I said, “You have not only said something wrong, you are behaving very falsely. At least before your students you should not be so insincere. Whatever you have said, you don’t mean; your tears are false.”

All the professors of the university were present; the whole student community was present. They were all shocked that I would say before everybody, to the vice-chancellor, “You are insincere.”

I said, “You have heard the name, Raman Maharshi?”

He said, “Yes, I have heard it.”

“Have you ever been there to sit at his feet? – because he is of the same caliber and same consciousness as Gautam Buddha. And I can say with authority that even in Gautam Buddha’s time you would not have gone to him. This century is also not without enlightened people. You have to take your words back.”

People used to think he was very stubborn…but perhaps he had never met somebody so authentically sincere that it could bring his original face into the public. He wiped his tears and he said, “Perhaps you are right – I might not have gone. It was just oratory and nothing else; I did not mean it. In this whole gathering, perhaps you are the only person who is listening – not only to the words, but also to the meaning behind them.”

“I would love you to take your dinner with me tonight, because I would like to discuss a little more. I have never come across anybody in my whole long life who has brought my original face before the crowd. And something is very strange – I don’t feel angry at you; I simply feel a deep sadness about myself. Why can’t I be true? But nobody has ever pointed it out to me.”

Everybody in the world wants to be true, because just to be true brings so much joy and such an abundance of blissfulness – why should one be false? You have to have the courage for a little deeper insight: Why are you afraid? What can the world do to you? People can laugh at you; it will do them good – laughter is always a medicine, healthful. People can think you are mad…just because they think you are mad, you don’t become mad.

And if you are authentic about your joy, your tears, your dance – sooner or later there will be people who will start understanding you, who may start joining your caravan. I myself had started alone on the path, and then people went on coming and it became a worldwide caravan. And I have not invited anybody; I have simply done whatever I felt was coming from my heart.

My responsibility is towards my heart, not towards anybody else in the world. So is your responsibility only towards your own being. Don’t go against it, because going against it is committing suicide, is destroying yourself. And what is the gain? Even if people give you respect, and people think that you are a very sober, respectable, honorable man, these things are not going to nourish your being. They are not going to give you any more insight into life and its tremendous beauty.