"That idea has sunk very deep into your unconscious – that you are not deserving, that you are utterly worthless. Naturally, the best way is to get away from yourself. Everybody is doing it in different ways: somebody is running for money, somebody is running for power, somebody is running for respectability, somebody is running for virtue, saintliness.

"But if you look deep down, they are not running for anything, they are running from. This is just an excuse, that somebody is running after money madly; he is deceiving himself and the whole world. The reality is that money gives him a good excuse to run after it, and hides the fact that he is running from himself. That′s why when he accumulates money, he comes to a point of tremendous despair and anguish. What has happened? That was his goal; he has achieved it – he should be the happiest man in the world.

"But the people who succeed are not the happiest people in the world, they are the most miserable. What is their anguish? Their anguish is that their whole effort has failed. Now there is no more to run after, and suddenly they are encountering themselves. At the highest peak of their success they meet nobody else but themselves. Strangely enough, this is the fellow they have been running from.

"You cannot run from yourself. On the contrary, you have to come closer to yourself, deeper into your being, and to drop all the condemnatory tones that have been handed over to you by everybody you have known in your life. The parents, the husband, the wife, the neighbors, the teachers, the friends, the enemies, everybody is pointing to something that is wrong in you. From no source comes any appreciation.

"Humanity has created a very strange situation for itself in which nobody is at ease, nobody can relax, because the moment you relax you face yourself. Relaxation becomes almost a mirror, and you don′t want to see your face because you are so much impressed by the condemnatory opinions of others." Osho