"That's exactly the meaning of being a rebel: to live according to your own light, howsoever small, and find your way in the unknown future. Give all the opportunities, accept all the challenges of the unknown fearlessly, as if you are the first people on the earth.

"The past is a burden, and if you are attached to the past you cannot move a single inch. You are burdened with a mountain, your potentiality is going to be crushed. That has been happening for centuries – people are living so burdened, so conditioned, that there is no possibility for them to be themselves. They are Christians, they are Hindus, they are Mohammedans, but they are not themselves.

"My sannyasin does not belong to any ideology, to any philosophy, to any theology. He is pure of all that is rotten, he is pure of all that has passed; his eyes are fixed on the future. And he is seeking and searching his own growth without any fear of the crowd, the masses – which don't have any individuality of their own. They are sheep, a crowd of sheep.

"My sannyasin is a rebel. He comes out of the crowd, stands alone like a lion, finds himself – his path, his dignity, his freedom.

"You are also asking, 'Is it true that a rebel is born, not made, or are we born rebels but tamed and conditioned by our societies?'

"A rebel is born, not made. In fact, nothing that is significant in human life is manufactured, is made. It is all intrinsic, inborn – you bring it with your life into the world. But you are born in a society, in a crowd; and that becomes a calamity, because the people you are born among and the people you will be growing with have no respect for individuals, particularly for children. They think that their children are their possessions, and their whole effort is to fulfill their own incomplete ambitions through their children.

"They are frustrated; they have been running after shadows, they have not been able to attain any fulfillment. Now their only desire is that what they have not been able to do, their children will do."