"To live this life partially, is to live an undivine life. To be partial is to be irreligious. To be total and whole is to be holy.

"The questioner asks about the past. In the past, all over the world, people were pagans – simple nature-worshippers. There was no concept of sin, there was no question of guilt. Life was accepted as it is. There was no evaluation, no interpretation – reason had not interfered yet.

"The moment reason starts interfering, condemnation comes. The moment reason enters in, division, split, starts and man becomes schizophrenic. Then you start condemning something in your being – one part becomes higher, another part becomes lower, and you lose balance.

"But this had to happen; reason had to come, this is part of growth. As it happens to every child, it had to happen to the whole of humanity too. When the child is born he is a pagan; each child is a born pagan. He is happy the way he is. He has no idea what is right and what is wrong; he has no ideals. He has no criteria, he has no judgment. Hungry, he asks for food. Sleepy, he falls asleep. That's what Zen masters say is the uttermost in religion – when hungry eat, when feeling sleepy go to sleep. Let life flow; don't interfere.

"Each child is born as a pagan, but sooner or later he will lose that simplicity. That is part; that has to happen, that is part of our growth, maturity, destiny. The child has to lose it and find it again. When the child loses it he becomes the ordinary man, the worldly man. When he regains it he becomes religious.

"The child's innocence is very cheap; it is a gift from God. He has not earned it: he will have to lose it. Only by losing it will he become aware of what he has lost. Then he will start searching for it. And only when he searches for it, and earns it, achieves it, becomes it – then he will know the tremendous preciousness of it.

"What happens to a saint? He becomes a child again; nothing else happens to a saint."