So the only fear that the priests and the hypocrites and the mahatmas feel is that they may be caught. And they are caught. But the stupidity is such, the unconsciousness of humanity is such, that again and again they are caught and again and again we go on listening to the same kind of stupidities.

It is time enough that we should get rid of this whole division between matter and spirit. They are not divided anywhere. They are not divided in you – your body and your soul are functioning totally together, in deep synchronicity. You can experience it: if your body is sick, your innermost core also becomes sad, and if your innermost core is joyous, your body also wants to dance.

I am not for any escapist attitude, I am not for any split in you. I want you to be one, I want you to be integrated. I want you to be totally natural, accepting, affirming. I teach you a materialist-spiritualist approach to life. It has never been done before – that’s why I am so much condemned. I accept it. I don’t feel any trouble with it because it is natural.

There have been materialists in the past: Epicurus in Greece, Charvakas in the East – they believed in materialism. They said: “All spiritualism is hocus-pocus, it is inventions of the crafty priests. It is just to exploit people. And man is nothing but body, there is no soul. So there is no question of knowing thyself, you are just matter.”

That’s what Karl Marx said again in the modern context: “Consciousness is only a byproduct, an epiphenomenon – just some matter, some chemicals joined together, created. Once they are no longer together it disappears, it evaporates. Nothing remains after death; there was nothing before birth. Life consists only of birth and death, and in between, so don’t be bothered about the other world, and don’t be bothered about hell and heaven.”

And Karl Marx said, “This is the opium for the people.” Priests have been dope-dealers! Perhaps that’s why they are against all kinds of dope – they have their own specific dope to sell. They have to be against LSD, marijuana, hashish. They have to be against all other drugs, because if people are taking opium, hashish, marijuana, LSD, then who are going to be Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans? It is a simple question of competition. They had to push their own drugs in the market.

Epicurus, Charvakas, Karl Marx, have a certain truth in what they are saying, but it is half-truth. The other half has been told by the so-called spiritualists. The other half is that matter is illusory, that it does not exist at all, it is maya. The real existence is of the soul; matter has to be avoided.

What Lama Trungpa is saying is an ancient, very ancient and rotten ideology. He’s a Tibetan, and Tibet is the most primitive country in the world, the most rotten – even more rotten than India. If India is two thousand years rotten, Tibet is five thousand years rotten. It is stinking. He represents that stinking tradition.