"Time consists only of two tenses: past and future. The present is not part of time; the present is beyond time. And the present is always fresh. Present is part of eternity. Present is the penetration of the eternal into the dreamy world of time, a ray of light into the darkness of mind.

"Past is never fresh – cannot be, obviously. It is always dirty, it is always stinking – stinking of death, stinking of all that is rotten, stinking of tradition, stinking of corpses. The past is a cemetery. And the future is nothing but a projection of the dead past. And out of the dead past the future cannot be alive – the dead can only project the dead. What is your future? – modified past, touched up here and there; a little better, a little more sophisticated, a little more comfortable, but it is the same past. You are hankering to repeat it. Your future has nothing new about it, it cannot have.

"Mind cannot conceive of the new. It is impotent as far as the new and the fresh and the young is concerned. It can move only within the small world of the familiar, the known – and the known is the past. The future is nothing but a desire to repeat it – in a better way, of course. Hence future is also not fresh. The present is fresh.

"You ask me, 'From where does freshness come?'

"Freshness never comes and never goes. It is always here, it is always now. you be here and now, and you are suddenly fresh, bathed in eternity, showered by something which is timeless. Call it God, call it the kingdom of God, call it nirvana, or whatsoever you want. All those names refer to the same unnameable. All those words try to express the inexpressible.

"Just put the human mind aside. And by that I mean, put the past aside and the future, and look. This very momentand the whole heaven descends upon you. You are overwhelmed. The birds are singing and their songs are fresh; they are not repeating old songs. They have no idea of yesterdays and they are not singing for the future."