The poor man creates a poor God, a God which is nothing but his imagination, a God which exists nowhere. The East has known one day the true religion, now only footprints are left. Buddha knew true religion, Mahavira knew true religion, Krishna knew true religion. They had touched the ultimate peaks of consciousness, but only now echoes are there in the atmosphere. The reality has disappeared long before, we are worshipping the foot-prints.
So people in the East become interested into a kind of religion which I call pseudo, false, basically illusory – and not only that, but positively harmful, because it prevents scientific growth.
If you are hungry you need better technology, not better prayers, not yagnas, not offerings to the fire god – that is utter stupidity. You are already poor and you are wasting money, food, purified butter in the fire, in the hope that gods will bless you. How long you have been hoping this way? And those gods have not heard at all. And how long you are going to be deceived by yourself? But just as I said, it is a vicious circle. The hungrier, the more starving, the more undernourished, the more crowded you become – the more your problems become unmanageable – the more you start hoping, wishing, imagining, dreaming, the more you start going to some stupid people in the hope that miracles will be done. They have never been done and they will never be done. Miracles don’t exist.
Miracles are absolutely non-existential, but the poor man’s religion remains focused on the possibility of a miracle.
Have you heard about the latest miracle performed by the Polack Pope? He has made a blind man deaf.
Once a couple were thinking about having a baby one evening after an especially good session of love-making.
The woman joyfully exclaimed, “Ah, dear, I think that did it! Ah, I am so happy. What will we call it?”
The husband smiled, removing the unnoticed condom from himself, and said, “We will call him Houdini.”
A madman went to the local Jewish tailor who was a kind of philosopher, to try on his new uniform. He dressed in the uniform and went to look in the mirror.
“Wow!” he shouted, “Look at that, Mr. Tailor! You made me a jumpsuit with three sleeves.”
“Well,” said the tailor, “you never told me how many you wanted.”
Mad people going to mad people.
But these mad people are known as mahatmas in the East, and the East is full of mahatmas. When you get tired of one mahatma there are other mahatmas, and you go on moving from one shop to another shop. And life is short, you can go on remaining in illusion.
The poor man’s religion is that of miracles, that’s why Christianity has a deep attraction for the eastern man. You can see it happening.