The modern man is farther away from God not because he is more materialistic, no. Man has always been materialistic, has to be so because a man is ninety-nine percent body. Man has always been materialistic – this is nothing new. Is it because of too much scientific training and education? No. Science is not against God. It may not be for God, but it is not at all against God. It simply says: God is not my concern at all. It is not; they exist on different planes. Science cannot say yes or no to God; they are not moving in the same dimension, the dimensions differ. So science has not made man atheistic.

Then what is making people atheistic, farther away from God? No, not even communism. Communism may have created new gods but it has not destroyed the old one – it cannot. Communism itself is a religion. Then what? To me, it is time-consciousness – which is a new factor in the world, a new factor in human consciousness – that is creating the trouble. And it has become deep-rooted, particularly in Christianity and Judaism; it has become very very deep-rooted. And the cause of it is that Christianity, Judaism and Islam are all three from the same source – Judaism. All three are Jewish.

In the world there are in fact only two religions: one is Hindu, the other is Jewish. Mohammedanism and Christianity come out of Jewish sources – just offshoots. Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism come out of Hinduism – they are just offshoots.

There is a deep-rooted problem in Jewish thinking, and that is that they deny rebirth; they deny the theory of a circle of births. They believe in only one life, and that dominates the West. If there is only one life then you will be in a hurry, because time is short and too many things have to be done; you cannot move at ease. That’s why so much speed: everything is moving fast, everybody is worried that life is slipping out of their hands, and you have only one life.

In the East it is believed that you have millions of lives: there is no hurry, time is not short, no need to be worried about it; enough to waste and even enough always there in reserve – it is eternal. You will be born again and again, again and again. It is a circle. You move…you go, you come again, you go, you come again, so there is no need to be worried about time. That’s why in the eyes of the West the East looks lethargic, lazy, not doing anything. Nobody is worried, people can relax under the trees – no hurry. But this “no hurry” helps religion. The mind which is too time-conscious may create many materialistic miracles but it will miss the inner dimension, because the inner dimension is approached only when you are absolutely patient. You will miss many things if you are patient, that is right, but you will never miss yourself.

If you want to create an empire of things, possessions, then be in a hurry; then think that time is money and very precious, and use it to create more and more things. But you will be lost. When you die you will have piled up a great empire of things, but dying you will come to realize that you have not achieved anything. The whole effort has been a failure, because unless you achieve yourself, nothing is achieved. Unless you come to yourself, you have not come to any point. Life may have been a journey, but you have not reached the goal.