You can go and tell Morarji Desai that he is a hypocrite. Or tell Sanjiva Reddy, the president of this country, “You are a hypocrite.” You cannot say that to me. You can say to the president, Sanjiva Reddy, “You are a hypocrite because you teach about Gandhism and you still go on eating meat. You talk about nonviolence and you go on eating meat. This is hypocrisy – pure hypocrisy, unpolluted hypocrisy!”

But you cannot say that to Jesus. He eats meat, but he has never propounded vegetarianism. He has never talked about that kind of nonviolence. You cannot say that he is a hypocrite. Jesus drinks wine. You cannot tell him that he is a hypocrite unless he teaches otherwise.

My whole approach towards life is that of total acceptance, is that of celebration, not of renunciation. How can you say to me that I am a hypocrite? I may be the only person on this earth who is not a hypocrite because I have no ideals.

The first necessity for the hypocrite is to have ideals. I have none; I am a non-idealist. I live naturally and it is very natural to live in comfort and convenience. It is simply stupid not to live if comfort is available. If it is not available, that is another thing. Then whatsoever is available, live in it comfortably, manage to live in it comfortably. I have lived in many kinds of situations but I have always lived comfortably.

When I was a student I used to walk every day four miles to the university. But I loved it. I walked those four miles every day with great comfort; I enjoyed it. When I was a teacher I used to ride a bicycle to the university; I enjoyed that too. Whatsoever has been the situation, whether I had only a bicycle or a Mercedes Benz, it doesn’t make any difference. I have lived in comfort.

Comfort is an attitude of the mind. It is an approach towards life. I have lived in very, very poor houses. When I became a teacher in the university, I started living in one single room with no windows, no ventilation. The rent was just twenty rupees per month, but I loved it, I enjoyed it; it wasn’t a problem at all.

Whatsoever the moment allows, I have squeezed the moment to its totality. I have drunk of the moment fully. I have never repented and I have never desired something else. If something else started happening I enjoyed that too.

You can never say to me that I am a hypocrite. It is impossible for me to be a hypocrite because I have no ideals to fulfill – no oughts, no shoulds. The “is” is all that is, and I live into it.

So the second thing to remember is don’t have certain ideas about yourself. You must be carrying many ideas of how you should be, hence the problem arises. “Can cowardice and hypocrisy also be beautiful?” Now if you have the idea to be a brave man then it looks ugly to be a coward. But cowardice is a fact, and the ideal is just an ideal, a fantasy of the mind.

Sacrifice fantasies to reality, drop all ideals and then life starts becoming integrated. All the rejected fragments start coming back home, the repressed starts surfacing. For the first time you start feeling a kind of togetherness. You are no longer falling apart.