You will have to forget your language if you want to understand my language. You will have to forget yourself if you want to be in tune with me. That much risk you will have to take.

That’s why people who are very knowledgeable when they come here are absolutely incapable to understand anything, not because they are ignorant but because they are knowledgeable. The Hindu comes here to listen me quote the Vedas; instead I quote a joke. He is shocked. He wanted to hear richas to be repeated from the Vedas and the Upanishads: that’s what he has been expecting. His expectation is so much that he cannot understand what is happening here. If I had quoted from the scriptures he would have relaxed, he would have felt that he has understood, simply because he would have thought that I am supporting his ideas. He comes here not to understand something new, he comes here to be strengthened, supported, nourished in his own beliefs. He will go very happy if I am supporting his ideas. And one thing is absolutely certain: his ideas have not helped him at all, otherwise there was no need to come here. To come here and still hanker to be supported simply shows the stupidity.

If your ideas are right you need not come here; you live your ideas, you practice them. You have lived according to your ideas and you have reached nowhere. Your Vedas have failed. Your Upanishads have become just a parrot-like phenomenon in you. You go on repeating beautiful words. If you have come here to get some support, some props for your falling ego, for your disintegrating ego, then you have come to a wrong place. Then listening to me he will be shocked; he will immediately close himself. He will become almost blind and deaf.

Jesus says again and again to his disciples, “If you have ears, listen. If you have eyes, see.” Was he talking to blind people and deaf people? He was just talking to ordinary people like you who were able to see and hear perfectly well. Then what does he mean? He simply means your ears are so much full of noise and your eyes are already so full of ideas that it is impossible to reach you, to touch your heart, to move your heart.

Every day I receive many letters, many questions from Christians, from Mohammedans, from Hindus, from all kinds of people who have come with a certain idea. If by chance they feel that I am saying things according to them they are immensely happy and they write to me great letters of thankfulness, gratitude. And all that is nonsense; it is neither gratitude nor thankfulness, because in their letters it is very clear: they are not agreeing with me, they are happy that they are finding me agreeing with them. But that is just a coincidence. Now, here are three thousand people – I am bound to say something which will support somebody’s idea.