I have never seen anybody failing who has used what I am saying. One day, suddenly, he cannot believe that he was unnecessarily destroying his health rather than having pure and clean air, smoking dirty smoke and destroying his lungs.

This is going to become a problem more and more, because as the women’s liberation movement grows, children will not be breast-fed. I am not saying that they should be breast-fed; but they should be given some substitute breast so that their unconscious does not carry some wound that will create problems for them – chewing gum and cigarettes and cigars…. These are all symptoms. In different countries they are different.

In India they go on chewing pan leaves, or there are many people who use snuff. These are all the same. The snuff looks far away, but it is not that far away. The people who are nervous, tense, in anxiety, will take a dose of snuff. It gives a good sneeze, clears their mind, shakes their whole being, and it feels good.

But those anxieties will come back. The snuff cannot destroy them. You have to destroy the very base of your being nervous. Why should you be nervous?

Many journalists have told me, “One of the greatest difficulties is that we feel nervous with you.” And they have said, “This is strange because we interview politicians – they feel nervous, we make them nervous. You make us nervous, and immediately the desire to smoke arises. Then you prevent us smoking: ‘You cannot smoke here.’ You are allergic.

“You have a great strategy! – we cannot smoke, and you are making us nervous and tense, and this allergy you have which prevents us from smoking…so you have no way out for us.”

But why should they feel nervous before me? Those politicians are powerful people – if they feel nervous before them, it can be understood. But the reality is, those powerful people are just hollow inside and that power is borrowed from others, and they are afraid for their respectability. Each word they have to speak, they have to think twice. They are nervous that these journalists may create a situation in which their influence over people is destroyed. Their image that they have created has to become better and better. That is their fear. Because of that fear, the journalist – any journalist, who has no power – can make them nervous.

To me there is no problem. I have no desire for respectability. I am notorious enough – they cannot make me more notorious. I have done everything that could have made me nervous; I have managed already. What can they do to me? – I don’t have any power to lose and I can say anything that I want because I am not worried about being contradictory, inconsistent. On the contrary, I enjoy being contradictory, inconsistent.