"He's so one with his bliss that there is no knower left behind. Blissfulness is his being, and there is no distinction between the knower and the known. So of course the child is not aware that he is blissful. You become aware only when you have lost something.

"Mulla Nasruddin was saying to his son one day, 'You don't know what happiness is until you get married – and then it is too late.'

"It is so. It is very difficult to know something without losing it, because when you have not lost it you are so totally one with it. There is no distance: the observer and the observed are one; the known and the knower are one. Every child is in a profoundly blissful state.

"Psychologists also agree with this. They say that the whole search of religion is nothing but a way to again find the womb of the mother. They use it as a criticism of religion, but to me it is not criticism at all. It is simply true. Yes, the search for religion is again a search for the womb. The search for religion is again a search to make this whole existence a womb.

"The child is in absolute tune with the mother. The child is never out of tune with the mother. The child does not know that he is separate from the mother. If the mother is healthy the child is healthy; if the mother is ill the child is ill; if the mother is sad the child is sad; if the mother is happy the child is happy; if the mother is dancing the child is dancing; if the mother is sitting silently the child is silent. The child has no boundaries of his own yet. This is the purest bliss, but it has to be lost.

"The child is born, and suddenly he is thrown off-center. Suddenly he is uprooted from the earth, from the mother. He loses his moorings and he does not know who he is. There was no need to know it when he was with the mother. There was no need to know – he was all, and there was no need to know, there was no distinction."