Once it happened: A very beautiful man, Mahatma Bhagwandeen, came to the town where I used to live. He was making a small place for orphans, an orphanage. He wanted to collect some money, so he went to collect. The whole day the old man went from one shop to another shop, from one house to another house. He was a very simple man. All that he collected was not more than twelve rupees; he collected the whole day.

When he came back, very tired, I asked, "Where have you been the whole day?" He said, "I have been collecting, but it seems impossible - in one day only twelve rupees. How long will it take for me?" I said, "You wait. This is not the way to collect. " He said, "Then how should it be done?" I said, "You simply wait."

The next day I gave his picture to be published in the newspapers, saying that a great saint had come. Phone calls started coming: "We want to come for darshan." I said, "It is very difficult. The saint rarely gives darshan, but I will see." And many people came, but I didn't allow them to see him.

In two, three days, it was the talk of the town: "A great saint has come, and he is not seeing anybody."

Then I asked a few of my friends, "You go with him," so twenty or twenty-five persons followed him, there was a procession in the town. And wherever he went, the same places, and just three or four days before, the person had given him only four annas; now he gave him five hundred rupees. The same man - but now he was a great saint, followed by twenty-five followers, with pictures in the newspaper, and a very rare man because he never gave audience to people. That day he collected near about eight thousand rupees. There is a lot of difference between twelve rupees and eight thousand rupees.

People's minds live through words. You live through words. Somebody says, "Watch! This man is a thief," and immediately you are totally different towards the man, you are no longer the same. Just a minute before you were so loving, kind, helpful; now you are withdrawn. Just a small word has distorted the whole thing. He may not be a thief. He may not be a saint.

But you live through words, you don't see reality as it is. If a painting is hanging somewhere, you may not see it. You may pass through the room every day and you may not see, and one day somebody says, "This is a Picasso," and then just you see how your eyes are shining and you are standing there in front of the painting, mystified! "Picasso? A million dollar painting?" And it may be nothing.

It may be just some madman who has painted it, but the idea that it is Picasso's painting is enough - and it starts looking beautiful, it starts looking like something miraculous. That's how you are living.

You don't reflect reality. Your mind continuously distorts it. Whatsoever you have been told and taught and conditioned for, your mind functions in the service of it.