I said, “It is up to you; we can drop the negotiation.”

The man started fighting with his wife – “You should not speak when I am talking to somebody. You just bring sweets; otherwise this boy can destroy my whole prestige. He talks such strange things! Now I know why his father has put the whole burden on me.”

He told my father, “I cannot teach your boy. You will have to take him to somebody else.”

My father said, “I have tried everybody. Everybody has to make a negotiation with him.”

He said, “Negotiation? Has he told you?”

My father said, “Every time I take him to somebody” – an old advocate was his friend, one old physician was his friend – “he ends up negotiating. And in the negotiation he simply gives temporary relief and gets sweets or anything he wants, and makes it clear: This is only the beginning of a relationship that will last as long you are alive, for certainly he is going to live longer than you.”

I have not found a single person my whole life who does not have beliefs. And belief is sheer stupidity. It means you don’t know, yet you are pretending. You are not deceiving others – you are deceiving yourself that you know. When you go to the church, or go to the temple, what is your knowledge?

Just in front of my house there was a temple of Shiva, and as you know, Shiva is represented by a phallic symbol. I used to tease the priest and ask what it is. “If you have any sense, cover it with some cloth.”

He would say, “I pray to you…You disturb my customers!”

I said, “Then some negotiation. Who told you that this is the way God is?”

He said, “Everybody knows.”

I said, “I have even seen dogs pissing on it.” And dogs are very skeptical people; they find very strange places to piss. Particularly the Shivalingam, the statue of Shiva, is very appealing to them – an absolutely marble urinal, and very comfortable for them because they have just to raise one leg and Shiva comes just underneath them.

The priest said, “Don’t torture me with these things. I know that this happens. I have to clean, wash…and I wonder, why so many dogs?”

I said, “You need not wonder. Whenever I have time, I find dogs and bring them – ‘Where are you going? Unnecessarily searching for a place…just come here!’”

He used to give me bribes.