The Taj Mahal is unique in the whole world

There is no other building that can be compared to it. And it was made by a great emperor. It took thirty years in building, and almost ten thousand stonecutters, sculptors.... Master builders were gathered from faraway countries, the best from Iran, from Turkey, from Egypt, from Arabia. And the emperor who was making it had the whole empire of India and all the money was pouring into it.
These ten thousand people worked almost.... When they had come they were young; by the time the Taj Mahal was completed, either they were old or dead. The second generation was working. Sometimes they had come old -- they were famous so they were brought -- so the third generation was working.
And the emperor who was making it as a memorial to his wife, Mumtaj, was also making on the other side of the river Jamuna his own memorial. When he died he would be buried there. Emperors took care while they were alive to make their memorial too, because after they were dead nobody was going to bother to put so much money and effort into it.
But his whole treasure was finished with the wife's memorial. His own memorial has only the foundation stones. He could not complete it because he was dethroned by his own son and kept in jail. And the son immediately dropped the plan of the second memorial.
The Taj Mahal is made of white marble, all Italian marble. And the other memorial, just on the other side of the river -- at the end he was going to make a bridge -- was going to be exactly the same as the Taj Mahal, but in black marble. He was creating a beautiful symmetry. The architect was going to be exactly the same, the building exactly the same, just the marble was going to be white on the wife's memorial and black on his own memorial.
Now these followers wanted to try to make something better than the Taj Mahal, because thousands of tourists were coming every day to see the Taj Mahal. Naturally they thought it was not only a question of prestige, it was also a question of business. It had been going on for almost one hundred years.
They had been able to make only the ground floor. Certainly they have made it far better than the Taj Mahal, but there seems to be no possibility that they will be able to complete it. They wanted to make it a three-story building, so it goes higher than the Taj Mahal, but all the money that they could collect from their followers from all over India is finished. For one hundred years continuously thousands of workers have been involved in making it.

I have seen.... Their pillars are so beautiful, so creative: on the pillars they have made creepers in marble. And the creepers have green flowers of green marble and roses on top of the creepers made in rubies, emeralds, diamonds. They have certainly made it clear that if they complete it -- even incomplete -- it has gone beyond the Taj Mahal. They are immensely happy. They invited me when I was speaking at Agra University.... They invited me to show me their incomplete memorial. They have done a tremendously great job.

They took me inside. Inside they have a map drawn on the marble and on the map there are fourteen divisions.