The purpose of worship is to reveal to you your own being. It is not a state of sleep. It is a state of absolute awakening – just the opposite of what the religions have been teaching you. They all have been teaching you methods of concentration, and all concentration methods are against meditation, because they bring hypnosis. Hypnosis simply means created, deliberate sleep.

Meditation means an awakening: every fiber of your being is vibrant, alert, aware. And only in that awareness do you for the first time know that there is no ego in you. The ego disappears from you, the very idea of “I” is no longer existent, and the barrier between you and existence has fallen away.

Then you are one with the whole.

And the whole is vast.

To become one with it is worship.

And it can be approached from any dimension: chopping wood, carrying water from a well, cooking food or cleaning the floor, washing the clothes, taking a bath. All activities of your life should be done so totally, so intensely, that the ego disappears. And suddenly you find yourself expanding. That expanding consciousness reaches to the trees, to the flowers, to the animals, to the human beings, to the stars.

Vincent van Gogh has painted pictures of trees which go above the stars. People thought he was mad, because no tree goes above the stars. But when he was asked why he paints this way – where has he seen any tree going above the stars? – he said, “I have seen the aspiration of the tree, the longing of the tree, the very spirit of the tree. It is on the way; it is going to reach to the stars, it is going to reach beyond them.”

When you feel expansion of your consciousness, that is the most ecstatic experience possible, because suddenly you are the whole universe.

Stars are within you.

The sun rises within you and sets within you.

The earth moves within you.

The flowers blossom within you.

This mystic experience is the outcome of worship.

And you are always on holy ground. The God of Moses was wrong to tell him, “Now take off your shoes.” Even God is trying to divide the ground like a politician, that this is America, this is Soviet Russia, this is England; this is holy land, and everything else is unholy.

No. I say absolutely no to such a God who divides existence. Existence is one organic unity. And the moment you worship, you fall into that organic unity. And once you know the secret, then anything is worship. Walking, going for a morning walk, is worship. You are not doing anything. But just the wind, the sun, the beach, the ocean – what more do you want? Can’t you see you cannot make a better church? – with the sun, with the wind, with the sand, with the ocean – unbounded.