"You are not even going to commit yourself to the exploration.

"Curiosity is cheap. If somebody answers, good. If nobody answers, that too is okay. You are not deeply interested. It is not arising out of your heart. Curiosity has to disappear before you can attain to a passionate inquiry into existence.

"So, Devageet, it is not a bad sign, but a tremendously important indication that you are on the right path. The path does not belong to the curious ones. It belongs to those who are committed, dedicated; who are ready even to sacrifice their lives for the experience of truth. As the curiosity disappears you are no longer a student; you become a disciple.

"That's the only difference between the student and a disciple. The student is only curious, gathering knowledge from all the sources without much concern. It is not his essential search – just gathering knowledge to cover up his ignorance. But the ignorance remains there, and the more it is covered, the more dangerous, because you start forgetting it. And a man who has forgotten his ignorance is a man utterly lost.

"To go on remembering that you are ignorant is to go on remembering that the night is not over and your morning has not yet come: that you still have a long way to go before the darkness disappears and you see the first signs on the horizon of the sun rising with all its colors and all its beauty and all its blessings.

"The curious person is not at all accountable for anything deep. The moment you become passionately interested to know, it becomes a question of life and death. Without knowing, your life seems to be just a desert without any oasis anywhere. You have to know; only then will your life have some significance, some meaning, some relevance, some reason why you should go on existing.

"But the disciple is only a beginning, not the end: the right beginning. A moment comes when your passionate longing to know turns into still deeper waters. It becomes a longing not just to know, but to be. Knowledge is always something there. There is a distance between you and the known."