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Religion is simply religion, as love is love. Do you call love Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan? If love is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan, then why should God be Christian, Hindu and Mohammedan? Has not Jesus said `God is Love'? Religion is not in the religions; religion is pure of all adjectives, pure of all definitions, and each one has to seek it. Nobody can be born into a religion, religion has to be born into you. You have to open your soul and receive religion. It is showering all around... but you are carrying toys, substitutes, false coins, in your hands, and thinking you are having religion. In the church it is not, in the mosque it is not, in the temple it is not. Go somewhere where a living Master is: it is there. And that too exists only for a few moments -- the Master is gone, and the religion disappears.
Hence Kabir's insistence for a SATGURU -- for a true Master
Religion is individual, one has to seek it on one's own. It is not a social phenomenon, it has nothing to do with the crowd and the collective. It is a private thing, as intimate as love. You come to it alone, in deep intimacy, privacy... you open your heart. Religion is spontaneous in the sense that you cannot learn it. You can be it, but you cannot learn it. It is as spontaneous as love. Have you ever learnt what love is?And that day will be a doomsday, when man will have to learn how to love. That day seems to be coming closer every day, in the West particularly, and more particularly in America. Books are being written: How to Love, How to be Friendly -- foolish books, because if man has forgotten how to love, no book can teach it. To teach humanity how to love is as if somebody goes to the fish and teaches the fish to swim -- that will be foolish. And so is the case with religion. Religion cannot be taught, it can only be caught; it is a sort of infection. You can go wherever a holy person exists and you can catch it, you can imbibe it.
Religion is a rebellion. It is a rebellion against death, it is rebellion against all that is dead; it is rebellion against the outside: it is rebellion against politics, greed, society, culture, civilization. Religion is
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