So I am saying everything that has not been said. Laughter has been completely avoided, because it seemed that it destroyed your seriousness. And all the masters of the past wanted you to be serious about your search. They misunderstood one thing, that sincerity about the search is one thing, and seriousness about the search is not the same thing. I want you to be sincere and authentic about your search -- not only about your search, but about everything, because you cannot be sincere only in one dimension. If you are sincere, then all dimensions of your life are sincere.

But seriousness has been misunderstood as sincerity. Seriousness is a sickness. A serious seeker is searching for truth with sadness, with a burden on his head. He is not interested in the pilgrimage. He is only interested in the end, the goal, the paradise, the heaven, whatever name has been chosen by the master. My own understanding is: there is no heaven, and there is no paradise, there is no goal. Life is an eternal pilgrimage.

Now, making people serious is making them sick for eternity. They will lose all joy, they will shrink, all their juice will be gone. They will not see the beauty of the path and the trees and the mountains that they will be passing through, because seriousness does not allow these things. Seriousness condemns all this as mundane.

To me, there is no division like mundane and sacred. It is one universe. There are not two universes. Yes, the same universe you can look at in a mundane way, you can look at in a sacred way. The distinction is not between two universes, the distinction is only in two outlooks. And my feeling is, the more joyous you are, the more full of juice, love, laughter, music and dance, the more your journey will become a tremendously beautiful pilgrimage.

And because there is no goal ... Life is eternal, hence there cannot be any goal. All ideas of goals are contradictory to the idea of eternal life. And if life is eternal, then you have to enjoy each moment as if you have reached the goal. Each moment is a goal in itself. Don't wait to rejoice when you have reached the goal. That kind of goal does not exist. Use every moment as if you have arrived. It is always as if you have arrived. You are always arriving.

And I don't think existence wants you to be serious. I have not seen a serious tree. I have not seen a serious bird. I have not seen a serious sunrise. I have not seen a serious starry night. It seems they are all laughing in their own ways, dancing in their own ways. We may not understand it, but there is a subtle feeling that the whole existence is a celebration. I teach you celebration. And laughter has certainly to be one of the major ingredients in this celebration.