"All your physical needs are fulfilled, all your psychological needs are fulfilled. Only then do you start feeling the spiritual urge.

"Religion in fact is the only luxury, because it happens when you are rich in every possible way.

"Blessed are not the poor, because they shall never know the kingdom of God; the question of inheritance does not arise.

"Blessed are the rich, those rich in every dimension of life.

"They need not bother about God; the kingdom of God is theirs, not God's. But the basic thing is the richness in all dimensions.

"This will help you to understand why East and West have developed differently. The East is very ancient; Western history starts with Jesus Christ. That's why you use 'before Christ, 'after Christ' – Christ is the demarcating line. Before Christ it is prehistory, mythology, there is no evidence for it. After Christ things start becoming more factual; you have evidence for them.

"But Christ is only two thousand years old. Centuries before Western history began the East had reached to its highest peak of material richness – in all dimensions. Not only had it reached to its ultimate peak of development, it had also fallen. This all happened before the West started its history. In comparison to the East the West is childish.

"The East is ancient. This is the reason why religion reached its highest peak in the East. Science too began there. For example, arithmetic began in India many centuries before Jesus Christ. Astronomy began in India many centuries before Jesus Christ. Medicine began in India. Printing, the mechanism to print, began in China one thousand years before Jesus Christ. Guns, machine guns, all were invented in China.

"If we look into the past of the East there is every evidence that they might have invented something like airplanes. There is so much evidence that it cannot be simply overlooked.

"As far as richness is concerned, India was known all over the world as a golden bird. Columbus, who stumbled on and discovered America, was not trying to discover America, remember. He had started his journey to go to India. There were connections between the West and India."