"Understanding is a great death – death from this world of fantasy, dream, illusion.

"Right you are, right is your feeling that you have heard it before – it sounds familiar – and yet it reveals much. It sounds familiar because it is familiar, still it reveals new dimensions because a new understanding is dawning on you.

"Truth is neither old nor new because it doesn't belong to time. Anything that belongs to time is bound to be new and old. That which is new today will be old tomorrow. That which is old today was yesterday new. New and old are two aspects of time; truth is timeless, truth is timelessness. It is always there – as old as existence and as new as this moment.

"If you understand, the familiarity carries deep mysteries hidden behind it. So don't be deceived by the familiarity. You may have heard the words, you have not understood the truth; otherwise you are transformed. Transformation is a function of truth. Says Jesus, 'Truth liberates.' The moment you understand, you are liberated. There is nothing else to do afterwards. The very understanding is enough, is liberation.

"Listen, but don't compare. Listen, but don't bring your memory in; otherwise your memory and your feeling that it is familiar will be a distraction. The moment your mind says it is familiar, the mind is saying there is nothing new to understand. There is much! There is infinite to be understood.

"Don't look through the memory and don't compare. Look direct, look immediate, look without memory. Let there be a clarity of perception. Don't compare with anything that you have heard before.

"I tell you: you may have heard it before but you have not understood it, so what is the point of hearing it before? And if you are too much in this idea of familiarity you will miss it again. And again, whenever you will hear, the idea will be there that it sounds familiar.

"Comparison is a disease. It obstructs, it doesn't help. So even when you feel it is familiar you also feel, side by side, new flowers of understanding blooming. They bloom in spite of your comparison."