In reality everything is within; the outer is just a projection. Fear is within you; then the fear is projected as a hell. Hell is just a projected image on the screen of the fear that is within you – the anger, the jealousy, and all that is poisonous in you, all that is evil in you. Heaven is again a projected image on the screen – of all that is good and beautiful, of all that is blissful within you. The Devil is the fallen human being, God is the risen human being. God is the ultimate possibility of your beatitude; the Devil is the ultimate fall of you. There is nobody like the Devil existing somewhere. You will never meet him unless you become him. And you will never encounter God unless you become God.

In the East religions transcended this anthropocentric attitude very very long ago in the past. Eastern religions are non-anthropocentric. They say you cannot encounter God, you can become God. They say when you reach the ultimate point of existence there will be no God to receive you and welcome you. Only you will be there in your godliness.

So this can be said, and I go on insisting: There exists no God, but existence is divine. There exists no one like a person, a super-person, no one. God is nonexistential, but godliness is existential. The moment I say godliness, it becomes something inward; the moment you say God, you have projected it.

This story is beautiful. The Zen master Hakuin is one of the rare flower-ings. A warrior came to him, a samurai, a great soldier, and he asked, “Is there any hell, is there any heaven? And if there is hell and heaven, where are the gates? Where do I enter from? How can I avoid hell and choose heaven? Where are the gates?” He was a simple warrior. Warriors are always simple.

It is difficult to find a businessman who is simple. He is always cunning, clever; otherwise he cannot be a businessman. A warrior is always simple; otherwise he cannot be a warrior. He knows only two things, life and death – nothing much – and his life is always at stake, he is always gambling. He is a simple man. That’s why businessmen could not create a single Mahavira, a single Buddha. Even brahmins could not create a Rama, a Buddha, a Mahavira, because brahmins are also cunning, cunning in a different way. They are also businessmen – of a different world, of the other. They deal in business, not of this world but of the other world. Their priesthood is a business; their religion is mathematics, arithmetic. They are also clever, very clever, more clever than businessmen, because the businessman is limited to this world; their cunningness goes beyond. They always think of the other world, the rewards they are going to get there, and their rituals, their whole mind is concerned with how to achieve more pleasures in the other world. They are concerned with pleasure: they are businessmen. Even brahmins could not create a Buddha. This is strange. All the twenty-four Jaina tirthankaras are kshatriyas, warriors. Buddha is a warrior; Rama and Krishna are warriors, simple people, with no cunning in their minds, with no arithmetic. They know only two things – life and death.