"You would like to abide so that if this world changes there is nothing to worry about. Your mind says, 'Seek the divine and there will be no change, and you will live for ever and ever.'

"The ordinary religious conception – Hindu, Jewish or Christian – is basically an ego-trip. Why do you say that change is appearance? – because with change you are afraid. Change looks like death. You would like something absolutely permanent to stand upon. You would like a house that will be always and always. In this world you cannot find that house that abides. In this world you cannot find any relationship that abides. Then you project a relationship with God, because God abides, and with God you will abide. But this search, this desire, this seeking to abide forever – this is the problem! Why do you want to be? Why not, NOT be? Why are you so afraid of not being? If you are afraid of nonbeing, nothingness, emptiness, death, you cannot know the truth. One knows the true when one is ready to drop oneself totally, utterly.

"That's why Buddha says, 'There is no soul. You are not a self, not an atma. You are an anatta, a no-self. There is nothing permanent in you, nothing substantial – you are a flow, a river.' Why does Buddha insist on a no-self? He insists because if you accept nonbeing, if you accept nothingness, then there is no fear of death, then you can drop yourself completely. And when you drop yourself completely, the vision arises. Then you are capable of knowing. With your ego you cannot know. Only in an egolessness, in a deep abyss, in the absence of the ego, does the perception happen – then you become a mirror. With the ego you will always interpret, you cannot know the truth. With the ego you will always be there interpreting in subtle ways, and your interpretation is not the truth. You are the medium of all falsification. Through you everything becomes false. When you are not there, the true reflects.

"Somehow you have to come to an understanding: the understanding of the no-self, of a changeless flux, no substance as such – just a river flowing and flowing."