Man is freedom and has no identity. He cannot be labeled…and that’s his beauty and glory: that you cannot say who he is. He is always in the making. By the time you have asserted that he is this, he has moved. He is deciding each moment what to be, or, to be or not to be. Each moment there is a fresh decision, a fresh release of life. A sinner can be a saint in a single moment, and a saint can be a sinner in a single moment. The unhealthy can become healthy, and the healthy can become unhealthy in a single moment. Just a change of decision, just a change of insight, of vision, and everything changes.

Man is a tremendous freedom with no boundaries to his being. All boundaries are false. That’s why only in love a man becomes healthy and whole, because love forces no boundaries. It takes away all boundaries, all labels; it does not categorize you. It accepts you whosoever you are. It doesn’t make it a condition that the other has to be known before he will be accepted. No, love accepts, and the more acceptance there is, the more you become aware that each individual is an infinity, and it is impossible to know him.

And when you have known that it is impossible to know an individual, you have touched the very pulse of life.

So these groups are not therapies because those who participate are not patients. I don’t call them ill, I don’t call them patients; they are not in need of any therapy. They are in need of understanding, in need of a group who can allow them that which has been denied them by society.

They need a family because their own family has not proved to be a family at all. It has been destructive, it has crippled them, paralyzed them. They need an alternative family, an alternative society. They need a place where they can be themselves totally – with no barriers, and nobody condemning them, evaluating them; a place where they are accepted as they are, unconditionally – and suddenly wholeness happens, health happens. Health is a function of love, of understanding.

Secondly: the leader is not a leader. At the most he is a facilitator; at the most a midwife. The child is going to be born even without a midwife. At the most the midwife can make the process a little easier and more comfortable. Whatsoever they gain in the group, people can gain themselves, on their own; it will take a little longer, maybe it will be more arduous. Somebody who has gone a little ahead can help them, can give them a little more confidence.

The leader is not a leader – at the most he is a catalytic agent. His presence, just the idea that he is present, is helpful. They can move more easily; they know that somebody knows. They know that they can enjoy freedom without any danger to themselves.

Society has made a point of incessantly implanting a fear in people. A fear that alone you are not enough, that you have to be led, that you cannot be left alone; the fear that you need a teacher, that you always need somebody as a guide, somebody who is going to decide what to do and what not to do. You need a Moses to give you commandments. You need a scripture, a doctrine, beliefs – you alone are not enough; all these things are needed, and left to yourself you will go wrong. This fear has been implanted very deeply; it has gone to the very marrow.