"You can go on speculating infinitely without ever touching the reality. By authentic knowledge, by veda is meant: something which has been experienced, not speculated. That is the difference between science and philosophy. Philosophy is speculation; science is experiment. And that is the difference between philosophy and religion also. Religion is also an experiment. So we can say, philosophy is speculation about everything, science is experience, experiment about the objective world, and religion is experience and experiment about the subjective world.

"Veda is authentic knowledge about the inner one. Veda is the supreme science: science of the inner one, science of the subjectivity, science of the knower, not of the known, science of the consciousness itself.

"For these eight days we have been doing something very strange. I say strange, because the human mind goes on asking for things of the world but never, never for something concerned with the inner being. We go on desiring objects, but never desiring our own self. That's why I say we have been doing something very strange here: not asking for things, not asking for riches, not asking for any object of the world, but asking for the inner being. Not asking anything concerning any utility, concerning any utilitarian object, but asking and desiring something of pure being, which is not a utility at all. Not going out, but coming in. That's why I call it strange.

"And it has been still more strange because for these eight days we were not only asking, we were doing something – and doing madly.

"This phenomenon has become rare. It was not rare in the past. A buddha was moving, and thousands and thousands of seekers were around him doing very strange things, going on a very strange journey. A Jesus was there, a Mahavira was there, a Zarathustra was there, a Lao Tzu was there... and many many people were deeply involved in knowing ‘Who am I?’ Now, this question has become absurd – if you ask, ‘Who am I?’ your neighbors will feel that you have gone mad. Everyone knows who he is, there is no need to ask. But really, no one knows who he is, and there is a very deep need to ask it.

"But just asking will not do. You have to penetrate in; you have to break many barriers, and you have to put aside many hindrances. You have to transform your energy to make it capable of moving into a new dimension – the dimension of the inner. "