A sannyasin must be a good actor. By being a good actor I mean that you are not related at all, but you go on fulfilling the formalities. Deep down you are uprooted, but you don’t even give a hint that you are uprooted. And what is the use of giving a hint? – because then they will start trying to change you. Don’t give them any chance. Let this be an inner journey and outwardly be completely formal. They will be happy then because they live in formalities. They live on the outside, they don’t need your inner worship. They don’t need your inner love, just the show is enough.

These are the two ways: one is that of Buddha and Jesus, the other is that of Janak and me. Be wherever you are. Don’t create any outward show that you are changing and becoming religious, because that can create trouble and you may not be strong enough right now. Create the conflict inside but don’t create it outside. The inner conflict is more than enough; it will give you the growth, the maturity needed.

…the father against the son and the son against the father; and they will stand as solitaries.

This word solitary has to be understood deeply. When you become religious you become solitary; then there is no society for you, you are alone. And to accept that you are alone is the greatest transformation that can happen to you, because mind is afraid of being alone; mind wants somebody else to hang on to, to cling to. Alone you feel a trembling, a fear grips you: “Alone…?” And immediately you rush toward society, to the club, the conference, the sect, the church, somewhere where there is a crowd, where you can feel that you are not alone, where you can lose yourself in the crowd. That’s why the crowd has become so important: go to the racecourse, go to the cinema hall. A crowd is needed in which you are no longer solitary, where you can relax.

But a religious man is solitary because he is trying to reach his highest peak. He is not to lose himself in others. He has to remember, become more mindful, he has to become more aware and alert. And he has to accept the truth. This is the truth: that everybody is alone and there is no possibility of any togetherness. Your consciousness is a solitary peak. But that is the beauty of it and you are unnecessarily afraid of it. Imagine Everest in a crowd of Everests; then the whole beauty is lost. Everest is beautiful and challenging because it is alone, a solitary peak. A religious man is like Everest: he becomes a solitary peak, alone, and he lives and enjoys it. That doesn’t mean that he will not move in society, it doesn’t mean he will not love. On the contrary, only he can love. On the contrary, only he can move in society, because only he is. You are not; so how can you love? He can love but his love is not going to be like a drug, he is not going to be lost. He can share, he can give himself completely and still remain himself. He can give himself to you and still not be lost, because his mindfulness remains the innermost peak. There, in that shrine, he remains alone. Nobody enters there, nobody can enter there.

In the innermost core of your being you are alone.

The purity of aloneness and the beauty of aloneness…