Remember, the day a child starts thinking of the future he loses innocence. Only up to that moment, while he goes on enjoying the present, is he a child, innocent; uncorrupted is his being. Becoming has not entered in, he is still in paradise.

Paradise is nothing, paradise is a capacity to enjoy yourself right here and now.

You are in paradise, but still you have lost it because you cannot enjoy here and now. You are thinking, planning for the future, somewhere when you become like gods, then you will enjoy it.

Knowledge creates future. Knowledge creates desire. Knowledge creates becoming. Knowledge is sansar, the wheel. When you are in the wheel you go on round and round and round reaching nowhere.

Knowledge is the world. When Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world, he means the world of becoming. He does not mean this world of the trees and the birds singing and the rain falling, and the sky and the clouds, no – he does not mean by “this world”, this world that surrounds you. He means the world that surrounds your mind and your being, the world of becoming, desire – what Buddha calls tanha. The desire to be something other than you are already.

And that is impossible. You are going to be in a constant hell. You can be only that which you are already, nothing else is possible. You are simply trying to do something impossible.

You cannot be anything else. How can you be? A roseflower trying to become a lotus flower, a lotus flower trying to become something else...but they are not so stupid, they are still part of paradise. The rosebush just by your side is still in paradise but you are not. The child sitting by your side may be still in paradise but you are not. I am just here before you, am in paradise, but you are not. So paradise is not a question of geography, it is a question of inner space.

Knowledge creates the rift, it corrupts innocence, it makes you old. Otherwise you would remain always like children. And when Jesus says, and he says perfectly rightly, that “Unless you become like children you will not enter my kingdom of God,” that is the secret key to open the closed doors of paradise again.

Knowledge expels you, not God. There is no God, that is just a way of saying the same thing. To say it in easier ways we make parables. so that you can understand. The moment you become knowledgeable you are expelled automatically, nobody expels you. And the moment you drop knowledge and become innocent again you are accepted back, nobody accepts you.

Knowledge is a device to fight with the whole, and how can you fight with the whole? It is just like a drop of ocean fighting with the ocean; it is going to be a miserable, very miserable, hellish phenomenon. How can the drop fight with the ocean? It can go on fighting, but there is no possibility of it ever conquering the whole. It will be always in defeat, and that is the hell – always defeated, always defeated, always a failure.