In the world, in this world, we can have everything – everything can become part of our possessions. Truth can never be possessed, because there are two commodities which can be possessed: thoughts and things. Things can be possessed, thoughts can be possessed – truth is neither. Truth is being. You can become it, but you cannot possess it. You cannot have it in your safe, you cannot have it in your book, you cannot have it in your hand. When you have it, you are it. You become truth. It is not a concept, it is a being itself.

Second thing to remember: this is a human tendency, to try to show you have that which you don’t have. If you have it, you don’t try to show it, there is no point. If you don’t have it you try to show it, as if you have it. So remember, whatsoever you want to show to people, that is the thing you don’t have.

If you go to a rich man’s house, become his guest – nothing changes; if he is really rich nothing changes, he simply accepts you. Go to a poor man’s house – he changes everything. He may borrow furniture from his neighbor, a carpet from somebody else, curtains from somebody else. He would like to impress you that he is rich. If you are not rich you would like to impress people that you are rich. And if you don’t know, you would like people to think that you know. Whenever you want to impress somebody, remember this: it is a human tendency to impress, because nobody wants to look poor – and more so where things of the other world are concerned.

You can be a poor man as far as things of this world are concerned, that is not much of a poverty; but as far as God, the soul, liberation, truth are concerned – it is too much to bear, to be poor is too much to bear. You would like to impress people that you have something, and it is difficult to impress them as far as things of this world are concerned, because those things are visible. It is easy to impress people about things of the other world because they are not visible. You can impress people that you know, without knowing.

The problem arises because when you impress others, there is a possibility that you may be impressed yourself by their eyes and their convictions that you have something. If many people are convinced that you know, by and by you will be convinced that you know – there is the problem, because deceiving others is not much of a problem. But if you are deceived by your own effort, then it will be almost impossible to bring you out of your sleep, because you think it is not a sleep at all! You think you are fully awake. It will be difficult to bring you out of your ignorance because you think you are enlightened already. It will be difficult to bring you out of your disease because you believe that you are healthy and whole already!