That’s what knowledge is: a glass eye. You cannot see through it, it is impossible to see through it.

Drop all your conclusions – Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, Jaina, Jewish. Drop all the knowledge that has been forced upon you. Every child has been poisoned – poisoned by knowledge, poisoned by the parents, the society, the church, the state. Every child has been distracted from his innocence, from his not-knowing. And that’s why every child, slowly slowly, becomes so burdened that he loses all joy of life, all ecstasy of being, and he becomes just like the crowd, part of the crowd.

In fact, the moment a child is perfectly conditioned by you, you are very happy; you call it “religious education.” You are very happy that the child has been initiated into the religion of his parents. All that you have done is you have destroyed his capacity to know on his own. You have destroyed his authenticity. You have destroyed his very precious innocence. You have closed his doors and windows. Now he will live an encapsulated existence. He will live in his inner darkness, surrounded by all kinds of stupid theories, systems of thought, philosophies, ideologies. He will be lost in a jungle of words and he will not be able to come out of it easily.

Even if he comes across a master, if he meets a buddha, then too it will take years for him to unlearn – because learning becomes almost your blood, your bones, your marrow. And to go against your own knowledge seems to be going against yourself, against your tradition, against your country, against your religion. It seems as if you are a traitor, as if you are betraying. In fact, your society has betrayed you, has contaminated your soul.

Every society has been doing that up to now, and every society has been very successfully doing it. That’s why it is so rare to find a Buddha; it is so rare to escape from the traps the society puts all around the child. And the child is so unaware; he can easily be conditioned, hypnotized. And that’s what goes on and on in the temples, in the churches, in the schools, colleges, universities. They all serve the past; they don’t serve the future. Their function is to perpetuate the past, the dead past.

My work here is just the opposite. I am not here to perpetuate the past; hence I am against all knowledge. I am all for learning, but learning means innocence, learning means openness, learning means receptivity. Learning means a non-egoistic approach towards reality. Learning means: “I don’t know and I am ready – ready to know.” Knowledge means: “I know already.” Knowledge is the greatest deception that society creates in people’s minds.

My function is to serve the future, not the past. The past is no more, but the future is coming every moment. I want you to become innocent, seers, knowers – not knowledgeable – alert, aware, not unconsciously clinging to conclusions.