"Individuality has a dignity, but man has been taken away from his individuality by a simple device: put the individual in conflict. And you know the ancient proverb: A house divided cannot stand for long.

"You are continuously fighting with yourself because you have been given such stupid ideas about yourself: that you have to choose between your nature, your relaxedness with nature, or you have to choose thousands of years of conditioning. And conditionings go deeper and deeper every day. Pleasure has been condemned, non-seriousness has been condemned, playfulness has been condemned. The whole of humanity has been turned into utter seriousness – and seriousness is a psychological sickness. It can seep deeper and can even make your soul sick.

"There is nothing to be serious about in the world.

"There are only three things that happen in your life. One has already happened – your birth. You could not do anything about it. Another is death. Again, although it has not happened yet, you cannot do anything about it. So drop these two things completely, they are beyond your grasp. Between these two remain life, love, rejoicing.

"A man who is alive cannot be suppressed so easily. A man who loves has a clarity of vision and cannot be befooled by any politicians. And a man who knows how to be playful will not be found in any church, any temple, any mosque, any synagogue. Those are the places where people who have died before their death go; people who have taken a standpoint against life, against love, against playfulness, against joy, against the whole universe.

"But if you become blinded by these conditionings, then you will start repressing within yourself any possibility that can make you livelier, more loving, more blissful, more ecstatic. It is a struggle between you and your whole past. The past is long; it has gone to your very roots. But if you are alert enough there is still time to get out of the net, out of the chains of the past.

"A man who is free from the past is the only man who is free to live in the present. And a strange thing to be remembered: the man who is free from the past – as if he is absolutely new and fresh on this beautiful planet – will also be automatically free from the future."