But the scriptures can only fill your memory, they cannot give you any realization on their own. And in the dimension of truth nothing happens through memory training. For truth, you have to pay the price of self-transformation. The scriptures can only make you a pundit, a scholar, they cannot give birth to knowing in you. From scriptures more scriptures can be born. This is only natural. The material can only produce the material. But how can knowing be born out of the scriptures? Knowing is the nature of consciousness, it cannot arise out of unconscious matter. The scriptures are without life, without consciousness, truth is not so. The scriptures can only enrich the unconscious, lifeless memory. Conscious knowing cannot be attained by going into them, but by going into oneself.

I will say how can you know the truth as long as there are scriptures in between? This false notion that truth can be obtained from someone else, from the scriptures or from a guru, does not allow you to search for it within yourself. This idea is a big obstacle. This search is still in the world. Remember that the scriptures are part of the world as well. Whatever is outside is the world. The truth is where there is no outside – it is within, where the self is. The self is the real scripture. It is also the only real guru. By entering the self, truth is attained.

Is what intellect suggests to be the truth not the truth?

Intellect thinks. Intellect is not knowing. Thinking is groping in the dark, it is not knowing. The truth cannot be thought – it is seen, realized. This does not happen through the intellect but when the intellect is quiet and empty. This state of inner knowing is not intellect, it is intuition. Intuition is not thinking, it is an eye. To one who wants to see truth, intuition is like acquisition of sight to a blind man. No one ever gets anywhere by thinking. It is an endless groping. A blind man may grope endlessly but will he be able to attain to the light because of his groping? Just as there is no relation between groping and light, there is none between thinking and truth. They are altogether different dimensions.

Do you not consider a vision of Krishna or of Christ a spiritual experience?

No, this is not a spiritual experience. No vision is a spiritual experience. On that level all experiences are psychological. As long as there is the vision of someone else there is no vision of the self. Even in such experiences you are still outside your selves, you have still not come into your selves. That coming into one’s self takes place when there are no outer experiences whatsoever. When there is no object in front of the consciousness it settles effortlessly into itself. Only a consciousness without object can settle on the self.

Outside myself I am surrounded by two worlds: the world of matter and the world of the mind. Both of these are outside me. Not only is matter outside, the mind is outside as well. Because the mind is inside the body, it creates the illusion of being inner, but it is not. The self is inner, behind the mind, beyond the mind.