And the third fool, the third man, was absolutely naked. He had nothing. He was the poorest man who has ever existed, except that he had a sword which he always carried, on guard. He was always afraid, he was paranoid – afraid that somebody is going to rob him someday. Of course, he had nothing.

They all conferred because there was a rumor that their city is in a deep crisis. All the three fools who were thought to be very wise were asked to go deep into the phenomena: Is it true that the city is in danger – some crisis is coming, some future catastrophe?

The blind man looked into the far horizon and said, “Yes, I can see: thousands of soldiers of the enemy country are coming. I cannot only see them, I can count how many there are. I can see to which race and to which religion they belong.”

The deaf man listened silently, brooded, and said, “Yes. I can hear what they are saying, and I can also hear what they are not saying and hiding in their hearts.”

The beggar jumped, the third beggar jumped, took his sword in his hand and he said, “I am afraid they are going to rob us.”

This is your story. Think about it, move around and around and penetrate deeper into it: this is the story of man.

Man is always pretending that which he is not; that’s a way of hiding oneself. The ugly man tries to look beautiful, the man who is in anguish tries to look happy, the man who does not know a thing tries to prove that he knows all. This is how it goes on and on. And unless you become aware of these three fools within you, you will never become a sage. To go beyond the three fools, one becomes the true sage.

Try to stick to the fact, don’t try to hide it in a fiction. Fictions are easy, cheap – one need not do anything, one can simply imagine. And imagination is a way of auto-hypnosis. If you go on continuously repeating something, you will start feeling that you have that thing. What have you got in this world? What do you possess? You don’t possess even yourself, then why are you so afraid that somebody is going to rob you?

People come to me and they say, “We cannot trust because we are afraid.”

I ask them, “For what are you afraid? What have you got?”

They say, “If we trust, somebody may deceive us” – the third fool.

What have you got? Empty-handed you come, empty-handed you go, and just in between – “between and betwixt” – the foolishness that you possess something.

That is the meaning of Jesus when he says that “Even camels can pass through the eye of the needle but rich men will not be able to enter into my kingdom of God.” What does he mean by a rich man? He means one who has nothing and thinks that he has.