Chapter 34: The Sound of Truth: “Aha!”
All the religions have created a split between the real and the spiritual - this world and that world, body and soul, matter and spirit. Nobody has yet recognized that this division in existence is the basis of all schizophrenia in humanity.
Every person is split, he is not one. To be split is to be sick, and to be one and whole is to be healthy and holy. I am against the split. I want you to know that your body is your visible spirit, and your spirit is your invisible body. The universe that you can see is the visible body of existence, and the universe that you can only feel - the beauty of a flower, the blissfulness of silence, the ecstasy of one’s own being - that is the invisible part of the universe. They are one, there is no dividing line anywhere. Certainly they are not opposed to each other.
It is so simple to understand that your body and your soul are not opposed to each other; otherwise, how can they live together? How can they live in such harmony?
But religions had to make the split; their whole business was dependent on the split: God is separate from existence, the soul is separate from the body. That opens the doors to all kinds of exploitation in the name of religion, because then they can say, “Your body is dragging you towards hell, and unless you fight with your body, its nature, its instincts, its hunger, its sensuality, its sexuality - everything that makes up your body - unless you conquer it, you will not enter into the kingdom of God. Only pure souls who have transcended their bodies enter there.”
Naturally, millions of people have been torturing their bodies to attain spirituality. All that they attain is stupidity. The more they torture their body, the more unintelligent they become, because the body gives everything needed for their intelligence. And if they start fighting the body, those resources stop flowing towards their intelligence.
I have never come across a single so-called saint in my life - and I have seen thousands - who had any gleam of intelligence in his eyes, who had any aura of beauty around him; who had any magnetism that made you feel pulled towards him. On the contrary: in India, there are Jaina saints..
Because they are against the body, perhaps their religion is the most anti-life religion. They don’t take a bath, they don’t wash their teeth, because that is all serving the devil, decorating the devil. They stink, because they have not taken a bath for years. Their perspiration has gathered on their body in layers - dust and perspiration. And they live naked, so the whole body is available to the dust. They don’t wash their mouth. You cannot talk to them sitting closely, because every word that they speak comes as a shock: their breath is unbearable.