To remove that guilt, worship arises. Worship is simply a removal of the guilt, to wash away the guilt. That’s how such big religions like Christianity…otherwise Jesus had not that genius to produce such a big religion. There were hundreds of rabbis far more intelligent, far more scholarly than him. He was just an uneducated young man, but the crucifixion changed the whole situation. Once they crucified him, they made him a god – god to all those people, who are millions, who had supported the crucifixion. They started feeling guilty.

And you can see it if you look deeply. Jesus was killed by the order of the Roman emperor, by his viceroy, Pontius Pilate in Judea, with the agreement of the high priest of the temple of the Jews. Today Rome has been the citadel of Christianity for twenty centuries, but the order to kill that man had come from Rome. There was a day when the whole Roman civilization turned into a Christian civilization. Today the pope has only a small piece of land – eight square miles – but it is an independent country. It has been shrinking slowly; once he had the whole of Italy. He was higher than the state.

And more people were killed in Rome for being Christians. Christ was the first one, then whosoever turned Christian was killed in the same way; hundreds of people were crucified. And this whole crucifixion created so much guilt in people that a great religion came out of it. But such a religion can only be a psychological cover-up; it cannot be a true religion. It is simply covering up your guilt. The more fanatic a religious person is…you can measure by his fanaticism how guilty he is feeling, what he is hiding behind it.

But Christianity became the world’s biggest religion for the simple reason that not only Christ, but many other people who had turned Christian, were crucified without any trial. And the masses were supporting the powerful people, but deep down feeling hurt – what is happening is simply inhuman, should not happen. But they are poor, they have no power; they cannot do anything except worship.

A real religion is always of meditation. A false religion is always of worship.

Worship is a psychological method of washing from your hands the blood that you can see on your hands. Even Pontius Pilate…the first thing he did after ordering the crucifixion of Jesus was to wash his hands, because he was not willing to kill this innocent man. He had talked to him, he had listened in disguise where he was talking to his disciples, and he had started loving something in that man: “He is innocent. He says some crazy things, but the way he says them is beautiful. He is uneducated, but he speaks poetry. He does not know much, but whatever he knows he presents it with tremendous authority. And he is not doing any harm to anybody. If you don’t want to listen to him, don’t listen. If you don’t want to follow him, don’t follow. He is not preaching any dangerous ideas to people.”

Pontius Pilate wanted him to be freed. He tried to persuade the priests that he should be freed because he seems to be innocent. But Jews were not ready to free him – and they committed a great mistake. They are responsible for creating Christianity. So all the bloodshed that Christianity has done, deep down, Jews are responsible for, and Christianity has taken revenge, tortured Jews, killed Jews, made them homeless. For centuries it has been going on.