And this whole nonsense arises because we have created the idea of the ego. The ego is an effort to disconnect yourself from the whole, although you cannot disconnect yourself from whole, but you can live in the belief that you have succeeded. Your belief is the cause of your hell. Drop the belief of the ego and suddenly you will see messengers running between you and the whole continuously, every moment, day in, day out. Then the birds singing bring messages, the flowers opening bring messages, then the stars twinkling in the night bring messages. Then the whole existence becomes an open book, the real Bible. Then you need not go into old, rotten scriptures; you can simply look around and start reading existence. And then there are sermons everywhere, scriptures everywhere, songs everywhere.

This is the first thing that is represented by the beautiful myth of the angels. You must have seen pictures of the angels: they all look like small children, not even they are young. They look childlike – their faces have the same innocence, the same purity, the same unpoisoned state. Their eyes, their cheeks, their whole personality is that of a child – as if a child has been magnified, as if you are looking a child through a magnifying glass.

All the buddhas have said: Unless you attain your childhood again you will not know what the truth is. But they are not childish, remember – childlike of course, but not childish. To be childish is to be retarded, to be childlike is to be innocent. To be childlike is healthy, to be childish is very unhealthy.

Our society does not allow us to remain childlike; it forces us to become so-called grown-ups, which are not really grown-ups. Physically they are grown-ups but not psychologically; psychologically they are very childish. The average psychological age is only thirteen years. The person may be ninety years old, but his average psychological age remains stuck somewhere at the age thirteen.

This is something very strange. Man should grow as a whole; his psychology, his physiology, his soul, all should grow in a kind of harmonious dance. Then only he remains whole, then only there is health, then only there is sanity. If even one part of you is lagging far behind, then your whole will remain undeveloped because you cannot grow in parts; that is impossible.

It happened in a court:

A thief was caught and just before the magistrate was going to punish him, declare his punishment, the thief said, “Sir, I would like to say one thing before you declare your judgment. That is, I am not responsible and you cannot punish somebody for somebody else’s fault.”

The magistrate said, “What do you mean? Have you not stolen these things? There are eyewitnesses.”

He said, “Yes, they are also right. My hands have done the wrong, but I have not done it. You can punish my hands, but you cannot punish me.”

The magistrate was also a very cunning person. He said, “Okay, which hand has committed the crime?”

And the man said, “My right hand.”

The magistrate said, “That’s all right. Then your right hand is sent to jail for ten years.”

The whole court laughed, because if the hand goes to jail, how can the man remain behind? He will have to go to jail. But the court has to stop laughing in the middle because the man was laughing even more uproariously than the court.

The magistrate said, “You are laughing? Are you mad or something?”