“A conversation between someone who has realized the truth and someone who has had direct experience of it cannot be reduced to a simple exchange of information. Rather, it takes the form of an exchange of views which, although they may differ in form, spring from a shared root: experience. In this type of encounter, there is no need to defend a position or a desire to confront. What emerges is a tacit, almost silent recognition between two people who speak from a knowledge that is not borrowed or theoretical, but verified internally. Words circulate without any demand for agreement, and in this unpretentious background, a deeper affinity than any superficial difference can be sensed. Even when it occurs between seekers who are still in transit, if there is sincerity, the exchange remains fruitful. Ideas do not compete; they are allowed to appear, resonate, interweave, without needing to impose themselves or be resolved.
On the other hand, dialogue becomes unviable when one of the interlocutors has no experience but clings rigidly to a theory, a doctrine, or a text that they consider unquestionable. Under these conditions, dialogue does not fail: it simply cannot begin. Where the mind is fixed on absolute certainty, all openness becomes impossible. Belief becomes a trench, and words no longer seek to understand, but to refute. There is no room for encounter, only for reaction.
Faced with the mere possibility of a different perspective, a perception of threat is triggered. From that framework, opening up to another point of view would be to allow contamination of the “purity” of what is held to be true. Fanaticism then operates as a preventive closure: difference is not contemplated, it is feared. It is received as a fracture, as disintegration. Thus, fear sets in, and with it, the compulsive need to reaffirm an identity that, far from being solid, is always perceived as on the verge of collapse. When truth is confused with ownership, any possibility of real encounter is extinguished. And what could have been mutual recognition dissolves into inevitable exclusion.”
Prabhuji
