(excerpts)

The object of our technology is to control the world, to have a
superelectronic pushbutton universe, where we can get anything we want, fulfill any desires
simply by pushing a button. You're Aladdin with the lamp, you rub it, the jinni comes and
says, "Salaam, I'm your humble servant, what do you wish? Anything you want."

And after a while, just as in those dreams I described you would decide one day to forget that
you were dreaming, you would say to the jinni of the lamp, "I would like a surprise." Or God,
in the Court of Heaven, might turn to his vizier, and say, "Oh, Commander of the Faithful, we
are bored." And the vizier of the Court would reply, "Oh King, live forever, surely out of the
infinitude of your wisdom you can discover some way of not being bored." And the King
would reply, "Oh vizier, give us a surprise." That's the whole basis of the story of the Arabian
Nights. Here was a very powerful sultan, who was bored. And therefore he challenged
Scheherazade to tell him a new story every night so that the telling of the tales, getting
involved in adventures, would never, never end.

Isn't that the reason why we go to the theater, why we go to the movies, because we want to
get out of ourselves? We want a surprise; and a surprise means that you have toother
yourself. That is to say, there has to enter into your experience some element that is not under
your control.

So if our technology were to succeed completely, and everything were to be under our
control, we should eventually say, "We need a new button." With all these control buttons, we
always have to have a button labeled SURPRISE, and just so it doesn't become too
dangerous, we'll put a time limit on it—surprise for 15 minutes, for an hour, for a day, for a
month, a year, a lifetime. Then, in the end, when the surprise circuit is finished, we'll be back
in control and we'll all know where we are. And we'll heave a sigh of relief, but, after a while,
we'll press the button labeled SURPRISE once more.

Curiously enough, there is something parallel to this in Christianity. There's a passage in St.
Paul's Epistle to the Philippians in which he says a very curious thing: "Let this mind be in
you which was also in Christ Jesus, who being in the form of God, did not think identity with
God a thing to be clung to, but humbled himself and made himself of no reputation, and was
found in fashion as a man and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross." Here
you have exactly the same idea, the idea of God becoming human, suffering all that human
beings can suffer, even death. And St. Paul is saying, "Let this mind be in you," that is to say,
let the same kind of consciousness be in you that was in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ knew he
was God.

Wake up and find out eventually who you really are. In our culture, of course, they'll say
you're crazy or you're blasphemous, and they'll either put you in jail or in the nut house
(which is the same thing). But if you wake up in India and tell your friends and relations,
"My goodness, I've just discovered that I'm God," they'll laugh and say, "Oh, congratulations,
at last you found out."