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is a Sufi, and Buddha too -- and they never heard about the word, and they never knew that anything like Sufism exists.
Whenever a religion is alive, it is because Sufism is alive within it. Whenever a religion is dead, it shows only that the spirit, the Sufi spirit, has left it. Now there is only a corpse, howsoever decorated -- in philosophy, metaphysics, in dogmas, doctrines -- but whenever Sufism has left, religion stinks of death. This has happened many times. This is happening already almost all over the world. One has to be aware of it, otherwise one can go on clinging to a dead corpse.
Christianity has no Sufism now. It is a dead religion -- the Church killed it. When `church' becomes too much, Sufism has to leave that body. It cannot exist with dogmas. It can well exist with a dancing soul, but not with dogmas. It cannot exist with theology. They are not good companions. And with popes and priests it is impossible for Sufism to exist. It is just the opposite! Sufism needs no popes, no priests; it needs no dogmas. It is not of the head; it belongs to the heart. The heart is the Church, not an organized church, because every organization is of the mind. And once the mind takes possession, the heart has simply to leave that house completely. The house becomes too narrow for the heart. The heart needs the whole of the sky. Nothing less than that will do.
It cannot be confined in churches. The whole existence is the only church for it. It can throb under the sky. It can throb in freedom. But it dies when everything becomes a system, an organized pattern, a ritual -- the state of Sufism simply disappears from there.
Christianity killed Jesus. Jews could not kill him. They crucified him, of course, but they failed. They could not kill him. He survived crucifixion. That is the meaning of resurrection -- not that physically Jesus survived, but that the crucifixion proved futile. Jews could not kill him. They tried, but Jesus survived. Where Jews failed, Christians succeeded. They killed him with out any crucifixion. They killed him through prayer. They killed him through dogma. They killed him through organization. Followers succeed where
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