"And one moment you will be in hell and another moment you will be in heaven. Just observe closely: the climate goes on changing around you. Sometimes it is very cloudy and everything looks dark and dismal, and sometimes it is so sunny, and so beautiful, so joyous. But the mistake, the greatest mistake a man can commit, is to think that the climate is created by outside forces. It is not created by outside forces; it is your inner decision, your inner will. It is your choice. It happens on the outside, but it arises from the deepest core of your being. It needs very alert watchfulness to see this point. Once you have seen it you need not live in hell at all. Why should you choose hell once it is understood that it is your choice?

"For centuries man has been trying to find excuses, rationalizations, pseudo causes outside himself, for a certain reason: it feels very bad that you are the creator of all your miseries. First the miseries are there, and second, the very idea 'I am the creator of all these miseries' hurts even more than the miseries themselves. Man has been finding a thousand and one ways to avoid this hurt, to avoid this wound, to avoid this great responsibility..

"In the past we created the idea of God: that he determines, that everything is preordained, predetermined, that a child is born absolutely determined. God determines what man is going to be; he is not free, he has no freedom. If there is no freedom, there can be no responsibility; if there is freedom, then there is responsibility. They come together, they are inseparable. Man was ready to gain his freedom, but he was very afraid to accept the responsibility. Even at the cost of losing freedom he wanted to be absolutely without responsibility. At least he could say, 'It is not my will that I am suffering. What can I do? I am helpless! God has preordained it.' Or fate, kismet

"The religions which don't believe in God and don't believe in fate either had to find some other explanation, but it is the same thing. They have found the theory of reincarnation, the theory of karma: your past lives determine your present life."