This is how things are. Everybody is trying to enslave everybody else; and in slavery, naturally, a few things which are very delicate start dying: intelligence, sensitivity, responsibility, individuality. And marriage is the smallest group, only two persons. Then the groups go on becoming bigger and bigger; the bigger the group, the more you are lost.
And then there are nations, great religions – there are seven hundred million Catholics. Once you become a Catholic – or unfortunately you may have been born a Catholic – you don’t have any scope, any space to expand. From everywhere your wings are cut, you are kept reduced in every possible way. Because if you are allowed freedom, there is a danger you may not be Catholic at all. You may even go against Catholicism….
A small boy in a school was crying and his teacher asked him, “What is the matter, Johnny? You have never cried like that. Has somebody died?”
He said, “It is worse than that. My dog has given birth to seven small puppies, and when I asked those puppies, ‘Are you Catholics?’ they all waved their heads, so I was feeling very happy.”
The teacher said, “Then why you are weeping?”
He said, “Today, their eyes opened, and when I asked, ‘Are you Catholics?’ they started looking at each other, they didn’t answer at all.”
You have to be blind to be a Catholic, to be a Mohammedan, to be a Hindu, to be a Buddhist. If your eyes open, it becomes impossible for you to remain confined to superstitions, lies of all kinds, and to go on believing in fictions when your intelligence raises doubts. Your church demands of you, never to doubt – that is the greatest sin.
But intelligence never grows without doubting, without questioning. It is the natural growth of intelligence to question. Just to believe means the intelligence need not grow – for what and why? There is nothing to seek and nothing to search for, you simply have faith in the priest and keep your eyes closed. This has been so, but this need not be so forever.
And those who understand me clearly can see it happening here already. Nobody is dictating anything to you, nobody is giving you any discipline, nobody is telling you what is right and what is wrong. Because of this, I am condemned all over the world. Perhaps no man has been condemned so aggressively, so violently, and on such a large scale.
And what is my crime? My crime is that I am trying to create groups where people are individual, intelligent seekers, meditators, lovers. Not believers, not faithful to any holy scripture, not faithful to any dead prophet – trusting only their own intelligence and their own still, small voice, heard in the silences of the heart, in deep meditation.