Religion is not what people understand it to be. It is not Christianity, it is not Hinduism, it is not Mohammedanism. Religion is a dead rock.

I teach you not religion, but religiousness – a flowing river, continuously changing its course, but ultimately reaching to the ocean.

A rock may be very ancient, far more experienced, far older than any Rig Veda, but a rock is a rock, and it is dead. It does not move with the seasons, it does not move with existence; it is simply lying there. And have you seen any rock with any song, with any dance?

To me religion is a quality, not an organization.

All the religions that exist in the world – and they are not a small number: there are three hundred religions in the world – are dead rocks. They don’t flow, they don’t change, they don’t move with the times. And anything that is dead is not going to help you – unless you want to make your grave. Then perhaps the rock may be helpful.

All the so-called religions have been making graves for you – destroying your life, your love, your joy and filling your heads with fantasies, illusions, hallucinations about God, about heaven and hell, about reincarnation, and all kinds of crap.

I trust the flowing, changing, moving…because that is the nature of life. It knows only one thing is permanent, and that is change. Only change never changes; otherwise, everything changes. Sometimes it is fall and the trees become naked. All the leaves fall down with no complaint. Silently, peacefully they merge back into the earth from where they have come. The naked trees against the sky have a beauty of their own, and a there must be a tremendous trust in their hearts – because they know that if the old leaves are gone, the new will be coming. And soon new leaves, fresh, younger, more delicate, start coming out.

A religion should be not a dead organization but a kind of religiousness; a quality which includes truthfulness, sincerity, naturalness, a deep let-go with the cosmos, a loving heart, a friendliness towards the whole. For these no holy scriptures are needed.

In fact, there are no holy scriptures anywhere. The so-called holy scriptures do not even prove that they are good literature. It is good that nobody reads them, because they are full of ugly pornography.

When I said this, one of my friends, started working on the Holy Bible, and now he has found five hundred solid pages of pornography. If any book has to be banned from the world, it is the Holy Bible. But that friend does not know that the Holy Bible is just nothing. If you look into the Hindu puranas, you will be surprised. They are the most ancient editions of Playboy! Not only the human beings but even the gods described there are such ugly, dirty old people. It is strange…and they are still worshipped as gods.