But strangely we were not aware for centuries that the right hand represents the left side of mind; it is joined crisscross. So the left side of the mind has developed because the right hand is active. Its action is an extension of the side of the mind it is connected to. And because the left hand is ignored, the right side of the mind has also been ignored.

So there is a cross in the mind of man, dividing it in two ways. Front and back, that is one division; then right and left – another division. If the cross can have any significance, this should be the significance.

Every man is on the cross, not only Jesus Christ.

And the cross is not outside you, the cross is within you. It is far heavier than the outside cross, and it is far more murderous. It has destroyed so enormously, so devastatingly, that it is almost incalculable. And all the traditions of the world have been supporting it.

The left side of the mind has its qualities…. For example, it can be used by the front of the mind without any difficulty. It has a certain affinity with the front of the mind. The right side of the mind has a certain affinity with the back side of the mind. So as the meditator moves into the unused parts of his own mind…if he moves to the back part he becomes absolutely silent.

Many mystics have never spoken, for the simple reason that they had no idea…that if they wanted to speak, they had to move to the right side of the mind, they had to use the right side of the mind.

Before they ever entered into meditation they had used the left side of the mind – they knew only it. When they moved into meditation suddenly they found that there is no connection between the left side of the mind and the back of the mind. They became disconnected. Their silence was not willed; simply, they could not find a way out of it. They tried the left side of the mind, to which they were accustomed, and they could not reach it. From the back of the mind there is no way to the left side of the mind. They never said a single word.

Very few mystics have done the tremendous job of searching and seeing the fact that the left side of the mind is used by the front mind for thinking and for all kinds of activities. It is a natural deduction that perhaps the right side of the mind may be the way to express silence, to let it become a song. These are the few mystics who became known as great masters.

All mystics have not been masters. They had realized, they had come to the ultimate peak of experience, but they remained isolated and cut off from the larger humanity. They could not contribute anything. They knew it – but suddenly they found they were dumb. They have tasted it, but by tasting it they have lost their tongue, they cannot speak about it.

One of the greatest philosophers of the contemporary West, Ludwig Wittgenstein, has made one of the most pregnant statements. He is the only man in the contemporary world who writes only maxims, who does not even make a paragraph – just lines, each line separate and individual.