All words are masks, all theories, dogmas, philosophies are masks, all religions, all theologies are masks. He’s right: to tell the truth, you have to wear a mask. You cannot tell it straight, there is no way. To bring the word in simply means: now you cannot be straight, a medium has come in. Now the expression is through the medium, the medium will bring its own distortions into it. If you have a colored glass before your eyes, you will see the world in the same color. Now words will become like glasses on your eyes: they will color your world. That’s why different people look at the world in different ways – because they have been conditioned differently.
A Hindu looks at the world differently from the Christian. A Hindu can worship the tree and the Christian will think, “What nonsense! Worshipping a tree?” The Christian will think, “This man has to be brought to his senses, converted. This man is a pagan. Make efforts to bring him to the true religion. This man is primitive” – because the Christian has a different upbringing, a different conditioning. Ask the Hindu: he has a different mind. He says, “The whole existence is divine. The tree is also divine. And the question is not what you are worshipping, the question is that you are worshipping. What you worship makes no difference.” And the Hindu will say, “You go on worshipping a dead cross – it is made of wood – and I am worshipping an alive tree, and you think I am foolish? Who is foolish? The tree is alive and life is flowing, and the tree is green and the tree is in blossom. God is still flowing in it as green juice. Your cross is dead. It is better to worship the tree,” the Hindu will say, “than to worship the cross.”
The Hindu worships Krishna – dancing, playing on his flute – and the Christian cannot believe it because the world is in suffering: “And how can this man be so cruel that he is playing on his flute? The world needs to be redeemed and he is dancing with girls! What is he doing? What kind of religion is this?” He has a conditioning that the man of God has to die for the world so that the world can be redeemed, the man of God has to become a sacrifice, he has to be a martyr – not a singer, not a musician, not a dancer, but a martyr.
A Hindu has a different conditioning: he thinks if Jesus is crucified then he must have been suffering from bad karma from his past life – otherwise why should he be crucified? Crucifixion is not a good thing. It means he must have committed some bad things in his past life, because “as you sow, so you reap.” “He cannot be the man of God. If he is the man of God then crucifixion is simply impossible.” They have a different vision and different conditioning: the man of God has to sing the song of God, the celestial song, Bhagavad-Gita. He has to dance and sing in praise of God. The world need not be redeemed, the world has only to be enlightened, helped – to laugh, to love, to be.