"Adam and Eve were punished because they wanted to live, they wanted to know, they wanted to understand, explore, inquire – this is their original sin. You are the inheritors of Adam and Eve. You are born in sin.

"Pseudo-religions cannot support your living. They cannot teach you the art of how to live, and live intensely and totally. They can only teach you how to escape from life, how to avoid knowing the truth. You can relate it to the story of the original sin.

"The original sin was that Adam and Eve wanted to know what life was all about. They wanted to taste eternal life. Why just go on living a momentary, temporal existence which can be terminated any time by anything – a small accident, and you are finished. Is there something more? – or is this all? This was their original sin. So what will be the original virtue? You can infer it very easily. The original virtue will be to renounce life. Adam and Eve were trying to know the eternal life; they wanted to become eternal, like gods.

"The pseudo-religions say you should renounce life totally, so you go against Adam and Eve. You have to go against them if you want to enter into the Garden of Eden again. And you have to renounce inquiry, doubt, skepticism, because these are the ways of knowing. This story is very symbolic. It gives you the whole key to all religions.

"What Adam and Eve have done the religions have been trying to undo so that you are again accepted by God, welcomed back into heaven. Religions are afraid of life, are afraid of knowing – and they are not separate. It is because of this story they appeared to be separate, because in a story they have to be separate: a tree of eternal life, a tree of knowledge. But in fact, living is knowing. Knowing is living.

"There is no other way to know, except to live. And there is no other way to live, unless you are aware of what you are living.

"Knowing and living are inseparable.

"The knower becomes enlightened, but he also becomes afire with life."