"You have not chosen to be a Christian or a Hindu or a Buddhist; hence it is absolutely meaningless, it carries no weight. It is at the most a social phenomenon. It has nothing to do with religion, it has no sacredness about it – a social conformity, useful in its own ways.

"Your church is nothing but a club. Just as there are Rotarians, so there are Christians. You belong to a certain club and the club has a few privileges; belonging to it, you also have the right to have those privileges. It is not a search for truth because the search for truth does not make you part of a tradition. It certainly makes you a disciple, but not a part of a dead tradition, religion, organization. It certainly brings you close to a Christ or a Buddha, but it has nothing to do with the scriptures.

"A living master is bound to happen to the person who is in search of truth, who wants to know the meaning of life, who wants to go to the innermost core of his being, who wants to know the depth and the height of existence. He will have to hold hands with a master.

"The master is one who has already known. The master is one who has been to the other shore and has come to this shore to show you the path. But only a master can show the path – a living master, remember. A tradition is just a fossil, a corpse. Yes, once there may have been a light, but the light has gone to the infinite long, long ago.

"Twenty-five centuries have passed since Buddha's flame became one with the universal flame. Now you can go on worshipping Buddha, but you will not be, in the real sense, a disciple – you can't be. The Buddha you worship is your own invention, your projection. You will have to find a real buddha, a man who is alive, just as alive as you are, who is in the body, whose flame can help your unlit candle to become lit, whose fire can consume you.

"But churches and temples and creeds and dogmas cannot consume you, they cannot make you aflame."