Going beyond words

Following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Questioner (Q): What is beyond the words?

Acharya Prashant (AP):

Words will always belong to the mental realm, to the path. What is beyond the path? The destination. Whatever is being said is being said so that you can be close to the destination.

Words are for the sake of Silence if they are arising from silence. Words arising from the Silence are for the sake of Silence. Be directly established in the Silence.

You take a shortcut. You take a direct path.

When you cannot comprehend the words, just know that the destination of all the words is Silence.

So you directly go there.

Why take the circuitous route? Words are like that mischievous tourist guide who wants to inflate his billing, so he will take you by the longest route possible. And in taking you through the longest route, he’s assuring you of his own importance, “You see, it was such a torturous route. You would’ve lost your way. Good that you hired me. See now I am navigating you through all this maze.” This is what words do.

You directly reach where the guide would anyway take you in the end.

The end is right in front of you.