Theology - The Jungle of Lies

Question 1:

Existence as such has no meaning. Nor is it meaningless. Meaning is simply irrelevant to existence.

There is no goal existence is trying to achieve. There is nowhere it is going. It simply is.

Meaning is goal oriented: some purpose, some achievement.... Man's mind brings the problem of meaning. The mind is the root cause of all the questions that arise in you. The mind cannot rest at ease with things as they are. It is the nature of mind. The oceans are not worried about God, the mountains are not contemplating on God, the trees are not thinking about God.

Look at it from a different angle. A ship sinks in the ocean: is the ocean moral or immoral? The very question is irrelevant. The ocean is not doing it purposefully, there is no motivation. It is not gaining anything out of it. It was not intending to do it. If It had not happened, the ocean would not have been In despair. If it has happened, the ocean is not going to celebrate the victory. In fact, for the ocean, the very existence of the ship is not in any way a concern. So the accident of the ship sinking is neither moral on the part of the ocean, nor immoral. It is amoral.

Morality is man's mind game. Existence knows nothing of it, animals know nothing of it, the birds are not aware of it. It is only man. And man is different from the whole existence because of the mind. It gives him a totally new dimension.

The mind asks, "Why is existence there at all? Who created it? Why did he create it? There must be some purpose behind it," because the mind cannot conceive of anything which has no purpose.

The mind is very Jewish, it thinks in terms of business: what are you going to get out of it? If you are not going to get anything out of it, then why are you doing it? You cannot say, "Just for its own sake." Then you are mad, crazy.

I am reminded: somebody asked Picasso - he was painting something by the beach, near the ocean. A man was standing there looking: he could not figure out what it was. In fact it is very difficult to figure out Picasso's paintings. And that is the genius of the man, that he has brought his paintings to the state of existence. They are existential. You cannot ask their meaning, their purpose, what they are. But the man was perfectly right. He asked, "I have been waiting, watching.

What are you doing? What is this? What is this painting?"

Picasso looked at him and he said, "I know you have been waiting, watching, and I was worried that you were going to ask this question. I don't know. I myself don't know what it is, and I don't care to know. Nobody asks the flowers, 'What are you? Why are you? Why are you red, why are you blue, why are you yellow? Why this shape and not another shape, and why this season, not another season? And why this perfume, not another perfume?' Nobody asks the flowers.

"Nobody asks the clouds, 'Where are you moving to? What is the purpose of all this activity?'

Nobody asks the stars. The whole existence is continuously active. Everything is moving, nothing is static. Nobody asks. So why do people go on torturing a poor painter? I just enjoy doing it. Is that not enough? I am immensely happy that it has happened. I don't know what it is."

The man simply thought, "He is mad!"

But painters are forgiven. People don't expect them to be sane at all. Poets are forgiven. You know that they are a little bit crazy; otherwise who bothers about painting and poetry when there are so many things to do in the world? - to earn mountains of money, to be presidents and prime ministers, kings and queens.... And these fools are wasting their time, their life, and if you ask them, "For what?" they don't even have the answer.

The man simply moved away. He said, "I knew it, that you don't know what you are doing. No madman knows what he is doing."

Picasso laughed, and he said, "That is right. I would prefer to be a madman rather than to be a reasonable, rational businessman. I want to be part of this existence."

Mind is part of the society. It is not part of existence. Hence, it needs a society for its growth. The better established the society, the more proficiently the mind grows.

The question of God arose in the very beginning, perhaps ten thousand years ago, because in the Rig Veda - the oldest scripture in the world - one of the most important statements occurs. And that statement is, "We do not know who created the world. We do not know whether anybody created it or not." This must be in the very beginning when man starts the first stirrings of thought: "Who created the world? We do not know."

Yes, the theologian has not appeared yet; the man with the answer has not appeared yet. He comes very soon, he is not far away. Once you ask, "We do not know who created the world," the cunning man amongst you will come with the answer. He will say, "You don't know - I know." And immediately he becomes your superior. He becomes the wise man, the priest, the rabbi, the messiah - because he knows, and you don't know.

Later on priests condemned this statement in the Rig Veda by entitling it Nasdia Sutra - it means negative sutras. The title must have been given by those people who were pretending that they knew. But the people who must have written those sutras, raised those questions, were more innocent. They were simply saying, "We do not know. And there seems to be no way to know who created it all, or whether anybody created it at all. It may have existed for ever." Is there any necessity that there should be a beginning and an end? Yes, in a human story you have a beginning and an end. In a movie you have a beginning and an end. But in existence there is no beginning, no end.

But the mind cannot conceive that there is no beginning. The mind can conceive - you can take it as far back as possible, millions of light years back - it can conceive of any beginning, but it cannot conceive that it is a beginningless universe.

Mind feels some intrinsic incapacity to conceive beginninglessness and endlessness, that is the truth. But mind wants the answer to, "Who began it all?" And to satisfy the mind... otherwise it goes crazy, asking these questions and finding no answer; it becomes more and more desperate.

It becomes a constant anguish. Because we don't know the meaning of our lives, then a thousand other questions arise. Then why do we go on living? If we are just accidental, without any purpose - we happen one day, and one day we disappear, leaving not even a trace behind - the mind is not capable of conceiving it. It wants to create history; it wants to leave its name behind. It makes pyramids which will last for thousands of years. It makes monuments. Even ordinary people....

In Jabalpur, where I lived for many years, there is one of the most beautiful spots possible. One of the most beautiful rivers of India, the Narmada, passes for almost two miles between two mountains of marble, pure white mountains of marble for two miles on both sides, mountains of marble. You can see their reflection in the river, and on a full moon night it becomes absolutely a dreamland. You cannot believe it.

When I took one of my professors, Doctor S.K. Saxena... because I was saying again and again to him, "One day you have to come with me." Finally he said, "I don't believe that something can be dreamlike, but if you insist, I will take the chance." He used to live one hundred and twenty miles away from Jabalpur. I took him on a full moon night to the marble rocks. And the moment we entered the Narmada, he looked here and there. In the beginning, for half a mile, it is just an ordinary river.

After half a mile, suddenly you enter into the marble world.

He could not believe it. He said to me, "Forgive me that I doubted you. Take me close to the mountains because I want to touch and see whether they are there or there is some trick, some magic. It is really dreamlike, but I want to touch and see that it is real, not just a dream, not that you have brought me into some magical world."

I had to take the boat close to the mountains. He touched the mountains, felt the mountains and took a small rock with him. I said, "What are you doing?"

He said, "I will carry it to remember that it was not a dream. This rock will remind me that it was a reality; otherwise in the morning I may start suspecting. It is unbelievably true." But if you ask for the meaning, there is none. If you ask for the purpose, there is none. It is utterly beautiful, just pure beauty. But bring the mind in, and immediately the question, "Why?"

The mind wants first to know: "Why? Where? By whom? For what purpose?" So the first rising of the mind in human beings... you can conceive what they had faced... the sky full of stars....

Just think of yourself as Adam and Eve, the first man and woman on the earth. To you it does not create any question because you don't even see the stars; you have become accustomed, you take them for granted. But the first glimmerings, stirrings, of intelligence in man... all was a fairy land.

Everything was a question mark.

So many stars! Why? Who created them? So many trees, so many flowers - who goes on painting them? The sunrise, the sunset - everything was thrilling, ecstatic. And all the questions became one question and that question is God. God is not a simple question. All these questions of purpose, meaning, motive, beginning, end.... The cunning priest exploited the situation of the simple human mind. He said, "You don't know, but I know." God is the invention of those cunning people: "God created it." And then they started figuring out about God, because people started asking, "Who is this God? Where does he live? Why did he create?" So they had to invent: "God is omnipotent, all-powerful; he can do anything."

Just the other day I received a letter. I receive many letters from Christians. This poor fellow says, "You don't know, miracles happen! I have seen it happen; they have happened to me. My truck was stuck in the mud, and I tried everything that I could, but it wouldn't budge. Then I prayed to God, and suddenly, the miracle: the truck moved! And you say there are no miracles."

Now this poor fellow thinks that God is so interested in him and his truck, which is stuck in the mud, that when he prays, God immediately runs, as if he is a mechanic. Prayer is a phone call. He runs immediately, fixes it, and the truck is on the road. "And you say that there are no miracles." All these Christians have been relating their experience of miracles, which are just like this.

Man's ego finds it very satisfying that God cares even about you, knows about you, even about your truck stuck in the mud. But this man is not aware of what he is saying. It has nothing to do with God, it has something to do with the ego. The cunning priest played the game, fulfilling your ego, answering the questions raised by your mind in such a way that with one stone he killed two birds.

The answer was a fulfillment for the ego and a fulfillment for the mind. If it was not fulfilling for your ego, you would have rejected it. You would have doubted. You would have raised a thousand and one questions - but it was very fulfilling to the ego. To doubt means your fulfillment for the ego disappears. It is better to drop doubting. It is far more profitable; your ego is fulfilled. God creates the world; he is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient. He knows everything - past, present, future.

Unless he knows everything, he will not know you and your truck, stuck in the mud in Oregon. And can you conceive the idea of the mind and the ego, and their games?

Up to now they have counted at least two million galaxies. Our sun, our moon, our earth, all the planets, and all the stars that you see with your bare eyes, are one galaxy. This sun is the center of this solar system. Everything is moving around the sun. The sun is the center of one solar system.

At least two million galaxies have been discovered. Many more are there - one can be certain about it, because we have not come to the end of the universe, and we are not going to come to the end.

The mind cannot conceive of it. The mind always thinks somewhere there must be an end.

When Columbus was trying, persuading people... because nobody was going with him; there was nobody ready. It was one crazy queen of Spain who said, "I will give the money. You try." It was not a problem for her. Money was simple for her and she was known for crazy things, and this idea struck her: "It is perfectly good. If you are lost, you are lost; you are asking for it yourself. I will pay for the trip, but you find the men."

He needed at least ninety people to go with him to take care of the ship, food, everything, because he estimated it would take at least three months to come back home. To make a round trip and come back home would take at least three months; that was his calculation, which was proved wrong. But because the queen was helping, a few daring people, courageous people, started to be ready to go with him. And one day, with ninety people he started.

The pope sent him the last warning: "I tell you, don't do such a stupid thing. You will repent forever, because it says in The Bible the earth is flat, so one day you will come to the very end of the earth and your ship will go down. From the very edge of the earth, where will you go? You will fall into eternal hell! There is bound to be an end, you cannot go on for ever and ever. The earth is flat, so there is an edge and you are going to fall off, and with you these ninety fools who are going - they are going to fall. I am giving you the last warning: don't go against God!"

But Copernicus, Columbus, Galileo - these people are not gullible. They are not the mediocre masses which the priest can exploit. Columbus said, "I am going. It is better to fall from the edge - but at least I will see with my own eyes the edge of the earth, the flatness of the earth. And I will see what happens after the fall - where we end up, whether we land anywhere or we go on falling.

We will see."

But as days started passing... weeks, months... the ninety people who were with him started becoming afraid. Only three days more and their rations would be finished. They had traveled two months, twenty-seven days, "and he had promised that in three months we would be back home.

There seems to be no sign anywhere...." They all gathered in the night when Columbus was sleeping, to kill him, and go back - because alive he was not going to go back. He was not a man to go back; he would rather fall into the eternal ditch. He was not the man to go back - even to say anything about it was impossible.

But Columbus suspected that these people must be getting afraid. He himself was having doubts:

three months were ending and there was no sign - neither home, nor the edge. Nothing had happened, and there seemed to be that ocean going on and on. So when he saw that all the ninety people had gathered - he had pretended to sleep, he was not sleeping - he went to listen. They had closed the door; he listened. They were saying, "We throw him into the ocean, and we go back. This is the only way; otherwise we are finished. He is finished, we are finished. He is finished because of his own stubbornness; we are unnecessarily finished."

Columbus knocked on the door; they became afraid. They opened the door, saw Columbus.

Columbus entered. He said, "You are perfectly right. There is no need to conspire; you can throw me into the ocean. But listen to one thing: you have rations for only three days. If you go back, you need rations for at least two months, twenty-seven days. Three days won't help. After three days what will you do? In three days will you reach home? That much is absolutely certain. My calculations may have gone wrong, but this calculation you can do yourself: we have come this far in two months twenty-seven days. Now, going back will take the same time - if you don't drift here and there, if you don't lose the way. If you go back exactly on the right course, which is not certain, then too you need that much rations. You don't have that much rations. And you will have one person less, Columbus.

"You idiots! Listen to me. It is better to go ahead - perhaps in three days we may reach - because going ahead is open. We may reach, we may not reach, but there is a possibility we may reach. And I have absolute certainty that we will reach because today I saw a bird flying in the sky, and I have seen a few leaves floating in the ocean. So we are very close to land. We may not reach our home, but we are going to reach some place."

The logic was absolutely clear. Even those idiots could understand that that was true. Backwards, it was absolute death. After three days they would start starving, and without the intelligence of Columbus.... Ahead there was a possibility; he might still prove right. Three days were still left. They changed their plan. They asked to be forgiven. Columbus said, "No problem. I myself doubt many times what I have done. I am not concerned about me, I am concerned about you because it is not your project; it is my project, and you are unnecessarily being sacrificed for it. But wait three days more. Give me my three months completely." And in three days he reached America.

He did not reach home. He did not reach India. That was his second thought, that if they don't reach Spain, then they might reach half way at least - to India, from the other side. From one side the traffic was open; between Spain and India, between England and India, the traffic was open. So at least from the other side they might reach India. And he thought, "This is India." That's why the people who are living here, were living here, to whom this country belongs, are called Red Indians.

That is not their name, it is the name Columbus gave to them. They were of a red color, reddish, and he thought it was India, so he called them Red Indians.

The priest did two things. He satisfied your mind, put it into a coma: there is God, he knows all, and he has created everything. When the all knowing, all powerful, everywhere present God is there, you need not worry about the purpose; he will take care. He has already taken care. He has created man as the suprememost creation to rule over the whole world of animals, mountains, oceans, trees.

He has created man in his own image.

Just think of that statement, "God has created man in his own image." The priest is fulfilling both things. He is saying: "You are created by God in his own image, you partake of something of God's... you are his inheritors." It helped, consoled, took away the worry, anxiety, fear. You have somebody so powerful, so all knowing and everywhere present, that there is no need to be worried whether in time of trouble you call and he has gone somewhere else. He is present everywhere. So you can pray and he is listening. And he is all powerful, so don't suspect that he will not do it. He can do anything.

So you can ask for anything, if you ask with total faith. See the trick. These are the tricks that the priest has played over the whole history of man: "With total trust...." Now, trust can never be total; "Doubtless belief...." Now, belief can never be without doubt. He is giving you conditions to fulfill, so that if your prayer is not fulfilled, you will know why it is not fulfilled - not that God is not there to listen, not that he is deaf, not that he is no longer concerned about you, not that he has retired or died, no - your belief is not absolute. You are having doubt, by the side, around the corner. And you know the doubt, so you are at fault.

And once in a while, when the truck moves out of the mud, then it is so gratifying to think that in two million galaxies - and each galaxy can have many solar systems, and each solar system has one sun and many planets - your tiny earth.... It is a very tiny earth. This sun is sixty thousand times bigger than the earth, and this sun is a very mediocre sun; it is not the biggest sun, just in the middle range. There are suns which are thousands of times bigger than this.

So this small earth, and on this small earth, this small America, and in this small America, this small Oregon, and in this small Oregon, the Big Muddy Ranch... your great truck caught in the mud and God comes running. It is so gratifying.

So, once in a while, if you go on praying, once in a while you will find that your prayer has been heard. Then it is gratifying. Then you completely forget that there was still doubt. No, when things are gratifying, who bothers about such uncomfortable, inconvenient truths? No, one completely forgets, one is so overjoyed in one's belief. And one is satisfied also that one's belief is so powerful that God has to listen to it.

Now these fools write to me in their letters that they are praying for me to God, that God should forgive me. They should pray to me that I should forgive their God, because he has tortured humanity enough. He and his company of messiahs, avataras, tirthankaras, paigambaras - this whole lot, and the priests all over the earth - have been sucking the blood of humanity. They should pray to me that I should forgive their God and their messiahs and their tirthankaras and their avataras.

But they are asking that I should be forgiven because I don't know that miracles are there; because I don't know that Jesus is the true messiah, that he is really the only begotten son of God. They are praying for me.... At least a dozen letters every day: "We will pray in the church to Jesus, to God, that you should be forgiven."

There is no God. Even if I want to forgive him, it is pointless. There is no God whom I can forgive.

And I cannot forgive the company that has used the name of God and exploited the whole of humanity up to now. I cannot forgive, nor can I forget, because this company is the worst gang of criminals possible. They have used your weakness.

The mind's weakness is, it wants a certain support of meaning. They give it - a false support, a promise which is not going to be fulfilled. And they fulfill the ego, which is one of the greatest barriers to knowing existence. So both ways they have committed such a crime that it is incalculable.

On the one hand they stop the mind from getting into the quest because they supplied readymade answers....

A true religion will say, "Your question is valid, go on searching. And there is no answer which can be given by anybody to you. Any answer given to you by anybody else is a wrong answer."

Remember it. It is not a question of whether it is right or wrong. If it is given by somebody else, the very fact that it is given by somebody else to you, not found by you, means it is false. You have to find it yourself, and you have to risk everything to find. The question is valid. The answer is wrong.

So in the Rig Veda, the statement, "We do not know why this existence is, who created it, whether there is anybody who created it at all," is the only authentic statement in the whole Rig Veda - and the priests call it the Negative Sutra; they think some atheist.... The Rig Veda is not a book written by one man, it is a collection. Hundreds of poets, seers, scholars have contributed to it. It is almost like the Encyclopedia Britannica. The four Vedas contain all the knowledge of those days - ten thousand years ago - whatsoever was known, whatsoever questions were raised. It contains all; it is really an encyclopedia. It should be put with the encyclopedias; it is not a holy book. There is no holy book at all.

It's just like the Jews and Christians are so very worried about the Song of Solomon in the Old Testament. They would have loved it not to be there. But what can they do? It is there, and now it is too late to take it out. And they are really ashamed. No rabbi comments on it. No Christian priest comments on it. And it is the only beautiful piece in the whole Bible. But because it is a song of love and Solomon is singing in the praise of his beloved, it is very sensuous. I don't think any poet has ever come close to the Song of Solomon in sensuousness. Your D.H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, and others, have much to learn from the Song of Solomon.

But Jews go on hiding it, Christians go on hiding it. If you simply go to church, you will never know that there is something like the Song of Solomon. No rabbi is going to comment on it, he will feel ashamed. Solomon is so authentic about his feelings, emotions, sensuality, that it seems he knows Sigmund Freud perfectly well, and that Sigmund Freud may have to learn something from Solomon.

Solomon need not bother about Sigmund Freud.

You will be surprised that the Song of Solomon is a Jewish and Christian phenomenon, but in India, Solomon is called Suleiman; that is the Indian pronunciation for Solomon. And in India there is a proverb: if somebody tries to be very wise, he is told, "Don't try to be a Suleiman" - don't pretend to be a Solomon, don't pretend to be so wise as Solomon was.

Now, in India that proverb is very ancient. But India can accept Solomon because it can accept Khajuraho. Solomon's song should be engraved in the temples of Khajuraho - only there is it befitting, where stone has been turned into such sensuous beauty. The thousands of women and men which are sculptured look so real you would like to hug them. You will feel ashamed: why are you not so beautiful, so proportionate? Solomon's song will be exactly the right book for the temples of Khajuraho, Konarak, Puri. And in India this is one of the ancient proverbs: "Don't try to be a Suleiman." But Jews and Christians don't accept Solomon as a really wise man. He seems to be the only 'other-wise' man in the whole Bible.

The same is the situation of the Nasdia Sutra in the Rig Veda. To me that is the only sutra which is authentic. Anybody who wrote ten thousand years ago, "We do not know. We only have questions, we don't have any answers," must have been a man of tremendous courage.

And this courage is needed to search, to seek, and to find - but you will not find God; you will find yourself. You will not find the creator, but you will find the creative energy that surrounds you, within and without. If you listen to others, it is "God the creator"; if you search on your own, then it is godliness - the creativity.

Once the priest started answering that there is God, and people started asking about God, they forgot why they had asked in the first place for God. Who created the world? The priest answered:

God. And in every country, the priest was free to imagine what God is, how he looks.

The Chinese God looks like a Chinese. He cannot have a beard like me. Chinese cannot afford my beard, that is impossible. They have just a small beard - hairs you can count on your fingers.

The Chinese God also has the same beard. When one Chinese friend brought me a statue of the Chinese God, I told him, "You could have been a little generous, at least with your God. What kind of beard - just twelve hairs? And a flat nose, and both the cheekbones standing out... it has to be Chinese."

The Hindu God has to be Hindu. I was telling you about Khajuraho. If you see those women, they are Hindu women, and not of today, but of those days when those women were carved. Women must have modeled, otherwise you cannot have all that proportion. You will not find such round breasts anywhere in the world as you will find in the Khajuraho statues. But Indian women used to have that kind of breast. Unless a woman had that kind of breast, full grown, fully rounded, she was not beautiful. And she was missing something, she could not be a true mother. Of course, little kids would have been in trouble with those breasts, that I can understand.

When I was visiting - and I was visiting Khajuraho again and again because Khajuraho is one of the tremendous phenomena, those thirty temples - I asked the guide, who finally became a sannyasin - he is now a sannyasin, the guide who was in Khajuraho - I asked him, "If the breast is so round, then it will be very difficult for the child to drink milk out of it. His nose will go into the breast. He will choke. Because the mouth is drinking, the nose will be closed, he will die."

He said, "You are a strange man. I have been here for thirty years, I have shown thousands of people these temples, but nobody bothered about it. Not even I myself have thought.... It is true."

I said, "You can try."

He said, "There is no need to try, it is absolutely true." With such a round breast, the nose is bound to be squashed and the child cannot breathe. It would have been really difficult for the kids. But I have looked in the ancientmost scriptures of India: the breast is depicted by Kalidas, Bhavabhuti, by all the great poets, in the same way.

In the West the breast is disappearing. In the East also it is no longer the same. Something has gone wrong somewhere. Something has changed. In the West, the woman is trying to be equal to man in every possible way. Her psychology is different now: she wants to wear the same clothes as man. Naturally her body is changing its shape. With the clothes, with the psychology, with her desire, her body is changing: her breasts and her bottom are both disappearing. She is becoming a straight pillar, with no ups, no downs. That is ugly, but unless she stops the idea of becoming like man.... The body follows the mind. It slowly slowly fits to the idea of the mind.

I have been a guest in tribes, very ancient tribes, where the woman is stronger than the man. For the first time when you see the fact, you cannot believe it. All over the world the man is taller, stronger, muscular; the woman is smaller, not muscular. But in these tribes in central India, the woman is taller. The woman has muscles. The woman does all kinds of work, the man takes care of the children. Naturally he has shrunk, he is no longer the same man because he is not using his muscles. He has become the wife, the wife has become the husband.

Once your psychology changes... and why did it happen in central India? - because the man found it easier. You can marry as many women as you want, so man started marrying many women. And he started putting them to use, to work: "Go to the farm, go to the orchard, go to the river, go to the well to bring water." What should all these women do, sitting in the house? He started resting and the women started working. And of course when women are working, they will leave the children with the husband, saying "Just watch over the children, take care of them."

Slowly slowly the woman became taller, stronger. Now the situation is, the man cannot beat the woman. In central India the woman beats the man, and that is accepted, just as in other parts of India, if a man hits his wife it is accepted. He need not even give an apology - it is his right. The same is true in central India; the wife can beat the husband, it is her right. If he has not been taking care of the children well, he is going to be punished.

All over the world the woman has remained small because man has been imposing the psychology:

"I am bigger, stronger. I am your caretaker, your safety, your security." And he is making the woman weaker, because the weaker she is, the more she will be dependent on him. So don't educate her, don't let her work, so financially she is weak, educationally she is weak. She has to depend on you.

Where can she go? What can she do? How can she earn her livelihood? It is impossible.

When Bhavabhuti, Kalidas, and other poets, and these unknown sculptors, were painting the women.... It was not imaginary because it is not only in one place. All over India, in any temple, you will find the same statue, the same kind of statue, the same figure. It must have been common. But it started disappearing as the Mohammedans entered India.

As the Mohammedans entered India, they brought women who used a veil called a burkha, a black veil covering all the body. They rarely see the sunlight; many may not ever have seen the sun in their life. They rarely see other human beings, other than their husband, their children. Their bodies are pale - are bound to be - weak, fragile. They don't have round, big breasts; their bodies cannot support that kind of breast. When Mohammedan women came to India... and Mohammedans are very interested in other people's women because they can marry four women. In their own society they cannot find four, because the proportion always remains the same, naturally - as many boys as girls are born.

You will be surprised - nature has a way of its own, its own arithmetic. One hundred girls are born, then one hundred and ten boys are born, because by the time they become mature ten boys will have died. Boys are weaker: their resistance to diseases, to sickness, is less than the woman's. So one hundred girls and one hundred and ten boys - that is the proportion nature brings. Ten more, because ten are going to be finished before they become marriageable. By the time they are sixteen they will be of equal numbers.

So it seems to be a natural arrangement: one man, one woman - that should be the way. How can you get three other women, from where? So they were grabbing anybody's women. With the Mohammedans, purdah, ghoonghat, entered India. The Indian woman also started hiding herself in her sari, with her sari pulled down over the head so nobody could see her face, and she started using clothes which don't show her breasts. Otherwise she was joyous about her body. With Mohammedans coming to India she became afraid of her body. She became, deep down in her psychology, shrunken. To be a woman became a sin, a danger. It is from the Mohammedan period in India that the woman lost her old beauty, her old proportions. She is no longer the Khajuraho woman.

What I was saying is that Solomon in the Old Testament is the only authentic, realistic, existential person. He is not a priest and he is not a rabbi and he is not a prophet. He is truly a man, a human being. And he is not ashamed of being a human being, or of human qualities.

The same is true about the Nasdia Sutra in the Rig Veda. We don't know who wrote it, but whoever wrote it, humanity owes much to that unknown man. Ten thousand years ago, when everybody was trembling before the priests... and what all the priests were doing was all mumbo jumbo. They were not allowing the people to read the scriptures, because if the people read the scriptures they will know what is written there: it is all rubbish. So the priest would repeat it, and Sanskrit is such a beautiful and poetic language that even if you are reading the daily newspaper it will look like poetry.

It will look like great poetry.

It is so musical that listening to Sanskrit you will forget that you need to understand what is being said. You will simply love and enjoy the chanting of it, the music of it, the rhythm of it. And that quality the priest used very cleverly. He did not allow the masses to read them, so they never understood what actually was written. The masses had to use other languages to talk. Sanskrit was only for the priests, brahmins. So they kept what was written there unknown to everybody.

Women were completely cut out because no woman was allowed to read the holy scriptures, the Vedas. The sudras, who are one fourth of the country, were completely prohibited, so that if they were found even hearing the scriptures, to say nothing about reading them.... If some brahmin was chanting and some sudra, hiding, tried to hear it, it was enough: he could be given the ultimate punishment, the death penalty. Even a man like Rama, whom Hindus worship as God's incarnation, did such an inhuman act that that single act is enough to condemn him forever.

A brahmin came to Rama with his young son who had just died and he said, "My son has died. And this shows that some sudra, some untouchable, somewhere in your kingdom, is reading the Vedas."

Now, what is the connection with a sudra reading the Vedas? Now everybody can read them, they are available in all the libraries, and all the sudras are reading them and no brahmins are dying. Why would this particular brahmin's son die if some sudra somewhere was reading them?

Immediately a great search was made. It was found that one sudra was not reading, but hearing the scriptures. Somebody was chanting, and he was listening because the chanting was so beautiful.

There was nothing wrong in it, but this was enough: he was called to the court, and Rama ordered that molten lead should be poured into both of his ears so he would never again hear anything.

And this man is God's incarnation. This was done - such a cruel act! It does not help the brahmin's son. He had died, he did not come back to life. If he had come back to life, then there would have some meaning to it. He did not come back to life, but this man was deaf for the rest of his life. And perhaps it might have destroyed his brain cells, his eyes, who knows - because the scriptures don't bother to describe what happened to the man, whether he died or lived.

You are pouring fire into both his ears. And the ears are connected with the nose, connected with the eyes, connected with the brain; you may have destroyed such fragile tissues in his brain that even if he was alive, he would have been just a robot. And what was his sin? He had heard some brahmin chanting a mantra, which he could not even understand because he did not know Sanskrit.

The priest tried to make sure that people could not know much about scriptures; they should not ask questions, they should not raise doubts: "Their function is to believe, to pray, to worship, and they will be benefited in the coming life after death."

God is the greatest lie that has been uttered.

Now I laugh because I have been in the courts a few times. One time I was in a court and they said to me, "Take the oath in the name of God."

I said, "Don't mention the name of God, because I cannot take the oath of truth in the name of the greatest lie."

The judge could not believe it; he said, "What are you saying?"

I said, "God is the greatest lie. And you are telling me to take the oath of truth in the name of God?

If you want that, I will do it, but remember, I am taking the oath of truth in the name of a lie. The 'truth' means nothing, the oath means nothing, and you are giving me absolute freedom to lie from the very beginning."

Then he said, "Then there are other alternatives. You can take the oath on any holy scripture you believe in."

I said, "I don't believe in any holy scripture. I have never come across any holy scripture."

Then he said, "The last thing is, you can take the oath in the name of the constitution of India."

I said, "I am not ready to take the oath in the name of those scriptures which have some beautiful statements, which have some beautiful poetry, which are written by poets, seers. Some of them may have known the truth; but as a whole I don't consider any book holy, so I am not taking the oath on them. Do you really think I will take the oath in the name of the constitution, written by third class politicians, the worst people in the country?"

Then he said, "Then what can be done? - the oath has to be taken."

I said, "I can take the oath on my own authority. That's the only way. There is no other way. All other ways are created by the priests, and I don't believe in priests."

The priests have given you the greatest lie, and then to protect their lie they have to create more lies: that God punishes you, that he rewards you, that he sends special messengers to you, that whenever there is trouble, whenever there is suffering, he comes. It is strange that people go on believing it. People are living in suffering and misery, and he does not seem to come - except to remove a truck! A great miracle.

People are dying... so many wars... so many people being killed - and he is not coming. Do you think those millions of Jews who were gassed in Germany - many of them were rabbis, very learned ones - were not praying? He comes to move a truck in the Muddy Ranch, and what about those millions of Jews and hundreds of rabbis being gassed, and he does not come at all?

What happened in Russia? Since the revolution at least ten million people have been killed. And not rich people - because where can you find ten million rich people in Russia? - poor people, for whom the revolution was made, in whose name the revolution was made, in whose name the communist party was ruling, were being killed for small reasons... those poor people. And Russia was very poor, one of the poorest countries, because the czar and the super-rich people who were surrounding the czar were exploiting the whole country so tremendously for hundreds of years that everybody was starving, dying, sick.

Now, a man has two hens, and you can just see that poor man: he has two hens, and only two hens - it's all that he has. So he can sell two eggs every day, and with some earning out of it, some earnings from somewhere else, somewhere he can work.... Now the communist party says everything belongs to the state; these two hens are now the property of the state. Now, that poor man does not understand communism or anything; he understands only one thing, that his two hens are going. He tries hard not to give them his hens - so he is shot because he is fighting against communism! He was simply fighting for his two hens, without which he cannot live. Such poor people.

Millions of people were simply shot, and they were all very orthodox Catholic Christians. The Russian church was the most orthodox church in the whole world; the Vatican is nothing. And it was independent of the Vatican just because of orthodoxy; it thought that the Vatican was too liberal. It was absolutely orthodox. These people who were praying every Sunday in the church - what happened to them? What happened to God? Did he suddenly disappear from Russia? Was he afraid of the communist party? Was he afraid of Stalin? Was he afraid that he would be shot?

What happened to his all pervading wisdom, compassion, love? Everything disappeared, and these millions of people simply died, went on dying.

So the priests have to invent miracles. They have to invent great fictions, stories, in which God does great things. He never does them in front of you - not a single eyewitness for anything; it is just written in the books.

Jesus raised Lazarus from his grave. Now, a man who can raise a dead man back to life is absolutely impotent on the cross. That was the time to show the miracle. He could have changed the cross into a crown, into a golden throne. That would have been a miracle. But at that time he could not do anything. He prays to God - and up to now he was doing miracles - now he is asking God to do the miracle. And God is completely deaf. Jesus shouts, "Have you forsaken me?" But there is no reply from the sky.

Priests created God; then, to support a lie they created other lies. They went on creating lies for thousands of years, and people went on searching for some way to find the truth among these lies.

You will be lost in those theological lies; it is a jungle of lies.

No, that is not the way to the truth. The way to truth is just to avoid all theology: Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Jaina, Buddhist - avoid all theology. Avoid all that the priests have invented. Remain with your question, and make it a quest and search within. It is better to ask, "Who am I?" rather than to ask who created the world. Even if you know, what are you going to do? I say, "A created the world." Then what? You will ask, "Who created A?"

The real religious question has nothing to do with God at all. The authentic question is, "Who am I?" And the only way to know is to be silent, be alert, be aware, watch your thoughts, and let them disappear.

One day you will find all has become silent, not even a murmur of thought. Everything has stopped, as if time has stopped. And suddenly you are awake from a long, long dream, from a nightmare.

And once you know your being, you know the whole of being, because your being is not an island.

It is not separate from the whole. It is part of the whole continent, of the whole existence. And once you have known your part, you have tasted... and the taste all over the existence is the same.

The moment one comes to know oneself, one knows that all religions have been businesses, business establishments founded by a cunning people. You have been cheated. The moment you know yourself, you know such a blessing that in that blessing all doubts, all questions disappear.

Have you observed a simple fact? - that when you are happy you never ask, "Why am I happy?"

But when you are miserable, you always ask, "Why am I miserable?" When your head is healthy you don't ask any questions: "Why is my head not suffering from a headache?" But when you have a headache, then certainly you ask, "Why this headache?"

I am trying to remind you that when you are full of blessings inside, all your questions will disappear - not answered, disappear; dissolved, not solved. And being in that state of no questioning, no doubting, no belief but utterly fulfilled, contented, knowing happens. One becomes a Solomon.

Okay Sheela?