Air

Condemnation

You have been forced to lose your life.

Life has been condemned in every possible way by all the religions; and when everybody is condemning life – the whole world is full of condemners – what can a small child do? He becomes impressed by all this condemnation.

Just look at the story of the beginning of the world. God said to Adam and Eve, “Don’t eat from the tree of knowledge, and don’t eat from the tree of life.”

He had prohibited two trees. Both are the most significant things in life: wisdom and life – and God denies both. Then you can go on eating all kinds of grass and whatsoever you want. He does not say, “Don’t eat marijuana, don’t drink alcohol.” No, He is not interested in that. Adam and Eve can smoke grass, that is allowed; can make wine from grapes, that is allowed.

Only two things are not allowed: they should not become knowers, they should remain ignorant; and they should not live, they should go on postponing life. And because they disobeyed and ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge … they could not manage to eat the second tree’s fruit, they were caught. After eating the fruit of knowledge they were speeding fast towards the tree of life but they were prevented immediately.

It is natural: anyone who has awareness, consciousness – which are the qualities of wisdom – his first thing will be to go deeper into life, to taste it as much as possible, to connect himself with its center, to be drowned in the mystery of life.

The story does not say it, but the story is not complete. I say to you, they were rushing immediately, because it is absolutely logical: after eating the fruit of knowledge they were rushing towards the tree of life. And that’s why it was so easy for God to catch hold of them; otherwise, in the Garden of Eden there were so many millions of trees, where would He have found them? It would have taken eternity to search: rather than man searching for God, God would have been still searching for man, for where he is.

But I know how things would have happened – they are not told in the story. God, coming to know that they have eaten the fruit of knowledge, must have rushed immediately to the tree of life and waited there knowing that they must be coming. It is such simple logic, no Aristotle is needed.

And certainly they were caught there. Both were rushing, naked, rejoicing, because for the first time their eyes were open. For the first time they were human beings; before this they were only animals amongst other animals … and God threw them out of the Garden of Eden. Since then, man has been longing for life, more life.

It is just because of the serpent that you have become what you have become. It is because of disobedience to God that you have attained a certain dignity, a pride of being human, a certain integrity, a certain individuality.

Disobedience is the foundation of a real religious man – disobedience to all priests, to all politicians, to all vested interests.

Only then can you throw the conditioning away. And the moment you are no longer conditioned, you will not ask what the goal of life is. Your whole question will go through a revolution. You will ask, How can I live more totally? How can I drown myself utterly in life? – Because life is the goal of everything; hence there can be no goal for life. But you are starved, and except for death there seems to be nothing; life is slipping out of your hands and death is coming closer every moment.