But before man can attain to such intensity, either of awareness or of love – the real thing is intensity; neither does awareness matter nor love; what matters is intensity, total intensity – before that total intensity can happen you have to be perfectly conscious of your unconsciousness. Man is so unconscious that he is not even conscious of his unconsciousness.

Just the other day Mulla Nasruddin was telling me: “I had eighteen bottles of whisky in my cellar and was told by my wife to empty the contents of each and every bottle down the sink, or else. I said I would, and proceeded with the unpleasant task.

I withdrew the cork from the first bottle and poured the contents down the sink with the exception of one glass, which I drank.

I extracted the cork from the second bottle and I did likewise with it with the exception of one glass, which I drank.

I then withdrew the cork from the third bottle and poured the whisky down the sink which I drank. I pulled the cork from the fourth bottle down the sink and poured the bottle from the cork of the next and drank one sink out of it and threw the rest down the glass. I pulled the sink out of the next glass and poured the cork down the bottle. Then I corked the sink with the glass, bottled the drink and drank the pour. When I had everything emptied, I steadied the house with me hand, counted the glasses, corks, bottles and sinks with the other, which were 29, and as the house came by, I counted them again and finally had all the houses in one bottle, which I drank. I’m not under the affluence of oncohol, as some tinkle peep I am, I’m not half as thunk as you might drink. I fool so feelish I don’t know who is me, and the drunker I stand here the longer I get. Ah me!”

This is precisely the situation man is in. One is not aware of who one is, one is not aware of from where one is, one is not aware of where one is going. One is not aware of why one is at all, why this whole existence is. One simply goes on like a robot, doing things, managing somehow.

From birth to death man is a long sleep, sometimes dreaming with eyes closed, sometimes dreaming with eyes open, but dreaming all the same, all the time.

This situation cannot allow you to invite the guest. In this situation you cannot know what God is, because God is nothing but the name of the totality. You don’t even know yourself, how can you know the total? Even the small part of your being – you are just a tiny being compared to this great, vast existence, you are just a dewdrop compared to the ocean of existence – and you don’t know even the dewdrop, and you start inquiring about the ocean.

Hence all philosophy is foolish. Philosophy is bound to be foolish because it inquires about the ocean without knowing the dewdrop. Religion is very sane: it starts by inquiring into the dewdrop.