Now is my time. I don’t think anybody has spoken in a dentist’s chair. I feel privileged. I see buddhas envious of me.

The P.S. continues….

The first book today: The Destiny of the Mind by Haas. I don’t know how his name is pronounced: h-a-a-s – I pronounce it Haas. The book is not very well known for the simple reason that it is so profound. I think this fellow Haas must be a German; even so he has created a book of immense significance. He is not a poet, he writes like a mathematician. He is the man who gave me the word philosia.

Philosophy means “love of wisdom”; philo is love, and sophia is wisdom, but it cannot be applicable to darshan, the Eastern way of looking at the whole. Philosophy is harsh.

In his book Destiny of the Mind, Haas uses for darshan not the word philosophy but philosia. Philo still means love, but osia means truth, the real, the ultimately real – not love of knowledge or wisdom, but love for the truth, palatable or unpalatable, it does not matter.

This is one of those books which has brought East and West closer – but just closer, books cannot do anything more. For the meeting to happen a man is needed, not a book, and Haas was not that man. His book is beautiful, but he himself is just ordinary. For the real meeting a Buddha, a Bodhidharma, a Jesus, a Mohammed or a Baal Shem is needed. In short, meditation is needed, and I don’t think that this man Haas ever meditated. He may have concentrated – Germans know much about concentration, concentration camps. Great! I have been holding meditation camps and they have been holding concentration camps! Concentration is German, meditation is not. Yes, once in a while even in Germany a meditator has happened, but that is not the rule, only the exception, and the exception always proves the rule. I know Eckhart, and I know Böhme….

My second name today is Eckhart. I would have loved for him to have been born in the East. To be born among Germans and then to write or speak about the ultimate is a difficult job. But the poor man did it, and did it perfectly. Germans are Germans; whatsoever they do, they do it perfectly. Even today it seems one German sannyasin is still knocking. Perfection! Listen to his knocks, how beautiful they sound amidst all this silence.