had, from the very beginning, put this condition: "If I am defeated then you will have to marry me. If you are defeated then certainly I am going to marry you because...."

Mandan saw that he was in a dilemma in every way; he was caught. And he could not refuse a woman, that would be too unmannerly; you cannot refuse a woman. So he fought.

And the woman was really a giant; it took six months, and I suspect she got defeated by her own doing. And I have reasons to suspect it, because anyway she was going to marry him. It would look ugly to be victorious and then to marry a man who has been defeated - that would not be nice - and to have a defeated husband.... So my feeling has always been that Bharti - her name was Bharti - must have arranged it. Six months was enough to prove her mettle. All over the country, for even six days nobody had been able to withstand Mandan. If she could withstand six months, she must have turned the whole of Mandan's blood to perspiration.

And she must have got herself defeated. Why I suspect it is because of this second debate between Shankara and Mandan. Shankara said, "I would like your wife to preside."

Bharti said, "I have no problem, if you choose me knowing perfectly well that I am the wife of Mandan Mishra."

Shankara said, "That I know, but I know also that you are a great intellectual, that you were the only one who almost defeated Mandan. And I cannot conceive of you - being Mandan's wife, and yourself an independent intellectual in your own right - as being unfair I accept you. Whatsoever you decide will be, without complaint, accepted."

The debate again lasted six months. Finally Mandan was defeated. Shankara asked Bharti's opinion.

Bharti said, "Mandan is defeated but you are not victorious yet." This was the climate of intelligence.

She said, "Mandan is defeated but you are not victorious yet because 1, being his wife, according to Hindu scriptures am half of his being. So you have only done with one half of Mandan Mishra. The other half is still here. Now you will have to discuss with me."

Shankara was tired enough. Six months with Mandan had been such a difficult job that many times he had thought that he was going to lose. And then immediately to begin another debate.... And he knew the woman had kept this Mandan in debate for six months; now what was going to happen?

But that woman was really intelligent. She said, "I am not interested in theology - I am a woman - so forget all about your BRAHMASUTRAS of Badarayana; SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA, VEDAS; I am not interested in them, my interest is in Vatsyayana's KAMASUTRAS" - the first book on sexology in the whole world.

Now, Shankara was a bachelor, thirty years old. He said, "Vatsyayana? - but I have not even read him."

Bharti said, "You can ask for time to study."

But he said, "Just study won't help, because I don't have any practical knowledge."

Bharti said, "I can give you as much time as you want. You can get married, you can have practical knowledge. But till you defeat me in sexology, on matters concerning sex and its subtleties, you have no right to declare yourself victorious. Mandan is defeated, Mandan has to be your follower; he can help you. He is old, he is my husband and he knows everything about sex. He can help you now he is your follower. But half of his being still has to be conquered."

Now, Shankara's disciples must have invented the rest of the story because it seems contrived.

Up to then it was perfectly right, historical. Shankara asked for six months' leave, and in those six months he entered the body of a king who had just died - because he could not have experience of sex through his own body, he was a celibate monk. And the woman had put him in such a spot - either he had to accept defeat and become a follower of Bharti.... That would be stupid: Mandan, his follower, and he himself, Bharti's follower.

I don't think it is true - Shankara must have experienced sex through his own body. Now let Hindus and their religious feelings be hurt; what can I do? I cannot believe any nonsense that he entered a just - dead king and used the king's body and left his own body in a cave - I have been to the cave also - with his disciples. They had to protect the body till he returned, so continuously, twenty-four hours a day, they were guarding the body, taking care of the body. And for six months he lived in the king's body having all kinds of sexual experiences with his many queens.

And after six months he entered his own body; the king died. Shankara went back to Mandan for the debate - and Bharti simply laughed. She said, "I was just joking. When my husband is defeated, I am defeated. His life is my life, his death is my death, his pleasure is my pleasure, and his pain is my pain. His defeat is my defeat - you need not argue."

Shankara said, "My God! Then why did you put me to such trouble?"

But to me this seems to be just the same kind of story as the virgin Mary or as Buddha being born standing. The mother was standing; Buddha came out of the mother's womb standing, he fell on the earth standing. The first thing he did was, he took seven steps and declared: "I am the greatest enlightened one who has ever come on the earth." Now, all these hocus-pocus stories - but these are the things which make these religions juicy, so even retarded people can enjoy a little bit.

Jesus gives no argument at all. He never confronted any rabbi; that would have been the right course. The question is what Jesus did to deserve such followers. He did everything. He created chaos in the great temple of the Jews by throwing the money-changers out of the temple, upturning their tables. This is not the way of a man who says, "god is love," who says, "love your neighbor as yourself," who says, "love your enemy as yourself" but I don't think he loved his enemies as himself And he was not only throwing out these people, who were there for centuries.... And they were playing an essential part; without them millions of poor Jews would have been in tremendous difficulty. It was a beautiful institution. It was created to help poor Jews: they could take loans from the temple at a very minimal interest so that they were not in the hands of local exploiters who would take the maximum interest out of them. And they would never have been able to pay back the original money because the interest was so much; they would have been slaves for their whole lives without being slaves. And this was a great institution.

I don't think it was wrong. It was perfectly right that the temple provided the poor people with money at the minimum rate. And the temple had so much money. It was perfectly right, in every way ethical to help the poor people because the money was also coming from the same people. But the way the Christians present it is wrong, it is not right. The institution was perfectly right, and Jesus was just creating a nuisance there.

He should have gone to the high priest, argued about it, told him, "This institution of taking interest from the poor is not right," convinced him, "give it to them without interest." But no, he behaved violently; he was an angry man. And this behavior is not an argument, it is just the dialogue of my goldsmithji. You are not proving that you are right by throwing those moneychangers out of the temple. And you are not destroying the system: they will be back, soon they were back. And soon the whole Jewish system was angry with this man. If they had to crucify him I think perhaps they had no other choice; this man was so arrogant.

I have thought about all those people who have been crucified, poisoned, killed - for example, Socrates. I find him absolutely right, and the people who poisoned him and decided to kill him, absolutely wrong. They were not able to answer any of his arguments. They were not capable, nobody was capable, of as much intelligence as Socrates; those were ordinary pygmies. But it was a "democracy"....

Up to now there has never been any democracy.

Democracy has yet to come in the world; it has not entered it yet.

It has always been a mobocracy ca]led a democracy.

In the name of democracy the jurors, who were not even worthy to polish the shoes of Socrates, decided by voting - and it was not a great margin, just by one vote: fifty-one were in favor of poisoning him, forty-nine were against. They had nothing against him except meaningless words:

"He spoils the minds of people."

Just the same complaint they have against me, that I spoil people's minds. I simply spoil their retardedness and help their mind to be free from their retardedness - and that was what Socrates was doing.

Socrates had never done anything that you could say was done out of arrogance, or out of anger, or out of jealousy. He was not standing for any public post, he was not interested in any power politics.

He was not a man of anger at all.

The story is that his wife - she must have been really a monster, but sometimes it happens that such nice people as Socrates get such monster women. It is strange, but perhaps there is some balance.

Perhaps only Socrates could stand that woman; no other man I think could have lived with her for even a single day. She used to beat Socrates and he would simply sit.

If his disciples asked, Socrates would say, "It is her problem; she is angry. What can I do? It is her problem - she is suffering, and out of her suffering and anger she is throwing tantrums. I just happen to be sitting nearby so she is hitting me. But it is her problem, it is none of my concern."

One day when he was teaching his disciples, she came in angry - because that was one thing that she was very angry about, that he was always teaching truth, freedom, and never giving enough time to her. All kinds of people were coming from faraway places; and with them, strangers, he was wasting his time - strangers, who were of no interest. She was sitting there, boiling: she was his wife and he did not give that much attention to her.

This is a common complaint of all the women of the whole world: that the husband goes on playing chess with somebody, with more interest, goes on smoking a cigar with so much joy, reads his paper the first thing in the morning; and the wife is shouting, and he does not even listen to what she is saying. He says, "Okay, okay," for anything. He comes to bed and immediately starts snoring. And with strangers....

So Socrates' wife came with boiling hot water - she was preparing for tea, but Socrates did not get up from this discussion, and the discussion was going on longer and longer, and the time for tea had already passed; it was lunchtime by then - she came in great anger and poured the whole kettle of hot water on Socrates' head. Half of his face was burned and remained always scarred. But he continued.

All the people who were there were shocked. They had completely forgotten the matter they were discussing - and Socrates continued. They asked, "Can you still remember what we were talking about?"

He said, "Yes - because this is her problem, this is not my problem." Now, this man has no anger in him, no arrogance, no desire to prove that he is a superman; there is not even a mention that he is more than an ordinary human being.

Jesus is arrogant; naturally, he gets arrogant followers. He is the model. His utterances are not those of a humble man. Although he says, "Be humble, be meek," it seems all this teaching is for others - he is not humble. A humble man will not say, "I am the only begotten son of God." What can be more egoistic?

A humble man will not insist that he is the messiah, sent by God, for whom you have been waiting.

When nobody is agreeing to it, drop the idea. It is up to them: if they don't want the messiah, if they don't want to receive the message, what can you do? You are just a postman; and if the man says, "I don't want to receive this envelope, you take it back," what can the postman do? But he was a very arrogant postman. He insisted on delivering the message; whether you wanted it or not, whether you accepted him or not, he would deliver it.

I have thought many times that perhaps the Jews were forced by Jesus' arrogance and anger, and his continuously harassing them to accept that he was the messiah, to ask for his crucifixion. I don't think that it was just their fault; most of the responsibility falls on Jesus' arrogance.

In India we have seen Buddha speaking against the VEDAS, but ready to welcome any argument.

Jesus makes only statements, there is no question of argument; he is the messiah and he has brought the message.

In the whole of the four gospels there is not a single argument for anything. And I can visualize the contemporary scene there in Jerusalem. He must have looked like a buffoon, moving with that company - at least I would not have moved around with that company he was with. All those twelve apostles are just Oregonians. I don't see any spark in those twelve people: not a single intelligent man, not a single rabbi, not a single scholar, not a single professor - nobody who had some sharpness of mind was amongst those people that were following him.

So it is not just today - even when Jesus was here only idiots were around him. Only Judas was a little educated. The others were all uneducated: fishermen, farmers, woodcutters, carpenters - all were from the very lowest strata of society. And it is not that Jerusalem was lacking, Jerusalem was throbbing with intelligence at that time. It was their peak hour: there were great rabbis and great scholars and great, intelligent people.

Jesus should have converted them. Then you would not have found these Bible-thrashing - or is it bashing? - bashing.... Thrashing is also good. You would not have these idiots who are angry, cannot understand, are not able even to listen.

And Christianity got the major portion of humanity under it for the simple reason that the majority of people are retarded. To be a follower of Bodhidharma you need tremendous qualities; to understand Nagarjuna you will have to rise to your ultimate potential of understanding. But for Jesus nothing is needed. All that he is asking is: "Have belief in me, have faith in me, and that's all you have to do.

The remainder is for me to do, and that will be done on the judgment day. I will choose and sort out my sheep and tell my father that these people have to be saved and the remaining ones are to be thrown into hell."

Now, do you think any intelligent person is going to follow such ideas, with no logic, no reason?

Since that time he has been collecting these people, Jesus freaks, Witnesses of Jehovah. I have met, in India, all these kinds of strange people, but for all of them Jesus is responsible because he behaved wrongly. He did not follow what he was saying. If he had been humble, meek, if he had been available to argument, ready to listen - but no, he was an absolute fanatic. Whatever he says is truth; no other evidence is needed. He is the son of God, that's enough. The son of God cannot tell lies. He has been sent by God - but he should have at least taken a certificate from God to show people.

On what grounds can a person say that "I am the son of God"? And do you think that any intelligent person is going to believe it? No. Socrates' poisoning I sincerely feel was a crime against evolution.

Mansoor's crucifixion I certainly feel was a crime against man's growing potentialities. But with Jesus I don't feel the same, because he was responsible for whatsoever happened to him. And he is responsible for what kind of people have been collecting around him.

And these idiots around the world go on purchasing Jesus' ideas like hot cakes - or would it be more correct to say, like hot dogs? I was thinking of suggesting to my Magdalena people to make something like vegetarian hot watchdogs. They are really going to sell - vegetarian hot watchdogs, not ordinary dogs.

The stupid and the imbecile, the retarded - they have all become Christians, and we have to help them come out of their prisons. They are imprisoned. And the people who become Christians by their own desire - it is okay. If they feel they want to be, that's perfectly right, but nobody should be forced by birth to be a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan. Nobody should be forced by birth.

For a political election you ask that a person be adult, at least twenty-one years of age - to decide about politics, which is a third-rate matter. And to decide about religion, which is the ultimate concern of man, you don't give any chance for the person to grow, to learn, to remain open and available to all kinds of winds, and then choose. A religion has to be chosen, it cannot be inherited. Even if it takes your whole life, it is worth it because it is your ultimate concern.

So anything that has been given to you by birth is ugly, whether it is Christianity, or Hinduism, or Jainism or Buddhism; anything that is given to you by birth, drop it.

Search for yourself Be adult, come of age.

Only then, perhaps, will we be able to free people from their imprisonments.

And if all the intelligent people are outside the cages, I have every certainty that many retarded people will start having second thoughts. They won't be Bible-bashing or Bible-thrashing Christians.

They won't be angry if something against them is proposed. They will not be ready immediately to cut off your head or shoot you, if you are saying something against their ideology.

A religious person remains open to the very last moment, to his death; to the very last breath he is open.

That is a basic and absolute quality for a religious man: to remain always open - because who knows, tomorrow a few other facts may encounter you and you will have to change your whole idea of existence, of life.

Nobody knows what tomorrow is going to reveal.

The revelations are not in the BIBLE or in the KORAN.

The revelations are in life.

And every moment is a revelation if you are open.

But if you are closed then you are dead. The day you become closed, you become dead.

There are dead Christians, there are dead Hindus, there are dead Mohammedans; the earth is so full of dead people - but they are walking, talking, teaching, converting, doing all kinds of things. But as I see it, rarely is there a living being amongst them, very rarely somebody who is still alive.

I call that man alive who is always open, who never closes the windows and the doors of his being, because tomorrow is unpredictable.

All that we can say is: "Up to now this is my experience; tomorrow will take care of itself"