"They hear, but they don't listen. They appear to understand, but they only misunderstand.'

"And particularly a man like Zarathustra or Bodhidharma is bound to be misunderstood, because they are absolutely non-compromising with your lies, with your beliefs. Their truth is going to shatter you completely. To protect yourself, either you don't hear what they are saying or you interpret it in such a way that it does not disturb you. You will be extremely surprised that modern research has found that almost ninety-eight percent is being censored out – only two percent reaches to you.

"Zarathustra is saying tremendously significant statements which can become the foundation of a new humanity, but he has to be understood with great sympathy. He has to be heard not only by your mind, but by your being too. Unless every cell of your body is thrilled by what he is saying, you will not understand him.

"Do not depend only on the mind: mind – rather than understanding – always creates misunderstanding, because mind has already its own prejudices. It clings to its prejudices. It allows in only those things which support its prejudices; otherwise it does not allow them in. Or even if by chance they have entered in, it interprets them, dilutes them, destroys their fire, takes their living quality. They become just hypotheses, they lose their reality, they cannot transform you.

"Only a truth that reaches to your heart alive, dancing, is capable of taking you beyond your present state of consciousness. In these statements there are thousands of gems spread all over, but one needs to be a jeweler to understand them.

"An old fable of Aesop is: A farmer is returning home with his donkey, and finds by the side of the road, perhaps the biggest diamond in existence, but the poor fellow has no idea that it is a diamond. He has heard the word, but he has never seen one. Still it is shining so beautifully in the sunrays, that he thinks, it is a beautiful stone and I have never given anything to my poor donkey. He will enjoy it very much. So he ties the stone around the neck of the donkey."