"Its knowledge only helps it to know that much more is to be known, and there seems to be no end in view.

"In contrast, the East has reached its goal: it has attained to the ultimate consciousness. In a certain way, it has reached inner perfection. This creates new difficulties of misunderstanding, because the East speaks from the heights of final realization and the West can understand only relative truths which are changing every day.

"They have also chosen to speak in different ways. The East speaks in poetic metaphors; the West speaks in terms of mathematics. The East speaks intuitively; the West, only intellectually.

"It is one of the greatest problems to be solved – how East and West can come together. Their meeting is absolutely necessary; otherwise, whatever has been attained in the East, or in the West, will all disappear in nuclear smoke.

"I can understand Kaveesha's question. When she heard me first say the famous haiku – 'Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself' – it was natural for her to understand it as poetry, as metaphoric expression. The mind trained in the Western way cannot think otherwise. It is impossible to think that it is a description of a reality.

"There is no metaphor involved; it is not poetry. Haiku is not poetry. Its formation is poetic, but what it contains is reality – only the container is poetic, but the content is absolute reality.

"But it is difficult for the simple reason, first: sitting silently is against the Western mind. The West has the proverb, 'The empty mind is the devil's workshop.' Sitting silently, you will be empty. And from your childhood you have heard 'the empty mind is the devil's workshop,' and the East knows something totally different. It is a workshop – not of the devil but of the divine.

"The first sentence creates great hurdles. Everybody is taught in the West to think, and thinking pays in life – sitting silently won't pay. It is not a qualification; maybe it can be called a disqualification. If you apply for a job and tell the employer that your qualification is sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself, they will be simply amazed! They will throw you out of the office – 'You sit somewhere else, because we don't want the grass to grow here!' And you must be mad in their eyes…."