It is easier to go with the crowd, otherwise the crowd can be very crude, very primitive. It respects people, gives them honor if they are obedient to its superstitions – and naturally everybody wants to be respected, honored. A natural instinct to be respected is exploited.

A natural desire to live a comfortable, easy life is exploited, because if you start raising questions about beliefs you will be continuously struggling with your neighbors, with your family, with your teachers, with your priest, with your husband, with your wife, even with your children. Your life will become a chaos. Nobody wants to make his life a chaos.

These are natural longings of every man, and these can be exploited very easily. And the best way to exploit is to give you beliefs – beautiful beliefs, but they remain superficial. They never ring any bell in your heart. “Jesus loves you” – you hear the words, but nothing happens in your heart. “He will come to you, he will come to your rescue, he is your savior” – but these are just empty words to you, and you go on carrying these empty words your whole life. They become more or less just part of the formalities; your religion becomes a formality, something of the same category as etiquette.

You have to live with so many people – naturally you have to adjust, to adapt, and not to create an unnecessary nuisance, not to become a target of their enmity. But this is not going to help your growth. On the contrary, because these words, these beliefs remain empty for your whole life, deep down a suspicion settles that all religion is bogus. It is very difficult for an intelligent man not to come to this conclusion – a whole life of belief, and your hands are empty and your heart is empty. There have been no golden moments, no experiences that go beyond this world.

So you perform the ritual: you go to the church just as you go to the Rotary Club, there is no difference at all. Perhaps going to the Rotary Club or Lions’ Club or some other club, you feel more excited than going to church. Going to church seems to be a burden, a duty that has to be done.

Remember, duty is a four-letter, ugly word. Love knows no duty. It does many things, but it loves to do them – it is not duty. The moment you utter the word duty it means there is no love. You have to do it because you have to do it; the pressure of the crowd is so much. But it is deep down a humiliation, an insult, a destruction of your self-respect.

Naturally you live a so-called religious life – Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan – but absolutely superficial, it has no authenticity. And the trick is very simple: they have substituted belief in place of trust. Trust is something that grows in you, it is not imposed on you; it is not a plastic flower but a rose that grows, blossoms, releases its fragrance. Trust is the most poetic experience of life. But the basic necessity for trust to happen is that you should not be burdened with beliefs.