Meera will not see Christ, that is not her investment. And Theresa will not see Krishna, that is not her investment. A Christian goes on seeing Christ, and a Buddhist goes on seeing Buddha. Whatsoever you believe, you can see. If you believe hard enough, it becomes real. But this reality is just a relative reality, an invented reality. There is not much difference between it and dreaming.

Every night you invent a reality, and while you are dreaming it looks so real, so authentically real. Every morning you find it was false. Millions of times you have found it was false – but again you will go to sleep tonight and again it will be real. The mind will again play the game.

Even absurd dreams look real, which are not possible, not at all possible. A rock suddenly becomes a dog…a dog starts talking to you…but in the dream it is real. Where is your logic? Where is your reason? Where have all your experiences of the past gone? You are again deceived.

Zen says the same is happening even while you are awake. Your so-called awakeness is not much of an awareness, it is happening then too. You see a woman and you call her beautiful. Maybe you are simply projecting beauty. Maybe you are seeing things which are not there. That’s what Buddha says – because how can there be beauty in the body? And how can there be beauty in bones, flesh, blood? All kinds of diseases are hiding there. Death is growing there…but you see beauty. You believe. When you believe, it is there; when the belief disappears, all beauty disappears.

Watch it. You are constantly creating your own world. We live in different worlds because we live in different dreams, and we live in different worlds because we live in different belief-systems. A Hindu has a different belief-system, reality comes in a different way to him. A Mohammedan has a different belief-system, reality comes in a different way to him. What is real for a Hindu is absurd for a Mohammedan, and what is real for the Mohammedan is absurd for the Hindu. They may be neighbors, they may be friends, but they belong to different belief-systems.

So is there a way to know the real? Yes, there is a way. Zen says: Drop all belief-systems. That’s what Krishnamurti goes on insisting – drop all belief-systems, then you can know. But there is no way to say that which you will know there, because there the known and the knower are no more separate. There the experiencer and the experienced are no more separate.

Hence, Zen says, samadhi is not an experience. God is not an experience, enlightenment is not an experience – because experiences happen in the mind, and these things happen beyond the mind. If they are experiences then they are again part of your belief.