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Yes, Shobha. The doubt is the only thing that prevents – the doubt that we are not as we should be, the doubt that God cannot be within us.

How God can be within us? – because you have been taught God is there in the seventh heaven sitting on his golden throne, surrounded by his angels playing on their harps, singing hallelujah.

He is not here, he is far away. He is big, he is huge, he is eternal, he is this and he is that. How he can be in your heart? Such a tiny heart you have. And how he can be in your heart? – you are so ugly and you are so horrible and you condemn yourself in a thousand and one ways continuously.

How he can be there? If God is there in you, then where the devil will live?

The doubt….

And when somebody says that God is within you, you cannot accept it.

You have heard it many times, Jesus saying to people, “The kingdom of God is within you.” But even Christians don’t listen, even the followers. Even Jesus’ intimate followers, immediate followers, go on asking about God who is in heaven and Jesus goes on saying, “He is within you,” and they go on talking about the God who is in heaven, and they go on saying, “When we all will die, how will we live in paradise? Who will be at the right hand of God? What will be our position there? Who will be who? What will be the hierarchy?”

And Jesus goes on saying, “He is within you,” but nobody believes it, because you have not been taught to trust yourself.

From your very birth you have been distracted from your being.

Everybody has condemned you – your parents, your teachers, your priests, your politicians. Everybody has condemned you. Everybody has said, “You! You are not right as you are. You have to become right. You have to attain to some perfection.”

Goals have been given to you, and because of those goals and those perfectionist ideals you remain condemned and crushed.

How can you receive the message that God is within you, that you are already home, that you have never left it in the first place, that all is okay as it is? Just relax, and it is yours. Not that you have to search and seek, but just relax into it and it is yours.

Doubt arises: “God within me?

And my father was saying, ‘You are the ugliest kid in the town.’ And my mother was saying, ‘Why didn’t you die? You are a condemnation to the family, you are a blame to the family. We are sorry that we have given birth to you.’” And your teacher was saying that you are a fool, that you are stupid, that you are idiotic. And the priest was saying that you are bound for hell, that you are a sinner.

Just the other night I was reading about an Indian mystic who was invited into a Christian church. After the talk the Christian priest shouted loudly to the congregation: “All you sinners! Now kneel down and pray! Kneel down in prayer!”

They all knelt down except the mystic, the Hindu mystic. The priest looked at him, he said, “Aren’t you going to participate with us in prayer?” He said, “I was going to participate, but I am not a sinner. And I don’t see that anybody else here is a sinner.

I was going to participate in the prayer, but now you have made it impossible for me. I cannot kneel down. I am not a sinner. God is within me; I cannot be that disrespectful to God. I can pray only because God is within me. And I am not praying for anything – my prayer is my thankfulness, my gratitude for all that he has already given to me. My thankfulness is that he has chosen me as his abode, that he has honored me, that I am part of him, that he belongs to me. I am ready to pray, I am ready to kneel down, but not as a sinner, because that is not true.”

You have been taught that you are sinners, that unless Jesus saves you, you are bound to go to hell. You have been condemned so much that when this Eastern message bursts forth in your being you start doubting: “This is not possible. I?…and I have never left home?

Maybe it is true about Buddha, maybe it is true about Jesus, but I? – I am a sinner.”

Nobody is a sinner. Even while you are in the darkest hole of your life you are still divine. You cannot lose your divinity, there is no way to lose it. It is your very being. It is the stuff you are made of.

Shobha has asked: “Is the only thing that keeps us from coming home the doubt that we are not already home, which is reinforced by everyone around us?”

Yes, it is reinforced by everyone around you. That’s why I say: love is only when somebody accepts you as divine. He reinforces the truth that you are divine.

If anybody reinforces the untruth that you are not divine, it is not love.

She may be your mother, he may be your father, it doesn’t matter. If anybody gives you a self-condemnatory idea, he is poisoning you. If anybody says that you are not accepted as you are, that God will love you only if you fulfill certain conditions, then he is destroying you, he is your enemy – beware of him.