Dont follow anybody
DON'T FOLLOW ANYBODY, otherwise you will be unhappy. And you are unhappy enough because you have been following your father and mother, teachers, religion. You have been following so many, and all those voices are different, contradictory, inconsistent. You are being pulled in all directions; how can you be together? You are a disintegrated phenomenon, a crowd, one part going to the East, another part going to the West; the lower body has gone to the South, the upper body has gone to the Himalayas, North. You are a disintegrated phenomenon, not together.
Be together! And I tell you, if you remain together, if you don't listen to anybody, if you only listen to your own voice, EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO ERR SOMETIMES, EVEN IF YOU GO WRONG SOMETIMES -- don't bother. You will go wrong, because you have become accustomed to following others so much that you have lost your inner voice.
YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE INNER VOICE IS. Many voices are there and they are all from others. Sometimes the mother speaks -- do this! Sometimes the father speaks -- don't do this! Sometimes somebody else, a Buddha, a Jesus, a Christ, a Chuang Tzu... drop all those voices. Listen!
MEDITATION IS A DEEP LISTENING, listening to the inner voice. As you become silent, voices cease. Chuang Tzu goes to his home, Buddha goes to his home, Jesus is no longer there, your father and your mother are really gone; everybody goes, only you are left, alone in your emptiness. Then your nature asserts itself -- and that is a flowering.
As a seed breaks and comes out, sprouting, so your inner voice comes out, sprouting. And then follow it: wherever it leads, follow it. DON'T LISTEN TO ANYBODY; THAT IS YOUR WAY TO GOD. And all that a Master can do is to bring you to your inner voice. The Master should not become the substitute, otherwise you will become even more crowded than you were before.
Don't make me your voice, I am not your enemy. Don't listen to me! Only this much is enough: that you GO DEEP WITHIN YOURSELF AND LISTEN TO YOUR OWN VOICE. If I can help you towards that, then I am a Master to you, otherwise I am an enemy.
AND ONCE YOU HAVE STARTED LISTENING TO YOUR OWN VOICE I AM NOT NEEDED, you can discard me. Listen... just as there is a third eye, there is a third ear, it is not talked about in the scriptures. There is a third ear, and as the third eye will give you glimpses of your being so the third ear gives you glimpses of your inner voice. When these two outer ears stop functioning -- when you are not listening to anybody, you have become completely deaf, no voice penetrates and you have thrown all the voices from the inside outside, when you have thrown all the rubbish out, you are just empty, settling within -- you will feel the voice. It is always there. Every child is born with it, every tree is born with it, every bird lives with it -- even a turtle is born with it. And you cannot confuse a turtle, you cannot convince him by saying: Come and be dead and we will enshrine you. The turtle will also say: Go home, leave me here to drag my tail in the mud.
ONCE YOU CAN FEEL YOUR VOICE THEN NO RULES ARE NEEDED, you have become a rule unto yourself. And the more clear the voice, the more your steps fall in the right direction. It becomes a progressively stronger and stronger force, every step leads nearer to your destiny and you feel more at ease. You will feel a deep contentment that nothing is wrong and you can bless and you can be blessed by all.
RELIGION IS REBELLION, rebellion against the others, rebellion against the well-wishers, rebellion against the do-gooders. It is the greatest rebellion because you are alone, nobody else is there and you have to travel the path alone. It is the rebellion of the individual against the crowd.
THE CROWD IS VERY, VERY POWERFUL. It can crush you, it has already crushed you. You are crippled and crushed, you are almost dead. To leave you alive is dangerous for the crowd because then you will follow your own path, and the crowd has its own path -- it wants you to follow it. The crowd wants you to become a clerk in a post office, a teacher in a primary school, a nurse in a hospital, and your inner voice may not be ready for it. Your inner voice may be moving you to become a Buddha or a Chuang Tzu, but the society does not need a Buddha -- it needs a perfect executive. What is a Buddha needed for? He is useless economically, a burden.
Once it happened that Mulla Nasrudin went to a psychiatrist wearing a beret, a smock, a flowing beard. The psychiatrist asked: Are you an artist? Nasrudin said: No, not at all! The psychiatrist said: Then why this beret, smock and beard? Nasrudin said: That's what I am here to enquire, why? I never wanted it; this is my father, he wanted me to be a painter, a great artist. That is why I am here to enquire.
YOU ARE IN SUCH BAD SHAPE BECAUSE SO MANY PEOPLE HAVE WANTED SO MANY THINGS OUT OF YOU. If you fulfill them you will remain unfulfilled, because nobody can expect the thing that you are here for -- for that you have to search, it is an inner enquiry. That is the soul! You may call it God, you may call it truth, names differ. But the real thing is to find the authentic destiny that you are here for; otherwise one day or other you will have to go to the psychiatrist and ask. And everybody is getting nearer the door of the psychiatrist! Even the psychiatrist himself is in bad shape; because he goes to some other psychiatrist for his own analysis -- they do each other's psychoanalysis too. And this is really something: more psychiatrists commit suicide than anybody else, twice as many as any other profession. Twice as many as in any other profession go mad, and they are here meaning to help others!
EVERYBODY IS IN BAD SHAPE BECAUSE NOBODY HAS LISTENED TO HIS AUTHENTIC BEING. Listen to it! And don't listen to anybody
