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Zarathustra, amongst all the religious founders, is the only one who is life-affirmative, who is not against life, whose religion is a religion of celebration, of gratefulness to existence. He is not against the pleasures of life, and he is not in favor of renouncing the world. On the contrary, he is in absolute support of rejoicing in the world, because except for this life and this world, all are hypothetical ideologies. God, heaven and hell, they are all projections of the human mind, not authentic experiences; they are not realities.
"Zarathustra is immensely in love with life and all that life provides. He is the only mystic with immense affirmation of life. There is no place for renouncing anything -- life is a gift of existence. Learn to enjoy it! Relish in it! Dance with the trees, and dance with the stars. Love without jealousy. Live without competition. Accept everybody without judgment. And then there is no need for any God. And there is no need for any paradise.
We can transform this very earth into a divine existence. Our very life can become the expression of godliness.
I am all for godliness because godliness is a quality you can learn, you can grow. God is just a dead idea. The sooner it is dropped, the better, because it unnecessarily wastes your time.
Millions of people are praying around the earth, not knowing that there is nobody to hear their prayers. Millions are worshiping stone statues. If they cannot love living human beings, how is it possible for them to love stone statues? But stone statues are comfortable. They don't create any trouble. You can do anything you want: you can pour water over them or milk over them, you can offer them rotten coconuts, and they will not even object. You can say anything in any language, right or wrong, to the stone statue, it does not matter.
Love needs the other to be living, alive. But then you have to learn the art.
It is one of the stupidities that no university in the world teaches people the art of living, the art of loving, the art of meditating. And I think anything else is far lower than love, life, meditation, laughter. You may be a great surgeon, you may be a great engineer, you may be a great scientist -- still you will need a sense of humor, still you will need the art of love, still you will need the art of living, still you will need all these great values in your life.
But you will be surprised: I teach only these things -- love, life, laughter, and as a background for all these, meditation -- but the government of India is not willing to accept this school as an institution of education. They would accept it as an institution of education, if I was teaching geography, history, chemistry, physics -- the mundane things of life.
I don't say that they should not be taught, but they should not be the only education. They should be a lower kind of education, and each university should have a higher faculty of education where you are taught real values of life... because geography cannot make you a better man, nor can history make you a better lover, nor can chemistry make you meditative.
All that is being taught in the universities cannot give you the sense of humor. You cannot laugh, you cannot dance, you cannot sing. Your life becomes almost like a desert.
Zarathustra would like your life to be a garden where birds sing, where flowers blossom, where trees dance, where the sun comes with joy. Zarathustra is absolutely for life, and that is the reason why he does not have many followers. The poisoners, the destructive people, have millions of followers. And a unique teacher and a unique mystic whose whole message is love and life, has got the smallest religion in the world.
Zarathustra's religion should be the only religion. All other religions should be buried in the cemeteries, because except for life there is no God, and except for love there is no prayer."
Zarathustra: A God that can Dance
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