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I am not condemning belief: I am simply explaining it to you, that belief is the barrier to God. Belief is not a bridge, but a barrier. It is your belief that is hindering you from God. If belief is dropped, immediately you are in God, you are God.

And why is there any need to believe? You don’t believe in the sun, do you? You don’t believe in the earth, do you? You know the earth exists, so there is no point in believing. You only believe in things which you don’t know. Belief is out of ignorance. Buddha does not believe in God because he knows God! You don’t know God, that’s why you believe in God. And if you go on believing, beware – you will never come to know.

Belief simply means you are hiding your ignorance. Rather than destroying it, you are hiding it, decorating it, making it a little comfortable, convenient, acceptable. You are worried that you don’t know God, so you cling to a belief, and you make yourself feel that you know. Repeating your belief constantly, again and again, you start creating a kind of autohypnosis that “I know, I believe!”

Just look at your question:
[I very strongly believe in God.]

Just belief won’t do? It has to be strong – and then very strong! What does it show? You can’t hide. The truth shows itself: you are very afraid of your ignorance. Deep down you know that “I don’t know.” You have to push that ignorance, you have to fight with it, so you have to believe strongly.

Just think: somebody comes to you and says, “I love you very strongly!” What in the world does he mean? Love is not enough? Has it to be very strong? If love is there, it is enough. If love is there, there is no need even to say it. Silence is its expression.

But when somebody says, “I love you very strongly, very, very strongly,” then there is one thing certain, that he is afraid that his love is not there. He is managing it somehow, creating it somehow. He is making great effort to create it; that’s why he calls it strong, because he knows his unloving nature is difficult to repress. He has to fight with his unloving nature.

Your very words, [Very strongly I believe in God] shows that you don’t know God at all; otherwise, there will be no need for strength. There will be no need for belief. God simply is. How can you believe or disbelieve? It is not left to you. But we go on hiding.

Just listen to this story:

Farmer Jim was very worried about the poor performance of his prize bull for which he had paid an astronomical sum. He talked to all his friends every time he went to the market, and one day learned from a cousin that there was an amazing vet way down in the West Country.
He was so depressed about the bull that he decided this last resort was the answer, so he set off to Cornwall to find the vet. At last he found the chap who urged him to give his bull a great big pill once a day.
A few months later he met his cousin who asked him how he had got on. “Oh, it was marvelous,” he said. “He gave me these pills for the bull and I had no sooner started him off on them than he hit the jackpot. In fact,” he said, “I’m making a fortune out of the local farmers – they can’t get their cows round here fast enough!”
“What are these pills then?” asked his cousin.
“Oh!” said Farmer Jim, “huge, great green jobs like bombs – with a peppermint taste!”

Do you see the point? Do you get it? You cannot hide it: that peppermint taste will say everything. Very strong belief? That is the peppermint taste.

You don’t know anything about God. That’s why you are worried about why I am condemning belief. Your belief must be feeling shaken; the fear is that if the belief is gone, you will again be ignorant. But that is my work here. Excuse me, but that is my work here – to make you absolutely as you are. If you are ignorant, you are ignorant. It is better to be that which you are, because only from that authentic reality can you be bridged to ultimate reality. With your false beliefs… All beliefs are false. Belief as such is false; knowing is true, believing is false.

I am here to make you ignorant again. If you cooperate with me, this will happen: you will become ignorant, innocent. Your knowledgeability will disappear –and in that very disappearance you will find for the first time the mystery of life dancing around you, and the benediction of that mystery. That mystery is God.

God can never be a concept. God cannot be reduced to an idea. God cannot be reduced to a belief. Become ignorant. I have never heard of pundits and scholars reaching God. Sinners have been known to reach, but not scholars. The original sin is the sin of knowledge. Remember the biblical story again and again. It is one of the most precious parables of human history. Adam has been turned out of the Garden of Eden because he has eaten of the Tree of Knowledge. His sin is his knowledge.

You will have to vomit your knowledge. Vomit the apple! Become innocent and ignorant again. You will be attaining to a second childhood – and fortunate are those who can attain to second childhood, because through it, and only through it, is one bridged to God. But then there is no belief. One knows.

And remember, knowing and knowledge are different. Knowledge consists of beliefs, knowing consists of experience.