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presence; a certain air, a certain energy which is not yours, which belongs to the cosmos.
Stendhal is perfectly right: "God's only excuse is that he does not exist." That is saving him; otherwise there was no safety, no security.
Friedrich Nietzsche in his, THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA, comes to a point where Zarathustra is coming down from his mountain cave where he has lived many, many years. And he finds on the way an old hermit's hut, and the hermit is praying to God. Early in the morning, as the sun is rising, the hermit is praying.
And Zarathustra murmurs to himself, "Is it possible that this old hermit has not heard that God is dead?"
When Zarathustra goes down he tells the crowd, "Have you heard the news that God is dead?" They all start laughing.
They say, "You must be insane. Living in a cave for many, many years alone, has made you a crackpot."
Nietzsche himself became mad in the last phase of his life, because he declared really good news but he could not manage to find something to replace God. He could not find the celebration of life, he could not find the experience of the living stream within you. He remained in a vacuum -- in a vacuum you are going to be mad.
More people go mad in the West than in the East. More people commit suicide in the West than in the East. More people murder in the West than in the East. It should be otherwise -- the East is so poor that people should commit suicide, should go mad ... but they don't. What is happening?
The Western mind has come to know God is not there -- an immense vacuum. And man cannot live without meaning, man cannot live without significance, man cannot live without joy. If God is dead, man has become absolutely empty, and man cannot live in emptiness.
He needs juices of life flowing through him. He needs to blossom into beautiful lotuses. He needs to sing songs, he needs to play music. He needs all the blessings that existence makes available to you.
The Western man is more educated, is more rich, hence his bodily needs are almost fulfilled. He looks at the sky and finds the sky is empty -- there is no God. This understanding that there
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