I was reading on the back of a book called The Book and you're saying, 'I teach a sensuous religion; beauty is far more valuable than truth. Beauty is God himself, truth is just an aspect of beauty.' And I'd like to ask you three questions about those quotes:
Are you actually teaching a religion?
Is there a God? Do you believe in God, or maybe you're even some kind of God to your disciples yourself?
And you're saying beauty is far more valuable than truth. Is that why – from what I see – most of the people here are young, good-looking people?

"That is my way of disposing of God. When I say beauty is God, I'm saying there is no God, but only beauty. And I am making a distinction between truth and beauty because truth is more a question of the head. It is a more logical, philosophical inquiry. Beauty is of the heart. It is not logical, not philosophical; it is more poetic, more aesthetic. You can feel it, but you cannot prove it. You can experience it, but you cannot explain it.

"Truth – the very word looks dead, a logical conclusion. Beauty is not a conclusion, it is a sudden revelation. When you see a rose it is not that you go through a logical solipsism, 'This is a rose, and roses are beautiful, so this must be beautiful.' The moment you see it, the head stops spinning thoughts. On the contrary, your heart starts beating faster. It is something totally different from the idea of truth.

"Truth is argumentative. Whenever somebody proves a truth, all that he proves is that he is more logically proficient than his opponent. So, in the whole history of philosophy, every philosopher has been contradicted: five thousand years of philosophy, and not a single truth on which all the philosophers agree.

"Beauty is a totally different phenomenon. It is not a question of proving it. If you see a woman as beautiful, nobody is going to ask why. The question why is irrelevant about beauty. You need not prove it, nor can you. In fact, if the other person is idiotic enough and continues to say, 'You have to prove why this woman is beautiful,' you will be at a loss. You cannot prove it, because it is something of the heart, and proofs are something of the head.

"What I am saying in that statement is that the experience of religion is just like the experience of beauty, love. It is of the heart. It is not a theology, it is not a philosophy; it is more like a poetry, a painting, a sculpture.

"It happened that Picasso was painting on a beach, and a man was watching him for almost two hours. He looked at the painting from every angle, and finally he could not contain his curiosity."