"They are simply befooling themselves.

"I am not a messiah especially sent by God. In the first place there is no God to send anyone. In the second place, for the argument's sake, if there is a God who can create the whole creation, he need not have these mediocre messiahs to change people. He can do it himself. All these people who have been trying to be messengers of God, incarnations of God, the only begotten son of God…may not be bad people. They may be good people; their intention may not be bad. I never suspect their intention, but they are utterly wrong. And because of these people, humanity has suffered tremendously.

"I want human beings to understand that they have the capacity to fall in their consciousness to the lowest level or they can rise to the highest pinnacle of consciousness. They can have friends. Gautam Buddha, Hazrat Mohammed, Jesus Christ should be understood as great friends. Their advice may be of immense value, but the moment they become leaders, the moment Jesus becomes the shepherd and his followers become sheep, it is ugly; it is absolutely inhuman.

"When Mohammed becomes a prophet of God, he raises himself above humanity. That is just an egoistic trip.

"When Buddha allows himself to be worshipped, that his word has to be taken in deep faith, he is harming humanity. I don't belong to their category at all.

"I am a simple, ordinary human being just like you. But I am aware and you are not. This is not much of a difference – you can become aware.

"I am conscious and you are not. I can show you the path just like a friend, but you have to follow the path. I cannot take you to paradise because there is none. These are all fictions created to exploit humanity – the paradise, the hell – because it is a simple psychology that man can be controlled by two things, fear and greed. For fear there is hell; for greed there is heaven.

"It is very easy to manipulate human beings between these two poles. Nobody wants to be in hell for eternity – everybody wants to be in heaven and have all the pleasures eternally."