"They threw the baby out with the bath water.

"To be an agnostic means tremendous search. You have not to believe, and you have not to disbelieve either. The negative agnostic disbelieves; and there is not much difference between belief and disbelief. The religious person believes in God, the irreligious person does not believe in God, but their beliefs and their disbeliefs are only mental games. Neither of them has searched, meditated, gone deeper into his own center. To be an agnostic needs tremendous courage, immense energy and patience.

"And when the agnostic comes to the center of his being, certainly he finds there is no God, because the moment you know your center, you have known the center of the whole existence. On the periphery we are separate, but our separation is only at the circumference. As you go on moving towards your own self, you are coming closer and closer to other people's selves. Ultimately when you reach to the center, you are amazed: there is no God, but there is tremendous beauty, incalculable silence.

"If their agnosticism were what I am defining it to be, they would not have been in desperation. The agnostic can never live in desperation. Either he is involved in the great search of what it is all about. He has no energy for desperation, he is pouring his whole effort into one single dimension: he wants to know.

"The agnostic is not the end of the search.

"It is just the beginning.

"The agnostic cannot say there is no God, there is no heaven, no hell. That is what the atheist goes on doing. Perhaps your parents were atheists. The atheists are bound to come someday to deep despair. As death comes close by, they start trembling. They have not believed in God, they have disbelieved in religion. It was good when they were young, but before death almost all atheists become theists, they start believing. A simple arithmetic.

"Death is there. What is beyond they don't know. They don't know themselves. It was easier when they were young, hot. They enjoyed criticizing, they enjoyed destroying arguments of those who believe. And it is very easy to destroy their arguments."