I teach self-service. And then, as a consequence, a totally different vision arises. The person who serves himself, enjoys himself, loves himself, respects himself, is bound to respect others. Because, slowly slowly, he becomes aware that the same life exists in others – the same life. The more you love yourself, the more you become aware that you are not separate.

Only in love is union felt. The more you love yourself the more you merge and melt into your own being, the more you become orgasmic in your inner world, the more you see that all definitions are false, all demarcations are arbitrary, that you are not separate, that the universe is one.

That’s why we call it ‘universe’ – ‘uni’ means one. We don’t call it ‘multiverse’. It is one, it is one whole. We are part of each other – no man is an island. We belong to an invisible but infinite continent. Boundless is our existence.

But those experiences happen only to people who are self-actualizing, who are in such tremendous love with themselves that they can close their eyes and be alone and be utterly blissful. That’s what meditation is all about.

Meditation means being ecstatic in your aloneness. But when you become ecstatic in your aloneness, soon the ecstasy is so much that you cannot contain it. It starts overflowing you. And when it starts overflowing you it becomes love. Meditation allows love to happen. And the people who have not known meditation will never know love. They may pretend that they love but they cannot. They will only pretend – because they don’t have anything to give, they are not overflowing.

Love is a sharing. But before you can share, you have to have it! Meditation should be the first thing. Meditation is the center, love is the circumference of it. Meditation is the flame, love is the radiation of it. Meditation is the flower, love is the fragrance of it.

I teach meditation, because that is the only way to allow love to happen in your being. And when you start overflowing, you start relating with others, caring for others – service comes in your life as a shadow of meditation. It is not to be imposed upon you, it has not to be a duty.

Duty is a four-letter, dirty word. Whenever you do something AS a duty, it is imposed, cultivated, phony. It is pseudo, it makes you a hypocrite.

A totally different quality arises in your being when you are overflowing and you cannot contain yourself. You have to love, you have to share. And the beauty of sharing is that the more you give, the more you get. The more you empty yourself into love, the more you feel full.

You ask me: “Do you propose through changing human nature to change society and the world?”

I don’t propose it. That’s how it can happen – the only way it can happen. But that is not our goal.