But no religion in the world has given respect to love or to joy or to music or to dance or to any creativity that beautifies existence. They are all against it. Their whole business is to convince you that your authentic blissfulness is not in this world. Jesus says, “My kingdom of God is not of this world.” This is, in essence, the teaching of all the religions. Their kingdom is beyond death, a fiction. Torture yourself if you want to enter their fictitious paradise. And meanwhile let the priest enjoy the power, the money; let the priest enjoy the ego.
In fact, seen in the light of psychological analysis, the whole humanity has been, up to now, sick. But because the sickness is so prevalent, it is very difficult to think that it is sickness. You never think that your nose is something wrong, but if you have instead of five fingers, six fingers, you think something is wrong.
I used to work in a university, and one university teacher had twelve fingers. She used to hide them, and I said, “You are an idiot. You should make other people feel that ‘You are missing. I have six – you have only five.’ What is wrong in having six fingers? Why feel guilty about it? Make some use of it and let others feel that they are missing the sixth finger.” But it is difficult because millions of people have only ten fingers.
That’s why every language in the world has ten basic mathematical digits, because man started calculating, in the primitive days, on his fingers. And a person like me still counts on the fingers and still gets lost after the fourth – it becomes so complicated! You will be surprised, all the languages have, strangely, agreed without even being in contact; they have developed ten basic digits. And then it is repetition – eleven and twelve and thirteen…. After ten you can go on repeating as long as you want, but ten is the base. It simply means that man has always had five fingers, so nobody thinks anything wrong about five fingers, or anything right about five fingers. One simply takes it for granted; that’s how things are.
The psychological sickness of enjoying either your own torture or somebody else’s torture is the very foundation of all your religions. And you will not believe how inventive these psychologically sick people have been. Just a few examples…. I will have to count on my fingers, and I know I will get lost!
In Russia there was a Christian sect – most prominent, because nobody could do what they were doing. Every religion has been teaching celibacy, but they had done the ultimate: they started cutting off their sexual organs. A man who cut off his sexual organs would become a saint – so simple. That means people who are born…a few people are born impotent; they are born spiritual people. You may not be aware – in the world outside India, perhaps they don’t show themselves the way they do in India.