The word discipline comes from these people, and the word effort also comes from these people. They have created such a world emphasizing work, effort, endeavor, struggle, achievement; that they have turned almost everybody into a workaholic – which is worse than an alcoholic, because the alcoholic at least feels that he is doing something wrong. The workaholic feels he is doing the right thing, and those who are not workaholics are lazy people, worthless; they don’t even have any right to exist, because they are a burden.
They have destroyed beautiful words, given them new connotations, new meanings. For example, discipline. Discipline does not mean what you have heard that it means. The word discipline comes from the same root as disciple. Its root meaning is: capacity to learn, learning to be more sensitive, to be more aware, to be more sincere, to be more authentic, to be more creative. Life is a beautiful journey if it is a process of constant learning, exploration. Then it is excitement every moment, because every moment you are opening a new door, every moment you are coming in contact with a new mystery.
The word disciple means one who learns, and discipline means the process of learning. But the word has been prostituted. Discipline means obedience. They have turned the whole world into a camp of boy scouts. High above there is somebody who knows – you need not learn, you have simply to obey. They have turned the meaning of discipline into its very opposite. Learning automatically consists of doubting, of questioning, of being skeptical, of being curious, certainly not of being a believer, because a believer never learns. But they have used the word for thousands of years in this way. And it is not only one word that they have prostituted; they have prostituted many words. Beautiful words have become so ugly in the hands of the vested interests that you cannot even imagine the original meaning of the word…thousands of years of misuse.
They want everybody to be disciplined the way people are disciplined in the army. You are ordered; you have to do it without asking why. This is not the way of learning. And even from the very beginning they have imposed stories on the minds of people, that the first sin committed was disobedience. Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden because they disobeyed. I have tried in thousands of ways, but I don’t see that they have committed any sin or any crime. They were simply exploring. You are in a garden and you start exploring the fruits and flowers and what is edible and what is not edible.
And God is responsible, because he prohibited them from two trees. He indicated the trees: “You should not approach these two trees. One is the tree of wisdom, and the other is the tree of eternal life.” Just think, if you were Adam and Eve was not God himself tempting you to go to those two trees? And those two trees were of wisdom and of eternal life. Why should God be against them? If he was really a father, one who loves you, he might have pointed to them, saying, “This is a poisonous tree, don’t eat from it” or, “This is the tree of death; if you eat anything, you will die.” But these two trees are perfectly fine – eat as much as you can, because to be wise and to have eternal life is absolutely right.