The English word sin is very significant – not in the sense Christians use it, not in the sense it is being understood all over the world, but in its very roots the word comes with a totally different meaning. It means forgetfulness. It has nothing to do with your action, it has something to do with your reality that you have forgotten.

Because you have forgotten your reality and you are living with a false substitute, all your actions become hypocritical. You smile, but the smile is not coming from your heart. You weep, you cry, but the tears are very superficial. You love, but your love has no roots in your being. All your actions are as if you are a somnambulist – a man who walks in his sleep.

It happened in New York that a somnambulist… There are so many somnambulists that you would not believe it – ten percent of the whole humanity. They get up in the night, they go to the fridge, they eat something which the doctor has forbidden them, because they are getting fatter and fatter and creating their own death, committing a slow suicide. Somehow they manage to repress it in the day, but in the night the conscious mind is fast asleep, and the unconscious does not miss the opportunity. It knows the way, and they walk with open eyes; even in the dark they don’t stumble.

They are worried, their doctor is worried, their family is worried: “We have reduced your food, we are not giving you any sugar, and still you go on becoming fat!” And they are also worried that things go on disappearing from the fridge. And you cannot hold that person responsible, because he doesn’t remember anything at all in the morning.

But this New York case became world-famous. This man used to live in a fifty-story building, on the last story. In the night he would get up, go to the terrace, and jump across to the other house which was close by. The distance was such that nobody could have dared, with consciousness, to take such a jump – and it was an everyday routine!

Soon people became aware and started gathering underneath to see, because it was almost a miracle. The crowd started becoming bigger and bigger, and one day, when the man was just about to jump, the crowd shouted loudly, hailing the man. That made him wake up. But it was too late, he had taken the jump. He could not reach the other terrace – although each day he had been going to the other terrace, coming back, going to his room and falling asleep. But because he became conscious and he saw what he was doing… But he had already taken the jump. He fell from fifty stories up and his body was shattered in fragments on the road.

The self of man is his sleep; the soul is his awakening.

And to keep the self, society has given you certain rules and disciplines. For example, every small child is made ambitious. Nobody says to anybody, “Just be yourself.” Everybody is giving him great ideals: “Be a Gautam Buddha or a Jesus Christ or an Albert Einstein, but be someone! Don’t just go on remaining yourself – you are nothing.”