"Life knows no full stop, it goes on and on. The full stop is only for those who are not courageous. Then just a little joy, a little light, a little song, suffices them.

"I would like my people never to be satisfied. To be unsatisfied about worldly things is meaningless – with the worldly things you can be satisfied – but to be satisfied with spiritual growth is committing suicide. Contentment with the world and discontentment for God is the way.

"It is true – if your heart is beating with my heart you will hear me ahead of time because whatever I am saying is nothing new: it is only dormant in you, asleep in you. When your heart is dancing with me, that which is asleep in you becomes awake. And the quality of awakening is the same, so you can hear me ahead of time. That is a very significant indication of coming closer and closer to the state of a devotee.

"You say, 'I see that you are here and then I feel that it is only your body present. When you speak of Jesus, you are he; when you speak of Buddha, you are he; when you speak of Mahavira, you are he; I see that you are all masters.'

"Every master is all masters, because the message is the same. Every master is only a vehicle, a passage, but what comes through that passage belongs to existence itself. It cannot be otherwise. The language is going to be different, the ways of expression are going to be different, but the essential core of the message is eternally the same.

"It is because I feel such a deep affinity with Buddha, Mahavira, Jesus, Zarathustra, Bodhidharma, Moses, that I feel an absolute right even to criticize them. That is out of my love.

"People misunderstand: they think I have criticized Jesus, I have simply corrected him. Jesus is two thousand years old. In two thousand years the very style of life has changed; the concepts, the words, the approach to reality has changed. Although the fingers are pointing to the same moon, the fingers are different. And my love for Jesus or Buddha is so great that I don't feel any difficulty in criticizing them – just like a friend can criticize you, not a stranger."