"M. Once you say, 'I want to find Truth,' all your life will be deeply affected by it. All your mental and physical habits, feelings and emotions, desires and fears, plans and decisions will undergo a most radical transformation.
Q. Once I have made up my mind to find The Reality, what do I do next?
M. It depends on your temperament. If you are earnest, whatever way you choose will take you to your goal. It is the earnestness that is the decisive factor.
Q. What is the source of earnestness?
M. It is the homing instinct, which makes the bird return to its nest and the fish to the mountain stream where it was born. The seed returns to earth, when the fruit is ripe. Ripeness is all.
Q. And what will ripen me? Do I need experience?
M. You already have all the experience you need, otherwise you would not have come here. You need not gather any more. Rather you must go beyond experience. Whatever effort you make, whatever method you follow, will merely generate more experience, but will not make you go beyond. Nor will reading books help you. They will enrich your mind, but the person you are will remain intact. If you expect any benefits from your search, material, mental, spiritual, you have missed the point. Truth gives no advantage. It gives you no higher status, no power over others; all you get is Truth and Freedom from the false.
Q. Surely truth gives you the power to help others.
M. This is mere imagination, however noble! In truth you do not help others, because there are no others. You divide people into noble and ignoble and you ask the noble to help the ignoble. You separate. You evaluate. You judge and condemn---in the name of Truth you destroy it. Your very desire to formulate Truth denies it, because it cannot be contained in words. Truth can be expressed only by the denial of false---in action. For this you must see the false as false and reject it. Renunciation of the false is liberating and energizing. It lays open the road to perfection.
Q. When do I know I have discovered Truth?
M. When the idea 'this is true, that is true' does not arise. Truth does not assert itself, it is in the seeing of the false as false and rejecting it. It is useless to search for Truth when the mind is blind to the false. It must be purged of the false completely before Truth can dawn on it.
Q. Once I have made up my mind to find The Reality, what do I do next?
M. It depends on your temperament. If you are earnest, whatever way you choose will take you to your goal. It is the earnestness that is the decisive factor.
Q. What is the source of earnestness?
M. It is the homing instinct, which makes the bird return to its nest and the fish to the mountain stream where it was born. The seed returns to earth, when the fruit is ripe. Ripeness is all.
Q. And what will ripen me? Do I need experience?
M. You already have all the experience you need, otherwise you would not have come here. You need not gather any more. Rather you must go beyond experience. Whatever effort you make, whatever method you follow, will merely generate more experience, but will not make you go beyond. Nor will reading books help you. They will enrich your mind, but the person you are will remain intact. If you expect any benefits from your search, material, mental, spiritual, you have missed the point. Truth gives no advantage. It gives you no higher status, no power over others; all you get is Truth and Freedom from the false.
Q. Surely truth gives you the power to help others.
M. This is mere imagination, however noble! In truth you do not help others, because there are no others. You divide people into noble and ignoble and you ask the noble to help the ignoble. You separate. You evaluate. You judge and condemn---in the name of Truth you destroy it. Your very desire to formulate Truth denies it, because it cannot be contained in words. Truth can be expressed only by the denial of false---in action. For this you must see the false as false and reject it. Renunciation of the false is liberating and energizing. It lays open the road to perfection.
Q. When do I know I have discovered Truth?
M. When the idea 'this is true, that is true' does not arise. Truth does not assert itself, it is in the seeing of the false as false and rejecting it. It is useless to search for Truth when the mind is blind to the false. It must be purged of the false completely before Truth can dawn on it.
