"It will be a kind of religiousness – just a vague feeling, not a definite thought. You can experience it, but you cannot explain it. It will not be like a flower, it will be more like a fragrance. If you are not suffering from cold you will be able to feel it, the fragrance. And people's heads are too full of coldness; they are suffering from cold, they have become frozen. One is a Hindu, another is a Christian.

"That is the meaning of your name, Christina: a Christian.

"Be a christ and never be a Christian! Be a buddha, never be a Buddhist! That is settling for rubbish. When you can experience the truth yourself, why settle for secondhand knowledge? All religions are secondhand knowledge.

"When a master is alive he has a certain climate, there is no doubt about it, a certain atmosphere around him, where people start growing – growing into themselves. That is true conversion. Conversion does not mean a Hindu becoming a Christian or a Christian becoming a Hindu; that is not conversion. That is simply changing one prison for another, moving from one dead system of thought to another dead system of thought – but you remain the same.

"Conversion means a radical change in your being. It is not a question of changing your ideology, it is a question of changing your consciousness. In that sense, people are certainly being converted. And I am not converting them, they are allowing themselves to be converted. Remember that difference. I am not interested in converting anybody; I am simply making a space available for those who want to go through this revolution. They can go through this revolution. Neither directly nor indirectly am I trying to make you part of any religion.

"Just the other day I was readingsomebody has written – a Hindu – that I am converting people into Jainism because I was born in a Jaina religion. And Jainas think that I am converting Jainas into the Hindu religion because orange is a Hindu color – as if colors can also be Hindu or Mohammedan! And Christians have been writing letters to me, writing articles against me, that I am converting Christians to Hinduism."