Man is crushed between the devil and God, between good and evil. I want man not to be crushed, not to be enslaved, but to be an individual in his own right, free. And out of his freedom, and out of his awareness, he should act – not according to what God wants.

I have told you the story of the ten commandments…

When God made the world, he went to the Babylonians and said, “Would you like to have a commandment?”

They said, “First we would like to see what it is.”

And he said, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

The Babylonians said, “What would we do? We don’t want any commandment, please forgive us.”

He went to the Egyptians, and he went to other races. Nobody was willing, because everybody asked, “What is the commandment?” And they said, “We don’t want to be encaged in any commandment. We want to live on our own.”

Finally he reached Moses and asked him, “Do you want to have a commandment?”

Moses asked, “How much does it cost?”

This is a rare question! God had gone all around the world…and it was only Moses who asked the price, the first thing. God said, “It costs nothing.”

Moses said, “Then I will have ten!” If it does not cost anything, why not have ten? – that’s how there are ten commandments.

Every religion has created its own commandments – strange, unnatural – out of fear or out of greed. But they have made this poor humanity that you see around the world.

Even the richest man is so poor because he does not have the freedom to act according to his own consciousness. He has to act according to principles given by somebody else, and one does not know whether that man was a con-man, a fraud, a poet, a dreamer. There is no evidence…because so many people have claimed that they are incarnations of God, that they are messengers of God, that they are prophets of God, and they all bring different messages. Either God is mad or these people are simply lying. Most probably they are lying…!

It gives you a great egoistic feeling if you are a prophet, a messiah, an avatara, a tirthankara – somebody special, not just an ordinary human being. Then you can dominate. This is a different kind of politics. Wherever there is domination, there is politics.

The politician is dominating because of physical force – his armies, his armaments, his nuclear weapons. The religious prophets, messiahs, saviors, avataras are dominating you spiritually. Their domination is more dangerous – they are far greater politicians. They are dominating your life not only from outside but from inside. They have become your inside, they have become your morality, they have become your conscience, they have become your very spiritual being.