"Man creates God in his own image. When man's image changes, his God obviously changes. And there comes a point in man's growth when God disappears completely. God as a personal God is out of the immature mind of humanity.

"Existence as divine is a totally different concept. Then God is not a personal being somewhere high in the heaven ruling the world, manipulating, controlling, managing. No, all that nonsense disappears as man becomes mature. It is a childhood concept of God, a childish concept of God. If a small child is to understand God, he has to understand as a personal being. When humanity grows and becomes mature, that God is to die. Then a totally different existence arises. Now the whole existence is divine – not that there is God.

"For Nietzsche himself, this realization that there is no personal God was too much. He could not bear it: he went insane. He was not ready himself to understand what insight had happened to him. He himself was childish; he needed a personal God. But he meditated upon it, and as he meditated, the more and more he became aware that that God is no longer there in the skies. It is dead. And he also became aware that he has been killed by us.

"Of course, if it was created by us, it has to be killed by us. The concept was created by man in his childhood. In his maturity the concept is dropped – as when you were children you played with toys, then you became mature, and you forgot all about those toys. Suddenly one day you come across in a corner of the house, in the rubbish. An old toy. Then you remember how much you had loved it, but now it is meaningless. It has to be thrown; you have changed.

"Man created the personal God, then man destroyed it. This realization was too much for Nietzsche himself; he became insane. His insanity is an indication that he was not prepared for the insight that happened to him.

"But, in the East, Patanjali is absolutely godless. You cannot find a greater atheist than Patanjali, but it does not disturb him because really he is a grown-up man, really grown-up in consciousness, mature, integrated."