Beloved Bhagwan
WHEN I SIT IN FRONT OF YOU AND LISTEN TO YOU SPEAK, I FEEL AS IF A PROCESS OF OSMOSIS IS HAPPENING. I FIND I DON'T INTELLECTUALLY LISTEN. IS THIS THE RIGHT WAY OR AM I MISSING SOMETHING?
This is the right way.
If you listen to me intellectually you miss, not something, but all. Intellectual listening is a kind of deafness. When I say something, you can listen to the word. You have a mind, a library in the mind of all your prejudices, philosophies, ideologies. The word has to go through all those preconceived patterns, and by the time it reaches to you it is no longer the same.
It has changed so many times, passing through the whole process of intellectual listening, that when it comes out it is absolutely something else. And yet it appears to be rationally the right thing; it fits with your mind. The process of listening has managed to cut it here and there, change it here and there; to color it here and there, to make it what you want it to be, not what it is. And you will agree with it; it is your own idea, it has nothing to do with me.
Listening intellectually is not listening at all. It is a way of avoiding. The right way is that you don't bring your mind in and you let me go into your innermost being without being hindered. Then there will be an understanding. Then there will be a communion, a real listening, because in the very process of listening, you have changed.
Now the agreement that arises in your being is not agreeing with your mind, it is agreeing with something new, which your mind knows nothing of. The mind is always old, and the truth is always new; they never meet, they never coexist.
You are fortunate that you can listen the right way -- putting the mind aside, just allowing me to sink deeper and deeper within you. Then even though words have been used, silence has been conveyed. Even though words have been used, that which cannot be said has been said -- at least has been heard. And saying is not important, hearing is important.
Right listening means you will never ask how to do it. For example, if I am talking about silence and you are listening the right way, you will never ask how to be silent, because in the very listening you would have tasted it. In the very listening you will have experienced it -- the window has opened.
The people who listen intellectually are bound to ask later on how to do it. Their question about how to do it signifies that they have missed what was conveyed to them.
It is not only words that I am saying to you -- I am conveying my very heart. The words are only vehicles. Through the intellect the vehicles will reach, but I will be left behind. When you are listening without the mind, the vehicle becomes unimportant; its only use is that it helps me to reach to you. It is my outstretched hand, so that I can touch your heart.
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