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Book Name: Eighty Four Thousand PoemsPrevious     Next
 

the idea was that a ,am of god

Has to go beyond humanity.

For example

Mahavira is said not to have perspired

Because that is too human.

Now, in India not to perspire...

It is a super-human feat!

It is easier to walk on water

Than not to perspire in India!

And he lived in the hottest part of the country,

In Bihar, and he lived naked

And he walked bare-footed on muddy paths

In dirt and dust and in the burning sun.

But the stories say that he never perspired

Never urinated, never defecated.

These are human things too human!

The followers of Mahavira, cannot conceive

Him urinating.

That looks below Mahavira, too below:

He is a god!

You can always think of him sitting

In deep meditation.

That's the only activity left for him.

In that way Jesus is far more human.

He enjoys eating and drinking

And mixing with people and laughing and joking.

He enjoyed company, and the company of all kinds

Of people -- gamblers, drunkards, prostitutes.

He is really human!

And Matthias is the most human of all

His disciples, he represents his humanity.

My effort here

Is to make religion as human as possible.

It should not be airy-fairy!

We have to bring it down to earth.

And I allow my sannyasins to perspire!

There is nothing wrong in it, no sin is committed.

Even a sauna bath is perfectly virtuous!

Perspire as much as you can.

Remember that religion has not to be unearthly.

It has to be rooted in the earth

Only then is it alive.

When it becomes too cloudy, uprooted

It looses all greenness, it looses all aliveness.

It becomes just an abstract philosophy.

That's what has happened in the East.

Hence Jainas cannot believe in Jesus,

Neither can Buddhists believe in Jesus

Because he is too human.

But I am all for Jesus

Simply because he is so human!

We want a religion which is human.

Of course one has not to end with humanity

One

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