If you cannot drop it, it means that you are so attached to it that the distinction is not there, the separation is not there: there is no gap. A gap is needed so that at least in your room, in your bathroom, you can put your personality away and become real. At least in meditation, you can throw off the personality and become real, because there it is not needed.

Meditation is non-social. It is not concerned with anyone else, it is concerned only with yourself. So no mask is needed, you can be authentic. But you cannot be authentic because you don’t know the distinction. Even in meditation I feel that you are doing many false things.

Freud became aware – when he first started psychoanalysis he was not aware of it, but by and by he became aware – that patients would say things that were not real, just to make him happy, to confirm his theories. Because when Freud was happy, they also felt happy. Later, only after twenty years of psychoanalysis did he become aware that what they were saying was not real.

For example, Freud says that sex is the root of every mental disturbance. Patients would come to him and tell him about their disturbances. Then they would reveal that sex was the root of their disturbances. So Freud thought that his theories were confirmed by thousands and thousands of examples. Later on he became aware that many of them were lying just to make the psychoanalyst happy: “My theory is okay.” They were conforming to his theory.

Sometimes I feel the same thing. When I say “Go mad!” and you go mad, I know that you are going mad just to make me happy. But there is no need. I am already too happy! There is no need. Don’t do anything that is not real. It is not going to help anyone. Be authentic, be real, at least in your meditation – because there, you alone are concerned.

Tillich has said somewhere that religion is the concern of the individual, a totally personal concern with oneself. It is not concerned with anyone else, so you need not think of anyone else while meditating, not even of me. Be real. Throw off the mask. Anything authentic will help you to move inward, anything unreal will help you to move outward.

That is why Shankara calls the world an illusion. The more you move away from yourself, the more you are moving into illusion; and the more you go inward, the more you are moving into reality. Your personality is the gateway toward illusion, toward an unreal, dream world. Throw away that gate, throw away that bridge completely – at least in meditation.

I am not saying for you to go and move in society and be authentic. You will be in difficulty. If you feel happy to do it you can do it, but I’m not saying that; don’t put the blame on me. Society will create troubles for you. It doesn’t want your real faces, it wants your unreal faces.