When a man is happy with his body, has enough to eat, has a good house to live in, he starts becoming interested in music, poetry, literature, painting, art. Now a new hunger arises. The bodily needs are fulfilled, now psychological needs arise.
There is a hierarchy in needs: the first is the body; it is the base, it is the ground-floor of your being. Without the ground-floor, the first storey cannot exist.
When your bodily needs are fulfilled, psychological needs arise. When your psychological needs are also fulfilled, then your spiritual needs arise.
When a person has listened to all the music that is available in the world, and has seen all the beauty, and has found that it is all dream; has listened to all the great poets, and has found that it is just a way to forget yourself, just a way to intoxicate yourself, but it does not lead you anywhere; has seen all the paintings and the great art — amusing, entertaining, but then what…?
Then hands remain empty, more empty than they ever were before. Then music and poetry are not enough. Then the desire to meditate, the desire to pray, a hunger for God, a hunger for truth arises. A great passion takes possession of you and you are in search of truth, because you now know: unless you know what the secretmost truth of this existence is, nothing can satisfy. All else you have tried and it has failed.
Religion is the ultimate luxury. Either you have to be very rich to come to this luxury, or you have to be tremendously intelligent. But in both the cases you are rich — rich with money or rich with intelligence. I have never seen a person who is really poor — poor in intelligence, poor in riches — ever become religious.
But a certain sort of richness is needed.
OSHO
