Ramakrishna said, “If it was just a stone statue, I would not have lost my caste. Against the whole society I would not have come. To me it is not.”

Rani said, “And I have also heard that the food you prepare to offer to the god – first you taste it. That is against all scriptures. You have to offer it first to the god, then it can be distributed to the devotees and then you can take it. But you are not supposed to taste it first.”

He said, “You can take your temple and I resign from it, because I know perfectly – my mother used to taste first before she would give anything to me. And when I asked her why she was doing that, she said, ‘If it is not good, I will not give it to you.’ How can I do otherwise? I don’t care about your scriptures; I don’t know them. I have learned only from my mother that if there is love, love cannot give something which is not tasteful. First I have to taste it, and then only can I offer it.”

Now this man, Ramakrishna, is expelled from Brahmanism, and you will not find another brahmin of the same status, of the same insight. He was not there just to get some salary. He was there really to worship, and worship is a love affair. It knows no other rules except love. Love is decisive, not any other law.

So it is not a question of whom you have to choose, the question is, are you going to love existence, are you going to love existence as divine? Then it does not matter in which religion you are born. All those things become unnecessary. You have found the essential core. And if you are going to decide, you will never be able to decide.

For example, no Jaina is going to accept Christ as enlightened, for the simple reason that it is inconceivable according to the Jaina perception that any enlightened man will drink alcohol. When you are enlightened, you have tasted the ultimate ecstasy – now what can alcohol give to you? Alcohol is for miserable people to forget their misery. Alcohol helps you to forget something. You want to forget misery and suffering, but nobody wants to forget blissfulness, ecstasy.

If an ecstatic person drinks alcohol, he will forget all about it. No meditator is going to drink alcohol. That is simply illogical, unscientific. So no Jaina, no Buddhist, is going to agree that Jesus is enlightened. But on the other hand, the Christian also has questions, because Buddha neither served the poor nor helped the sick to become healthy, nor did Mahavira raise the dead back to life. They had no concern at all for other people.