"Whether it is the Ganges or the Thames does not make any difference, the water is the same, it is all H20. And whether you step in the river today or tomorrow or after millions of years, it will be the same river.

"And how can you be different? You were a child, you remember it. Then you were a young man, you remember that too. Then you became old; that too you remember. Who is this one who goes on remembering? There must be a non-changing element in you – unchanging, permanent, absolutely permanent. Childhood comes and goes; so comes youth and is gone, so old age – but something remains eternally the same.

"Now let me say to you: Heraclitus and Parmeneides, both are right; in fact they both are right together. If Heraclitus is right, it is only half the truth; if Parmeneides is right, that too is only half the truth, and half the truth is not the true thing. They are stating half-truths. The wheel moves and the hub does not move. Parmeneides talks about the hub, Heraclitus talks about the wheel – but the wheel cannot exist without the hub. And what use is a hub without the wheel? So those two contradictory-looking half-truths are not contradictory but complementary. Heraclitus and Parmeneides are not enemies but friends. The other can stand only if the complementary truth is there, otherwise not.

"Meditate on the silent center of a cyclone….

"But the moment you state something, it can at the most only be half the truth. No statement can cover the whole truth. If any statement wants to cover the whole truth, then the statement will have to be, of necessity, self-contradictory, then it will have to be, of necessity, illogical. Then the statement will look crazy.

"Mahavira did that: he is the craziest man because he tried to state the whole truth and nothing but the whole truth. He drives you crazy, because each statement is immediately followed by its contradiction. He developed a sevenfold way of making statements. One is followed by its contradiction, that is followed by its contradiction…so on and so forth. He goes on contradicting seven times, and only when he has said seven different things contradictory to each other seven times, then he says, 'Now the truth is told perfectly' – but then you don't know what he has said."