"It is a chain.

"The first step is the most important step. In fact, it is almost half the journey. If the first step is right, you have already arrived; you have moved in the right direction.

"Truth is not without but within. And everybody has been seeking it without, hence everybody is missing it. And it is not only true about truth but about all search as such. Bliss is within, so is beauty, so is love, so is joy. All the values that one wants to attain to are within one's own being.

"These words of Robert Browning are of immense significance:

Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate'er you may believe.

"And man has believed down the ages in some truth which is somewhere far away in heaven. And one has to travel to it, and one has to go on a long, long pilgrimage. There is bound to be great effort – practicing, cultivating, preparing – and truth is all the time waiting for you within yourself.

"All the beliefs mislead you because all the beliefs are based on the false idea that truth is an object. People come to me and they ask, 'Where is truth?' and they think that they are asking a very relevant question – as if truth can be somewhere. They have not looked into the problem deeply. First they have to search into this questioning itself: who is the one asking for truth? Who is this one searching for truth? One should start from the very start. 'Who am I?' is the only significant question one can ask. And once this question is solved, all other questions are solved because truth is found.

"Raman Maharshi used to give only one meditation to everyone, whosoever would come to him: Just to go on and on pondering, observing, watching, witnessing one thing – to let this question become so utterly your existence that it persists even when you are asleep – 'Who am I?' And it has not to be repeated like a mantra. If you repeat it like a mantra you will have missed the point; it is not a mantra, it is an inquiry, and the greatest inquiry there is."