The first thing is to have the right understanding about yourself, because it is out of you that the path will be born, and in the end the destination will also arise from you.

You are everything – you are the seed and you will also become the tree. And when the flowers bloom and the fragrance emanates from them, then it is you who will be in those flowers and in that fragrance. If you have the wrong understanding about yourself, then all your hard work will go to waste.

The first thing: the first thing for you to understand about yourself is that you don’t know anything. If you did know, then there would have been no need for you to come to me. If you are able to catch hold of even one ray of sunlight, then the whole path which reaches to the sun has opened up because by catching that ray you can reach to its original source, the sun. And if you are able to taste even one drop of the ocean, then you have tasted the whole ocean. If you know even a little bit of life, then there is no need to ask anyone anything. With the help of that little bit that you know, you can keep moving on ahead.

It is as if a man takes a small lamp and walks in the darkness, and the way is lit for only two steps; but when he has taken those two steps, two more steps are lit up and then when he has taken those two steps, two more steps are lighted. With a lamp which can shed light on only two steps, you can complete a journey of a thousand miles. There is no need to light up the whole thousand miles. Even if you have a small lamp in your hand, even then, the journey along the longest of long, dark roads can be completed. Two steps are enough.

If you knew even a little bit about yourself, then there would have been no need for you to come to me; there would have been no need for you to go to anyone. So the first thing is that you understand this rightly: as yet, you don’t know anything about yourself, and whatever you may know is just words. But words have no life and no meaning. In this world, there is nothing more false than words.

Experience, yes – experience has meaning. I may talk as much as I want, but I cannot put my experience into words. Nobody has ever been able to do it and nobody will ever be able to do it – because whatever I know is my experience. And when I put that into words, what you hear is not the experience, but empty words.

I say God and you hear it, I say soul and you also hear it, but there is no meaning in the words soul or God. What you are hearing is just words, and by hearing them again and again an illusion is created that you have understood. The knowledge of words is another name for foolishness.

You don’t know anything. Please let this be clear; this is fundamental. Because if a person who does not know starts to think that he knows, then all the doors to knowing close for him. If a sick person believes that he is healthy, then the search for a cure stops. If an ignorant person thinks that he is wise, then this so-called wisdom will lead him much farther astray than his ignorance would have.