"You have to adjust to all kinds of blind and unconscious people. You cannot be yourself. This is our basic tradition all over the world, up to now, that nobody is allowed to be himself. It is because of this that the problem has arisen – it is everybody's problem.

"You are asking, 'While reading your books and listening to your tapes when I am alone, I become immensely happy and I weep, cry, and dance in aloneness. But I can't express my feelings in the presence of others, even though I wish very much to do so.'

"The moment the other is there, you are less concerned about yourself; you are more concerned about what his opinion will be about you. When you are alone in your bathroom, you become almost like a child – sometimes you make faces before the mirror. But if you become suddenly aware that even a small child is looking through the keyhole, you immediately change: you become your ordinary, old self again – serious, sober, as people expect you to be.

"And the most amazing thing is that you are afraid of those people and they are afraid of you – everybody is afraid of everybody else. Nobody is allowing his feelings, his reality, his authenticity – but everybody wants to do it, because it is a very suicidal act to go on repressing your original face.

"You are not living; on the contrary you are simply acting. And because the whole world is watching, your centuries-long unconscious holds you back – not to express, not to come out of the mask of your personality. Everybody is hiding behind something false – it hurts.

"To be dishonest, to be insincere to yourself, is the worst punishment you can give to yourself.

"And you are not going to do something harmful to anybody – you just want to cry, and your tears will be of joy; you want to dance, and dance is not a sin, is not a crime. You simply want to share your blissfulness – you are being generous. Still, the fear is that people may not accept your blissfulness. Somebody may say it is false, somebody may say it is just acting, somebody may say you are hypnotized."