There are hearts with many different qualities, like water with different chemical substances: those who have suffered, those to whom life has taught patience, those who have contemplated. They all represent one or other kind of the water that heals, and so do their personalities. People who have had deep experiences of any kind, of suffering, of agony, of love, of hate, of solitude, of association, of success, of failure, all have a particular quality, a quality which has a special use for others. And when a person realizes this, he will come to the conclusion that whatever has been his life's destiny, his heart has prepared a chemical substance through sorrow and pain, through joy or through pleasure, a chemical substance that is intended for a certain purpose, for the use of humanity, and that he can only give it out if he can keep his heart awakened and open. Once it is closed, once it is frozen, man is no longer living. It does not matter what he has gone through, for even the worst poison can be of some use. There is no person, however wicked, who is of no use, if only he realizes that the first condition for being useful to humanity is to keep his heart open.

As to spiritual attainment, it is something that we can never absorb through the head; it can only be received through the heart. Let two persons, one with his heart and the other with his head, listen to the teachings of a teacher. The latter will be thinking, 'Is it so or is it not so?' or, 'How is it, if it is so? How can it be; and if it is, why is it?' And there is never an end to the 'why'. But another person will listen with his heart; and while both logic and reason are at his disposal they are not troubling him. His heart is open, he listens to it; and the quality of the heart is such that whatever falls upon an open heart becomes instantly revealed. When one says, 'I cannot understand you', it is just like saying, 'I have my heart closed to you'; there is no other reason for not understanding another person. But when one can say that one has understood it all, it means one's heart was open; that is the reason why one has understood it.

Thus understanding does not depend upon the head; it depends upon the heart. By the help of the head one can make it more clear, it becomes intelligible and one can express it better. But to begin with it must come from the heart, not from the head. Besides a person who only uses his head says, 'It must be so because I think it is so', whereas the person who has the heart quality says, 'It is so because I believe it to be so'. That is the difference. In one person there is a doubt, in the other there is conviction.

There is in Arabic a word which is very difficult to translate: Iman. It is not exactly faith or belief; the nearest word one can find for it is 'conviction', a conviction that cannot be changed by anything, a conviction that does not come from outside. One always seeks for conviction, but nothing convinces and nobody convinces; conviction is something that comes from one's own heart, and it stands above faith and belief; for belief is the beginning of that same thing of which faith is the development and conviction the culmination.

Spiritual attainment is nothing but conviction. A man may think, 'Perhaps it is so'. He may think about the best doctrines or about the highest ideas that there are, but he will still think, 'It is so, perhaps'. There is always 'perhaps' attached to it. But then there is another person who cannot use the word 'perhaps' because he does not think about it. He cannot say, 'It may be so', when he knows that it is so. When a person arrives at the stage when the knowledge of reality becomes a conviction, then there is nothing in the world that will change it. And if there is anything to attain to, it is that conviction which one can never find in the outside world; it must rise from the depths of one's own heart.