"He was not at all concerned about who was asking the question; he was more concerned with his own insight.

"Just last night I received the last book of J. Krishnamurti, in which he is not speaking to anybody – he is speaking just to himself. The words are recorded but there was no audience, and perhaps in this book he comes closer to truth than in any of his other books. The audience is a limitation.

"This has been my experience too. If I am speaking to my own people, then there is no limitation; then I don't feel that I have to say something, or not to say something. Then I simply speak as if I am speaking to myself. When I am speaking to people who don't know me, who don't understand me – moreover they misunderstand me – there is a great limitation. Then I am not at freedom to speak. Their very faces, their eyes, their gestures prevent me from saying something that may hurt them.

"Just a few days ago, seventy people from the Times Of India group of papers came to have an exclusive interview with me. The owners were also present – Samir Jain, Nandita Jain and their mother Indu Jain were also present. But the strangest thing that I immediately felt as I entered the auditoriumso ugly, so inhuman and so uncultured. When I was giving my greetings with folded hands to everybody, those seventy people, including Indu Jain, could not even respond. That is, in India, a simple thing. Even a stranger on the street folds his hands. It need not be known to you who he is, but you respond because a folded-hands greeting has a spiritual meaning.

"Shaking hands has no spiritual meaning; shaking hands has a very mundane meaning. You have to shake with your right hand. It was a device created by the West to show that you are not keeping any weapon in your right hand. It was not a greeting – it was a search. It was being alert that the man is not an enemy, that he cannot do any harm because his right hand is empty. The reason for shaking hands and its psychology is totally different; in a way very mean, political."