He knows he has lived for nine months…and remember, for a child in the mother’s womb, nine months are almost eternity because he does not know how to count, he does not have any clock. Each moment is enough unto itself. He does not know there is going to be another moment afterwards, so each moment is a surprise. And with no worry, with no tension about food, about clothes, about shelter, he is absolutely at ease, relaxed, centered. There is nothing to distract him from the center.

There is nobody there even to say hello.

This experience of nine months of being centered, of immense joy, peace, aloneness…the other is no more there; you are the world, you are the whole. Nothing is missing, everything is supplied by nature without any effort on your part. But life confronts you in a totally different way – antagonistically, competitively. Everybody is your enemy, because everybody is in the same market; everybody is your enemy because everybody has the same desires, the same ambition. You are bound to come into conflict with millions of people.

It is because of this inner antagonism that all the cultures of the world have created a certain system of etiquette, familiarity, formality, and they have emphasized it continuously to the child: “You have to respect your father.”

All the cultures all over the world throughout the whole of history – why are they all insisting to the child, “You should respect your father”? There is some suspicion that if he is left alone, the child is not going to respect the father – that much is certain, simple logic. In fact, the child is going to hate. Every girl hates her mother. To hide it – because it will be very difficult to live in a society where all your wounds are uncovered and everybody is walking around with uncovered wounds – a certain ethos, a morality, a certain style of life has to cover it and to show just the opposite – that you love your mother, that you love and respect your father.

Deep down just the opposite is the case. You have been divided into two parts by the society. The false part has been given all respect, because the false is created by the society. The real is denied any respectability, because the real comes from nature – which is beyond the control of any society, culture or civilization. Each child has to be trained in lies, has to be programmed in such a way that he will be subservient to the society, a docile slave.

All societies are breaking the very spine of every child so he becomes spineless. He cannot raise his voice, he cannot question anything. His life is just not his own. He loves, but his love is false. From the very beginning he was told to love his mother “because she is your mother” – as if being a mother has some intrinsic quality or some obligation that you should love her. But it has been accepted that the mother should be loved.

My emphasis is that the mother should be loving, and no child should ever be told to love somebody unless it happens on its own. Yes, the mother, the father, the family can create a milieu without saying anything; the whole energy can generate, can trigger your own forces of love.