"Rather than drawing anything out of you, it forces, imposes things upon you.

"That which is imposed upon you is nonessential; it creates your personality. The essential is your individuality, the nonessential is your personality. In other words, the essential is your very soul, your being; the nonessential is your ego. All that helps the ego is nonessential, all that helps you to become egoless is essential. Ambition is nonessential, greed is nonessential, desire, any kind of desire, is nonessential.

"Meditativeness is essential. To be silent, to be still, just to be alert, aware: that is the first step, the door into the essential. And once you have found in deep, profound silence what you are meant to be, you have found your destiny. And then life has a sense of direction not imposed by others but discovered by yourself.

"The function of the master is educative – not informative but educative, educative in the original sense of the word. He is not to give you a certain character because that will be imposed upon you. He is not to make you a Christian or Hindu or a Buddhist. He has to help you to know what you can be, because that which you can be you already are in essence, in the potential. You can be a Christ, you can be a Buddha, you can be a Krishna – but you cannot be a Christian; Christianity is something imposed from the outside. You cannot be a Hindu. Nobody is born a Hindu, it is nobody's destiny to be a Hindu; it is the effort of others to lead you astray from your destiny. Nobody is born to be a communist or a fascist, but everybody is born with a certain direction in which he will find fulfillment.

"Maybe you are a painter, but you are functioning in the society as a doctor. You will remain unfulfilled your whole life, because you listened to your parents and the society and the greed and ambition. Everybody was saying, 'Be a doctor. It is a good profession, respectable, and you will be able to earn more money than if you become a painter.' Who knows? – a painter may not be able to earn money at all, because painting is not something which has any utilitarian purpose."