"The mind is there between him and the reality, and the mind always interprets; it is a constant commentator. It never allows the reality to reach to you as it is. It distorts it, it polishes it, it changes it. It makes it according to its own gestalt, its own pattern. It gives it the shape of its own ideas, it colors it. Of course, something of the reality still lingers on, but it is only something fragmentary, as if the poet has seen a beautiful dream.

"The mystic knows it directly, immediately; there is no interpretation. Existence and the mystic are in deep communion. The poet is only once in a while in a sort of communication, but never of communion. In communication you remain separate, bridged for the moment but still separate. In communion you are no more, not only bridged for the moment – you are simply not there. It is not a question of creating a bridge, you are immersed, you are attuned. You are in a state of 'at-onement' with reality.

"Remember this, before we start meditating on these beautiful words of Kahlil Gibran – they are beautiful. He is one of the most perceptive poets of this age, but he is a poet, not a mystic; he is not a buddha, not a christ. He has not seen reality, he has dreamed about it. His dreams are beautiful, psychedelic, but dreams are dreams; even if sometimes they reflect the reality, they only reflect it. They are faraway echoes, or maybe echoes of the echoes of the echoes.

"Kahlil Gibran says: 'When love beckons to you, follow him.'

"It is implied in the statement as if love is some thing outside you and you have to follow it. In fact, when love is there you are not there; there is nobody to follow it. Love is overwhelming. Love is a dissolution of the ego. Who is there to follow? Who is there not to follow? If there is somebody still to follow or not to follow then it is not love, then it must be something else – maybe biology, chemistry, psychology, but not love. It must be instinctive; it must be lust parading as love, camouflaged as love."