Religion can be healthy, as healthy as a newborn babe – as healthy as the songs of the birds in the morning, as healthy as a newly-opening lotus. Or religion can be ill, diseased, dying, just like an old man: shrinking, sad, moving into death.

When religion is young it has a fragrance, the fragrance of life. It has a song, it has a mystery around it. It has the quality of dance, joy, delight. It is a celebration. When religion is young, alive, fresh, religion is always a celebration. It is a feast; it is life-enhancing, life-affirmative. When religion is old, dying or already dead – just a stinking corpse – then it is renunciation, then it is not celebration. Then it is anti-life, then it is life-negative. Then it leaves the world, it leaves all that is alive, it starts being suicidal. It shrinks.

Life expands, death is a shrinkage. When you are young, you are flowing in all directions. When you are old, you are frozen. You no longer flow, you only grumble. You become hard; the flexibility is lost.

When religion is young, alive, it is ordinary. It has nothing to fulfill the ego: it is very ordinary. In fact, in its very ordinariness it is extraordinary. It is superb in being just ordinary. Life is enough when religion is young; no other God is needed. Then life is God, life is divine.