"But when he died he was so blissful, so peaceful, so at home that even his impending death did not create a ripple in his consciousness.

"Later on his disciple, Plato, made two categories. One, the first category: knowledge which is ignorance, mere knowledgeability. You have heard it, you have read it, but you are not an eyewitness to it. It is mere hearsay, knowledge which is ignorance. Unfortunately, ninety-nine percent of humanity belongs to that category.

"The second: ignorance which knows. You have become a child, innocent; all knowledgeability has been dropped, existence has again become mysterious – just as it was when you were born. When you opened your eyes for the first time, everything was a mystery.

"Ignorance that knowsyou have become ignorant in the sense that you do not carry the burden of scriptures, doctrines, theologies, philosophies. But you have a clarity which only innocence can give to you. In that clarity you can see, but what you see is beyond words; hence you cannot say, 'I know.' In fact, in that clarity, in that seeing, the seer disappears. There is only seeing. There is experiencing, but the experiencer has disappeared.

"This is the state of the mystic, and this is the search of a mystery school.

"Do not expect that people will understand you. Their misunderstanding is a recognition that you are a mystery school. Their misunderstanding is a qualification for you. If they start understanding you, then you are no longer a mystery school.

"That's why I said, 'Religion in this commune is dead' – because religion they understand, but they do not understand the mystery, the origin, the root from which the word religion is derived. It is religio. It means putting yourself together: no longer split, no longer divided into body, mind, soul; no longer divided into God the creator, and existence the created. Everything that divides is against religio.

"The mystic disappears in his experience, because to remain an experiencer is a division. The knower and the known – there is still a division. There is a certain experiencing: the experience and the experiencer have become one. That is religio.

"In the East, philosophy is called darshan."