He said, “I have not informed my wife that I am bringing twenty friends for dinner. Seeing you all, she may get mad. You just remain outside. First I will go and persuade her, and then I will call you in.”

He went in the house, closed the door, and told his wife, “Twenty idiots are following me, because by mistake I used the word generosity. And you know me, that I am a bragging type of man. So they have come for dinner. Now only you can save me!”

The wife said, “What can I do? – because there is no food in the house. You had gone to purchase vegetables…the whole day I have been waiting. And now you turn up – without vegetables – with twenty friends for dinner?”

“No,” Mulla said, “that is not a problem. You simply go, open the door, and ask the people, ‘Why are you standing here?’ And they will say, ‘Mulla has invited us for dinner.’ You simply say, ‘Mulla is not in the house. I have not seen his face since this morning.’”

The wife said, “But this seems to be very illogical. You have brought them; you have left them in front of the house, you have entered the house in front of them. And now you are trying to dump the whole problem on me.”

Mulla said, “Don’t be worried, I will manage. You just do what I say.”

The wife had to concede because there was no other way. She went; she asked, “What is the matter? What are you doing here?”

The friends said, “Your husband has asked us to come to your house for dinner.”

The woman said, “But I have not seen him since this morning. He is not in the house.”

Those twenty friends laughed. They said, “This is too much! He has brought us here, and we know that he is in the house because he has entered the house before our eyes – twenty eyewitnesses.” And they started arguing, “If he is not in the house, let us come in, and we will find him. He must be hiding.”

The wife said, “He is not there.”

They started arguing. Mulla opened a window and said to the people, “You seem to be just barbarous! You are arguing with my wife? Twenty men arguing with one simple woman! Can’t you understand a simple thing? Mulla may have come with you, but he has gone from the back door. So now get lost!”

Those twenty people could not believe this, that Mulla himself was saying that he must have gone out from the back door!

You cannot deny yourself.

Your very denial will be the proof. You cannot say, “I have gone out from the back door” – because then who are you? Who is making this statement?

All the religions have been befooling humanity.

One thing they all know: man is born innocent, knowing nothing. Soon he is going to question. That’s an intrinsic quality of human intelligence. No animal questions anything. No tree questions or believes. No mountain has a philosophy, an explanation of the world.