"The philosopher thinks about reality, the mystic simply drops all thinking. In his silence ( his utter silence and serenity ( he becomes a mirror, and the reality reflects itself.

"The mystic is the greatest flowering of human consciousness. His ultimate vision can be described in three beautiful words that have been used for thousands of years, and there has not been any improvement on them. They are three words from the ancient-most sources: satyam shivam sundaram.

"Satyam means the truth – not what you think about it, but what it is; not your idea about it, but its reality. To know this truth you have to be utterly absent. Your very presence will distort the vision – because your presence means the presence of your mind, your prejudices, your conditionings. You are nothing else but a bundle of all that has been forced upon you by the religions, by the society, by the so-called leaders of humanity.

"Your absence means the absence of all prejudices, of all borrowed knowledge: absence of the Christian, absence of the Hindu, absence of the Mohammedan…just a pure sky, a pure being. I am using the word absence to deny all that is not you.

"But don't misunderstand me: this absence of you is your real presence. Only the prejudices are absent. The ego is absent, your knowledgeability is absent but your being shows in its utter purity. You disappear as a personality and there remains only a pure presence. So on one side it is absence of all that is false in you, and on the other side it is presence of all that is real in you. In this state you don't think, you simply see.

"This seeing of existence is the first experience of the mystic contained in the word satyam. Satyam means the truth: not any conception about it, but truth itself.

"The second word, shivam, means virtue – all that is good, all that is valuable, all that is the most precious in you: the ultimate good. The man who comes to experience the truth starts living the truth immediately. There is no other alternative. His living the truth is shivam. Shivam means truth in action, truth in your life, truth in your love, truth in your friendship, truth in your eyes and truth in your heart."