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Godot must be the German word for God. I asked Haridas, my German sannyasin, "Does Godot mean God?"
He said, "No!"
I asked, "Then what is equivalent to God in German?"
He said, "Gott!"
I said, "That is even worse that Godot! Godot sounds nearer than Gott!"
But people have been waiting and waiting for centuries; neither the messiah comes, nor does human misery disappear. On the contrary, it goes on increasing. We have made the world more educated, more cultured, without seeing the fact that if people are more intelligent they are going to ask questions which uneducated masses have never asked before. They are going to ask, "How long will it take for the fulfillment of our hopes?" And there is no answer.
They were asking the same question of Jesus two thousand years ago, and he said, "Don't be worried. Soon I will be coming." Now, two thousand years... isn't the "soon" finished?
If the "soon" takes two thousand years, then any intelligent person will have doubts. And what is the guarantee that he is coming in the future? Two thousand years can pass, ten thousand years can pass. His "soon" seems to be very elastic, you can do anything with it. You can go on stretching it out for thousands of years and man's suffering goes on becoming more and more.
Man has never suffered so much as he is suffering now, for the simple reason that man has never been so intelligent before. Buffalos don't suffer. Have you seen a buffalo sad, bored? Have you seen a donkey in very great despair?
Religions have tried hard to make sure that people should not become intelligent. Intelligence was their monopoly: the priest knows, and you should just have faith. The masses went on believing this up to this twentieth century, and it is not a coincidence that existentialism burst out in Europe -- not in India, not in Ethiopia.
One would think it would have been more logical for existentialism to be born in Ethiopia, where people are dying in thousands every day; they know what despair is. But they are not intelligent enough. They accept it still as a test of God, perhaps the last test; and beyond that is all they have always
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