For example, in Russia, no child can be born in your own house; every child has to be born in the hospital. Now that is the right moment to put any kind of electrode into the child’s brain – for example, any electrode that stops him from revolutionary activity against the government, any electrode that prevents him feeling miserable, full of suffering, tortured. And the central board of the communist party would have all the remote controls.

They can have a system that if somebody is thinking in terms of anti-communism, on a board a light will show suddenly. And then they just have to push a button, and all his revolution, anti-communism will disappear.

What Delgado has done and proved, has been done to you by society in a more primitive way. But it has been successful up to now. They don’t put an electrode in your mind – they had no idea of it – but what they do functions in the same way.

They go on telling you what is right. And continuous repetition of what is right and what is wrong goes on making a spot in your mind without putting in an electrode. And by and by, you start thinking that it is your mind which is deciding what is right and what is wrong.

It is not so. The society has conditioned you.

And that you can see in different societies, because different societies have different conditionings. For example, the American flag has meaning for the American, because from his very childhood he has been told, “Even to sacrifice your life for the flag is something great.”

And what is the flag? Just a piece of cloth. It has no intrinsic value. For an Indian, it means nothing; for an American, it means everything. The Indian flag means everything to the Indian; to the American it means nothing.

So it is not your mind that is deciding. It is the mind of the society that has imposed upon you certain ideas.

For example, in Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram in India, to drink tea was a sin. Nobody was committing it, but once in a while, just because it was a sin, there was a great attraction to commit it too. But if somebody was caught drinking tea, red-handed, he was condemned by the whole ashram.

And Mahatma Gandhi’s way of condemnation was very cruel. He will not say anything to the person. He will start a fast. He will say, “Something must be still wrong in my spirituality. That’s why my disciples go on doing such things. So I am purifying myself.”

Now that man becomes doubly guilty. First, he drank tea, and now the old man is fasting – unto death! Now he is more condemned, not only by the ashram but by the whole country. Letters start coming, telegrams start coming. And he falls at Mahatma Gandhi’s feet to be forgiven, he will never do such a thing again, but, “Please come out of your fast.”

Gandhi is not being cruel to him just on the surface. You would have said that he was cruel if he had slapped him. But I say that was nothing. But going on a fast to purify himself so that his disciples don’t commit sin…