These stupid people should know that the body is one. The blood circulates continuously from the feet to the head, from the head to the feet: it knows no division. Life pulsates all over the body. The body is an orgasm, an organic unity, a deep ecstasy. But if you divide it you disturb its orgasmic quality. If you divide it you become schizophrenic.

And they divide the body, they divide the mind: the good mind, the bad mind, the sinner’s mind, the saint’s mind. And this way they go on becoming more and more schizophrenic. This is not simplicity, this is pathology. And they live in misery. They will never know anything of joy, they will not know anything of laughter. They have condemned laughter as a sin.

That’s why Christians say Jesus never laughed. They can’t believe Jesus laughing: that looks so profane, almost sacrilegious. Ask the Jainas. They don’t say anything in their scriptures, but they will also agree with Christians that Mahavira also never laughed.

How can these ideas create simple human beings? Those who cannot laugh, those who cannot dance, those who cannot sing, those who cannot enjoy the very ordinariness of life….

I don’t think that Christians or Jainas are right. I know Jesus, he laughed. I know him not through the scriptures. I know Mahavira; if he cannot laugh, then who will laugh? I know them from my innermost being.

But the people who have imposed on them the idea of no laughter, of no joy, are the people who have been driving the whole humanity crazy, mad, insane. They have converted the whole earth into a mad asylum.

You ask me: “What is innocence? Does being innocent require one to live a simple life?”

Innocence requires nothing. If it requires, it becomes complex. Innocence simply lives without any idea of how to live. Bring in the how and you become complex. Innocence is a simple response to the present.

Ideas are accumulated past. How Buddha lived – live like that and you will be a Buddhist. How Jesus lived – live like that and you will be a Christian. But you will be imposing something upon yourself.

God never creates two persons alike. Each individual is unique. So if you impose Jesus upon yourself you will be phony. All Christians are bound to be phony – all Hindus, all Jainas, all Buddhists – because they are trying to be somebody they cannot be.

You can’t be Gautam Buddha. You can be a buddha, but not Gautam Buddha. Buddha means awakened – that is your birthright – but Gautam is an individual. You can be a christ, but not Jesus Christ; Jesus is an individual. Christ is another name for buddhahood. It is the ultimate state of consciousness. Yes, that is possible, that is your potential. You can bloom and flower into christ consciousness, but you can never be Jesus, that is not possible and it is good that it is not possible.