I am against all organized religions, without any exception, for the simple reason that truth cannot be organized. It is not politics, it is a love affair between the individual and existence; you cannot organize it. No priests are needed, no theologians are needed, no churches are needed.

Is not the sky full of stars enough for you to appreciate and admire, and fall down on the earth in prayer and in thankfulness to existence? Are not flowers enough, trees and birds, mountains…a sunrise, a beautiful sunset?

Existence surrounds you with so much beauty, and you create a small prison and call it a church. And you think going into the church is being religious…?

Listening to the sermon of a man who has not realized anything – he may be a scholar, but he is not enlightened; he speaks within quotes, but he cannot speak on his own authority – is simply wasting time. Find somebody who has found the truth, and be with him. Drink his presence; look into his eyes. Feel his heart and let your heart beat in rhythm with his heart – and perhaps you may have some taste of religion.

But religion cannot be organized.

Truth cannot even be expressed. What to say about organizing it? – it is inexpressible. Those who have known it have talked about and about, but they have never been able to exactly say it. They talk about and about in the hope that perhaps by chance you may get the knack. It is not an art which can be taught; it is something more like a disease which can only be caught.

When you are near a man who knows the truth, perhaps you may catch the disease.

All the mystics of the world, of all the ages, are agreed on one point, that truth cannot be brought down to the level of language. All the theologians are doing just the opposite. All the mystics are agreed that there is no way of organizing truth, because it is purely an individual affair. Do you have organizations for love? And love at least involves two persons; it is interpersonal.

Religion is absolutely personal. It does not involve anybody else but you.

You need not be a part of a crowd: Catholic, Protestant, Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Buddhist. All these crowds have destroyed the possibility of man attaining truth, because they have given a fallacious idea that you need not search: “Jesus knows – you simply believe in Jesus. Buddha knows it – you simply believe in Buddha. You don’t have to do anything.”

They have made truth so cheap that the whole world believes and lives in darkness, and lives in a thousand and one lies. Belief in the very beginning is a lie. How can you believe that Buddha has attained truth? How can you believe that Jesus has attained truth? – his contemporaries did not believe him; you are twenty centuries away.

His contemporaries only thought that he was a nuisance. They did not relish his presence; on the contrary, they wanted him to be destroyed. And you know that he knew the truth? On what grounds?