Truth is not information. It is not something that can be transferred from one hand to another. Even if I try to transfer my truth to you the moment it reaches your hands it will be a falsehood. That is the very nature of truth: nontransferable. You have to grow into it. It is your own maturity, it is your own realization.

So remember: listening to me, always remain alert.

There are many pitfalls; and the greatest is, that listening to me continuously you may start thinking that whatsoever I am saying is truth for you. It is truth for me, otherwise I would not have said it, but it is not truth for you. Remain alert – it is knowledge. It is not yet knowing and understanding.

Knowledge is borrowed, knowing is your own flowering, blossoming. Knowing is yours authentically, knowledge is always from some source: Vedas, Bible, Koran, me. It is always from somewhere else.

And this is the intrinsic nature of knowledge: borrowed, it burdens. It never makes you free. Only knowing frees you, liberates you. Jesus has said: Truth liberates. But not another’s truth. Otherwise all Christians would be liberated already.

A Christian is not liberated. In fact the truth of Jesus has become HIS bondage. A Christ is a liberated soul but a Christian? He lives in a prison; of course, decorated in a Christian way. A Hindu lives in another prison, decorated with Hindu deities, and pictures and images and mantras. A Jaina lives in a Jaina prison. Their prisons differ, but the bondage? The bondage is the same. Your fetters can be different. It is even possible your fetters may be more valuable than others’ fetters – you may have golden ones, but that doesn’t make any difference – you are not yet liberated.

Truth liberates. Whose truth? How can my truth liberate you? Your bondage is yours, how can my truth cut your bondage? you have created your bondage out of your ignorance, you have to create your own liberty out of your realization of truth. Nobody else can liberate you. Only you, and only you.

And never cling to the hope that somebody else can liberate you. If that was possible than a Buddha would have been enough, a Jesus would have been enough, a Krishna would have done the whole thing. There would have been no need.

This is the difference between scientific knowledge and religious knowing. When some Einstein discovers a scientific truth, once discovered it is discovered for all. Then there is no need to discover it again and again – that would be foolish! Then even a small child in school can learn the truth of the theory of relativity. But the Buddha’s truth? My truth? – No, it cannot be learnt that way.

That’s why there is no possibility of religious teaching. Awakening is possible, teaching is not possible. And all great religious teachers were not teachers at all – they were masters. They were trying to create devices in which you awaken. They were not trying to give you some information.