"Communists will think just the opposite. Marx will not be ready to approve what El Mahdi says in this story. Marx says the cause exists outside man; man is in misery because there are causes outside which create misery. Man will be happy if the causes are changed, replaced. A revolution is needed, according to Marx, in the outside world. According to Mohammed, Jesus, Mahavira, Krishna, this whole diagnosis is wrong. Causes are inside. Outside are only excuses.

"You can change the outside, but nothing will change if the inside remains the same. The inside will create again and again the same pattern whatsoever the situation outside, because man lives from the inner to the outer.

"It happened: I used to know a man. He married thrice, and he suffered much. The first time he married he chose a woman who was a sadist, who enjoyed torturing him. He would come to see me and he would relate his misery. Sometimes the woman would beat him, and he would show me the marks. But I had the feeling that somehow, deep down, he relished it, he enjoyed it, because whenever he would be talking about his miseries his face would become radiant, not sad; his eyes would sparkle, he would become more alive.

"I continued to watch him minutely. Sometimes his wife would go to her parents' home; then he was never happy. When the wife was with him he was unhappy: when the wife was not with him he was unhappy – but both unhappinesses have a distinction and difference. When the wife was there he was unhappy, but happy in his unhappiness; he enjoyed it, talked about it. And I had the feeling he was exaggerating; he was very poetic about it.

"Then the misery became too much and the man divorced the wife. The day he divorced I told him, 'Now be very alert – because I think you will fall in love with the same type of woman again. Because you remain the same, you will again find the same type of woman. So now be alert.'

"He said, 'Never again can I marry such a woman. I am finished for ever!'

"But within three months he again became a victim of the same type of woman and he got married, and again he started his sad stories that the woman was torturing him."