"And the demarcation between ignorance and innocence is very fine.

"Jesus said to Nicodemus, a professor of Judaism in the University of Jerusalem, 'Unless you are born again you will not understand what I am saying.' He is not saying that first you have to die and be born through another womb. He is saying, 'Unless you are so transformed that your ignorance becomes innocence – that is true rebirth. And only then will you understand what I am saying.'

"The child cannot ask the question because he cannot make distinctions, and the awakened one will not ask because he knows that good and evil are two sides of the same coin. If you choose good, you have also chosen evil. And this is one of the great miseries of all the religions and their saints – they have chosen good and repressed evil. Because of this division they themselves have become divided and split. And not only have they become divided and split, they have made the whole humanity schizophrenic.

"So it is significant that a child does not ask the question. It is also significant that a young man does not ask the question, because, for the young, life is so absorbing and the song of life is so fulfilling and his heart is beating with love, he has no time to think about good and evil. Only the elders… And the elders are those who have spent all their energies, who are empty; they have nothing to do.

"The child was full of wonder, the youth was full of love, but the old man has lost all. Neither have his eyes any wonder; because he is so knowledgeable nothing surprises him, and he has seen that every love slowly, slowly turns into hate. He is living – but an empty life. And these empty people become very much concerned about judgment. They cannot do anything themselves, but at least, sitting in their rocking chairs, they can judge everybody – who is good, who is bad; who is a sinner and who is a saint.

"This is their way of somehow feeling more important than the young, than the children. The children are ignorant; the young are blind."