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I don't see any sharpness in you. You have collected degrees, but you have lost something while you were collecting all this nonsense. Your memory is good, but your intelligence is poor."
It is not necessary that both should exist together.
In the past, religion was the easiest approach to fulfil your ego. No intelligence is needed, no memory is needed, no will is needed, no struggle is needed. All that is needed is a weak, impotent personality. All that is needed is a cowardly man who is incapable of fighting in the world. He can escape to the monastery, and just by escaping to the monastery he becomes a great saint. In the monastery his whole day is uncreative: he is not doing anything, he is not enriching the world. And if he is doing something at all, that is a kind of self-torture. He may be fasting, praying five times a day, doing many yoga postures, standing on his head for hours, standing naked in the cold or in the heat -- all kinds of self-violence. And these qualities have been praised, highly praised.
We have praised stupid people as saints and we have praised uncreative people as religious, as spiritual. They have not contributed anything to the world; it is because of them the world is suffering so much.
In India religion has been very predominant, more predominant than anywhere else. And you can see the consequences! India has almost become the hell of the earth. People are starving; people are hungry, dying, ill, no energy, lethargic, no desire to do anything -- in every possible way immoral, but still thinking themselves spiritual because once a month they go on a fast, or once a week, or because they go every day to the temple, or because they read the Gita every day, or because every day they go on chanting some stupid mantra thinking that they are doing Transcendental Meditation. And you don't see any meditativeness anywhere. You don't see any peace, silence, joy. You don't see anything that can be said to be the outcome of centuries of religiousness.
My vision of religion is totally different.
Anand Shravan, you ask: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE RELIGIOUS?
To me to be religious means many things, because
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