Don’t compare at all, because you are you, and somebody else is somebody else. Why should I compare myself with Yehudi Menuhin or with Pablo Picasso? I don’t see the point at all. They are doing their thing; I am doing my thing. They are enjoying doing their thing, perhaps – because about them I cannot be certain. But I am certain about myself that I am enjoying whatsoever I am doing or not doing.

I said I cannot be certain about them because Pablo Picasso was not a happy man, in fact very unhappy. His paintings show his inner misery in many ways and he has spread that misery on the canvas.

And why did Picasso become the greatest painter of this age? The reason is because this age knows inner suffering the most.

Nobody would have thought him a painter five hundred years ago. They would have laughed, and they would have put him into a mental institution. And five hundred years ago, mental institutions were not easy places to be in. They did all kinds of things, particularly beating, because they thought it was possible to beat the madness out, because madness was thought of as something like an evil spirit possessing you. A good beating every day, and they thought the madness would go.

They used – just three hundred years ago – to take blood out of the madman, so he became weakened. They thought that his energies were being possessed by an evil spirit; if you took his energies out, the evil spirit would leave the place because there was nothing to feed on: it was feeding on his blood. Good logic – and they were doing just that.

Nobody would have thought that these were paintings. Only this century could believe that Picasso is a great painter, because this century suffers, is a little alert of suffering, of inner misery – and this man has put it in color. What you cannot put even in words, Picasso has been able to put in color. You don’t understand what it is, but somehow you feel a deep at-one-ment. It has an appeal; something clicks in you. It is not intellectual because you cannot figure out what it is, but you remain stuck watching, looking, as if it were a mirror and something of your inside, of your intestines, is there. Picasso’s paintings became the greatest in this age because they served almost like an X-ray. They brought your misery out. That’s why I said perhaps. And about anybody else I can only say perhaps.

Only about myself can I be certain. I know that if you go on exploring your inner world without condemnation, without appreciation, without thinking at all, just watching the facts, they start disappearing. A day comes, you are left alone, the whole crowd has gone away; and in that moment, for the first time you feel what psychic healing is.

And from psychic healing the door opens to spiritual healing.

You need not open it, it opens on its own. You just reach to the psychic center and the door opens. It has been waiting for you, perhaps for many lives. When you come, the door immediately opens, and from that door, you not only see yourself, you see the whole existence, all the stars, the whole cosmos.