"But there are a few obstacles – those obstacles have to be removed.

"It is not that you have to attain godhood – godhood is your nature – but there are a few obstacles which have to be removed. Once those obstacles are removed, you are that which you have always been seeking. Even when you were not aware of who you are, you were that. You cannot be other than that, you cannot be otherwise.

"Obstacles have to be eliminated, dropped. So nothing else has to be added to you. The positive religion tries to add something to you: virtue, righteousness, meditation, prayer. The positive religion says you are lacking something; you have to be in search of that which you are lacking. You have to accumulate something.

"Buddha's negative approach says you are not lacking anything. In fact, you are possessing too many things which are not needed. You have to drop something.

"It is like this: A man goes trekking into the Himalayas. The higher you start reaching, the more you will feel the weight of the things you are carrying with you. Your luggage will become more and more heavy. The higher the altitude, the more heavy your luggage will become. You will have to drop things. If you want to reach to the highest peak, you will have to drop all.

"Once you have dropped all, once you don't possess anything, once you have become a zero, a nothingness, a nobody, you have reached.

"Something has to be eliminated, not added to you. Something has to be dropped, not accumulated.

"When Buddha attained, somebody asked him, 'What have you attained?'

"He laughed. He said, 'I have not attained anything – because whatsoever I have attained was always with me. On the contrary, I have lost many things. I have lost my ego. I have lost my thoughts, my mind. I have lost all that I used to feel I possessed. I have lost my body – I used to think I was the body. I have lost all that. Now I exist as pure nothingness. But this is my achievement.

"Let me explain it to you, because this is very central."