Some people move only with curiosity, just like small children asking while they are on a walk, “What is the name of this tree?” And if you don’t reply, they immediately forget that they had asked anything and they start asking something else: “Why is this rock lying here?” They ask just for the sake of asking and not in order to know. They do not ask in order to know, they ask because they cannot remain without asking.

Those who are living out of curiosity are still childish. If you ask, “What is God?” just as casually as a child would ask on seeing a toy shop on the road, “What is this toy?” you are still a child. And the child can be forgiven, but not you.

Curiosity will not do. Religion is not a child’s play. Even if you are given a reply, it serves no purpose. The child’s fun is in asking. He could ask, that is his fun. Even if you give him a reply he is not very interested in it. What is the matter?

Psychologists say that when children learn to speak for the first time they are only practicing their speaking by asking, just as when a child learns walking for the first time he tries every now and then to get up and walk. So children repeat the same sentence again and again only because they have acquired a new experience, a new dimension through speaking. So in that new dimension they are floating and rehearsing; that is why they ask just anything, they say just anything.

In the world of religion, if you are also asking just anything, saying just anything, thinking just anything without any deep desire to know – only out of curiosity – then you will still cremate some more buddhas; then who knows how many more buddhas will still have to work hard on you!

Truth has no relationship to curiosity.

Some people move a little ahead of curiosity and become inquisitive. There is a little more depth in inquisitiveness, but just a little more. Inquisitiveness is also not very deep, it is shallow as well, for it is only intellectual. The intellect is the same as scabies: if you scratch it a bit, it feels good. So the intellect goes on itching: Is there God? Is there any soul? Is there any salvation? What is meditation? – not that you want to do it. What is God? – not that you want to know it, but just for discussion, just for conversation. It is a mental exercise, an intellectual entertainment. So people only talk big, they never stake anything. Whether God is or is not, it is not truly their concern; and they remain untransformed whether God does exist or does not.

It is very interesting: one person believes there is a God, another believes there is no God, and the lives of the two are identical. If someone is abused, the one who believes there is a God gets angry, and the one who believes there is no God, he also gets angry. Sometimes it happens that the one who believes there is a God gets even more angry. The one who believes there is no God, how much can he do to you? At best he may abuse you in return, hit you or kill you. But the one who believes there is a God can send you to rot in the agonies of hell. He has more ways of becoming angry.