See the point of it: how can so many people be in the right? The crowd is blind, the crowd is not enlightened. Truth has always been in the minority. When Buddha arises he is alone, when Jesus walks in Jerusalem he is alone, when Socrates fights he is alone. Of course, a few seekers gather together around Socrates, a school arises, but that school is a minority. And to be with Socrates needs courage, needs guts, because he is not there to console you. He will take all your consolations away, he will shatter all your illusions, because that is the only way to bring you to truth. He will force you to open your eyes, he will not sing a lullaby to help you to go to sleep. He will shout from the house tops to wake you up, he will shock you, he will hit you.

Just the other day Pradeepa came to see me. She was crying – naturally. I had shocked her tremendously. She would not have ever dreamt that one day, out of nowhere, I would just hit her exactly on the head with a hammer. And she was also disturbed because she has been a cause to create nausea in me – she feels for me, she loves me, as you all love me. She was crying for all these reasons.

But I have to tell you, and to her particularly, that you should feel grateful whenever I hit you hard, because I will hit you hard only when you are worthy of it; I will not hit just anybody. I will hit only when somebody is really growing. The more you will be growing the more demands will be made on you.

I have not told everybody to drop non-vegetarian food, but I have told Pradeepa, in a very shocking way, to drop it. Her consciousness is growing, now this is a hindrance. People who are not soaring high, they can carry as much of a burden as they like. But those who are starting, soaring high, they have to drop all unnecessary luggage. The more pure your energy becomes, the more you will have to be careful about it, because something precious can be lost! And it is very difficult to create that precious energy, it is very easy to lose it. Those who don’t have anything to lose, they need not worry. They can go on doing all kinds of stupid things, their whole being is in tune with those stupidities.

This has to be remembered by you all: that as you will be growing I will be making more and more demands on you.

There is a beautiful story….

India has known a great painter, one of the greatest of all – Nandalal Bose, a genius. He was a disciple of another genius, Avanindranath Tagore. Avanindranath Tagore was an uncle of Rabindranath Tagore. Rabindranath and Avanindranath were sitting together one day, sipping tea early in the morning, chit-chatting, and Nandalal came with a painting of Krishna. Rabindranath has written in his memoirs: “I have never seen such a beautiful painting of Krishna – so alive that it looked as if he is just going to come out of the painting any moment, that any moment his flute will start singing a song. I was dazed.”

Avanindranath looked at the painting, and threw the painting out of his house and told Nandalal, “Is this the way one paints Krishna? Even poor painters in Bengal do far better.”

Rabindranath was very shocked. Rabindranath knew his uncle’s paintings too, because he also had been painting Krishna his whole life, and he was absolutely certain that no painting of his uncle’s could be compared with Nandalal’s painting. Nandalal’s painting was far superior. But he kept quiet. It was not right for him to interfere between the master and the disciple. Nandalal touched the feet of Avanindranath, went out, and for three years disappeared.