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One can worship a tree, one can worship a rock, because the moment questions are gone and your heart is full of the mysterious and the miraculous, your whole life becomes a prayer, a worship.

It is so tremendously unbelievable that we are alive – for no reason at all – that we are breathing, that we can see, that we can taste, that we can hear, that we can love, that our hearts are beating, that life is passing through us, that life has chosen us as its vehicles. Just to know it is enough to be grateful, just to feel it is enough to be prayerful.

No God is needed to pray to. If you pray to a God your prayer is false.

When there is simply prayer, not addressed to anyone in particular, a kind of prayerfulness, a state of praying – not a prayer to any Hindu, Christian, or Mohammedan God, because they are all manufactured by the mind of man, they are not true. All gods are false. They are bound to be false because they are answers to certain questions – and questions are false, questioning is false, and the gods are answers to certain questions.

Somebody asks, “Who created the world?” Now that question becomes a thorn in the flesh; the mind cannot rest at ease unless an answer is found. You have to invent an answer just to console yourself. Either you do it or some cunning priest will do it for you on your behalf: “God created the world.” The question was false – how can a false question lead to a right answer? The very premise was false, hence the conclusion is false.

And people are so stupid that they accept such an answer: “God created the world.” And they don’t ask, “Who created God?” Yes, sometimes small children ask that: “Who created God?” Then we immediately hush them up. We say, “Wait! You are too young for such deep mysteries. When you become grown-up you will know.” As if you have known by becoming grown-up. But you cannot accept your ignorance.

You are untrue even to children. You are untrue, deceiving, dishonest, insincere, even to innocent children. You go on pretending as if you know and you go on telling them that they will also know when they are grown-up, more experienced. And they will repeat the same stupidity to their own children. That’s how stupidities are perpetuated for centuries.

Ask a question and somebody is bound to supply an answer. If nobody supplies, you are going to invent one yourself. This is not true religion; a religion that is based on a false answer is not true religion. And all the gods have been created in the same way, and all the scriptures too – just to console you, just to keep you in a false state of knowledge, because you are so afraid of being innocent, you are so afraid of being ignorant.

Remember: ignorance is not stupidity, knowledge is. Ignorance is innocence. No question, no answer, one simply lives moment-to-moment. And one is grateful because one is. One is grateful because the universe is. One is grateful because the sun rises and the birds sing and the flowers bloom and the clouds float, and in the night the sky becomes full of stars. One is simply grateful because there are mountains and rivers and oceans and deserts. One is simply grateful because there are animals and human beings. Such an incredible existence, so far out. Such a celebration, so psychedelic, so colorful. Such a dance of energy.

When feeling it you simply bow down, you simply bow down on the earth. Not in a temple, not in a mosque, not in a gurdwara, not in a church – they are all man-made. When you simply bow down before the sky, before the sunset, with no motive – what can you ask from a sunset? You cannot ask for money, you cannot ask for power, you cannot ask for prestige. It will look so stupid. What can you ask from a tree?

But when you go into a temple, into a church, you start asking for these things. Your prayer is rooted in some motive, and a prayer rooted in any motive is ugly, a prayer addressed to somebody is ugly.

But just a prayerfulness, a thankfulness, a pure gratitude – the sheer joy that we are part of such a mysterious existence!