"But when you attain wealth, suddenly it is revealed that wealth cannot protect you. And if wealth cannot protect you against death, how can it give you more and abundant life? No, you were seeking in a wrong direction.

"Another man is seeking power, prestige. What is he seeking? He is seeking to be omnipotent, he is seeking to be so powerful that death cannot destroy him. But that is deep down, he is not even aware of it. When he attains to power, then the poverty will be revealed.

"Hence the paradox that whenever you succeed in this world, you feel ultimate failure: I say again and again that nothing fails like success. If you don't succeed, then the illusion can be maintained, then you think, 'Someday or other I will succeed and I will attain.' But if you succeed, how can you maintain the illusion anymore? You have succeeded, and the inner emptiness remains the same. Rather, on the contrary, now you can feel it more against the contrast: the wealth is there all around you, and within, the poverty; light is there all around you, and within, darkness; life is all around you, and within, death. That's why whenever a society becomes affluent, rich, religion suddenly becomes meaningful.

"In a poor society religion cannot be meaningful because people have not yet failed. Their search, the outward search, still carries meaning. They think if they can get a good house everything will be okay; they think if they can get a little money then everything will be okay. A poor man can live in illusion, but not a rich man. And if you see a rich man also living in illusion, remember well, he is still poor, he has not succeeded yet.

"A Buddha leaves the palace, a Mahavira leaves the kingdom. They succeeded, and success failed them. They became alert that the whole direction had been wrong, so they took an about-turn. They moved in totally the opposite direction: they were kings, they became beggars; they were clothed in the costliest clothes possible, they became naked. It became a conversion: success fails, and failure becomes a conversion.

"But why does success fail? It fails because you were not searching for wealth, you were not searching for power, you were not searching for security and safety; you were not searching for a house, you were searching for something else."