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A religious man is always misunderstood. If he is not misunderstood, he is not a religious man.

Humanity lives with a nonreligious attitude toward life – sectarian, but not religious. So a religious man is a stranger. Whatever you say about him will be wrong because you are wrong. Remember: whatever you say about him… I am not saying that if you say something in his favor that will be right, no. Whether you are in favor of him or against him makes no difference, whatever you say about him will be wrong until you yourself have become a religious consciousness. Before that your reverence is false, your condemnation is false.

You may think of him as a sage, and you have misunderstood. You may think of him as a sinner, and again you have misunderstood.

So the first thing to remember is: unless you are right, whatever you do, say, be, is going to be wrong. And a religious man is such a tremendous phenomenon, such a strange phenomenon, that you have no language to talk about him. All your words concerning him are futile. Your whole language is useless, meaningless: a religious man is religious because he has gone beyond the dualities, and the whole of language exists within dualities.

If you say he is good you are wrong because he is bad also. If you say he is bad you are wrong again because he is good also. And now the trouble arises because you cannot conceive how a good man can also be bad. You can comprehend only a part of the whole because the other part is by necessity the opposite. It has to be so. A religious man is a miniature God. Just like God he is paradoxical and contradictory. Just like God he is summer and winter, day and night, life and death. Just like God he is divine and devil both.

Then the mind staggers. The mind is very efficient if you are working in polarities. If you say yes the mind can understand. If you say no the mind can understand. But if you say both yes and no then it goes beyond the mind. Unless you have gone beyond the mind you cannot have the feeling of what a religious consciousness is.

I was born a Jaina. Now, religion has nothing to do with your birth; you cannot be born into a religion. Just the contrary: religion has to be born in you. I was born a Jaina – just a coincidence. I could as well have been born a Christian or a Jew, an irrelevant fact, because religion cannot be given to you with your birth. It is not a gift, it is not a heritage. My father is a Jaina, my mother is a Jaina but they cannot give Jainism to me. I can inherit their wealth, I can inherit their prestige, I can inherit the family name, but I cannot inherit their religion. Religion cannot be a gift, a heritage; it is not a thing. It is something one has to seek for himself. Nobody else can give it to you.

So whatever is given with birth is a sect, not a religion. Hinduism, Christianity, Mohammedanism, Jainism, Buddhism, are sects, not religions. Religion is one, sects are many, because sects are the forms, dead fossilized forms. Sects are like footprints. Somebody one day walked there but he is no longer there – just footprints left on the sand, on the sand of time. A buddha walks, footprints are left, and you go on worshipping those footprints for centuries. There is nobody there now. Just a form in the sand, nothing else.

Sects are forms in the mind, just like footprints. Yes, somebody was there once but he is no longer there – and you go on worshipping those forms. You are born into those forms, you are conditioned into those forms, indoctrinated. You become a sectarian. And don’t think that you have become religious, otherwise you will miss. For religion to be there you have to seek it on your own. It is a personal growth, a personal encounter with reality, face-to-face, immediate and direct. It has nothing to do with tradition, nothing to do with the past. You have to grow into it. You have to allow it to grow in you.

Religion is a revolution, not a conformity. It is not a conviction intellectually attained; it is a conversion of your total being. How can you be born into a religion? Of course you can be born into an ideology, you can learn a theology, words about God, theories about God, dogmas and doctrines, but to know about God is not to know God. The word God is not God. And all the theologies together are nothing compared to a single moment of encounter with the divine. Then for the first time the spark, your inner light starts. You start rising in a different dimension. Religion is a personal search, it is not part of society.

I was born a Jaina. Of course they tried to force me to be a Jaina. Fortunately they failed. It is one of the misfortunes that they succeed in many cases. They failed and they have been angry with me. So if you ask the Jainas… Only rarely will you find a Jaina here and there who will say that I am a Jaina; otherwise they will say that I am an enemy of Jainism, and I am destroying their ideology and I am corrupting their sources. And both are right in a way.

Those who say that I am against Jainism are right in a way because I am against Jainism as they understand it. I am against it because it is not a religion at all. A dead fossil: of course, one of the most ancient. Jainism seems to be the most ancient religion in the world, even older than Hinduism. Even in the Vedas, in the Rig Veda, Jaina tirthankaras are mentioned, and mentioned with deep reverence. That shows Jaina tirthankaras are older than the Rig Veda, the first Hindu scripture, the oldest in the world.

When a scripture talks about a master, Rishabh, as the first tirthankara of the Jainas – the Vedas talk with so much reverence that it is almost certain that he was not a contemporary. He must have been dead for at least one thousand years; only then can you talk with such reverence. Nobody talks about contemporaries with such reverence. Followers can talk, but Hindus are not followers of Jainas. They are antagonistic religions. At least one thousand years must have passed, and the man must have become a legend.

Jainas are very old. Now historians are working on the ruins and findings in Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, and they say that there is every possibility that Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro were Jaina civilizations. Before the Aryans came to India, India was a Jaina country – there is every possibility. A very ancient religion, of course, very dead. The older a religion the more dead, everything fossilized. You cannot find a deader person than a Jaina monk. He goes on cutting his life; it is a slow suicide. And the more dead he is, the more he is worshipped because death itself seems to be like a renunciation. If he is a little alive, Jainas become afraid of him. Older religions crucify their followers, they murder them.

The older the religion, the greater the weight. Like a Himalaya on the heart of a small man – burdened, crushing, you cannot move. And traditions go on gathering, they are like snowballs. They go on gathering weight, they become fatter and fatter. Dead, but still they go on gaining weight. They become monstrous, and then they kill the spirit. They always remain true to the word, and the more true to the word, the more poisonous to the spirit.

If you ask the Jainas only a few will say, “Yes, this man is a real Jaina.” Many will say, “This man is against us, the greatest enemy.” And both are right in a way, and both are wrong in a deeper way. I am a Jaina. If you look at Mahavira, I am a Jaina. Mahavira is a religious man but not because he is born into a religion. He searched, he inquired, he encountered reality. He threw out all dogmas, he threw out all civilization. Even clothes he threw away because they too are a part of the civilization and the culture; they too carry the society with you. He remained naked. For twelve years he completely stopped talking because if you go on talking you use the language of the society, and that language carries the germs of the society.

Whenever you talk, immediately you become a part of a society. A silent man is not part of any society. He may be part of nature, but he’s not part of a society. In fact, language is the only thing that makes you human and part of human society and the human world. When you drop language, suddenly you drop out of human society and civilization. You become part of the trees, rocks, the sky.

For twelve years Mahavira would not use any language. He remained completely silent. This man I love because this is a religious man. He started speaking only when silence was total within him. He didn’t speak out of scriptures, he spoke out of himself. He spoke out of his silence, and whenever a word is born out of deep silence it is alive, throbbing with life. Those who hear it directly, they are most fortunate because soon it will die. Everything born dies.

A word is born. It is alive for a few moments; it throbs around you. If you can listen to it, it will enter your being; it will become part of your being. If you don’t listen to it, if you take notes and you think that you will try to understand it back home, it will be already dead. Then you will understand something which was not said at all. You have already made a private scripture.

Mahavira spoke out of his inner silence. His words are the most wonderful ever spoken. I love that man. He is the most antisocial man you can find, and antitraditional. The other twenty-three tirthankaras, twenty-three masters of the Jainas, were all clothed. This man became nude. Tradition has it that Jainas in those days tried to deny this man. They said, “What is he doing? Our other tirthankaras have never been nude, why is he moving around nude?” They did everything to deny this man, and because of that denial Jainism has been divided into two parts from that very day. They have two sects: those who followed Mahavira in his nudity – very few people – are called Digambaras: people who believe in nudity. The other older sect, which tried to avoid this Mahavira, tried to deny this Mahavira, are the Swetambaras. They believe in white clothes; their monks are white-robed. And the conflict has continued.

If a Jaina says, “Yes, this man Rajneesh is a Jaina,” he is right. I love Mahavira – a rare flowering, a rare fragrance, very rare and unique. But the others are also right when they say, “This man is not a Jaina but against them, an enemy.” They are also right because I am against tradition, against all rituals and forms, against scriptures, against the past. I am all for religion, and all against sects. They are also right.

If you ask Hindus they will say, “This man is a Jaina, and trying to sabotage Hinduism from within because no Jaina has ever talked about the Gita, and no Jaina has ever commented on the Upanishads. This man is trying to sabotage Hinduism from within.” This is what the Shankaracharya of Puri says about me: “Beware of this man! He is not a Hindu.” And he is right in a sense. In the sense that he is a Hindu, I am not. But in the sense he is a Hindu, Hinduism is worthless.

I am a Hindu in the sense Patanjali is a Hindu, Badrayana is a Hindu, Kapil and Kanad are Hindus. The really religious people never belong to the establishment, they cannot. It is possible that the establishment may follow them, and someday around them an establishment may be created – that is possible. But they are never part of any establishment, either of others or their own. They cannot exist in the establishment, they are free. Freedom can never be a part of any establishment.

Whenever the establishment becomes too much, freedom dies. Then the bird cannot be on the wing; the wings are cut. The bird has then been encaged – in a golden cage, beautifully decorated, very costly, precious – but now the cage is more important than the bird. By and by, people will forget the bird completely because the bird will die and they will go on worshipping the cage, and they will go on making it more and more decorative. Temples will arise around it and a great tradition, establishment, and nobody will bother about where the bird is. A dead corpse in a golden cage. If you believe in Hinduism as a bird on the wing I am a Hindu, as the Upanishads are Hindu, but I am not a Hindu in the sense the Shankaracharya of Puri is a Hindu – a dead bird in a golden cage.

If you ask Mohammedans, they will say I have no right to talk on Sufis or on the Koran. Once in a town I was talking about Sufis, and the maulvi of the town approached me and he said, “You have no right. You are not a Mohammedan, you don’t know Arabic. How can you talk on the Sufis and on the Koran?” I said, “The Koran has nothing to do with Arabic. It has something to do with the heart, not with the language.”

The Koran has nothing to do with the language. It has something to do with silence, not language. The Koran has something to do with reality, not with the symbols. And I am not a Mohammedan if you think that I am a follower of Mohammed – no, I am not. I am nobody’s follower. But I am a Mohammedan, just as Mohammed is a Mohammedan; just as Jesus is a Christian, I am a Christian – but like Mohammed and Jesus. Was Mohammed a Mohammedan? How can he be? Mohammedanism never existed before. Was Jesus a Christian? Christianity never existed before. How can he be a Christian? If Jesus is a Christian, I am a Christian. If Mohammed is a Mohammedan, then I am a Mohammedan. But otherwise I am not a Mohammedan and not a Christian. A religious man does not belong to any sect. In fact, all sects belong to the religious man.

But this is how the formal mind goes. It thinks in terms of ideology, language, ritual, and it misses the whole point: religion has nothing to do with these things. Then what is religion? Religion is an oceanic feeling where you are lost and only existence remains. It is a death and a resurrection. You die as you are and you are resurrected totally new. Something absolutely new arises out of the death of the old. On the grave of the old, something sprouts and becomes a new flower.

Religion is an inner revolution, an inner mutation. It is not in the temples, not in the mosques, not in the churches: don’t look for religion there. If you look there you will waste your time. Look for religion inwardly. And the further inward you move, the deeper you will find the ego there – which is the barrier. Drop that barrier and suddenly you are religious. There is only one thing which is not religious and that is the ego. That can never be religious. And sects never kill it; on the contrary, they strengthen it. Through rituals, temples, ideologies, the ego is strengthened.

You go to church and you feel that you have become religious; a subtle pride arises in you. You don’t become humble; on the contrary, you become more egoistic. You do a certain ritual and you feel gratified, and you start condemning those who are not doing the ritual. You think they are the sinners and they are going to be thrown into the fire of hell. Is your heaven secured just with doing certain rituals? Whom do you think that you are deceiving?

A man sits for one hour turning the beads and he thinks his heaven is secured, but the others, who are not doing this stupid thing, are going to hell. You go to the mosque and you kneel down, and you say foolish things to the divine: “You are great.” Is there any doubt about it? Why are you saying it? “I’m a sinner, and you are compassion.” What are you doing, buttressing God’s ego? Do you think God has something like an ego? That you can say to him: “You are very great and we are very small, and you are compassion and we are sinners: forgive us”? Whom do you think you are deceiving?

The ego is playing the game. You think God is also an ego which can be buttressed? God is not a person at all, so you are talking to yourself. There is nobody else to listen to it; only the walls, the dead walls of the mosque or the temple or a stone statue. Nobody is listening. In fact, you are doing something mad. Just go to the madhouses and see people talking to people who are not there. Even those mad people are not so mad because those somebodies may be somewhere. They may not be here; a madman may be talking to his wife who is not here in the madhouse, but somewhere maybe. But your God is nowhere; your madness is deeper, greater, dangerous.

How can you talk with existence? With existence you have to be silent; all talking should stop. You are not to say anything. On the contrary, a prayer is a listening. You have to listen to existence, not to say anything. If you speak, who will listen? If you talk and you are too involved in the words, who will listen? And every moment there is a message. Every moment, from everywhere, there is a message for you. It is written all over; the whole existence is the scripture of the divine. The message is everywhere, on every leaf is the signature. But who will see? Your eyes and your mind are filled with yourself. Rubbish you have, but you go on rotating that rubbish in the mind. Drop it all!

This is something to understand: a prayer can be Christian, a prayer can be Hindu, a prayer can be Jewish – then they are sectarian prayers and not prayers at all. A real prayer cannot be Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist. A real prayer is just a silence, a waiting. How can you say silence is Hindu? How can you say silence is Christian? Can silence be Christian or Hindu? Silence is simply silence, neither Hindu nor Mohammedan. When two persons are absolutely silent, can you say who is a Hindu and who is a Mohammedan? In silence, sects disappear. In silence, societies disappear. In silence, civilizations disappear. In silence, you disappear. Only silence is: you are not there. If you are there, then silence cannot be there because you will do something or other, you will think something or other, you will go on chattering inside.

When you are not, society is not, sects are not – no words, no prayer. You are not reciting the Koran, not reciting the Veda, not doing a TM meditation, “Ram, Ram, Ram”; all are foolish. When you are simply silent a meeting happens, a merger happens; you dissolve. Just as ice melts and the boundaries dissolve, and then you cannot find where the ice has gone… It has become one with the sea. The sun rises, ice melts, becomes water. Silence arises, the mind, the ice-like, frozen mind, starts melting, the ego dissolves. Suddenly there is ocean and you are not.

This is the moment of religion. Religion is born in you, nobody is born into religion. Religion takes birth in you. You have to become a mother, a womb for religion to become impregnated in you, to grow in you. You have to give birth. You cannot be born into religion, you have to give birth to religion. And then it is beautiful, then it is something from the unknown, then it is not concerned with man.

That is the meaning of Jesus’ virgin birth. The whole meaning is simply this: a man like Jesus is not born out of man. Religious consciousness is not born out of man, it is born out of the unknown. Mary, Jesus’ mother, is virgin; no man has corrupted her. This is a symbolic thing; it is not that Jesus is born out of a virgin biologically. Then you miss the metaphor; the beautiful story becomes an ugly doctrine. Then you miss the poetry.

For centuries Christians have been arguing and trying to prove somehow that Jesus was really born from a virgin mother. How can theologians be so stupid? It is a wonder! And they go on trying and proving, and very intellectual people, argumentative – but blind. Whenever you miss the poetry and try to create an argument out of it you destroy religion. You are not a help; you put people off religion. Because of some absurdity in the foundation, the whole of Christianity becomes absurd. These are poetic truths, and poetic truths are not logical truths. Logical truths are nothing, they are ordinary facts. Poetic truths are extraordinary facts, so extraordinary in their quality that you cannot make an argument out of them. Argument is too narrow: they need much space. Only a poetic symbology can give that space. This is beautiful poetry. I also say Jesus is born out of a virgin mother because there is no other way.

Religious consciousness is uncorrupted by man, untouched. Religious consciousness means you have dropped all that is manmade: doctrines, dogmas, churches, words, language, prayers, forms, rituals – all that is man-made you have dropped. Then, in that silence, God himself becomes part of you. You become pregnant with God. You carry the pregnancy, it grows every day, and the more it grows, the more alive it becomes, the more you start feeling that now you have something more valuable than your life. A mother is always ready to die for the child. If there is a crisis and only one can be saved, either the child or the mother, the mother is always ready – the child should survive. She is ready to die.

There is another parable I would like to tell you. It is said that whenever a buddha is born the mother immediately dies. That too has created problems for Buddhists. They say if Jesus is born and Mary is alive, has not died, then Jesus cannot be a buddha because whenever an enlightened man is born the mother dies. Buddha’s mother died. Then Mahavira cannot be a buddha, Krishna cannot be a buddha, because the first thing is missing. This is how beautiful symbols become ugly. It is beautiful! I don’t know whether Buddha’s mother died or not; that is irrelevant. Whether she lived or died, that is not the point. But the point is: whenever religious consciousness is born in you, when you are pregnant with buddhahood, when you are pregnant with enlightenment and you carry enlightenment as a child within you, you will die; both cannot live.

And this is the whole message of this series of talks: until you die, nothing is possible. The mother must die for the child to be born because both cannot exist. You are the mother and you are the child; you are not two. When you become enlightened, the old must die immediately. If you cling to the old, you will cripple your enlightenment. If you cling to the old, you will suffocate the child. If you cling too much, the child will be dead before the child is born.

Always remember: religion is poetry not logic. It is not even philosophy. It is art, and art is not an argument. Art doesn’t bother about argument. Art can seduce you without argument, so why bother about argument? Art is so powerful it can seduce you without any argument. Argument is needed at the lower realms where the thing itself is not so powerful as to convince you; then argument is needed. When the thing in itself is so powerful, so hypnotic, so transforming that you are suddenly absorbed into it, there is no need to convince you.

I never try to convince you. If you are convinced, good. If you are not convinced, good. But I am not trying to convince you of anything because conviction is a very ordinary thing. If you are convinced through argument you will never become religious. You may become philosophical, you may carry a dogma in your head, but you will never become religious.

Religion is like love: you fall in it for no reason at all. You cannot prove it; proof is not needed. Proof is needed only when you are thinking of a marriage. Argument is needed only when you are thinking of an arranged marriage. Then you think about the family and the parents of the girl, and the money and the dowry and the future possibilities, political relationships: you think about everything. But when you fall in love, you fall in love. It happens so suddenly there is no time gap.

And it is the same with religion. You fall in love with a man who is religious. You cannot prove it. And if somebody argues with you against it… It is very easy to prove something against it; it is almost impossible to prove anything for it. That’s why it is a trust, a faith, a deep blindness. But in that deep blindness, for the first time your inner eye starts functioning. The deep blindness from the outside becomes a deep insight from within.

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