"Religion is not a commodity. You cannot purchase it in the marketplace and you cannot have it just by believing in certain scriptures, rituals. You cannot get it so cheap – just by believing in Jesus Christ, in Gautam Buddha, in Mohammed, in Krishna.

"Religion has to be earned. It is the greatest learning on the earth; it needs tremendous awareness, so that you are not influenced by others. And this must be the duty of the parents, to see that their children are not influenced by others, because all influences create a spiritual slavery. If you remain fresh, clean, open, searching, you will find it.

"There has never been any exception. Anybody who has been open to reality, available to existence, immediately gets connected with the whole. And to be connected with the whole is the greatest experience that life can provide to you.

"When you are born, you are disconnected from the womb, from the mother. You had lived in the womb for nine months as one with the mother's body, mind, soul. There was no separation. You were not in any way different from your mother. Her heartbeats were your heartbeats, her breathing was your breathing, her blood was your blood.

"The disconnection from the mother is the most traumatic experience in life, the most painful, the most agonizing. Just think of the small child who is being taken away from his home, who is being taken away from his very world, the only world he knows; he is being taken away from love and warmth. The shock is great.

"Psychologically, the search for truth, for God, for home, is nothing but an effort to be again connected with the universe. It is a search for the mother's womb. Of course you cannot find your mother's womb, but you can find the existential womb. The whole existence can become the womb for you – nourishment, life, relaxation, silence. This is religion.

"Christianity is not religion; Hinduism and Mohammedanism are not religions. In the whole history of man very few people have experienced religion, although everybody has been a member of some religion.

"The strange phenomenon is that those who experienced religion were the people who renounced the religion into which they were born – that was the barrier."