~~ BECOME A CHILD ~~

Every child is being stuffed with knowledge. This removes his simplicity because it is not an advantage in a competitive world. His innocence will be exploited in every possible way. Afraid of society and the world, we try to make every child clever, cunning, knowledgeable — to be in the category of the powerful, so that he is not oppressed and powerless.
Whenever you understand that you've missed life, the first principle to be brought back is innocence. Drop your knowledge; forget your scriptures, religions, theologies and philosophies. Be born again, become innocent. Clean your mind of all that is not known by you, of all that is borrowed, all that has come from tradition, convention, all that has been given to you by others — parents, teachers, universities. Just get rid of it.

Once again be simple, be a child. And this miracle is possible by meditation. Meditation simply cuts you away from all that is not yours and saves only that which is your authentic being. It burns everything else and leaves you standing naked, alone under the sun, in the wind. It is as if you are the first person who has descended on earth — who knows nothing, who has to discover everything, who has to be a seeker, who has to go on a pilgrimage.

The second principle is the pilgrimage. Life must be a seeking — not a desire, but a search; not an ambition to become this, to become that, a president of a country or a prime minister, but a search to find out 'Who am I?'

Strangely, people who don't know who they are, are trying to become somebody. They don't even know who they are right now! They are unacquainted with their being — but they have a goal of becoming.