FUNDAMENTALISM

    Religion is a very complex phenomenon, and its complexity
has to be understood.
    There are seven types of religions in the world. The first type
is ignorance-oriented. Because people cannot tolerate their igno-
rance, they hide it. Because it is difficult to accept that one does
not know, it is against the ego, people believe. Their belief systems
function to protect their egos. The beliefs seem to be helpful, but
in the long range they are very harmful. In the beginning they
seem to be protective, but finally they are very destructive. The
very orientation lies in ignorance.
    A major part of humanity remains in the first type of religion.
It is simply to avoid the reality, to avoid the gap that one feels in
one's own being, to avoid the black hole of ignorance. The people
of the first type are the fanatics. They cannot even tolerate that
there can be other sorts of religions in the world. Their religion is
the religion. Because they are so afraid of their ignorance, if there
is some other religion besides theirs, then they might become sus-
picious, then doubt might arise. Then they will not be so certain.
To gain certainty they become stubborn, madly stubborn. They
cannot read others' scriptures, they cannot listen to other nuances
of truth, they cannot be tolerant to other revelations of God. Their
revelation is the only revelation, and their prophet is the only
prophet. Everything else is absolutely false. These people talk
in terms of absolutes, while a person of understanding is always
relative.
    These people have done great harm to religion. Because of
these people, religion itself looks a little stupid. Remember not to
be a victim of this first sort. Almost 90 percent of humanity lives
in this first sort of religion, and that is in no way better than
being irreligious. Maybe it is worse, because an irreligious person
is not a fanatic. An irreligious person is more open, at least ready
to listen, ready to talk things out, ready to argue, ready to seek and
inquire. But the first type of religious person is not even ready to
listen.
    When I was a student in the university I used to stay with one
of my professors. His mother was a very devout Hindu, completely
uneducated but very religious.
    One day on a cold winter night, a fire was burning in the room
in the fireplace, and I was reading the Rig Veda. She came into the
room and she asked, "What are you reading so late in the night?"
Just to tease her, I said, "This is the Koran." She jumped on me,
took away the Rig Veda, and threw it in the fireplace and said, "Are
you a Mohammedan? How do you dare to bring the Koran in my
house!"
    Next day I told her son, my professor, "Your mother seems to
be a Mohammedan"--because this sort of thing has mostly been
known to be done by Mohammedans. Mohammedans burned one
of the greatest treasures of the ancient world, the library of
Alexandria. The fire continued for almost six months; the library
was so big that it took six months for it to burn down completely.
And the man who burned it was a Mohammedan caliph. His logic
was the logic of the first type of religion. He came with a Koran in
one hand and with a burning torch in the other, and he asked the
librarian, "I have a simple question. In this big library, millions of
books are there ..." Those books contained all that humanity had
learned up to that time, and it was really more than we know now.
That library contained information about Lemuria, Atlantis, and
all the scriptures of Atlantis, the continent that disappeared into
the sea. It was the most ancient library, a great preserve. Had it
still existed, humanity might have been totally different, because
we are still rediscovering many things that had already been
discovered.
    This caliph said, "If this library contains only that which is
contained in the Koran, then it is not needed; it is superfluous. If
it contains more than is contained in the Koran, then it is wrong.
Then it has to be destroyed immediately." Either way it had to be
destroyed. If it contains the same as the Koran, then it is superflu-
ous. Why manage such a big library unnecessarily? The Koran is
enough. And if you say that it contains many more things than
the Koran, then those things are bound to be wrong, because the
Koran is the truth. Holding the Koran in one hand, he started the
fire with the other hand--in the name of the Koran. Mohammed
must have cried and wept that day in heaven, because in his name,
the library was being burned.
    This is the first type of religion. Always remain, alert, because
this stubborn man exists in everybody. It exists in Hindus, it exists
in Mohammedans, it exists in Christians, Buddhists, Jains--it ex-
ists in everybody. And everybody has to be aware not to get caught.
Only then can you rise to higher sorts of religion.
    The problem with this first type of religion is that we are al-
most always brought up in it. We are conditioned in it, so it looks
almost normal. A Hindu is brought up with the idea that others
are wrong. Even if he is taught to be tolerant, that tolerance is of
one who knows towards others who don't know. A Jain is brought
up with the belief that only he is right; others are all ignorant,
stumbling and groping in darkness. This conditioning can become
so deep that you may forget that it is a conditioning and that you
have to go above it. One can become used to a certain conditioning,
and one can start thinking it is one's nature, or it is the truth. So
one has to be very alert and watchful to find this lowest possibility
in oneself and not get caught in it.
    Sometimes we go on working hard in transforming our lives,
yet we go on believing in the first type of religion. The transforma-
tion is not possible, because you are trying in a context that is so
low that it cannot be really religious. The first type of religion is
just religion in name; it should not be called religion.
    The characteristic of the first type is imitation. It insists on
imitation: imitate Buddha,, imitate Christ, imitate Mahavira--but
imitate somebody. Don't be yourself, be somebody else. And if you
are very stubborn you can force yourself to be somebody else.
    You will never be somebody else. Deep down you cannot be.
You will remain yourself, but you can force so much that you al-
most start looking like somebody else.
    Each person is born with a unique individuality, and each per-
son has a destiny of his or her own. Imitation is crime, it is crimi-
nal. If you try to become a Buddha, you may look like Buddha, you
may walk like him, you may talk like him, but you will miss. You
will miss all that life was ready to deliver to you. Buddha happens
only once. It is not in the nature of things to repeat. Existence is so
creative that it never repeats anything. You cannot find another
human being in the present, in the past, or in the future who is
going to resemble you exactly. It has never happened. The human
being is not a mechanism like Ford cars on an assembly line. You
are a soul, individual. Imitation is poisonous. Never imitate any-
body, otherwise you will be a victim of the first sort of religion,
which is not religion at all.
    Then there is the second type. The second type is fear-oriented.
{ To be continued }


				*FUNDAMENTALISM*