Roses would try to become lotuses, which they can never become; it is not their self-nature. They can only be roses, beautiful, immensely graceful, fragrant. But if this idea of being somebody other than what their nature is, is imposed on them, two things will happen: they will never become lotuses, but their whole energy will be wasted in trying to become lotuses. And the second thing is they will not be roses either, because from where will they find the energy to be roses? That whole energy is making an effort for the impossible.

Actually the same has happened with humanity. Everybody is giving you an idea; everybody is ready to tell you how you should be.

All “shoulds” and all “should nots” have to be abandoned. You simply have to listen to your own inner voice. And wherever it leads, just go without bothering whether people think it is right or wrong.

If you can become just your own self, if you can blossom into your intrinsic nature, then only you will have blissfulness – a peace which cannot be expressed in words, and a certain poetry to your being; a certain dance to your being, because you will be in tune with existence. To be in tune with yourself is the only way to be in tune with existence. Nobody needs personal guidance, because all personal guidance is a beautiful name for dependence on somebody and he is going to distort you.

I don’t give you any discipline – I don’t tell you, you should be this or that. I simply say you should become silent, so that you can listen to your still, small voice. That is your real guide; the guide is within you. I know hundreds of psychoanalysts, psychologists, so-called counselors. They are burdened with all kinds of problems, but they have just learned the technique, either from education or from the libraries. And they go on advising – to advise is so simple. In their own lives they are not what they are advising. If you watch the life, as I have watched very closely the life of people like Sigmund Freud – the topmost counselors in the world: Karl Gustav Jung, Alfred Adler, Assagioli – I have been simply shocked to see that these people have become the guides to millions of people.

I remember one small incident…

Wilhelm Reich, as a young psychoanalyst, was deeply interested to meet Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. He had read in the universities and he was a genius, perhaps of a far greater quality than Sigmund Freud himself. Sigmund Freud was in his old age, just the last years, and this Wilhelm Reich was asking again and again for an appointment. Finally he got the appointment. And the way Sigmund Freud treated him is so inhuman, just because he was a young man, fresh from the university.