You can go on believing without putting the light on, that there is no darkness, but you know it is.

I have asked many believers – not ordinary people – saints, very much respected, that “Do you really know? And at least once in your life be true. You have been teaching about truth your whole life. At least, don’t lie.” And I have never come across a single person who has not said, that “We don’t know personally. We have accepted great masters who had known.” But this is borrowed. This is not yours. It cannot give you the feel of immortality. It cannot give you the taste of deathlessness. It cannot give you the experience of godliness. It can not give you anything. It is empty belief. It is better you drop it because by dropping it, you will have to find, you will have to go into search.

Jesus says, “Seek and ye shall find.” But he says, “Seek.” And the Christians down the ages have been telling, “Believe.” Do you see the difference? He says, “Seek and ye shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you. Ask and it shall be given to you.” But you have to do everything: seeking, knocking, asking, enquiring. You cannot borrow it. Nobody can do it on your behalf and it is a great blessing that nobody can do it on your behalf.

It is man’s privilege that truth is going to be always his own. And because it is going to be always his own, it is going to be always new. Hundreds of people have experienced truth, but it does not make it old because for you, whenever you experience it is new, you have never experienced it before. Socrates is poisoned because he was teaching the people of Athens how to find the truth and the crime that the court of Athens was discussing about, was that he is corrupting people – particularly the youth.

If to talk about truth and to tell people about truth and to encourage people to seek truth is corruption, then corruption is religion. Then there is no other religion except corruption.

And it is certainly true that only the young people were ready to receiving him because the old are already dead.

It rarely happens that your physical death and your real death happen together simultaneously – no. Most of the people die near the age thirty but they go on living, breathing, walking, talking, eating, perhaps for seventy years, eighty years. It is a posthumous existence. I am not saying that every old man is like that because Socrates himself was very old when he was poisoned. It depends on each individual.

If you remain a seeker, you never become old. Your body may become old – you never become old. You simply grow up, you don’t grow old.