I know. I have eyes, I can see! What is the need for believing? Belief is for those who are not courageous enough to open their eyes. Belief is for those whose religion is formal, who have not experienced anything of life, anything of beauty, anything of joy, anything of love – for whom God is a word, life is a word. They live in words.
“Hey, Paolo, how come-a I no see you around no more?”
“I gotta new business now, but I am-a no doing so good-a!”
“What’s your business?”
“I am a pump!”
“What the hell-a is a pump?”
“I gotta these eight-a girls who work-a for me, and every time they go out-a and make fun-a with a guy, I make-a money!”
“You be a dope! You ain’t a pump – you are a pimp!”
“No wonder business is-a no good-a. In the Yellow-a Pages, I am-a listed under ‘Pumps’!”
Beware of words. You are listed as a Hindu, as a Mohammedan, as a Christian…. You are none of these.
Friedrich Nietzsche is right when he says that the first and the last Christian died on the cross twenty centuries ago – neither before him was there another Christian nor after him. Only Christ is a Christian in the true sense of the word. He lived and experienced, and whatsoever he said was coming from his innermost core, it was not something borrowed. Everything borrowed is ugly. Beliefs are borrowed, hence they are ugly. And when you live according to borrowed beliefs you create chaos in the world. You remain unconscious and you go on talking about the Bible and the Veda and the Gita. And you are repeating all these things in your dreams. You have not understood a single word.
One Sunday morning a drunkard stumbled into a big building, not knowing it was a church. When he entered, the ten o’clock mass was in process – the organ was playing, a choir was singing and the church was very crowded. The priest was standing in front of the people, swaying a pot filled with smoking incense.
Suddenly a shout was heard from the back of the chapel, “Madam! Hey, Madam! Your bag is on fire!”
You are not in your senses, you don’t have any awareness, you are sleepwalkers. Almost the whole of humanity suffers from somnambulism, sleepwalking, and in your sleep the priests have caught hold of you. It is only accidental who was close by and who got hold of you.
If a child who is born into a Hindu family is given to a Christian family from the very beginning, he will never come to know that he is a Hindu. Or do you think he will ever come to know that he is a Hindu? – he will be a Christian.