"You have met these strangers, these outsiders, on different paths, on different crossroads – the quality of enlightenment is the same. So if you loved me deeply enough, all those experiences – which were momentary, because you never lived with an enlightened being long enough, otherwise you would not be here – just passing moments, but even the shadows, the reflections, are revived again because the taste is the same.

"Gautam Buddha is reported to have said, 'You can taste the ocean from anywhere. It is always salty.' It does not make any difference whether it is the Atlantic or Pacific. So is the case with enlightenment: it is an ocean of consciousness, and the taste is immensely sweet, fulfilling, enlightening. And the person who is before you is no longer important. What is important is the invisible experience that he is carrying within himself.

"So if you have passed a Gautam Buddha on a crossroad, or a Mahavira, or a Mahakashyapa, or a Kabir, or a Farid – meeting me, all those momentary impressions on your being will be revived again and it will appear as if you have known me before, many many times in many many lives.

"But the very apparent meaning is not true.

"I was not enlightened before this life. So even if you have met me, you have not met me – it was just an unconscious being like yourself. And you have been meeting thousands of people. I may have been one of those thousands of unconscious people that you came across – that is not significant.

"The difficulty with enlightenment is that you can be enlightened only in one life, because that is your last life. Once you have become enlightened, you cannot come again into the human body. You are released from the prison, from the pain, from the anguish, from the meaningless, miserable existence. You are no longer confined in any form; you enter into a formless universal consciousness. Once enlightened, your death is going to be the last death. In other words, only enlightened people die. The unenlightened…very difficult – they go on coming back, they never die. Only the enlightened person can afford death; the unenlightened cannot afford it, he is not yet ready."