Ronald Reagan was proposing that, in every educational institution, prayer should become compulsory. In the first place, prayer can never be compulsory. Anything compulsory is hated. Secondly, which prayer are you going to make – Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu? Who is going to decide?

The proposal was absolutely absurd. And it is good that the Supreme Court of America refused it. It is a pressuring of educational systems by the government.

But I would like the Supreme Court to consider again – not prayer, but meditation.

Meditation does not belong to any religion. In fact, meditation makes you capable of dropping your Christianity, your Judaism, your Hinduism, because now you know the real truth of your being, which is not in your holy scriptures, which cannot be in anything given to you from outside. It has to be discovered by yourself. It is your freedom to discover it or not.

Meditation is not religious. Meditation is a scientific method. Atheists can practice this; no God is needed. Prayer needs a God. For meditation no belief is needed, no requisite. Meditation is simply a method to enter into your innermost being and to become more conscious.

Right now, man’s consciousness is very superficial. One-tenth of your being is conscious. Your unconscious is nine times more than your consciousness. It is as if just on your porch you have a little candle, and the whole house which has many rooms is in utter darkness. Your whole house has to be lighted. In that light is transformation.

If a man becomes fully conscious there is no corner of darkness in his being which is unconscious. He cannot commit a crime. He cannot do anything wrong – not because you have told him, not because the Bible says so, not because the ten commandments are there, no. Now he has his own insight.

Now he can see himself what is right and what is wrong. And seeing, nobody falls in a well. In darkness it is possible to fall in a well. Seeing, nobody can do anything wrong. But seeing is possible only when there is no darkness within you.

A fully conscious human being is the new man. We are struggling for the new man.

That’s why I go on destroying your conditionings. My whole effort is to deprogram you and make you clean – as clean, as pure, as innocent as you were when you were born.

You were not born a Christian, you were not born Jewish; you were born just an innocent potentiality of growth which has been stopped by the vested interests. And those vested interests are still in power. They are doing their best to destroy any possibility for human evolution.

My people have to fight for their own sake and for the sake of humanity. First, become enlightened, and then spread your light to anybody who is interested.