Whatsoever you are, you will always find. And whatsoever you find, remember, it is you. It is nobody else.

This happens to everybody who comes here. In the beginning he comes with great expectations, as if the whole ashram will dance because he has come, and they will celebrate and there will be a great festival. These expectations lurk in the mind. And then one comes here and Sant won’t even allow you easily in through the gate! And he looks very unfriendly. He is directed to be that way there. And suddenly your hopes and expectations disappear.

I help with it. They should be destroyed, because with those expectations and hopes you will continue to be an egoist. With those hopes and expectations you will remain the old. They have to be dropped.

This is a situation, this ashram is a device. Here we try in every way to put you off. If you persist, then great is the payoff. If you escape, it is good for you and it is good for me too, because as it is I have enough responsibility for enough people. Unless you are really ready to go into deeper things and you have not come here as a curious person, you have not come here with some ambition still lurking in your mind, with some politics in your mind… Only if you have come here as a real authentic seeker will you stay. Then you will stay whatsoever happens around. You will not bother about it. You will say, “It is okay. There must be some reason in it.”

If you persist, persevere, you will start feeling that people are friendly. You have dropped your expectations; that’s why they start looking friendly. They are the same people: neither friendly nor unfriendly. This place is very neutral. We are not interested in converts, in new converts. We are not interested at all; we don’t take much interest. We are neutral. If you come it is your responsibility to come. If you choose you choose. We don’t persuade you in any way. You cannot blame us later on, that “You persuaded us.” That much is certain, you cannot blame us: if you stayed, you stayed because you had chosen to stay. From the very beginning things are clear.

Now you say, “…everyone is beautiful. I have had similar experiences before, but they have always faded away.” Good that they faded away. If they had remained, you would have been stuck. Then you would not have grown. Everything should come and go. It prepares you for a greater experience. It has to go away. If you are stuck with one experience, then there will be no growth in your life. Feel happy, feel grateful that they have faded away; otherwise you would not be here. You are here because your past faded away.

But you are here, it seems, still with a wrong desire: that now you will find something permanent. No, I don’t deal in the permanent at all. I deal in the momentary and the eternal – and they are both the same. The permanent is a false thing. The momentary and the eternal are the real things. But let me explain it to you…