True Religion

The greatest harm that the so-called religions have done to humanity is to prevent humanity from finding the true religion. They pretended to be the true religion. All the religions of the world have conditioned the human mind from the very childhood to believe that this is the true religion – the religion in which you are born.
A Hindu believes his religion is the only true religion in the world, all other religions are false. The same is the case with the Jew, with the Christian, with the Buddhist, with the Mohammedan. They are in agreement on one point, and that is that there is no need to find the true religion; the true religion is already available to you – you are born in it. I call this their greatest harm because man without authentic religion can only vegetate, cannot really live. He remains a superficial being; he cannot attain to any profundity, authenticity. He knows nothing about his own depths. He knows about himself through others, what they say. Just the way you know your face through the mirror, you are acquainted with yourself through other people’s opinion; you don’t know yourself directly. And the opinions that you depend on are of those people who are in a similar position: they don’t know themselves.
These religions have created a society of blind people, and they go on telling you that you don’t need eyes. Jesus had eyes; what is the need for Christians to have eyes? All that you have to do is to believe in Jesus; he will lead the way to paradise, you have simply to follow. You are not allowed to think, because thinking may take you astray. It is bound to take you on different paths than they want you to take, because thinking means sharpening your doubt, your intellect. And that is very dangerous for the so-called religions.
The so-called religions want you dull, dead, somehow dragging; they want you without intelligence. But they are clever in giving good names: they call it faith. It is nothing but the suicide of your intelligence.
A true religion will not require faith from you. A true religion will require experience.
It will not ask you to drop your doubt, it will help you to sharpen your doubt so that you can enquire to the very end.
The true religion will help you to find your truth.
And remember, my truth can never be your truth because there is no way of transferring truth from one person to another.
Mohammed’s truth is Mohammed’s truth; it cannot be yours just by your becoming a Mohammedan. To you it will remain only a belief And who knows whether Mohammed knows or not? Who knows, Jesus may be simply a fanatic, neurotic. That’s what modern psychiatrists, psychologists and psychoanalysts agree upon, that Jesus is a mental case.
To declare oneself to be the only begotten son of God, to declare, ”I am the messiah who has come to redeem the whole world from suffering and sin” – do you think it is normal? And how many people has he redeemed? I don’t think that he was able to redeem even a single person from suffering and sin. He was certainly a megalomaniac.
How can you have faith? Even if a Gautam Buddha knows the truth, there is no way for you to know whether he knows it or not. Yes, you can recognize somebody knowing the truth, if you also know it; then you will have the capacity to smell it. Otherwise you are simply believing in public opinion: you are believing in mass psychology, which is the lowest.
Truth comes to the highest intelligence.
But if from the very beginning you are taught to believe, then you are crippled, you are destroyed.
If from the very beginning you are conditioned to have faith, you have lost your soul.
Then you will vegetate, you will not live. And that’s what millions of people around the world are doing: vegetating.

What life can you have?

You don’t even know yourself. You don’t know from where you are coming, to where you are going, what the purpose of all this is. Who has prevented you from knowing? Not the devil but the popes, the priests, the rabbis, the shankaracharyas – these are the real devils. As far as I can see, all these synagogues, temples, mosques, churches – they are all dedicated to the devil, not to God, because what they have done is not divine, it is sheer murder: the slaughter of the whole human mind. But they have done many other things also. This fundamental harm cannot be done alone, it needs support from many other harms. For example: the religions have demystified the universe. I consider it to be one of the greatest crimes.
Let me repeat, they have demystified the universe, and I consider it to be one of the greatest crimes – and they have done it so cunningly, so cleverly, that you are not even aware what has been done. What do I mean when I say demystifying the universe? I mean they have supplied ready-made answers for you.
All the religions have a certain catechism. Christians have approached me: ”Why don’t you publish a small booklet which contains your catechism? Because you have so many books that it is difficult to read them all, to find out and to figure out what your message is. It will be easy; just like the Christians have done, you can publish the catechism on a postcard.”
I had to tell them, ”It is impossible for me because I don’t have a catechism at all. You will have to look into my books. You will have to enter into this jungle and you will have to find the message. And I don’t know whether you will be able to find one, or whether you will be lost yourself The second is the more probable possibility.”
But all the religions have provided a catechism. What is a catechism? For questions which are unanswerable they give you answers, even before you have asked. The child has not asked who has created the world; the child is not yet mature enough to ask such a question, but religions catch him before he becomes mature and the question arises. Once the question arises then their answer is not going to help.

I say poetry is far more religious than your so-called holy books. Music is more religious than your so-called sermons of great apostles. Painting is more religious because paintings are not answers, they are rather reflections of the mystery that existence is. Poetry does not answer anything for you, it simply reflects: the sunrise, the sunset, a cloud wandering in the sky, a bird on the wing, a rainbow.... It does not give you any answers.