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this has been done. This is the greatest crime that parents have always committed against children. They go on forcing the child -- they are afraid, they don't trust their own prayer.
When I was a child, I used to go with my father to his temple. In the beginning, he would tell me to do this and that. I told him, "If you tell me, I will do -- but from the very beginning, I will be against it. So please, don't enforce. Let me come, let me watch. If I feel something has happened to you, that will be the decisive factor." And he is a simple man. He allowed me. He said, "That's right." And he would go and pray, and I would simply sit and watch. Prayer, meditating, I would see how he changes, how his face suddenly goes through a transformation, how his face becomes luminous, how silent and graceful he becomes. That became an enquiry... one has to know these spaces too. Then the child is enchanted. Then a great desire arises in him to know what it is, what it is all about.
Good, that you were brought up in an unreligious home. That may be the cause that whenever I mention the name of Jesus you cry and something deep inside you is moved. Good -- because you are not a Christian, Christ can still mean something to you. And because you are not a Christian, soon you will see that Buddha also is meaningful, and so is Patanjali and so is Kabir and so is Nanak. When one is not conditioned, one remains available to all the sources, to all the great masters.
One should claim the whole heritage of humanity as one's own -- we are unnecessarily poor. Somebody says, "I am Christian." He is saying, "I claim only Jesus. I don't claim Buddha, I don't claim Zarathustra, I don't claim Lao Tzu." How poor a man! The whole humanity, the whole history of man, is yours. Jesus is as much yours as Lao Tzu, as Buddha, as Mohammed. They are all yours: claim them all together, that is your heritage. But that is possible only if you are not conditioned to be a Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan.
Good, you are fortunate that Jesus can still have some meaning to you. This is my whole effort here -- to uncondition you. If you are a Christian, I want you to become unconditioned.
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