"These are all exploiting humanity in the name of religion. They are not religions at all. They are superstitions.

"Of course superstitions should remain separate from the state. What kind of superstition it is does not matter: Hindu, Christian, Jewish. Superstition of all shapes and sizes should be kept as far away from the state as possible because the state is power, and if superstitions become joined with power they can do immense harm. They are doing immense harm even without the state. They have managed to create power of their own, they have their own generators. That's what is meant by 'organized religion'.

"A religious person has no power.

"He is humble. Not that he has practiced humbleness, he simple enjoys being humble. He has simply understood the stupidity and suffering of the ego, and by that sheer understanding, all that nonsense has disappeared. Suddenly he finds himself humble, egoless; he is harmless.

"But organized religion is nothing but politics in the name of religion. And the people who organize it are not religious, cannot be. The popes, the shankaracharyas, the imams, the rabbis – these people are not religious at all for the simple reason that they are full of knowledgeability, while a religious man knows he knows nothing. He knows that existence is so mysterious, there is no way to reduce it into knowledge. He is mystified by existence.

"A truly religious person is a mystic.

"He is a poet – not writing poetry, but living poetry.

"He is a painter – not painting on the canvas but painting on his own consciousness continuously.

"He is a musician; he may have never touched any instrument but he is continuously playing on his own inner being a music which cannot be translated in any way, cannot be brought from those higher realms of being to the lower, darker valleys of our life.

"He is a dancer; he may not move from one posture but his being is in a continual dance.

"A religious person cannot be Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan. To be religious is to be so vast you cannot confine it in such small prisons – churches, sects, creeds, dogmas.

"A religious man has no catechism."