You have not been allowed even the smallest pleasures by your church, by your priests, by your religion, by your culture. Only misery is acceptable, not pleasure. In this situation when from every source, from every direction comes only condemnation, it is very natural for you to feel that you are a sinner. Every religion has been shouting for centuries that you are born in sin, that suffering is your destiny – from so many sources without exception – that it is very natural for any individual to be impressed by this vast conspiracy. Everybody is caught in it.

And if you try to understand it you will be very much surprised. Just as others have condemned you, you are condemning others. It is a very mutual conspiracy. Just as your parents have never accepted you as being of any worth, you are doing the same with your children – without ever becoming aware that everybody is what he is, he cannot be otherwise. He can pretend to be otherwise, he can be a hypocrite, but in truth he will always remain himself.

Your running away is nothing but creating more hypocrisy, more masks so that you can hide yourself completely from the eyes of everyone. You may succeed in hiding yourself from others, but how can you succeed in hiding yourself from yourself? You can go to the moon; you will find yourself there. You can go to Everest; you may be alone but you are with yourself. Perhaps in that aloneness on Everest you will become more alert and aware of yourself.

That is one of the reasons why people are also afraid of aloneness; they want a crowd, they want always to have people surrounding them, they want friends. It is very difficult for people to remain silent and peaceful in aloneness. The reason is that in aloneness you are left with yourself – and you have accepted the stupid ideas that you are ugly, that you are sensuous, that you are lustful, that you are greedy, that you are violent, that there is nothing that can be appreciated in you.

Prem Amita, you are asking, “Why am I always running so fast?” Because you are afraid you may be overtaken by yourself. And the implications of running so fast have many dimensions. This running fast from yourself has created a craziness about speed. Everybody wants to reach somewhere with as much speed as possible.

It happened once…. I was coming from a place called Nagpur, back to Jabalpur. I was traveling with the vice-chancellor of Nagpur University, and the car broke down on the road. I have never seen anybody become so miserable.

I told him, “There is no hurry. Nobody is waiting for your there, and the conference which you are going to is going to begin in twenty-four hours. And Jabalpur is only three hours away. There is no problem. Either we will get the car repaired, or we will call for another car to come from Jabalpur, or we may get a lift, or buses are continually passing by. There is no problem. You need not be so miserable.”

He sat in the car and I went looking for somebody. It was a small village, but maybe some mechanic or some help was possible. Perhaps the landlord of the village had a car. When I came back from the village, that man was almost in tears. I said, “What is the matter?”