You are asking me how to save humanity from falling even further.
Humanity has never been falling.
What has been happening is that all the religious dogmas sooner or later become small and cannot contain man.
Man goes on growing:
Dogmas don’t grow, doctrines don’t grow.
The doctrines remain the same and man outgrows them.
The priest clings to the doctrine. That is his heritage, his power, tradition, ancient wisdom. He clings to it. Now what to say about the man who goes on outgrowing all those doctrines? Certainly to the priest this is a continuous fall; man is falling.
Just take a few examples and you will understand how doctrines are bound to be rigid, static, dead.
Man is alive. You cannot hold him in something which does not grow with him. He will break all those prisons, he will shatter all those chains.
For example, in Jainism the Jaina monk is not supposed to use shoes, for the simple reason that in ancient days shoes were made only of leather, and leather comes from animals; animals are killed. It is a symbol of violence, and Mahavira wanted his followers not to be in any way – directly or indirectly – involved in violence.
He prevented everybody from wearing shoes. He was not aware that one day shoes of rubber would be available, which involves no violence. Shoes of synthetic leather would be available, which involves no violence. Shoes of cloth would be available, which involves no violence. He was not aware. So it indicates two things. The claim of the Jainas that Mahavira is omniscient is nonsense; he knew nothing of synthetic leather – he cannot be omniscient.
Secondly, now twenty-five centuries have passed: Jaina monks and nuns are still walking barefooted on the dusty roads in hot weather in a country like India. You should see their feet; tears will come to your eyes. The skin of their feet is all broken, as broken as when for two or three years rains don’t come and the earth breaks; and blood is oozing out of those wounds. Still they have to go on walking; they cannot use a vehicle, because in those days again a vehicle meant horse-driven, bullock-driven – and that was violence.
And I can understand that it is violence. Who are you to force poor animals to pull your vehicles and to pull you? But Mahavira was not aware that there would be cars which would not be pulled by horses but would have horsepower without horses, that there would be trains, electrical vehicles.
He was not aware of that, that there would be airplanes with the least possibility of violence.
Even walking you will do more violence because it is not only when you kill an elephant that it is violence. According to Jainism the soul has the same status in the ant, the smallest ant, and the biggest elephant. Only the bodies are different – the souls are the same. So when you are walking on the road you may be killing many insects; not only insects, even when you are breathing you are killing very small living cells in the air. Just by the hot air coming out of your nose, your mouth, they are being killed.
Perhaps for the Jaina monk and nun the airplane is the most non-violent vehicle. When I suggested it to Jaina monks they said, ”What are you saying? If somebody hears it we will be thrown out, expelled!”
I could convince just one Jaina monk, and certainly he was expelled. He was a little stupid. We both were staying in one temple, and I told him, ”You unnecessarily walk ten miles every day from this place to the city, while a car comes for me; you can go with me.”
He said, ”But if anybody sees?”
I said, ”We can always manage.” He used to have a bamboo mat, so I said, ”You put the bamboo mat on the sofa in the car, and sit on the bamboo mat.”
He said, ”What will that do?”
I said, ”You can simply say, ‘I am sitting on my bamboo mat; I am not concerned with the car or anything.’”
He said, ”This is perfectly right, because if I am sitting on the bamboo mat and somebody pulls my bamboo mat, what can I do?”
I said, ”That’s right – you just sit on the bamboo mat.” I took him in the car, and we reached the place where there was a meeting in which I and he were both going to speak. When they saw him sitting .... And I asked somebody to come and pull the bamboo mat out, with him sitting on top of it.
They said, ”What is all this?”
I said, ”You first pull him out, because he has nothing to do with the car – he is simply sitting on his bamboo mat. I have pushed his bamboo mat into the car; now we have to take him out.” And I had told him, ”You simply sit with your eyes closed.” I said to them, ”He is a very meditative person, and don’t disturb him, just pull his mat.”
They pulled, but they were angry that this ....”We never heard of it: a Jaina monk sitting in a car! And we know perfectly well this is not a meditative monk; this is the first time we have seen him sitting with closed eyes. He is not very erudite either, not scholarly or anything.”
He knew only three speeches, and he used to ask me which one would be right, so I used to make the sign one, two, or three; that would do. So whichever finger I raised first he would do that speech.
And I always managed to let him deliver the wrong speech, one which was not supposed to be for that audience, but he depended on my finger; he was a little stupid.
Finally they expelled him just because he sat in the car. While I was there they could not, because I argued for him, ”He has nothing to do with it. You could expel me – but you cannot because I am not your monk, I don’t belong to anybody; nobody in the whole world can expel me. But you can expel me; if you can enjoy expelling, you can expel me. But he is absolutely innocent.”
So in front of me they could not do anything, but the moment I left, the next day, they expelled him.
They took away all his symbols of a Jaina monk. Only after five, seven years passed I met him in Lucknow, and what a great coincidence! – he was driving a taxi, he had become a taxi-driver. That’s how I met him – at the railway station, because I had to get down there and go to a hotel and wait at least eight hours; then my next train would come which would take me to the place where I was going.
So in Lucknow I had no work and I had not informed anybody, so I could just rest eight hours. By chance I called the taxi and he came. I said, ”What! You are driving a taxi.”
He said, ”It is all your doing.”
I said, ”But I think it is perfectly logical: from car to car, and from the back seat to the front seat. This is what evolution is! And at that time you were even afraid to sit down; now you are driving. You keep going: soon you will be a pilot and someday I will meet you in the air.”
He said, ”Don’t joke with me. I have been so angry with you, but seeing you all my anger has gone – you are such a nice person. But why did you do that to me?”
I said, ”I took you out of that bondage; now you can go to the cinema, you can smoke cigarettes.
You can do everything that you want.”
”I am. Yes, that is true,” he said, ”that you have made me free. I was a slave of those people; I could not even move without their permission. Now I don’t care a bit about anybody; I earn my living and I live the way I want to live. If you could help all the other Jaina monks also ....”
I said, ”I try my best but the followers are always surrounding them, protecting them, insisting that
they should not talk with me. They say ‘Even talk is dangerous because this man may put some idea in your mind.’”
All the religions are afraid of thinking, afraid of raising questions, afraid of doubt, afraid of disobedience, and stuck centuries back – for the simple reason that these things were not available then. Those people who were making those rules had no idea what the future was going to be.
Hence all the religions are agreed that man is continuously falling because he is not following the scriptures, not following the doctrines, not following the messiahs, the prophets. But I don’t see that
man is falling. In fact man’s sensitivity has grown.
His intelligence has grown, his life span has grown. He is more capable now of getting rid of slavery and patterns of slavery.
Man is courageous enough to doubt, question, enquire. This is not a fall.
This is the beginning of a true religion spreading. Soon it can become a wildfire.
But to the priests certainly it is a fall. Everything is a fall because it is not according to their scriptures.
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