Of the priests

AN ANCIENT STORY: A young devil comes running to his boss. He is trembling, and he says to the old devil, "Something has to be done immediately, because on the earth one man has found the truth! And once people know the truth, what will happen to our profession?"

The old man laughed, and he said, "Sit down and rest and don't be worried. Everything is taken care of. Our people have reached there."

"But," he said, "I am coming from there. I have not seen a single devil there."

The old man said, "The priests are my people. They have already surrounded the man who has found the truth. Now they will become the mediators between the man of truth and the masses.

They will raise temples, they will write scriptures, they will interpret and distort everything. They will ask people to worship, to pray. And in all this hubbub, the truth will be lost. This is my old method, which has always succeeded."

The priests who represent religion are not its friends. They are the greatest enemies of it, because religion needs no mediators: between you and existence there is an immediate relatedness. All that you have to learn is how to understand the language of existence. You know the languages of man, but they are not the languages of existence.

Existence knows only one language:

And that is of silence.

If you can also be silent you will be able to understand the truth, the meaning of life, the significance of all that exists. And there is no one who can interpret it for you. Everyone has to find it for himself.

Nobody can do the job on your behalf - but that's what the priests have been doing for centuries.

They are standing like a China Wall between you and existence.

Just a few days ago, the Vatican pope informed all the Catholics, "It is being told again and again to me that many Catholics are confessing to God directly. They are not going to the confession booth, to the priest. I declare it a sin to confess directly to God. You have to confess to the priest; you cannot relate to God directly."

He has not given any reason, because there is no reason at all, except that the priest has to be kept in his profession - and he himself is a high priest.

If people start approaching reality without anybody leading them, without anybody telling them what is good and what is evil, without anybody giving them a map that they have to follow, millions of people will be able to understand existence - because our heartbeat is also the heartbeat of the universe, our life is part of the life of the total.

We are not strangers, we are not coming from somewhere else; we are growing within existence.

We are part of it, an essential part of it. We just have to be silent enough, so that we can hear that which cannot be said in words: the music of existence, the immense joy of existence, the constant celebration of existence. Once it starts penetrating our heart, transformation comes.

That is the only way somebody becomes religious - not by going to the churches which are made by man, not by reading the scriptures which are made by man. But the priests have been pretending that their holy scriptures are written by God. The very idea is simply idiotic. Just look into those scriptures: You will not find any signature of God in them. You will find things which there is no reason for God to write.

Hindus believe in the VEDAS and believe that they are written by God himself, and they are the most ancient books in existence; but no Hindu bothers to look into them. If God wrote them, there is going to be something immensely valuable... but ninety-eight percent of the VEDAS are just rubbish - such rubbish that it proves that they are not written by God.

For example a prayer by a priest... why should God write it? And the prayer is that his cows are not giving enough milk, "Have mercy on me, increase the milk of my cows." Not only that, "Decrease the milk of everybody else's!" - God is going to write this? "Kill my enemies and help my friends" and even such stupid things as "Rains are coming; take care that all the water reaches my fields and avoids the neighboring field, because it belongs to my enemy. Just shower your water on my field."

Why should God write these things? Every scripture gives intrinsic evidence that they are written by men, and very stupid men, primitive men. The so-called holy scriptures are not even to be counted as good literature - they are childish, crude, ugly. But because they are written in languages which are dead... and some are in languages which have never been in use by common people, for example, the VEDAS. That language has never been used by the common people. It was the language of the learned brahmins, the language of the priests.

And they were very reluctant that it should be translated, because they knew: once it is translated, it will lose all sanctity. People will see that this nonsense is not even unholy - what to say about its being holy!

So much obscenity, so much pornography is in the holy scriptures of all your religions. But they are written in Sanskrit, which is not used by common people; in Arabic, which is not used by common people; in Hebrew, which is not used by common people; in Pali, in Prakrit. Those languages are dead. And all the religions are reluctant that their holy scriptures should be brought in to the modern languages which people understand - although, in spite of their reluctance, their holy scriptures have been translated.

First they were against their being printed; second they were against their being translated. The only reason was, they knew that once they were printed they would be sold all over the world, anybody could purchase them. And if they are translated into living languages, then how long can you hide the truth?, and how are you going to prove that they are written by God?

The scriptures are man-made, the statues of God are man-made, the temples and churches are man-made, but thousands of years of conditioning has given them a certain sacredness, holiness.

And there is nothing sacred in them, nothing holy in them.

The priests have been deceiving man more than anybody else. This is the worst profession in the world, even worse than the profession of the prostitutes. At least the prostitute gives you something in return; the priest gives you simply hot air - he has nothing to give to you.

And this is not all: Whenever somebody has realized the truth, these priests are against him.

Obviously they have to be, because if his truth is recognized by people, millions of priests in the world will be out of employment. And their employment is absolutely unproductive. They are parasites, they go on sucking the blood of man. From the moment the child is born, until he enters his grave, the priest goes on finding ways to exploit him.

Unless religion is freed from the hands of the priests, the world will remain only with pseudo-religion; it will never become religious. And a religious world can not be so miserable: the religious world should be a constant celebration.

A religious man is nothing but pure ecstasy. His heart is full of songs.

His whole being is ready to dance any moment.

But the priest has taken away the search for truth: He says there is no need for searching, it has already been found, you just have to have faith.

The priest has made people miserable, because he condemns all the pleasures of the world. He condemns the pleasures of the world so that he can praise the pleasures of the other world.

The other world is his fiction. And he wants humanity to sacrifice its reality for a fictitious idea - and people have sacrificed.

Zarathustra is not alone in condemning the priests. Gautam Buddha is with him, Mahavira is with him, Lao Tzu is with him. Gautam Buddha, Mahavira, and Lao Tzu condemn the priests, but very mildly. Zarathustra calls a spade a spade. He is absolutely realistic. He does not care about etiquette, manners, culture. He says whatsoever he experiences as the truth.

AND ONE DAY ZARATHUSTRA MADE A SIGN TO HIS DISCIPLES AND SPOKE THESE WORDS TO THEM:

HERE ARE PRIESTS: AND ALTHOUGH THEY ARE MY ENEMIES, PASS THEM BY QUIETLY AND WITH SLEEPING SWORDS! Zarathustra is very simple, innocent; speaks like a child. Gautam Buddha will not call them "my enemies," he will go round about.

Zarathustra hates directly.

The priests are not only enemies of Zarathustra, they are enemies of everyone who loves truth, who is in search of truth or who has found the truth. The closer you are to the truth, the more the priest is your enemy. You are disturbing his customers, you are disturbing his business. Religion to him is business.

The Christian churches in America were against me for the simple reason that so many young men and women have come out of their fold. My people don't belong to any religion. They are religious, and for being religious you don't have to belong to any religion.

Religiousness is a quality, a fragrance of your consciousness. It has nothing to do with belonging to an organization, following fixed and dead principles, decided by people who have been long, long dead. To look at it differently, in the name of religion the dead are dominating the living: they are dictating to you how you should live. They don't know anything about the vast changes that have happened since they died.

We are living in a totally different world, in a totally different time and we need every day a spontaneous awareness to respond to reality. And we go on failing because our response is not spontaneous: the reality is new and our response is thousands of years old. Our failure is absolutely certain and that constant failure brings misery in life.

HERE ARE PRIESTS, says Zarathustra to his disciples, AND ALTHOUGH THEY ARE MY ENEMIES, PASS THEM BY QUIETLY, don't quarrel with them. They are very efficient in quarreling.

They have refined their arguments. They don't have anything else to do, they only argue. It is better, to PASS THEM BY QUIETLY AND WITH SLEEPING SWORDS.

Don't fight with them. Because you are new, you have not yet experienced the truth - that is the problem. They can disturb you, they can lead you astray. You don't know the truth, nor do they know the truth, but they know the arguments, sophistry. They can convince your minds for anything they want. All priests belong to the category of the sophists.

One of my vice-chancellors was a world-renowned law-expert. He had three offices: one in London, one in New Delhi, one in Peking, and he was running continually from Peking to Delhi, from Delhi to London. He had the biggest cases on his hands - of maharajas, kings, queens - but he was a drunkard. He earned enough money; and when he retired, he donated the whole of the money so that a university could be founded. So he was the founder vice-chancellor of the university that he created.

I used to go for a morning walk, and he was the only one whom I used to meet on my morning walks.

By and by we became very friendly and very close. One day I was talking about sophistry, and he remembered one of his cases that he had fought in the Privy Council, in London. The case was between the Maharaja of Jaipur and the Maharaja of Udaipur. It was a big case but the night before he drank too much, and in the morning there was still the hang-over.

He went to the court. In his drunkenness he forgot completely that he was fighting for the Maharaja of Jaipur. Everybody was astonished because e started criticizing the Maharaja of Jaipur. He gave great arguments, brought all the precedents, all the legal support. Even the judges were looking at each other: What had happened to this man? - he was supposed to fight for the Maharaja of Jaipur.

The man who was going to fight for the Maharaja of Udaipur could not believe what is happening:

Now what is he going to do?

He was so convincing, that at lunch-time, when the court dissolved, his secretary said, "What are you doing? Are you fighting for the Maharaja of Jaipur or for the Maharaja of Udaipur?"

He said, "I drank too much last night. I do not know for whom I am fighting, for what I am fighting, but I had to say something. Do you think I was on the wrong side?"

The secretary said, "Absolutely wrong - and you have convinced the judges. Even the advocate who is going to argue against you, feels completely lost, because you have done his job already."

He said, "Do not be worried. So I am for the Maharaja of Jaipur. Just you remain standing by my side and go on pulling my coat, so I don't forget again. I am still not absolutely out of the influence of the alcohol: I look at the judge and I see two judges and I know - that is my criterion."

In the second half, after lunch, he said to the judge, "Before lunch I spoke in favour of the Maharaja of Udaipur and against the Maharaja of Jaipur. That was only half my argument. I was preparing the ground. These are the arguments that can be given by the opposing advocate. Now I will begin to destroy all those arguments, because I am here to protect the Maharaja of Jaipur and his interests."

This was a new revelation to everybody and even the judge could not believe that he would be able to contradict what he had established so clearly. But he contradicted it. Now he argued against himself and he won the case.

So he was telling me that sophistry is a prostitute. Arguments don't prove anything: A little better argumentation and they can be demolished. If you don't have the experience, it is dangerous to get into a quarrel, into argumentation, into sophistry, because your mind, having no experience, can be convinced by arguments for something which is not true.

The advice of Zarathustra is: first have the experience - then there is no need to be afraid of any argument, because no argument can destroy your experience. Your experience has a quality of being self evident.

THEY ARE BAD ENEMIES: NOTHING IS MORE REVENGEFUL THAN THEIR HUMILITY. They pretend to be very humble, but they are very revengeful. You can see around the world that the priests have done only one thing: they have created wars, religious wars they call crusades. They have killed many more people than anybody else, in the name of religion, in the name of love, in the name of truth. Their humbleness is hypocrisy. Their revengefulness is well known.

For thousands of years they have been destroying the unity of human beings. The whole humanity is one, but the priests will not allow it to happen; because if the whole humanity becomes one, drops these adjectives of being a Christian, or a Jew, or a Hindu or a Mohammedan, the priests will be at a loss. They have a very well paid profession and they are doing nothing, except creating trouble, riots amongst different religions.

THEY ARE BAD ENEMIES: NOTHING IS MORE REVENGEFUL THAN THEIR HUMILITY. AND HE WHO TOUCHES THEM IS EASILY DEFILED. Do not even touch them! Even coming in contact with them you will be defiled. They are the most ugly and disgusting profession on the earth.

Obviously, the people who sell God in the marketplace.... One day I was passing by the side of a church; a beautiful young woman waved to stop me, so I stopped the car. She handed over to me a few pamphlets. The first pamphlet on top had a beautiful house by the side of a mountain river with a waterfall, with huge trees and it said: "Do you want this house?"

I could not believe that this house was available in that city. There were no mountains, there were no waterfalls, but perhaps I didn't know. So I looked inside: it was not on the earth, it was in heaven.

"Believe in Jesus Christ and you will have such beautiful houses, just by the side of God...." These people are even selling properties in paradise, and so cheap - just believe in God, just believe in Jesus Christ, that's enough.

HE WHOM THEY CALL REDEEMER HAS CAST THEM INTO BONDAGE. All the redeemers have created different kinds of bondages. In fact nobody can redeem anybody else. One can redeem oneself, but to pretend that "I am the redeemer: just believe in me and I will save you; I am the savior, the only true savior," has created imprisonments.

These imprisonments are spiritual and psychological, that's why you don't see them. Otherwise what do you mean, when you say, "I am a Christian," or "I am a Hindu," or "I am a Buddhist?" It means, that "I believe Gautam Buddha is going to be my redeemer"; that "I am waiting simply for Jesus Christ to come and redeem me.

"You have dropped every effort to transform yourself - and that is the only way there is for any kind of transformation. All these redeemers have created only prisons for people. And the priests go on representing those dead redeemers.

Zarathustra is saying, HE WHOM THEY CALL REDEEMER HAS CAST THEM INTO BONDAGE.

These priests are also in bondage, but at least their bondage pays. The others who are in bondage are simply wasting their time in waiting. All waiting is waiting for Godot, who never comes.

Five thousand years ago Krishna had promised the Hindus, "Whenever there will be misery, whenever there will be pain, whenever there will be anguish, whenever people will become unvirtuous - I will come to redeem you."

Now what more does he want?... The prisons are full of criminals; and those who are not in the prisons - it does not mean that they are not criminals, it simply means they have not been caught.

People are living in utter misery, starvation, hunger, all kinds of sexual perversion.... For what is he waiting? He should come! He will not get a better chance to redeem people.

Jesus promised, "I will be coming." They all have promised. Their promises have become chains on your souls. Because of their promises you have not made any effort to change your own being, which is far easier than to wait.

INTO THE BONDAGE OF FALSE VALUES AND FALSE SCRIPTURES! I am really surprised, that almost the whole earth believes in different kinds of false scriptures. Their falsity is so clearly evident that it need not be proved.

For example, they all say, "God created the world", and of course there was no witness. On what grounds are they so certain that God created the world? God has not left any inscription anywhere "I created the world..." the day, the month, the year. There is not a single witness. They all go on preaching about God, but not a single person has seen him. They go on talking about heaven and hell - not only talking, they have maps of heaven and hell. And they don't have maps of the earth on which they live.

I was visiting Agra. Agra has the most beautiful piece of architecture, the Taj Mahal. In Agra and the surrounding area there is a Hindu sect, Radhaswami. When their founder died, they decided to make something better than the Taj Mahal, because it was going to be in the same city, Agra. They have poured in enough money and for almost a hundred years thousands of stone-cutters have been working on it, and only the ground floor is ready. It does not seem that they will be able to make their whole dream come true, but even the ground floor shows that if they succeed, they will make the Taj Mahal number two. Their place will be number one - such great art, such a tremendous work of carving in marble.

The high priest took me inside their temple, and he showed me a map. They believe that there are fifteen heavens and fifteen hells. It seems mathematical. Somebody is just stealing a small thing, steals a button from your coat, now to throw him in with Adolf Hitler does not seem to be right.

There must be some categorization. So it seems logical: fifteen hells for different kinds of sinners; the greatest sinners go to the fifteenth. The same is true about heavens. Somebody has done something good, he cannot be placed with Gautam Buddha or Jesus Christ, so according to their merit....

So I looked. Seeing my interest in their map the high priest asked me, "What do you think about it?"

I said, "It is perfectly right." Although it is absolutely ugly, ugly in the sense that Mohammed is somewhere in the fourth heaven, Moses in the fifth, Jesus in the sixth; Gautam Buddha, Mahavira in the seventh; Kabir, Nanak in the eighth.... That was the way they had divided it, with the names written, and their own guru, the founder of the Radhaswami sect, in the fifteenth. He was alone there. He had reached the highest consciousness. Gautam Buddha was still in the seventh, Jesus in the sixth.

He said, "What do you think about the categorization of these people?"

I said, "That's perfect; your guru is in the fifteenth."

He looked at me. He said, "How are you certain?"

I said, "I am certain, because I am in the sixteenth; and your guru is trying hard to enter into the sixteenth, but I won't let him. I go on throwing him back into the fifteenth." He said, "Sixteenth? But we have never heard about the sixteenth."

I said, "Your hearing or not hearing makes no difference."

He said, "But you are insulting our guru." I said, "I am not insulting him. Each according to his virtue; he reached only up to the fifteenth - and naturally I don't want anybody else to share the sixteenth apartment. And there is nothing else above, so I cannot go higher. This is the highest peak and your guru has to remain in the fifteenth."

He said, "I don't believe you; you must be joking."

I said, "You are not joking? - putting Gautam Buddha in the seventh and your guru, who is not even the dust of Gautam Buddha's feet, is in the fifteenth?"

He was very angry, but I said, "Anger will not help. All these falsities... you don't have any evidence for it. If you can produce any evidence, I will produce the evidence that I am in the sixteenth. Ask your guru, he knows me perfectly well."

But all religious scriptures, theologies, are so full of lies. They have to be full of lies, because truth is very simple. It does not need a scripture, it needs a meditative awareness, it needs a silence within you - that is the only temple, all other temples are false.

INTO THE BONDAGE OF FALSE VALUES AND FALSE SCRIPTURES! AH, THAT SOMEONE WOULD REDEEM THEM FROM THEIR REDEEMER! Zarathustra is saying, someone should redeem them from their redeemers. But say anything against any falsity and immediately you create enemies. I have not done any harm to anybody and I have created millions of enemies around the world - just because I pointed out the false statements in their scriptures, and they are not capable of defending them. Their failure to defend them becomes anger, rage, enmity.

OH, JUST LOOK AT THESE HUTS THAT THESE PRIESTS HAVE BUILT THEMSELVES.

CHURCHES THEY CALL THEIR SWEET-SMELLING CAVES!

OH THIS COUNTERFEIT LIGHT! OH THIS MUSTY AIR! HERE, WHERE THE SOUL MAY NOT FLY UP TO ITS HEIGHT!

ON THE CONTRARY, THEIR FAITH COMMANDS: 'UP THE STEPS ON YOUR KNEES, YOU SINNERS!'

Every religion destroys man's dignity; calls him a sinner. Rather than endowing man with dignity, making him more beautiful and more truthful, making him a god on the earth, they have turned the whole of humanity into a crowd of sinners. All that you have to do is: "UP THE STEPS ON YOUR KNEES, YOU SINNERS!"

This they call worship, this they call prayer.

This is nothing but suicide, this is destroying yourself, your esteem in your own eyes, your self- respect, your dignity.

You are the highest evolution in existence. Existence has hoped and dreamt for you to bring even higher stages of consciousness. Existence dreams within you to become superman - but these priests have created supersinners.

WHO CREATED SUCH CAVES AND PENITENTIAL STEPS? WAS IT NOT THOSE WHO WANTED TO HIDE THEMSELVES AND WERE ASHAMED BEFORE THE CLEAR SKY?

What is the need of all these churches, and temples, and synagogues?

Is not this whole world, the whole universe a beautiful temple? The sky full of stars in the night, the day full of the light of the sun, the birds singing, the flowers blossoming - what more beauty can you create? This spaciousness is your freedom. Being bound with false ideologies inside a church, you are nothing but a prisoner.

AND ONLY WHEN THE CLEAR SKY AGAIN LOOKS THROUGH BROKEN ROOFS AND DOWN UPON GRASS AND RED POPPIES ON BROKEN WALLS - ONLY THEN WILL I TURN MY HEART AGAIN TOWARDS THE PLACES OF THIS GOD.

Zarathustra says, this whole universe is the temple of God. All that is living is nothing but divine.

Everything is sacred, nothing is profane. The duality is created by the priests, and the duality between the profane and the sacred has created a duality within you - between the body and the soul. It has created a schizophrenic humanity - everybody is split.

Unless you become one, a deep harmony and accord, you will never hear the celestial music, which is the only proof that the world is not bad, that the world is alive: not only alive, but conscious; not only conscious, but constantly creative.

Christians say God created this world in six days; and the seventh day, on Sunday, he rested - and he is still resting, his Monday has not come yet. This world, this vast universe which has no limits is a continuous process of creativity; it is still being created. Who says the creation was complete in six days? And why should it be complete in six days? Nothing seems to be complete, everything is growing. Man's intelligence is growing, his consciousness is growing.

In those six days God did not create Zarathustra, God did not create Gautam Buddha, God did not create Jesus Christ. These are higher evolutionary steps. Zarathustra says you are only a bridge for the superman to arrive. You are not a being, but only a becoming. It seems to be so rational, so authentically true that man is a becoming. Anything that has become perfect becomes dead, because there is no possibility of any growth. It has exhausted itself; it has spent itself completely.

Life has to remain becoming, not being. It has to go on progressing, touching skies after skies, peaks beyond peaks.

THEY CALLED GOD THAT WHICH CONTRADICTED AND HARMED THEM: AND TRULY, THERE WAS MUCH THAT WAS HEROIC IN THEIR WORSHIP!

Zarathustra has a very subtle sense of humor, which to me is part of a really religious man. A really religious man is not serious, he is playful; and he has a tremendous quality of humor. He is saying, THEY CALLED GOD THAT WHICH CONTRADICTED AND HARMED THEM. If God was the creator of the world, then why is there so much misery? Then why are people dying of starvation? Has God forgotten about the universe He has created?

If God created the universe, then He is responsible for it; for all the sinners, for all the criminals, because He created the seeds of crime and the seeds of sin; otherwise, from where did they come?

- He is the only creator.

If a man murders somebody, who creates the desire for murder? If a man rapes somebody, who creates the desire for rape? If God is the only creator, then Zarathustra is right: THEY CALLED GOD THAT WHICH CONTRADICTED AND HARMED THEM.... and goes on contradicting and harming them. Then who is responsible for nuclear weapons? Who was responsible for Adolf Hitler and the second world war? Who was responsible for fifty million people's deaths in the second world war?

And who will be responsible if the Third World War happens and all life is destroyed on this beautiful planet?

God has to take the responsibility. If he is the creator, then he has to be the destroyer too, that implication is clear.

TRULY, THERE WAS MUCH THAT WAS HEROIC IN THEIR WORSHIP. And still the idiots are worshiping God - they are really heroic! THERE WAS MUCH THAT WAS HEROIC IN THEIR WORSHIP, to worship such a God who prevents his own creation, Adam and Eve, from becoming wise, from becoming eternally alive. Still the priests go on worshiping him and people go on blindly following the priest. He is simply laughing at their stupidity.

AND THEY KNEW NO OTHER WAY OF LOVING THEIR GOD THAN BY NAILING MEN TO THE CROSS! In the name of God more men have been killed than in any other name. Strange God, strange creator; strange are his representatives whose whole work is to kill man, to destroy man.

Strange are these so-called religious priests whose whole teaching is to renounce the world - and God created the world. Can't you see the contradiction? If God creates the world, then to renounce the world means renouncing God.

George Gurdjieff used to say that all religions are against God. He was also joking; he was saying they are against God because they all teach, "Renounce the world." Poor God has created the world in six days and got so tired that still his Monday has not come. He has not been seen around again.

Perhaps he spent himself totally and was finished; Sunday he went to sleep and never woke up again. And these people go on teaching "Renounce the world." Renouncing the world is renouncing God, because it is his creation.

THEY WOULD HAVE TO SING BETTER SONGS TO MAKE ME BELIEVE IN THEIR REDEEMER:

HIS DISCIPLES WOULD HAVE TO LOOK MORE REDEEMED! They don't look redeemed. You just look at the disciples of the so-called religions. Go and see the Jaina monks! Their eyes will not show intelligence, their faces will not shine with light and glory. They are torturing themselves, that is their discipline. And if you torture yourself, you cannot be a beautiful flower.

All the religions... looking at the pope, do you feel that he has anything of the divine, any aura of the divine? The pope who preceeded him was a homosexual. Is homosexuality divine? Perhaps, because the Christian trinity also seems to be a gay group: God the father, God the son, and a strange fellow, the Holy Ghost - not a single woman.

The popes down the ages have burnt thousands of women alive, condemning them as witches.

What was the criterion for them to decide who was a witch? Now there are no witches at all; suddenly they appeared, and suddenly they disappeared. There was no criterion, any man could inform the pope.

The pope had appointed a special court. Just the suspicion that a certain woman seems to be a witch... any man was eligible to suspect her.

No reason was asked, the woman was immediately caught and tortured so much for days on end, kept hungry, thirsty... beating her. They had invented machines for torture, and finally, because that seemed to be the only way to get rid of the torture, she had to confess that she was a witch. Her confession was the only criterion; and a confession you can get from anybody, if you torture enough and there is no way out. They dictated to her what she had to tell the court: that she was a witch and she had a sexual relationship with the devil.

The devil does not exist, but the woman had to say it in the court; otherwise the torture would start again. Once she accepted in the court that she was a witch and she had a sexual relationship with the devil, then the court was satisfied. There was no need of any other evidence. The judgement was simple: the woman had to be burnt alive in the middle of the town, so everybody could see what happened if you had a sexual relationship with the devil. Thousands of women were simply burnt, and these popes were responsible for it. These popes don't show any joy, any blissfulness, any creativity, any silence. Yes, they go on doing stupid things: kissing the earth. When this Polack pope came here, on Delhi airport he kissed the earth. I said, "This is his first taste of the Hindu religion, because here the whole earth is full of cowdung, holy cowdung." But by kissing the earth you simply show your stupidity and nothing else.

Zarathustra is saying, THEY WOULD HAVE TO SING BETTER SONGS TO MAKE ME BELIEVE IN THEIR REDEEMER.... They have to show that they are redeemed, that they are awakened, that they are liberated. ... HIS DISCIPLES WOULD HAVE TO LOOK MORE REDEEMED! But that is not the case: they look more and more enslaved.

I SHOULD LIKE TO SEE THEM NAKED: FOR BEAUTY ALONE SHOULD PREACH PENITENCE.

Why should they hide themselves? They should come out naked, in the open; they have nothing to hide. But do you think this Polack, if he comes naked, will look beautiful? He will look like a cartoon, of course not made by a great artist, just some amateur cartoonist.

THE SPIRIT OF THEIR REDEEMERS CONSISTED OF HOLES; BUT INTO EVERY HOLE THEY HAD PUT THEIR ILLUSION, THEIR STOP-GAP, WHICH THEY CALLED GOD.

If one looks with a magnifying glass at the life of Jesus, or the life of Gautam Buddha, or the life of Mahavira, or any other religious founder, one will find many holes in him, because nobody is perfect.

They have filled those holes with illusion, their stop-gap, which they called God.

I have heard that in paradise Moses and Jesus, both had gone fishing. Jesus asked Moses, "Is it really true that you parted the ocean and made a way for your people?"

Moses said, "As far as I remember, it is true."

Jesus said, "Can you do it again?"

Moses said, "I am not certain, but I will try."

He tried and he parted the lake into two parts. Old Jesus was amazed and he said, "Your memory is great!"

Moses asked, "What about you! You used to walk on water I have heard. Can you do that now?"

Jesus said, "I can try. I used to, that much I remember."

So he got out of the boat and started drowning.

Moses had to pull him back in. He said, "What happened, my son?" He said, "I forgot one thing: that time I had no holes in my feet."

They all have holes, and the work of their priests is to go on filling those holes with good stories, fictions, mythologies, all kinds of lies, miracles.

ZEALOUSLY AND WITH CLAMOR THEY DROVE THEIR HERDS OVER THEIR BRIDGE: AS IF THERE WERE ONLY ONE BRIDGE TO THE FUTURE! This is where Zarathustra cannot be categorized with any other mystic. He is saying there are many bridges to the future. Life is multi- dimensional.

TRULY, THESE SHEPHERDS, TOO, STILL BELONGED AMONG THE SHEEP! They are pretenders. They call themselves shepherds, but they belong to the same crowd as the sheep, because they are not aware of a simple fact: that to the future there are many bridges. Man has so many potentialities. He can become so many different kinds of superman. And we will need in the world every superman to be unique, so that the variety, and the beauty that variety brings, remains alive on the earth. If everybody becomes just the same, life will become a boredom.

THEY WROTE LETTERS OF BLOOD ON THE PATH THEY FOLLOWED, AND THEIR FOLLY TAUGHT THAT TRUTH IS PROVED BY BLOOD.

BUT BLOOD IS THE WORST WITNESS OF TRUTH; BLOOD POISONS AND TRANSFORMS THE PUREST TEACHING TO DELUSION AND HATRED OF THE HEART.

But for thousands of years blood has been the only argument. Whoever can cut your head with a sword has proved that his religion is right. The sword cannot be an argument, but it has been the argument for thousands of years. This shows how the priests have stopped man's growth, hindered in every way his flights into the open sky - they have not allowed freedom.

AND YOU, MY BROTHERS, MUST BE REDEEMED BY GREATER MEN THAN ANY REDEEMER HAS BEEN, IF YOU WOULD FIND THE WAY TO FREEDOM!

All that you need is to find a way to total freedom, freedom from all kinds of psychological and spiritual bondage, and you yourself will become your own redeemer. You will be a far superior man than all your redeemers have been.

... THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA.

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Osho.