When knowledge exists not, there is love. Knowledge is against love. Knowledgeable people cannot love…and people who can love are never knowledgeable. Love makes you wise, but never knowledgeable. Knowledge makes you cunning and clever, but never loving.
The known is the mind, the unknown is God. And Jesus says, “God is love.” Love comes through the unknown, with the unknown, as part of the unknown. To move into the unknown, one needs courage, tremendous courage. To cling to the known there is no need to have any courage – any coward can do it, cowards only do that.
When you become a Christian you are a coward; when you become a Mohammedan you are a coward; when you become a Hindu you are a coward. When you become religious you are tremendously courageous – you are going for an adventure, you are seeking the unknown, you are moving into the uncharted, the unmeasured and the immeasurable. There is every danger you may be lost, there is every danger you may not be able to come back, there is every danger that you will lose all control; you may go mad. That’s the price one has to pay for real religion.
People are afraid, so they cling to false substitutes. Christianity, Hinduism, Islam – these are false substitutes, cheap, very easily available. You don’t have to do anything: you are born in a certain family and you become a Christian, you are born into another family and you become a Hindu. You have not done anything, you have not chosen anything consciously, you have not moved an inch. There has been no pilgrimage, you have not searched.
Of course then religion can only be just a label, and these labels become pathological. Why do they become pathological? – because your inner reality remains different, and the label is totally different. Peek deeply into a Hindu and a Mohammedan and a Christian and a Jaina and a Buddhist, and you will find that only labels differ; deep inside, the same human being. And these labels create trouble.
The Bible goes on saying: Love your enemy – and you cannot even love your friend. You cannot even love yourself, and Jesus says, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” And you cannot even love yourself, how can you love your neighbor? And Jesus says, “Love your enemy,” and you have not yet known even how to love your friend, how to love your beloved. You don’t know the ways of love. Then what will you do? You will pretend, you will become a hypocrite, you will become a false entity. This is the pathology: you will become dual. Deep inside you will be something else, and on the surface you will go on pretending something else. Deep inside tears, and on your face you will go on smiling. This will tear you apart; this is what schizophrenia is, this is what split personality is. This is the root cause of all neuroses.
Hence, religion becomes pathological: imitated, religion creates pathology, a neurotic world. Realized by oneself, religion gives you tremendous health, well-being, celebration of life, joy, benediction.