They asked what your message was, and how it was for me. The hardest thing that I had to deal with – not just at the interview but all throughout – was that it was felt as a very selfish thing to be doing. People said that you’ve got talents to teach and to work with people, and here you are going off and dropping out in India. And I felt that really difficult. I just felt well, this is right for me; this is all I’ve got, and this is all I feel I’ve got to work for. But they didn’t really want to know. It was hard! My father said I should get a proper job and enough of this!

They cannot understand – it is natural. And I can understand it is hard for you, but it is harder for them. They cannot understand; they simply think that you have gone crazy. They may not say so, but they feel that something has gone wrong, because they live in a world, in an established pattern, where everything is judged according to money.

If you are making money, you are doing something good. The more money you are getting, the more valuable is your work. But out of sannyas you cannot get any money; in fact whatsoever you have got will be lost. So it is a disvalue. It has no market value – it is not a commodity. Godliness has never been a commodity. And Godliness has always been for crazy people; people who are not satisfied with power, prestige, money; people who really want something of the eternal – and are not concerned with the ephemeral, the illusionary.

But the world is settled with the illusion, and whenever somebody escapes from their circle, they all start crying loudly and making much fuss, saying that you have gone mad.

This is just to protect themselves, because if you are right, they are all wrong; you both cannot be right. If you are right then they are all wrong, and that is too much to accept. Their whole life is at stake, and of course they are in the majority. So of course they can simply prove that you have gone crazy, out of your mind.

And they will try to persuade you that you are talented; to become a teacher and this and that. But the greatest talent is just to be, and out of that being if something comes, it will come. If teaching comes out of it, it comes. But then you will not be a teacher; it will not be a job. It will be a vocation, not a profession. You will simply love to teach. You will find somebody and you will teach – and you will thank the person who allowed you to teach him, that’s all. If you feel like painting you will paint; but in the very painting of it is the result.

I was just reading about a poet who was telling his friends that he was writing a book. Nobody was interested. They asked, “Poetry?” – and the subject was politely dropped. Many years he talked to people about the book he was writing, that it was almost completed, this and that, but nobody was interested.

Then the book was published and became very famous, and an award was given for it. Then all those friends started coming and appreciating the book. The poet writes that he was surprised, because when he was writing it nobody was interested, but when it became an award-catching thing they were all for it, they all started praising it. But it was not because of the poetry but because of the award.