But your monks, your nuns, all the religions have forced death on humanity, destructiveness on humanity. And the ultimate result is AIDS. And AIDS is more dangerous than nuclear weapons, because nuclear weapons are not going to be used at all. It is absolutely clear that to use those weapons is to destroy all life on the planet.

War has meaning when somebody is victorious and somebody is defeated. War has no meaning when the whole of humanity is destroyed. Nobody is victorious; nobody is defeated. I can say to you with absolute certainty, nuclear weapons cannot be used. But AIDS is spreading fast, like wildfire. It may destroy humanity.

The first implication in Shiva’s story is that he is not celibate. The second implication is that he is not a homosexual. All your monks and nuns are bound to be homosexuals, lesbians. You have forced them into such a place that there is no other way.

The third implication is that Shiva has infinite love for his beloved, so much that he carried Parvati’s dead body in search of a physician for twelve years around the country, till all the limbs, one by one, fell away. Nothing was left on his shoulder. It looks a little ridiculous, but to me it has a totally different meaning.

A meditator like Shiva knows life is eternal. And if life is eternal, then there is no reason why Parvati has to take another form. She is still young, healthy, beautiful. There must be someone who can manage to make her heart beat again, her lungs function again, because behind the body is the soul, which is eternal – just something in the body is missing.

In that way, Shiva proves to be the first pioneer in human engineering. He is searching for a physician to change any part that is preventing the soul of his wife from entering this beautiful body.

Now scientists say that the human body has the capacity of rejuvenating itself as long as you want. Why do people almost always die at the age of seventy, on average? The reason is not physical, the reason is psychological.

We have become accustomed to the idea that life is only for seventy years. This conditioning in the mind for a life of seventy years is the cause of your body stopping; otherwise there is no reason.

There are places in Kashmir, a small part which is now occupied by Pakistan, where there are people who are one hundred and forty years old, one hundred and fifty years old – and still young. I have been to see those people. They live in the hills, and somehow they have not got the idea that man’s life is only for seventy years.

In the Caucasus, in Russia, there are people who have reached one hundred and eighty years, thousands of people, who are still working in the fields like young men. They are robust….

I am reminded of George Bernard Shaw, who lived all his life in London. But, when he was coming close to the age of seventy, he started going around in small villages to visit the cemeteries. His friends thought that he had become crazy.