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It is always there. While I am talking to you, I am also being to you.

Talking is relating to you through the intellect, and being is relating to you with my totality. While you are listening to me, if you are really listening, then it is not only a listening to the words. Listening to me your mind stops, listening to me you are not thinking. And when you are not thinking you are open. When you are not thinking and your mind is not functioning you start feeling. Then I can overwhelm you, I can move and fill you. Words are used only as a device.

I myself am not interested much in words. But I have to speak, because this has been my feeling: while I am speaking you become silent. If I am not speaking, then you are speaking within and you are not silent. If you are silent without my speaking then there will be no need to speak. and I am waiting for that moment when you can just sit by my side, just sit near me, not thinking. Then there will be no need to talk –because talk is partial. Then I can come in my totality to you, directly, no need for any mediating words.

But if I tell you to sit silently near me, you will not be able to sit silently. You will go on chattering, you will go on talking within, an inner talk will continue. To stop your inner talk I have to talk to you, so while I am talking you are engaged. My talking is just like a toy given to a child. He goes and plays with the toy and becomes silent, absorbed. I give you my words as toys. You play with them, and while you are playing with them you are so absorbed that you become silent. Whenever silence happens I can flow into you.

Words can be beautiful but they can never be true. Beauty is an aesthetic value. You can enjoy it, just like a beautiful painting, but nothing much will happen out of that enjoyment. It is good as far as it goes. But words are never true – they cannot be by their very nature. Truth can be communicated only in silence.

But this is the paradox: all those who have insisted that truth can be communicated only in silence, they have all used words. This is a shame, but nothing can be done about it. Words have to be used to make you silent. While listening to me you become silent. That silence is significant, and that silence will give you glimpses of truth.

Even if you have glimpses of truth through my words, that glimpse comes through your silence, not through my words. Even if you feel absolutely certain that whatsoever I am saying is true, that feeling of absolute certainty comes through your silence, not through my words. Whenever you are silent truth is there. Whenever you are chattering inside, the monkey-chatter goes on inside, you miss the truth which is always present.

Whatsoever I do – talk to you, help you to meditate with me, force you into a catharsis, or persuade you to dance, to celebrate – whatsoever I do, there is only one aim: somehow to help you to become silent. whenever you are silent doors are open; you are in the temple. How you become silent is not relevant. You become silent and then I am within you, you are within me. Silence knows no boundaries. In silence love is happening. I have become a lover to you; you have become a lover to me. In silence all that is significant happens. But to bring silence is a problem, arduous.

So I am not much interested in what I say to you. I am interested in what happens to you while I am saying anything – x, y, z. Sometimes I go on contradicting myself. Today I say something, tomorrow I will say something else, because what I say is not the point. My talking is just like poetry. I am not a philosopher. I may be a poet but I am not a philosopher. Tomorrow I will say something else, the day after tomorrow something else. That is not the point. My sayings may contradict, but I am not contradictory – because today I say something and you become silent; tomorrow I say something absolutely contradictory and you become silent; the day after tomorrow I again say something absolutely contradictory – to all that I have said – but you become silent.

Your silence is my consistency.

I am consistent, constantly consistent – contradicting on the surface, but the inner current remains the same.

And remember: if I say the same thing every day to you, you will not be silent. Then you will get bored and your inner talk will start. If I go on saying the same thing it will become old. When it is old you need not listen to it, or even without listening you know what I am saying, so you can continue your inner talk. I have to be inventive, saying things, shocking you sometimes. But one inner consistency remains: that is to create silence in you – because then I can be with you and you can be with me. The love, the truth can flower there.

Whenever there is silence, truth flowers. Truth is a flowering of silence.