Hence, down the ages, there has been a search for a kind of food that will not strengthen the mind but will help it to finally dissolve; a kind of food which, instead of strengthening the mind, will strengthen meditation, no-mind. No fixed and certain rules can be given, because people are different and each one has to decide for himself.

And watch what you allow into your mind. People are completely unaware; they go on reading everything and anything, they go on looking at the TV, any silly stupid thing. They go on listening to the radio, they go on chitchatting, chattering with people, and they are all pouring rubbish into each other’s heads. Rubbish is all that they have.

Avoid such situations in which you are unnecessarily burdened with rubbish. You already have too much as it is, you need to be unburdened of it. And you go on collecting it as if it is something precious.

Talk less, listen only to the essential, be telegraphic in talking and listening. If you talk less, if you listen less, slowly, slowly you will see that a cleanliness, a feeling of purity, as if you have just taken a bath, will start arising within you. That becomes the necessary soil for meditation to arise. Don’t go on reading all kinds of nonsense.

Once I used to live in a house where the neighbor was a madman who was very much interested in newspapers. He would come every day to collect all the newspapers from me. If sometimes he was ill or I was not at home, then he would come later on.

Once it happened, for ten days I was away, and when I came back he came again to collect all the newspapers. I said to him, “But these are old now – ten days old.”

He said, “What does it matter? It is the same rubbish! Only the dates change.”

It must have been a very sane moment in that madman’s life. Yes, there are insane moments in so-called sane people’s lives, and vice versa. He was telling a truth, saying, “It is the same old nonsense. What does it matter? I have time, and I have to remain occupied.”

I asked him, “What did you do for these ten days?”

He said, “I was reading the old newspapers – reading them again and again and again.”

Leave a few gaps in your mind unoccupied. Those moments of unoccupied consciousness are the first glimpses of meditation, the first penetrations of the beyond, the first flashes of no-mind. And then if you can manage to do this, the other thing is to choose physical food which does not help aggression and violence, which is not poisonous.

Now even scientists agree with this, that when you kill an animal, out of fear he releases all kinds of poisons. Death is not easy. When you are killing an animal, out of fear, there is a great trembling inside. The animal wants to survive; all kinds of poisons are released.