"Other religions say the material world, the world of money and power and prestige, is a mind-game – but they don't say that God, heaven, virtue, are mind-games. It is here that Zen is the ultimate religion. It says all is a mind-game. 'All' is all – whatsoever Zen says, it means. Mind includes everything that you can know, mind includes everything that you can experience, mind includes everything that is possible.

"Then is there any way to know the real which is not a mind game? There is a way, arid that is to drop the mind itself. When the mind is dropped, the reality is there. While the mind persists, it goes on creating its own reality. And that reality which is there when mind is dropped cannot be expressed through the mind.

"That's why Zen is absolutely silent about God. Not that God is not – but the God that we can talk about will be a mind-game, it will be our projection. Meera projects Krishna, Theresa projects Christ, Ramakrishna projects Mother Kali – but these are all projections. Beautiful projections. Obviously, when Meera is seeing Krishna playing on his flute it is a beautiful dream – but it is a dream, Zen says. It is imagination. You can put so much in it that it can become more real than you. But this reality is created by you, it is invented by you.

"Meera will not see Christ, that is not her investment. And Theresa will not see Krishna, that is not her investment. A Christian goes on seeing Christ, and a Buddhist goes on seeing Buddha. Whatsoever you believe, you can see. If you believe hard enough, it becomes real. But this reality is just a relative reality, an invented reality. There is not much difference between it and dreaming.

"Every night you invent a reality, and while you are dreaming it looks so real, so authentically real. Every morning you find it was false. Millions of times you have found it was false – but again you will go to sleep tonight and again it will be real. The mind will again play the game.

"Even absurd dreams look real, which are not possible, not at all possible."