"And when you are cut off from the past you are cut off from the future automatically, because past and future are two aspects of the same coin; they are not separate, and they are not separable either. You can toss a coin; sometimes it is heads, sometimes it is tails, but the other part is always there, hiding behind. Past and future are two aspects of the same coin. The name of the coin is mind. When the whole coin is dropped, that dropping is innocence. Then you don't know who you are, then you don't know what is: there is no knowledge.

"But you are, existence is, and the meeting of these two is-nesses – the small is-ness of you, meeting with the infinite is-ness of existence – that meeting, that merger, is the experience of beauty.

"Innocence is the door; through innocence you enter into beauty. The more innocent you become, the more existence becomes beautiful. The more knowledgeable you are, the more and more existence is ugly, because you start functioning from conclusions, you start functioning from knowledge.

"The moment you know, you destroy all poetry. The moment you know, and think that you know, you have created a barrier between yourself and that which is. Then everything is distorted. Then you don't hear with your ears, you translate. Then you don't see with your eyes, you interpret. Then you don't experience with your heart, you think that you experience. Then all possibility of meeting with existence in immediacy, in intimacy, is lost. You have fallen apart.

"This is the original sin. And this is the whole story, the biblical story of Adam and Eve eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Once they have eaten the fruit of knowledge they are driven out of paradise. Not that somebody drove them out, not that God ordered them to get out of paradise, they themselves fell. Knowing they were no longer innocent, knowing they were separate from existence, knowing they were egosknowing created such a barrier, an iron barrier.

"You ask me, 'What is innocence?' Vomit knowledge! The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge has to be vomited. That's what meditation is all about."