It is the eternal life, flowing through mountains, through forests, through plains. The child that has come through you has been coming through many other people before you. He has eternity behind him and eternity ahead of him. He had been in many houses, in many cities, in many strange places. In those millions of vehicles, you are also one. Be humble and be respectful to the child. No society in the world, up to now, has been respectful to the children. All respect is for the elders, all respect is for the old, almost dead. All respect is for the graveyards; no respect for the cradles.

And the child is the purest life – uncontaminated.

Almustafa is right when he says:

They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you…

They are coming from the very beginning.

And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

These small statements have tremendous implications if you understand that the child is: Life’s longing for itself. Then the child is closer to the very source of life than the old man. The old man is closer to death. But strange – death has been worshipped, respected, and life has been crushed, destroyed in every possible way.

If you know they come from you but they do not belong to you, then no parent is going to impose his religion, his politics, his ideas on the innocent child. He comes as a tabula rasa – nothing is written on him – and the parents are in such a hurry to make him a Christian, to make him a Hindu, to make him a Buddhist.

I remember my own childhood. My parents naturally wanted me to go with them when they went to the temple, to the religion they belonged to, but I have been a little bit crazy from the very beginning.

I told them, “It is your religion, it is your temple. You should have a little more patience. Give me time. I will find my own religion, my own temple.”

They said, “What kind of nonsense are you talking? Every child belongs to the religion he is born into.”

I said, “Every other child may belong, may not belong – that is their business. As far as I am concerned, I do not belong to any religion. I have not even searched for it. Allow me and help me to stand on my own feet. Don’t cripple me. Don’t destroy me. If there is truth, I will find it. But it cannot be borrowed – you cannot give it to me.”

They were obviously not happy. I never wrote with my name, the name of my religion… It was good that I entered school a little later than other children, because my mother’s father had only one daughter, my mother. And he lived in a faraway village where people had not seen the railway train, a car, a bus, because there was no road.