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subject matter, the breaking off or cutting out of particular things. If it is necessary to express the same thing in prose, the content will be entirely different.
That is why, for the most part, all of the great books in the world have been written in the form of poetry. What was being told was so beyond logic that it was difficult to express it in prose form. Prose is very logical; poetry is very illogical. Lack of logic is permitted and forgiven in poetry, but not in prose. In poetry, if you go a little beyond the logical understanding in places, you have license to do so. Not so in prose.
Because depth poetry is illogical, depth prose has to be logical. If you try to write the Upanishads or the Gita in prose, you will find that that which makes them alive is lost. The medium has changed, and what was beautiful as poetry will be awkward and bothersome as prose. They are not logical, but prose will try to make them so because prose is an arrangement of logic.
The Upanishads were recited in the form of poetry; so was the Gita. But Buddha and Mahavira did not speak in the form of poetry. There was a reason for this change. Since the time the Upanishads and the Gita were written, the world had changed. The period when they were written was, in one sense, poetical. People were simple and straightforward; there was no demand for logic. If they were told, "God is," they simply said yes; they did not turn around and ask, "What is God? How does he look?"
If you look at the way children are, you will have an idea of what type of people there must have been in those days. A child may ask a very difficult question, yet he will be pleased by a simple answer. The child may ask from where his small sister or brother came. You answer that he or she was brought by a stork and he is satisfied. Then he runs away to play. He had asked a very difficult question to which even the highly intelligent are not able to give a correct answer. The child asked a most basic, ultimate question: "From where do children come?" You answered that the stork brings them, and by the time you have said it the child is already gone. He is pleased with a very simple answer.
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