These are unconscious assertions; they come out of you when you are not on guard. Ordinarily you are on guard. That’s why people are so tense, continuously on guard, guarding themselves. But there are moments when the tension is too much and one relaxes. One has to relax, one cannot be on guard for twenty-four hours. In those moments, things surface.

You are truer when you have drunk a little too much and things start surfacing from your unconscious. Under the influence of alcohol you are truer than you ordinarily are, because the alcohol relaxes your guard. Then you start saying things you always wanted to say, and you are not worried about anything, and you are not trying to leave any impression – you are simply being true. Drunkards are beautiful people: truer, more authentic. It is ironic that only drunkards are authentic.

The more you are clever and cunning, the more inauthentic you become. Don’t hide behind screens. Come out in the sunshine. And don’t be afraid that your image will be shattered. The image that you are afraid of being shattered is not worth keeping. It is better to shatter it on your own. Take a hammer and shatter it.

That’s what being a sannyasin means: that you take a hammer in your hands and you shatter the old image. And you start a new life from ABC, from the very beginning again, as if you are born again. It is a rebirth.

Then, by and by, if you relax and you are not too worried about your image in the eyes of others, your own authentic face, original face, comes into being – the face that you had before you were born and the face that you will again have when you are dead; the original face, not the cultivated mask. With that original face you will see godliness everywhere, because with the original face you can meet with the original, with reality.

With a mask you will meet only other masks. With a mask there can never be any dialogue with reality. With a mask you remain in the relationship of “I” and “it”; reality remains behind it. When the mask is removed and you have come back home, a tremendous transformation happens. The relationship with reality is no more one of “I-it,” it is of “I-thou.” That “thou” is godliness.

Reality takes on a personality: you become alive here, reality becomes alive there. It has always been alive, just you were dead. It is as if you have taken chloroform: when you come back and the influence of the chloroform by and by disappears, how do you feel? It is a beautiful experience! If you have never been to the surgeon’s table, go, just for the experience. For a few moments you are completely in oblivion, and then consciousness arises. Suddenly, everything becomes alive, fresh. You are coming out of the womb. Exactly the same happens when you decide to live an authentic life. Then, for the first time you understand that now you are born. Just before you were thinking and dreaming that you were alive, but you were not.

A great mathematician, Herr Gauss, was keeping vigil while his wife lay ill upstairs. And as time passed, he found himself beginning to ponder a deep problem in mathematics.