I Am Against Religions, but I Am For Religion

Question 1:

Religion has nothing to do with God, the devil, heaven and hell.

The word religion has to be understood. The word is significant: it means putting the parts together, so that the parts are no longer parts but become whole. The root meaning of the word religion is: to put things together in such a way that the part is no longer a part but becomes the whole. Each part becomes the whole, in togetherness. Each part, separate, is dead; joined together, a new quality appears, the quality of the whole. And to bring that quality into your life is the purpose of religion.

It has nothing to do with God or the devil. But the way the religions have functioned in the world, they have changed its whole quality, the very fabric. Instead of making it a science of integration, so that man is not many, but one.... Ordinarily you are many, a crowd. To melt this crowd into one wholeness, so that everything in you starts functioning in harmony with everything else within you, and there is no conflict, no division, no fight - nobody higher, nobody lower, you are just one harmonious whole....

The religions around the world have helped humanity to forget even the meaning of the word. They are against the integrated man, because the integrated man does not need God, does not need the priest, does not need the church. The integrated man is enough unto himself. He is whole. And to me that makes him holy - because he is whole. He is so fulfilled that there is no psychological need for a father figure, a God somewhere in heaven taking care of you. He is so blissful in the moment, you cannot make him afraid about tomorrow. Tomorrow does not exist for the integrated man. Only this moment is all - neither there are yesterdays nor tomorrows.

You cannot manipulate the integrated man through these childish stupid strategies of "If you do this you will attain to heaven and all its pleasures; if you do that you will fall into hell and you will suffer for eternity." The integrated man will simply laugh at all this nonsense.

He has no fear of the future, you cannot create hell; he has no greed for the future, you cannot create heaven. He needs no protection, nobody to guide him, nobody to take him somewhere. He has no goals, no motivations. Each moment is so complete that it is not waiting to be completed by another moment which will come sometime in this life, or maybe in the next life.... Each moment is full, overfull, overflowing, and all that he knows is a tremendous gratitude for this beautiful existence.

That too he does not say, because the existence does not understand language. That gratitude is his very being, so whatsoever he is doing, there is gratitude. If he is not doing anything, just sitting silently, there is gratitude. It is not something like Mohammedans who five times a day thank God - but what are you doing between those five times? You are not thanking between those five times.

So your thankfulness is just a ritual, it is not your life.

Sheela has just brought me a brochure from a Christian society which "celebrates a week of forgiveness around the world." Any city can become a member of the society, but only a city. Then the city appears on the world map of the Society of Forgiveness. And the people who are doing such work really look serious, but what they are doing is so childish, so idiotic. On Monday you forgive yourself - this way it goes - on Tuesday you forgive your neighbors, on Wednesday you forgive your enemies, then you forgive your nation, then you forgive all the nations. The whole program is for the seven days.

And the covering letter says, "If you do forgive yourself, the nation, the nations, the whole world, you will achieve immense happiness. Resentment is bad, repentance is good." Now these people have sent a world map with the letter, on which the cities are marked, so the association must have been working for years. This is a new city, so they have invited us to become members of their foolish game.

Once a year for seven days you forgive... then what do you do for the whole year? And if you continue to forgive for the whole year, then for the next year your membership is finished, because the next year you cannot have the week to forgive - there is nobody left to forgive, you have forgiven all. But these people have been doing it for years, and every year - so the forgiveness does not transform you.

In the covering letter it says, "Be always the first to forgive." Don't miss the chance to be the first to forgive, be the leader, be the master of forgiveness. Do you see the point? Even in forgiveness there is competition, there is an ego game: "Be the first." But if everybody is trying to be the first, then who can be the first? Somebody has to be second: he has lost the game already; he is no longer master of his fate and destiny. So be quick! Before the other forgives you, you forgive him, so you remain the master of your destiny, and the leader, and the first - and great will be your benefit.

Now, to forgive someone, first you have to be angry, enraged, against him, hateful, resentful, in some way thinking of destroying the other. If these things are not there, how can you forgive? You must carry the wound the whole year, for these seven days of forgiveness. Every February those seven days will come, and at that time you do your best to be the first. And certainly the person who forgives more will have more benefits. But who can forgive more if you are not carrying resentment in you at all? How can you forgive? For what can you forgive?

For example, I cannot forgive anybody in the whole world. I don't see any reason for anybody to be forgiven by me; I am not carrying any wound, any resentment. While Sheela was reading the pamphlet, I tried to figure out that if I have to forgive, whom I should forgive. I was absolutely empty and no answer, no name appeared, that this person I should forgive... because in the first place I have never been in the attitude of resentfulness. I don't have any enemy in the world. There are millions of people who think they are my enemies, but as far as I am concerned, there is nobody who is my enemy. So if I try to forgive, whom am I going to forgive?

It was really a pleasure to see that society - and it is a world wide society, and hundreds of cities are members of the society. They must think they are doing something immensely significant. But deep down they are sowing the seed of ego in you: "Be the first...."

Religion has done so much against humanity, with good intentions. Those people were not functioning with bad intentions, but they were certainly idiots, not knowing exactly what they were doing, and how human psychology functions.

They exploited man. Take, for instance, Jesus: he says, "Man cannot live by bread alone." True, absolutely true - because he needs many fictions to live. Just bread won't do. He needs God, he needs the devil, he needs heaven, he needs hell and the popes and the church, and prayer and forgiveness. "Man cannot live by bread alone," Jesus says - perfectly right. Take away all these fictions and suddenly this question will arise: if there is no God, if there is no devil, then what is religion all about?

All these religions have given you fictions because your psychology has certain needs. Either you go beyond mind - that's what real religion is - or you create fictions so that your mind does not feel empty, meaningless, lonely, a driftwood with no goal ahead, no source behind.

One of the greatest needs of the human mind is to be needed. Existence seems to be absolutely indifferent to you. You cannot say it needs you, or can you? Without you, things were going perfectly well. The sunrise was there, the sunset was there, the flowers were flowering, the seasons were coming and going. If you were not there, it would make no difference at all. One day you will not be there again, and it will not make any difference at all: existence simply goes on and on. It does not give you the satisfaction that is your greatest need - to be needed. On the contrary, it gives you the feeling that it does not care. Perhaps it does not even know that you are.

I am reminded of one of Panch Tantra's stories. They are tremendously psychological. An elephant is passing over a bridge on a river, and a mosquito is sitting on the elephant. The elephant is so heavy, and the bridge is just a temporary bridge. Poor villagers make them when the rains are gone and the floods have disappeared, and the river becomes small. They make temporary wooden bridges for themselves. For eight months they are perfectly okay. But it was not made for an elephant because in that poor village nobody could own an elephant. It was just a wild elephant that had come to the bridge, and was passing over the bridge. The mosquito, sitting on the head of the elephant, said, "Uncle, it seems my weight and your weight are too much for the bridge."

The elephant said, "I was not even aware that you were sitting on my head. What are you doing there?" Now, in this small story the elephant is not even aware of the mosquito, but the mosquito thinks, "Me and you, together, are too much for this poor bridge."

Each man is far smaller in comparison to this vast universe than the mosquito is to the elephant.

There is not much difference between the mosquito and the elephant, but between a man and existence - the difference is immeasurable. But remember, man is doing the same thing. If you are going to get married, you go to the astrologer to ask, "Are the stars favorable?" That's what the poor mosquito was saying, "Uncle..." trying to relate with the elephant. You are trying to relate with the stars: are they favorable for your marriage? And of course the astrologer is going to exploit you.

I was for a few months in Raipur as a professor teaching there. I have traveled all over India, but Raipur seems to be a strange place. You will be able to pass only two or three houses before you find a great board declaring: "Here lives a great astrologer." You pass only two, three houses, and there is somebody who knows how to bring ghosts out of you, how to drive devils out of you. That kind of man, in Raipur, is called an ojha, one who drives devils, ghosts, from people's mind.

In those days I used to walk at least eight miles every day, so I walked to almost every nook and corner of the city of Raipur, and everywhere there were boards on the wall, advertisements. There must be people who are suffering from ghosts and devils, otherwise how are so many people doing this business - and doing well? They seem to be the most established people.

Just in front of my house there was one astrologer who was very famous. People from faraway places used to come to him for everything, not only marriage. In India, if you are starting a business you go to the astrologer: "On what day, at what time, are the stars favorable to me?" That is the time for the opening ceremony of your shop. If you are going traveling, first you will go to the astrologer:

"What time? I am going south; is it favorable with the stars that I go to the south on such a day? Or should I wait?" And the astrologer will give you the date and the time.

I saw that man doing it the whole day. Sometimes the train would leave in the middle of the night, but you had to leave at the time the astrologer has said, so you left your house in the middle of the day because that was the time when the stars were favorable. You left the house at that time and then you stayed at the station for twelve hours and waited for the train; but you should leave the house at the right moment, when all the stars are favorable.

One of my friends... he was also a professor, but he was a professor of Sanskrit. He was a great believer in all kinds of nonsense. Whenever he went to visit his family, he would ask this astrologer.

And sometimes it was very difficult, because the astrologer would say, "This month you cannot go out. This month is not favorable for you at all."

He would come to me and say, "This is very difficult; this is the month I have got leave granted. Now this astrologer is saying I cannot leave this month."

I said, "You wait. Let me see the astrologer. I know him perfectly well; he lives just in front of my house. And there are ways.... You just give a one rupee note to the astrologer, and then he asks you, 'What date, what time?' So I will give him one rupee and tell him, 'This poor fellow will come; you please give him this date and this time' - so you can catch the train directly, and go home."

I arranged many marriages; I just had to give one rupee to him. One day he said, "But you are a strange fellow. You go on giving rupees for others, their travel, their business, their marriage."

I said, "I enjoy the game, I see their foolishness and I see your cunningness. Just one rupee to see this whole game - it is not costly. And it is not only you, this is what all your forefathers have been doing. You decide about people's marriages, and every day your wife is nagging you, beating you.

What happened to your astrology? At least for yourself you could have chosen the right woman.

And these fools go on coming to you, knowing perfectly well that it is very difficult to find a more henpecked husband than you. But still they go on asking: 'I am going to be married; will this marriage prove to be successful, peaceful?' They are asking, and while they are sitting there, your wife comes in and starts shouting at you and screaming at you - and those fools can't even see it?

And what do you know about stars?

But the trick is, the astrology book of Hindus is the same. So if you inquire of one astrologer, he will give an answer. If you go to Benares and you inquire of another astrologer, he will give you the same answer, because they both depend on the same astrology book. If you go to Calcutta you will get the same answer. That makes you convinced that these astrologers must know, because three people in three cities cannot conspire against you. They don't know each other, and they don't have any idea that you are going to consult other people. You can consult all over India and you will find the same answer, because it is the same book. They consult the same book; nobody bothers about the stars, nobody knows about the stars, but only what the book says.

Man's greatest need, I said to you, is to be needed; otherwise he feels shaken. The trees, the clouds, the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains... nobody seems to be concerned with you.

The whole existence seems to be indifferent; whether you are or not, nobody cares. This condition makes the mind very shaky. Then the religion comes in, the so-called religion....

The real religion will try in every way to help you drop this need, so that you see there is no need for anybody to need you; that asking for it, you are asking for a fiction.

But the so-called religion, which exists in so many forms on the earth - Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, Jainism, and so many other "isms".... There are three hundred religions on the earth, but they are doing exactly the same thing. They all do the same work; they give you the same fulfillment. They say there is a God who cares about you, who looks after you, who is concerned about your wellbeing - so much so that he sends a holy book to guide your life, he sends his only begotten son to help you to be on the right path. He sends messiahs and prophets so that you don't go astray - because then they exploit your second weakness: fear of the devil, who is trying in every possible way to take you on the wrong path.

Hinduism has a story. Gautam Buddha became very influential while he was alive. He was a man of tremendous charisma, and he was very logical, rational, against all superstitions. The brahmins became very afraid that this man would destroy their whole profession. Brahmins have lived only on your psychological exploitation for thousands of years. Their whole function is to exploit your psychological needs. The pope, the bishop, the priest, they are all doing the same thing. You have a certain psychological need, and they know that this need can be exploited.

You also have a certain fear in you, which is bound to be there. It started from the moment you came out of your mother's womb - that separation. Before that separation there was no fear in you, because you were not lonely. The mother's womb is the most comfortable situation... you were just floating in your mother's womb. All your needs were fulfilled, without any work on your part.

There was no anxiety, no problem, no starvation, no unemployment, no war, no death. You were completely isolated, protected, and all your needs were fulfilled.

The child in the mother's womb has no fear, there is no reason for it. But once he comes out of the mother's womb, a great fear runs through his whole being. He is being taken... as if you take a tree out of the earth, uproot it. The whole tree is shaking and trembling; you are taking out its roots, you are destroying its very base. It knows no other nourishment, it knows no other way to exist. The earth has taken care of it, and you are uprooting it.

I am not talking poetry. Now there are scientific instruments which can detect whether a tree is feeling fear or not, just like a cardiogram. They immediately show.... You fix your instrument to the tree, which is rooted in the ground, flowering, playing in the wind, dancing in the sun. On the cardiogram, the graph is very harmonious, the same, there is no change... there is tremendous stillness inside the tree's being. Then you uproot it - and suddenly the graph trembles. Lines start going up and down. The harmony is lost. And as you pull the tree out more, there is chaos on the graph. The tree is going through tremendous anguish. And you will be surprised to know that when you are doing this to one tree, other trees which are around - their graphs start showing fear too. If it is happening to one tree, it can happen to them. It is not far away: "If this man is doing this thing to this tree, he can do it to me." All the trees around - all their graphs start showing they are afraid; anxiety is entering.

When the child comes out of the womb, it is the greatest shock of his life. Even death will not be this big a shock, because death will come without warning. Death will come most probably when he is unconscious. But while he is coming out of the mother's womb, he is conscious. In fact, for the first time he is becoming conscious. His nine months' long sleep, peaceful sleep, is disturbed - and then you cut the thread which joins him with the mother. The moment you cut that thread that joins him with the mother, you have created a fearful individual.

This is not the right way; but this is how it has been done up to now. Unknowingly, this has helped the priest and the so-called religions to exploit man. The child should be taken away from the mother more slowly, more gradually. There should not be that shock - and it can be arranged. A scientific arrangement is possible.

There should not be glaring lights in the room, because the child has lived for nine months in absolute darkness, and he has very fragile eyes which have never seen light. In all your hospitals there are glaring lights, tube lights, and the child suddenly faces the light. Most people are suffering from weak eyes because of this; later on they have to use glasses. No animal needs them. Have you seen animals with glasses reading the newspaper? Their eyes are perfectly healthy their whole life, to the point of death. It is only man.... And the beginning is at the very beginning. No, the child should be given birth to in darkness, or in a very soft light, candles perhaps. Darkness would be the best, but if a little light is needed, then candles will do.

And what have the doctors been doing up to now? They don't even give a little time for the child to be acquainted with the new reality. The way they welcome the child is so ugly. They hang the child upside down with his feet in their hands and they slap his bottom. The idea behind this stupid ritual is that this will help the child to breathe. In the mother's womb he was not breathing on his own; the mother was breathing for him, eating for him, doing everything for him. But to be welcomed into the world hanging upside down, with a slap on your bottom, is not a very good beginning.

But the doctor is in a hurry. Otherwise the child would start breathing on his own; he has to be left on the mother's belly, on top of the mother's belly. Before the joining thread is cut, he should be left on the mother's belly. He was inside the belly, underneath; now he is outside. That is not a great change. The mother is there, he can touch her, he can feel her. He knows the vibe. He is perfectly aware that this is his home. He has come out, but this is his home. Let him be with the mother a little longer, so he becomes acquainted with the mother from the outside. From the inside he knows her....

And don't cut the thread that joins him till he starts breathing on his own. Right now, what is done?

We cut the thread and slap the child so he has to breathe. But this is forcing him, this is violent, and absolutely unscientific and unnatural. Let him first breathe on his own. It will take a few minutes.

Don't be in such a hurry. It is a question of a man's whole life. You can smoke your cigarette two or three minutes later; you can whisper sweet nothings to your girlfriend a few minutes later. It is not going to harm anybody. What is the rush? You can't give him three minutes? A child needs no more than that. Just left on his own, within three minutes he starts breathing. When he starts breathing, he becomes confident that he can live on his own. Then you can cut the thread - it is useless now - and it will not give a shock to the child.

Then the most significant thing is, don't put him in blankets and in a bed. No, for nine months he was without blankets, naked, without pillows, without bed sheets, without a bed - don't make such a change so quickly. He needs a small tub with the same solution of water that was in his mother's womb - it is exactly ocean water: the same amount of salt, the same amount of chemicals, exactly the same.

That is again a proof that life must have happened first in the ocean. It still happens in ocean water.

That's why when a woman is pregnant she starts eating salty things, because the womb goes on absorbing the salt - the child needs exactly the same salty water that exists in the ocean. So just make up the same water in a small tub, and let the child lie down in the tub, and he will feel perfectly welcomed. This is the situation he is acquainted with.

In Japan, one Zen monk has tried a tremendous experiment to demonstrate that a three month old child can swim. Slowly he has been coming down: first he tried with nine month old children, then with six month old children, now with three month old children. And I say to him that you are still far away. Even the child just born is capable of swimming, because he has been swimming in his mother's womb.

So give the child a chance, similar to the mother's womb. He will be more confident; and no priest can exploit him so easily, telling him about hellfire and all that nonsense. But ordinarily, as humanity exists now, on the one hand it needs a God, protector, guide, help; and on the other hand a hell, so that he remains afraid of all the ways that the priest thinks are wrong. And what is wrong and what is right? In every society it differs. So right and wrong are determined by a particular society; they don't have any existential value.

Yes, there is a state of awareness when you go beyond mind and you can see things directly without any prejudice, without any ideology covering your eyes. When you can see directly you immediately know what is right and what is wrong. Nobody needs to be told. No commandments need to be given.

And each society goes on propounding: this is right and that is wrong. But how to prevent you from doing what they call wrong? The trouble is, whatever they call wrong is mostly natural - it attracts you. It is wrong, but it is natural, so the deep attraction for the natural is there. They have to create so much fear that it becomes more powerful than the natural attraction. Hence hell has to be invented.

There are religions that are not satisfied with one hell. And I can understand why they are not satisfied with one hell. Christianity is satisfied with one hell for the simple reason that the Christian hell is eternal, lengthwise. But Hindus, Jainas, Buddhists don't have an eternal hell, so they have to go vertically - seven hells! And each hell goes on becoming more and more torturous, more and more inhuman.

And I wonder: these people were called saints, who have described hell in its all gory detail.... These people, if they had any chance, would have become Adolf Hitlers, Joseph Stalins, Mao Zedongs, very easily. They had all the ideas; all that they were missing was power. But in a subtle way they had power too, but not for right now. Their power was in their being the head priest, the pope, the shankaracharya, but that power helped them to throw you into hell sometime in the future, after death.

Death itself is such a fear. But that was not enough for them, because the natural instincts are really very powerful. And why were they against the natural instincts? - because those natural instincts go against the vested interests.

Let me explain it to you. In India, Krishna had sixteen thousand wives. Now, what about the fifteen thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine men who have lost their wives? Those wives were stolen, forcibly taken away. They were mothers, they were wives. Some were unmarried, most of them were married. If any woman was beautiful, that was enough for Krishna to take her into the concentration camp of his wives. It must have been almost a city - sixteen thousand wives! Now, how to prevent those fifteen thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine men.... If they all joined together, they could kill this man, they could take back their wives. They had to be prevented.

The priest had to invent ways, because the priest was protected by Krishna. Krishna had the power, temporal power, in his hands - the army, the court, the law - he protected the priest. Hindu law says that if you kill a sudra, an untouchable, then ten years in jail is enough punishment; but if you kill a brahmin, then it is the death penalty. Not only in one life but in the coming seven lives, again and again you will be murdered, killed; only then will the punishment be over.

The temporal power protects the priest, the priest protects the temporal power. The priest says, "Krishna is no ordinary man, he is God's perfect incarnation and you should be happy that he has chosen your wife to be his consort. You should rejoice; you are fortunate and blessed. You will have great joys coming to you in paradise. So don't be resentful, don't be angry, don't think in terms of revolt. Rather, take it easily, happily, joyously - in fact gratefully - that he has chosen your wife, not somebody else's."

Now, the natural instinct of the man would have been to fight with this man. He has taken the mother of his children, he has taken his wife - and against her will. And what kind of society is this? But no, his natural instinct is destroyed in two ways, double ways. One: if you accept it willingly, you will benefit - immense pleasures, many beautiful women, a thousandfold joys - in heaven. Two: if you are resentful, angry, become violent or do something against Krishna, who is God's incarnation, you will suffer in the seventh hell. So you can choose....

Anything that was against the vested interest... for example, poverty: all the religions teach, "Blessed are the poor." It is not only Jesus. Jesus says it very accurately, fully, in one sentence, in one maxim:

"Blessed are the poor for they shall inherit the kingdom of God." But this is the teaching of all the religions: you should accept your poverty as a blessing, as a God-given gift. This is just a test of your faith. If you can pass through this fire test of poverty without grumbling, without in any way thinking that this is unjust, if you can go through it as a God-given gift, then the kingdom of God is yours.

It is a great consolation to Lazarus when Jesus says to him.... It happened: Lazarus was very poor; and the richest man in the village was giving a feast on his birthday. Lazarus was hungry, thirsty, and passing through that village he asked for some water. The servants threw him out. They said, "Don't you see that our master is giving a feast and great guests have gathered? You are just a beggar! - you have some nerve to enter the house and ask for water. Go to hell! Go away from here as quickly as possible." Jesus says to Lazarus, "Don't be worried. You will see: in paradise, you will be enjoying all the pleasures and this man will be suffering in hell-fire, thirsty, and will ask, 'Lazarus, give me some water.'"

Great consolation! - but a great strategy to protect the rich against the poor. The rich are few, the poor are many. Once they get the idea that it is not a blessing but a curse, they will kill all these rich people. It is good both ways: a consolation for the poor, so that poverty is a blessing; and a protection for the rich, so that the poor cannot revolt.

Religions have been the reason poverty goes on existing in the world; otherwise there is no reason at all for it, particularly now, when science and technology can transform this whole earth into paradise.

The religious people would not like this earth to be turned into paradise, because then what would happen to their paradise? They would love the earth to remain as poor, as starved, as hungry and as sick as it is, because upon this their whole business depends. The rich donate to the churches because the church protects them. The poor donate, who have not even enough to eat. They donate to the churches because it is the church who gives them guidance. And this life is small, this life is not much; much of it has passed, a little is left - that too will pass. Then there is eternal life, of eternal joys. The church shows the way, Jesus shows the way.

Natural instincts like sex, hunger.... These religious people have been teaching you fasting. Now, that is against nature. Fasting is as bad as too much eating. If you go on stuffing, overloading yourself, it is unnatural. There is something wrong psychologically with you. Perhaps you are feeling so empty that you go on stuffing yourself with anything that comes into your hands, just to fill your psychological emptiness.

Then there is the person who is fasting. Fasting is a slow suicide; he is eating himself. It's very strange: Jainas in India are against meat eating, against any nonvegetarian food. I was attending one of their conferences, an all-India Jaina conference, so all their sects and all their great acharyas, their great masters, were present. I asked a simple thing. I asked them, "You continue to preach fasting" - Jainas fast the most in the whole world - "but have you considered a simple fact?, that when you are fasting, you are eating your own meat."

Every day, in the beginning, two pounds disappear from your weight. Where do they go? Later on one pound will disappear because you can't afford two pounds - your stock is becoming less and less. A very healthy person can live for three months without eating; that much food is stocked within his body. But nobody is that healthy. To be that healthy you have to be again a hunter in the forest; there is no other way. And those hunters had to fast sometimes for many days, because hunting is not something like a fridge, where you go and you open it and everything is available. You may find something today, you may not find any food for a week, two weeks. The hunter needs some reserve food for those days when he cannot get any food. When he gets the food he eats too much. When he does not get food he fasts.

But Jainas are not hunters, they are not even cultivators. They are simply businessmen. To teach fasting to these people.... Every year for ten days they have their holy days, when many people fast for ten days continuously. I know many of my friends in those ten days think only of food and nothing else. They cannot think of anything else. You talk about a beautiful movie; they will say, "Not now...."

You put a Playboy magazine in front of them; they are not interested. Do you think a man who has been fasting for seven days will be interested in a Playboy magazine? He will not even pick it up. But I have taken them in my car, just to see what happens to them. In India, in many cities, the situation is that all the sweet shops and restaurants are in one street, so I would take them to that street, and just watch their reactions.

Psychologists have become aware of the fact that if they give you ten nude pictures just to look at...

and you may not be aware what the psychologist is doing: he will be watching your eyes. The girl that you like... immediately your eyes will become big, the pupil will become big. The pupil of the eye will open more, immediately. He can tell which girl you like, out of the ten pictures, without asking you. And you will be surprised: "Is he is doing some magic or what...? How did he come to read my mind?" There is no need to read your mind, just to watch your eyes. If your pupil becomes suddenly bigger, that means it wants to eat the girl, just to absorb her.

I have seen the same thing happen to these Jaina people. When they saw the sweets, I would slow down the car and I would watch their eyes. Their pupils were so big! A naked woman would not make any difference to their eyes. They had been eight days, nine days, or it was the tenth day, and they had not eaten anything - who would bother to eat a girl? Who would have the energy to bother? But looking at a sweet shop... and you could see, suddenly their face would become alive, their pupils become big. They were continuously thinking... even in the night, they were dreaming of food. For ten days they did nothing except fantasize about food.

Now, this is against their religion. Their priests say to them, "When you are fasting, you should not think of food." Firstly, fasting is unnatural; secondly, when you are fasting it is natural to think of food. Now, that too is prohibited: you cannot think of food. So what the Jainas do when they fast is, they go to the temple. They listen the whole day: many monks go on giving a sermon; they go on listening to their sermons. Scriptures are read, and they go on listening to the scriptures.

I have been into these places. Once, seeing somebody I knew, I went up to him and shook him and said, "Are you really listening to that man or are you thinking about some food?"

He said, "How did you come to know? In fact, that man reminded me of my cook. And I was feeling very bad, it is bad to think of a great sage as your cook. It is... but how did you come to know, that you have come to ask me?"

I said, "I was just passing by. I go on searching for things. So what are you doing in this temple?

For what?" The only purpose was that in the temple they would forget about food. But how can the temple make anybody forget about food when the body is hungry and each cell of the body is asking for food?

Why have religions put you against your natural instincts? For the simple reason, to make you feel guilty. Let me repeat this word guilt. This is their focus of destroying you, exploiting you, molding you, humiliating you, creating disrespect about yourself. Once guilt is created, once you start feeling, "I am a guilty person, a sinner," their work is done. Then who can save you? Then the savior is needed.

But first create the disease.

I have heard about two young men. Their business was: one young man would enter a town at night and throw coal tar on people's doors, windows, and then leave the town. In the morning everybody was puzzled: their doors and their windows were destroyed. Now, how to clean it up?

And then suddenly the second man would appear-they were partners in the business - and he would announce, "I clean coal tar off things."

So everybody was rushing to him: "Please come to my house and clean my windows." The other man was doing the work on the next town. By the time this one had finished cleaning this town, the other man had prepared the next town for him to clean. One went on making people's houses dirty, the other went on cleaning them. They were partners - fifty-fifty was the game.

The priest first creates guilt - that is throwing coal tar on your face. Now somebody is needed to clean it off. And it is not the visible face; it is your invisible reality that he goes on throwing coal tar on. You cannot find any way to clean it on your own because you don't know what this reality is. All that you know is, the priest has convinced you that you are guilty. And he has absolute explanations for it: that you think about sex, that you think about food when you are fasting, that in the night you should not drink water - nothing should go in your mouth in the night. But in summer, in India, it is so difficult not to drink water. Even small children are not allowed to by their parents. Even small children will steal water in the night. From the very beginning you are making them thieves, and making them feel guilty because they know they have done something wrong.

In my house, while my grandmother was alive, tomatoes were not allowed, because according to her the redness of the tomato looked like meat. I asked her many times, "Have you ever seen meat?"

She had never seen meat, but she said, "I know meat looks like tomatoes. Don't bring tomatoes in the house." I had not eaten a tomato up to the age of seventeen. I had not eaten onions up to the age of twenty-one, because they were not allowed in the house. It was a great sin to eat onions, potatoes.... Now, have you seen more innocent people than potatoes?

But Jainism is against anything that grows under the ground. Anything growing under the ground, Jainas don't allow. Because the sunrays don't reach it, it is heavy. Its heaviness they turn into something spiritual: by eating it you will be going down, it will make you heavy, and you need to be light. To have wings you need to be light, so nothing that grows under the earth should be eaten.

A strange argument, but if for thousands of years it has been repeated, people believe it. They still believe it. And once you eat such food, then you feel guilty, because it is against your conscience.

Conscience is created by the society.

You ask me, "If there is no God, no devil, what is the need of religions?" Then only is there the need of religion. When God is there and the devil is there, there is no space for religion. Those two are enough to occupy the whole space. Those two are such big fictions that there is no space left for religion.

First, you have to kill God and the devil, both, completely, to make space for religion. Then religion will not come to exploit your psychological needs, it will come to transform your being so that you can go above your psychological needs and you can see that those needs are not true.

For example, if you are in your psychological needs, then you are lonely. If you are beyond your psychological needs, you know you are alone. And aloneness has a strength; loneliness is weakness. Loneliness is asking always for the other, it is dependent on the other. Hence the other has power over you, you have power over the other. What power has a husband over the wife? What power has the wife over the husband? Simply this: without the other you feel lonely, and when you feel lonely, fear arises. Strange, two cowards, two persons full of fear, together start feeling great.

Their loneliness is doubled. They should feel more lonely now, and in fact that happens sooner or later - after the honeymoon. You cannot find a wife and a husband... they may be sitting together, but they are not together - they are both lonely. And then they are angry because the other is not fulfilling their need. So any excuse is enough to fight. At least fighting they forget their loneliness; fighting also fulfills a purpose. But when you go above your psychology....

Just the other day I was telling you how you can go above your psychology, your mind, those three divisions - how you can reach to the fourth, the turiya. And when you reach to the fourth, suddenly you see a transfiguration. It is not loneliness, it is simply aloneness, and it is a truth. And it is so beautiful to be alone, nobody taking any space, covering any space in you. No need to be needed by anybody, no need to need anybody - such a great strength that for the first time you feel you are born.

Religion is the way to get out of the mind, because mind is fragmentary, divided, a crowd, many; and when you go above it, consciousness is one, undivided, indivisible, individual. And to know that indivisible consciousness is to know all. Nothing more is needed.

You ask me, "Do your sannyasins need religion?"

Not the religion that you know about, but the religiousness that I am talking about. And in fact I cannot say that the sannyasins need religiousness. To be a sannyasin is to be religious. Unless you are religious, how can you be a sannyasin? But religion, remember again, in my sense of the word....

The sannyasin knows he is alone, knows that there is no God, no devil, no hell, no heaven. He knows what is harmonious for him, so he does it; and what is disharmonious for him, so he does not do it. He knows what brings blessings to him - he does it. And he knows what creates unnecessary suffering - he drops doing it. It is not a question of stopping, not doing it; he simply drops it. The moment you see that you are carrying a scorpion in your hand, is there any need to tell you, "Please drop it"? Before anybody says, "Drop it!" you will have dropped it. All that is needed is to know that you are carrying a scorpion in your hand.

Consciousness makes you aware, simply aware of what is right, of what is wrong. And the right starts happening, and the wrong starts disappearing.

Okay Sheela?