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Yes, it makes you sin so hard that one has to become a saint by and by. It throws you into such deep misery that you have to start looking for clues to get out of the imprisonment. Civilization helps tremendously. It helps you to grow, it helps you to understand the misery of life.

Just look here – many more people from the West come to me than from India. The West is more civilized, more cultured – of course more miserable. Everybody is just on the verge of going berserk, just on the verge, a little push is needed.

Out of four persons, they say nearly three are on the boundary line of becoming mad. Almost one out of four persons, one day or other, is going to become a victim of cancer. Out of four persons alive – alive on this day – out of those four, one is going to have cancer. Civilization gives cancer. It is a great gift because it shows the absurdity of the mind. Civilization brings the whole absurdity of the mind to the surface.

A culture starts becoming religious only when it is really civilized, rich, affluent. A poor country cannot be religious, cannot afford to be religious. A poor country thinks of communism; a rich country thinks about meditation, sannyas. A poor country thinks about bread and butter; a rich country is almost fed up with all that civilization, science, technology, can give. It wants something else.

When the needs of the body are fulfilled, the needs of the mind arise; when the needs of the mind are fulfilled, then the spiritual needs arise – they have a hierarchy. If the needs of the body are not fulfilled, you will not think about the needs of the mind; when you are hungry you don’t think of poetry, you can’t, it’s simply impossible. When you are hungry you can’t think of music; that would be suicidal. Beethoven doesn’t mean a thing when you are hungry. When you are hungry, beauty is a meaningless word. You see a beautiful face – and some bread appears!

I have heard that once a poet was lost in a jungle; for three days he couldn’t find the way. He was a great poet and he had written many, many songs, beautiful love songs, about the moon, and beautiful women, and the rivers and mountains and sea. After three days of hunger and starvation, the full-moon night came: he looked and he was surprised – no beautiful face appeared in the moon, but a floating bread, a chapati.

With the needs of the body fulfilled, suddenly poetry, art, music, dance, literature, philosophy – all that becomes very, very alluring. New calls are heard in the heart. When the needs of the mind are also fulfilled, then for the first time, God, religion, meditation, ecstasy, become meaningful. And the search starts. This is the difference between these three words: if all the needs of the body are fulfilled, it is a civilized country; if all the needs of the mind are fulfilled, it is a cultured country; and if all the spiritual needs are fulfilled, it is a religious country.

Religious countries have not existed up to now. At the most a few civilizations have reached the point of culture, that’s all. Up to now a religious country has not existed in the world. People think of India as religious, but no country has yet been religious. India once reached a peak of culture, in the days of Krishna five thousand years ago – and then the need arose, the search for God. Now America is in almost the same situation: a deep inner search has started.

Civilization helps, helps tremendously, because it brings all the hidden miseries of the mind to the surface. And you have to know them, only then can you transcend them – there is no other way. Only the experience that nothing here on this earth is fulfilling, that nothing that can help the body and the mind can be of much help… It is okay, the needs of the body are fulfilled – then what? It is good, you enjoy music and poetry, then suddenly one day you feel frustrated – what? You are playing with words and waves in the air. It does not deeply satisfy.

Only religiousness can satisfy. Only religiousness can become contentment; it touches your very innermost core. But civilization creates the situation in which religiousness becomes possible.