It was a one-year-long celebration and the man had to go with this drama party around the country, in all the great cities, to play the part of Abraham Lincoln. He learned the part so well…he looked absolutely like Lincoln, but that was not enough. Lincoln had a little stutter, once in a while he stuttered. The man learned how to stutter. It is very difficult to learn. It is difficult if you stutter to learn not to stutter, but to learn to stutter when you don’t stutter is even more difficult! But he did well.

One of Lincoln’s legs was a little longer than the other, so he limped. And this fellow managed through massage and bodywork and traction to lengthen one leg. He finally managed, and he started limping like Lenin….

[Laughter at the sudden change of name provokes a twinkle of an explanation.]

I forgot, because Lenin also had one leg long and one leg short. That was the only similarity between these two great….

For one year the man played the part every day and when the year ended, the celebration came to a finish, he went home limping, stuttering – everybody thought that he was joking – in the dress which Abraham Lincoln used to wear a hundred years before. One hour passed, two hours passed; then the family said, “Now it is enough, get out of this dress and be yourself!”

He said, “I am myself, I am Abraham Lincoln.”

They said, “Don’t carry the joke too far.”

He said, “I am not joking. Who told you I am joking?”

The family was at a loss. They tried to convince him.

He said, “You can see my leg, you can see my language, you can see my dress; it is self-evident that I am Abraham Lincoln. Why are you bothering me? You are not losing anything!”

They said, “We are not losing anything, but it looks crazy – you were just an actor, have you forgotten?”

He said, “What? Who told you I was an actor? I have been president of America!”

Then they thought that he had gone cuckoo. They took him to the psychoanalyst. When the psychoanalyst saw Abraham Lincoln entering into his office, he stood up. He was so much Abraham Lincoln that even the psychoanalyst forgot that Lincoln has been shot dead a hundred years before! Then he realized….

The man’s family came and said, “He has been acting; now it has got into his mind that he is Abraham Lincoln, and we have been trying in every possible way but he budges not a single inch. So we have brought him to you.”

The psychoanalyst tried, but it was very difficult. What can you do? The man says, “This is strange. I am Abraham Lincoln; why are you all after me? Everybody has a name, I have a name, my name is Abraham Lincoln. What is wrong in it? I limp, I stutter, I use the language that was used a hundred years ago…you can measure my height. For one year continuously I have been moving around the country. Nobody has objected.”