Then there was a fourth part of the people who said, “Not only is the glass useless, it is dangerous, because whosoever looks through it is distorted.” They were against it and they were planning to destroy it whenever the opportunity arises. They also have not looked through it!

Then there was another group who avoided it. They stopped walking through those streets where the glass came nearer and closer. They never passed through that crossroad because they said, “We are happy as we are.” They were not happy, but they thought, “It may disturb our usual pattern of life.”

But a few people were there – simple, innocent: they looked through it and they were transformed, they became totally new beings. But then the rumor spread all around that they have been hypnotized by that stupid glass: “They are fools; otherwise how can a glass transform a human being?” They were thought to be mad.

Forget about the story. But this is the situation of the whole world.

Religion is a magic glass. The secret quality of it is to transform you, but it cannot force transformation; you have to allow it to happen, you have to be in a receptive mood. Worship won’t help; that is very cunning and tricky. Logic won’t help because it is a question of experience, not of logical syllogism. Skepticism is not of much use because just by doubting you cannot come to know anything. One has to pass through the experience. Only the experience can be the criterion of truth or untruth. Thinking is not enough.

Avoiding, escaping from seeing life as it is, you remain a coward and you miss the whole point of it, the whole adventure of it. Only those who are innocent, childlike, ready to look through it, ready to be transformed, changed, mutated, they will be helped by religion. So only very few people have been helped by religion. Christians are millions, Hindus millions, Buddhist millions, Mohammedans millions, but religious people very few – you can count them on fingers.

To belong to an organization is not to be religious. To take the jump in deep trust and innocence is to be religious. To be a Hasid is to be ready to see – to see life as it is. This has to be understood.

You also see, but you don’t see as things are. Before they enter your being, you have transformed their color, you have given new shapes, forms, you have already interpreted. Your mind goes on falsifying things, and your mind goes on creating illusions around you. And you feel that you see as things are, but you never see, because once you see as things are, things disappear, only God remains.

Once you can see as things are, only one remains; millions of forms disappear into one, the formless. Then the tree is no more there, then the rock is no more there, then the river is no more there – but one existence, throbbing everywhere in a thousand and one ways.