"Now suddenly he is being thrown out of it. He knows only that small space; that has been his world and he was absolutely happy with it. He is being thrown out of it into something unknown, unfamiliar. It feels almost like death. The child resists getting out of the womb; that resistance creates the pain for the mother. The child does not let go and allow himself to come out of the womb easily – he fights. That is the beginning of struggle.

"He will fight his whole life now. And that is also the beginning of the fear of the unknown. There is a valid rationality in it, because the child never gets a better world than he has lost in the womb. He gets a miserable world. He had no idea of misery. He had never known any tension; everything was as it should be. And now everything is as it should not be, and for his whole life his effort will be to create the same comfort that he has lost.

"The desire for comfort, for luxury, for a beautiful home, for a loving atmosphere, is nothing but simply creating another womb around yourself – the womb that you have lost. You do everything to create it, but everything fails; nothing succeeds in giving you the womb back. That gives an immense guarantee to your mind: never allow anything unknown; never go beyond the boundary of the known – it is dangerous. And once you have gone beyond it you cannot come back, because you cannot go back to the womb. These are not conscious ideas, it is your unconscious feeling.

"So while sitting in silence, you may feel afraid when you come to the borderline. You may cling to anything so you don't lose the known and you don't get lost in the vast unknown. You don't want to commit the same mistake that you committed when you were born. The unconscious still carries the scar.

"In a better educational system we will teach every child that that was not life. You were comfortable, but there was no adventure, there was no challenge. Every trace of the fear of entering into the unknown has to be removed from the unconscious by the right kind of education."