It is difficult to find open people to come here, because open people don’t exist. Somebody is Christian, somebody is Hindu, somebody is Mohammedan, somebody is a communist – everybody is part of a crowd, everybody is part of a mob psychology. And whatever is happening here goes absolutely against his background, his mind, his tradition, his religion. Naturally, he feels offended.

I have no complaint about these people, just sadness, because if they were open they themselves could have found a way to rejoice in life. But rather than finding a way, they create more and more barriers to understanding.

We don’t hate anybody; everybody is welcome. But it is one of the basic things to be understood: you can be compassionate to somebody who is suffering, because that gives you the idea that you are not suffering. You can be compassionate to a poor man who is dying, starving, because deep inside there is a consolation that you are not in his place. But you cannot be loving towards someone who is living better than you. He creates inferiority in you. It is your doing, he is not doing anything – he is just living his life – but you start feeling inferior. And how to get rid of the inferiority complex? Either you learn to live the way the other man is living – that needs tremendous courage and guts because you will have to drop so many things you have become attached to.

People become attached even to their fetters, as if the fetters are made of gold; people become attached to their cages as if they are masterpieces. They don’t want anybody else – just think of a bird in a cage looking at the sky, at other birds on the wing, how does he feel? He has to find some way to condemn those birds, otherwise he is condemned. He cannot leave the cage, he is not brave enough to destroy it and get rid of it. And, in fact, he is infatuated with its beauty – the beautiful cathedrals, the churches, the beautiful Vatican, all that keeps you encaged. The bird on the wing has nothing, but he has the whole sky.

The only way to console yourself is to find some fault with the bird on the wing: that he is disobedient, that he is rebellious, that he is a criminal, that he is doing something wrong which is not supposed to be done. He should be peacefully in a cage. And the cage is nothing but the living acceptance of a grave. You have already died – a bird without wings is dead. A bird whose sky has been taken away from him is dead.

So when those dead birds come here and they see my people with their wings open in the sky – loving, dancing, singing, enjoying, relishing every moment – suddenly a great inferiority complex arises in them. They have to do something about it. And there are only two ways: either become red or become hostile.

Becoming hostile is easier, because it keeps your vested interests, your jobs, your crowd, your respectability intact. Becoming a sannyasin…yes, you will have the whole sky but you will lose the safety, the security, the bank balance, the job – perhaps the wife, the parents, the children. The risk is too much; they decide it is better to hate these people. Their hate is a protection.