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There is no need to understand me at all.

What is needed is to understand yourself. How is it going to help you if you understand me? And what will you understand by understanding me? You will understand what I say, you will collect it, you will become more knowledgeable – and that is not going to help. In fact it can even be a great hindrance. All knowledge becomes a hindrance to wisdom.

I am not here to make you understand me, I am here to help you to understand yourself. You have to watch your own actions more closely, your relationships, your moods; how you are when you are alone, how you are when you are with people, how you behave, how you react; whether your reactions are past-oriented, fixed patterns of thought, or spontaneous, responsible.

Watch all these things, go on watching your own mind, heart. That’s what has to be understood, that is the book to be opened; you are the unopened book.

And millions of people die as unopened books, their pages uncut. Please don’t die as an unopened book. Read – go deep into your being. You are carrying all the Vedas and all the Bibles and all the Korans in you. You are carrying all that has happened to humanity or can ever happen to humanity. You represent in a tiny drop, in a dewdrop, all the oceans, past, present and future. In your small flowering will be represented all the flowers.

Do not to be worried about what I say. How can you understand it in the first place? I speak from my heights using the same language that you use because there is no other language, but I give those words different meanings, twists and turns. When you listen to those words you listen according to your own mind, according to your own conditioning.

How can you understand me?

You can love me, but you cannot understand me. But if you love me, a great understanding will arise. And that will not arise through understanding my words, but by understanding your own being. The deeper your understanding is about yourself, the deeper will be your penetration into my words.

There are different kinds of people; a Buddha is one type, Jesus is a totally different type. A man who can easily understand Jesus may not be able to understand Buddha easily, may find it almost impossible.

You are here, but you may not find it easy to understand me. That is one of the reasons I am speaking on so many enlightened masters – so that I can use different languages, so that I can become helpful to different types of people. One who can understand Tilopa may not be able to understand Kabir, and one who can understand Kabir may not be able to understand Saraha.

I speak on different masters; different masters are just different excuses to approach different types of people. And all types of people have gathered around me.

This is happening for the first time, remember; this has not happened before.

This is utterly unique. Thousands gathered around Buddha, but they were of a single type, the type for which Buddha had appeal. Thousands gathered around Mahavira, the type for which Mahavira had appeal. And Mahavira and Buddha were contemporaries: the people who had gathered with Mahavira remained with Mahavira, and the people who had gathered with Buddha remained with Buddha – they could never understand each other’s master. The followers of Mahavira could not understand what Buddha was talking about, it all looked like nonsense to them: There is no self? – what more nonsensical statement could there be?

Self, the Supreme Self, is at the center of Mahavira’s thinking. And when Mahavira uses the words Supreme Self, with a capital S, he means exactly the same thing as when Buddha uses the words no-self. The Supreme Self is not the ego; in the Supreme Self there is no idea of “I.” That’s why Buddha calls it no-self: when there is no “I” why call it self? The Supreme Self would make the “I” look even bigger.

These are different people; their language is different, although they are expressing the same truth. Around Jesus there was a certain kind of people, but only one type. With me it is a totally different phenomenon. Here there are Christians, and Mohammedans, and Buddhists, and Jainas, and Hindus, and Parsis, and Sikhs, and Jews, and all kinds of people. This is a world gathering.

Buddha lived in a small place, just in a small province, Bihar. The province was so named because of Buddha. Bihar means “wandering of the enlightened one,” the place of his wanderings. He wandered in a small place. Jesus was never heard of beyond his small country. His country was of almost no importance. It became important only because of him, and only later on. Otherwise it was just an unimportant country, a desert.

I have heard…

Two Jews were talking, and one said, “Our whole misery, this whole hell that we have suffered down the ages, can be put on the shoulders of Moses. He was responsible.”
The other said, “I don’t understand. Why? Why was Moses responsible for all our misery? He did all he could to help us.”

But the other was adamant. He said, “No! While leading us out of Egypt, if he had gone left rather than right, all the oil would have been ours. But he led us into the desert!”

Jesus was born in a very, very unimportant country. His name was not heard of beyond the small province where he lived. While he was alive not much was known about him, only a few Jews gathered around him. It was a similar case with Mohammed.

With me it is a totally different phenomenon. Almost all kinds of people have arrived here. This is a world gathering, for the first time this is a universal brotherhood. Hence I am speaking on all the enlightened masters. They are just excuses so that I can be available to all kinds and all types of people.

If you cannot understand me right now while I am speaking on Kabir, wait – soon I will be speaking on Buddha, maybe then you will find something closer to your heart. And then I will be speaking on somebody else: maybe it is Zen that rings bells in your heart, or Sufism, or Hasidism – I am going to speak on all the possible ways. If you can wait, sooner or later you will find something that fits you.

You cannot change your type, that is unchangeable. Your type changes only when you go beyond it – then you disappear. Then a pure consciousness remains; neither introvert nor extrovert, neither male nor female, neither of the head nor of the heart.

The bus was crowded and a lanky mountaineer was sitting next to a pretty girl, whose short skirt kept creeping up over her knees. She fought a constant, though losing, battle with it.

She kept pulling her skirt down, but as soon as she let go, it began to slide up again. In desperation she gave it one hard yank, then looked up to meet the eyes of her traveling companion. “Don’t rip your calico, sister,” he advised her. “My weakness is liquor.”

There are different types; people have different characteristics.

If these talks are not reaching your heart, if you are feeling a little at a loss, don’t be worried. Try to make the best of it, and be silently patient.

I go on speaking every day; one never knows when it is the right moment for a certain person. It is a question of type, and also of mood. In a certain positive mood you simply understand with no effort; in a negative mood you can make a great effort and still fail.

On a certain morning you are feeling in such harmony, such deep well-being, that your eyes are clear; the mind is not noisy, you are in a state of melody – and then something suddenly strikes home, goes in like an arrow and penetrates your being.

One never knows when that moment will come. So I go on talking to you every morning, I go on shooting arrows in the dark. Somebody is bound to be hit.

I know you are there; your time, your moment, will come. Be a little more patient.