"I want to share my experience – and for that, only those who are capable of living with me in silence are ready to understand me. So for three and a half years, I was silent. The basic reason was that those people who were hanging around my words, were interested intellectually in me, dropped out.

"And the people who were in love with me – not with my words or theories – they remained. The moment I saw that all the people whose concern was their head are gone, I started speaking again. Now, with these people, speaking is a totally different experience. They can read me between the words, they can read me between the lines, and they are not addicted to my words. If I am silent, they are as happy as when I am speaking to them."

But what is the difference between being addicted to your words and being addicted to you?

"There is a great difference. Being addicted to my words is just intellectual. Being in love with me is total. Being in love with me is not a conviction, it is an experience. Being in love with my words, somebody can destroy it very easily – just a little better argument, and the person is finished.

"But a person who is in love with me, nothing can disturb him. His trust is not based on any argument: it is not philosophical, it is existential."

But both kinds of people draw sustenance from you. One may draw sustenance from his love for you; some may draw sustenance from their love for what you are saying. Why do you want to make a distinction between these two kinds of people? Why do you think one kind of lover is less important than the other and needs to be dropped off?

"He is not only less important, he is absolutely wrong. His approach toward me is wrong, and what he is doing with my words – creating certain belief systems, creating some philosophy, some ideology, which is going to prevent him from knowing himself.

"My whole work is to help people to know themselves, and those who become addicted to the words are creating a hindrance for themselves."