"Mind can understand anything which can be reached through installments, because mind is analysis, division, fragmentation. Mind can understand parts; the whole always eludes it. So if you listen to the mind you will never attain.

"That's what happened: this nun, Chiyono, studied for years and years and nothing happened. Mind can study about God, about enlightenment, about the ultimate. It can even pretend that everything has been understood. But God is not something you have to understand. Even if you know everything about God, you don't know him; knowledge is not 'about.' Whenever you say 'about,' you belong to the outside. You may be moving round and round, but you have not entered the circle.

"When someone says, 'I know about God,' he says he doesn't know anything at all, because how can you know anything about God? God is the center, not the periphery. You can know about matter – because matter has no center in it, it is just the periphery. You cannot know about consciousness: there is no self, there is no one inside. Matter is only the outside; you can know about it. Science is knowledge. The very word science means knowledge – knowledge of the periphery, knowledge about something where the center doesn't exist. Whenever the center is approached through the periphery, you miss it.

"You have to become it; that is the only way to know it. Nothing can be known about God. You have to be; only being is knowledge there. With the ultimate, 'about and about' means missing and missing again. You have to enter and become one.

"That's why Jesus says, 'God is like love' – not loving, but just like love. You cannot know anything about love, or can you? You can study and study, you can become a great scholar, but you have not touched, you have not penetrated. Love can be known only when you become a lover. Not only that: love can be known only when you become love. Even the lover disappears, because that too belongs to the outside. Two persons in love become absent. They are not there. Only love exists, the rhythm of love. There may be two poles of the rhythm but they are not there."