Man is so deceptive that he can deceive even himself. The god is dead; he has purchased it from the market. It is nothing but stone, carved into the shape of some unknown god who has never been seen by anyone. The god is just a thing. Of course, the richer the man, the costlier will be the god. But whether costly or not, it is a commodity. And on top of that, even the priest is a salaried servant. He has nothing to do with godliness, he has something to do with money. I have seen priests running from one temple to another. If a priest can manage to pray in twenty temples, then he is a rich priest.
The whole idea is so absurd and unbelievable. It is just as if you have a paid servant to love your beloved on your behalf. Perhaps one day it is going to happen – because the time you waste in loving your beloved can produce much money, much power. This game of love can be done by an ordinary servant. Why waste your time? And if the woman is also intelligent, there is no need for her to be there; she can also afford a woman servant. They both can love each other. Why waste time unnecessarily?
I have heard that a super-rich man was psychoanalyzed by a famous psychoanalyst. The psychoanalyst was very happy because the man used to pay him more than expected. But he was such a bore, that to listen to him for two hours, three hours, four hours a day, was too much. It was getting on the nerves of the psychiatrist. He started feeling, “If this goes on and on, soon this man may perhaps be cured, but I will never get out of this sickness that he is transferring to me.”
He had read an ancient parable about a king who was a great chess player. The game of chess is very complicated; it is mathematical – the king went mad. All kinds of remedies were tried, but nothing succeeded. Then his prime minister said to him, “We should declare that if there is anyone who can defeat our king in chess, immense will be his reward.”
One of the greatest chess players came to the palace, but to play chess with a madman… In the first place, chess itself is a very mad game. The best players of chess have to think at least five steps ahead: “I will do this; the opponent most probably will react in this way, then I will do this.” The longer one can visualize the process, the better a chess player he is.
One has never seen a chess player smiling – he is a serious man. And to play chess with a madman, and not an ordinary madman, a king who was playing chess according to his own laws… But the chess player was paid enough to suffer it, and after one year the king was back to his sanity – but the chess player became mad.
The psychoanalyst remembered the parable and thought, “This is going to happen to me too. This man has so much money it does not matter to him, he can continue his psychoanalysis for years. But listening to him every day was starting to enter into the mind of the psychoanalyst; even in his dreams he was listening to him. Then he became really freaked out, saying, “Some way has to be found. The patient cannot be lost, because he is giving so much money, but he cannot be heard because my own sanity is in danger.”