The greatest slavery is that of the child.

The third chapter leads off asking about a child's right to privacy and freedom from parental conditioning. Osho seems to believe that this question is a "fundamental problem facing humanity today".

He then asserts that the "future depends upon how we solve it." A rhetorical answer to a rhetorical question, however Osho seems to believe this question has never been asked in times past.

• The claim that "man has come of age," may or may not be true.
• The maturity to face new problems he sees as inherent in man's coming of age has yet to be proven.

Leading the second paragraph, Osho makes the observation:

• Slowly, slowly, as man progressed, he became aware of many kinds of slavery.
  Only recently in the West have we become aware that the greatest slavery is that of the child.

This situation, unknown in the past, now because "psychological insight has deepened into the human mind and its functioning." we are for the first time, able to discern this rather obvious condition of childhood.

Due to this recent psychological understanding, now:

• …it has become absolutely clear that the child is the most exploited person; nobody has been exploited more than the child.

This book represents a breakthrough of sorts – information that's been surpressed for thousands of years, making its first appearance into the pubic domain. It is not yet common knowledge, but the veil has been pierced.

Conventional wisdom says that everything on the internet is public and permanent.

I am also reminded of how I felt after first reading The Fourth Way — dumbfounded.
   ■ How could it be that I had never heard of this before?
   ■ Even more so, how could it be virtually unknown?

the book of children is the closest approximation of anything written (at least that I've been able to uncover) that deals with the fundamental problem facing humanity
— children are born as slaves.

Or as Osho puts it:

• Slowly, slowly, as man progressed, he became aware of many kinds of slavery. Only recently in the West have we become aware that the greatest slavery is that of the child.

It is a breakthrough because the book provides the more evidence confirming that Earth is a prison planet designed for maximun pain and suffering.
   ■ A key to its success is blind obedience – to nature, family and society – instilled beginning at birth.

Using this book by Osho as a starting point, perhaps a more complete understanding can be derived.

Chapter 3, Conditioning is a well thought out explanation of the plight that every child faces and is forced to deal with.

In order to make this information more publicly available, the complete text of chapter 3 is reprinted here.

Does a child not have as much right to privacy and freedom from parental conditioning as the parents expect for themselves? It is one of the most fundamental problems facing humanity today. The future depends on how we solve it. It has never been encountered before. For the first time man has come of age, a certain maturity has happened - and as you become mature you have to face new problems.

Slowly, slowly, as man progressed, he became aware of many kinds of slavery. Only recently in the West have we become aware that the greatest slavery is that of the child. It was never thought of before; it is not mentioned in any scripture of the world. Who could have thought ... a child and a slave? A slave to his own parents, who love him, who sacrifice themselves for the child? It would have looked ridiculous, utter nonsense!

But now, as psychological insight has deepened into the human mind and its functioning, it has become absolutely clear that the child is the most exploited person; nobody has been exploited more than the child. And of course he is being exploited behind a façade of love.

And I don't say that the parents are aware that they are exploiting the child, that they are imposing a slavery on the child, that they are destroying the child, that they are making him stupid, unintelligent, that their whole effort of conditioning the child as a Hindu, as a Mohammedan, as a Christian, as a Buddhist, is inhuman; they are not aware of it, but that does not make any difference as far as the facts are concerned. The child is being conditioned by the parents in ugly ways, and of course the child is helpless: he depends on the parents. He cannot rebel, he cannot escape, he cannot protect himself. He is absolutely vulnerable; hence he can be easily exploited.

Parental conditioning is the greatest slavery in the world. It has to be completely uprooted, only then will man be able for the first time to be really free, truly free, authentically free, because the child is the father of the man. If the child is brought up in a wrong way then the whole of humanity goes wrong. The child is the seed: if the seed itself is poisoned and corrupted by well-intentioned people, well-wishing people, then there is no hope for a free human individual. Then that dream can never be fulfilled.

What you think you have is not individuality, it is only personality. It is something cultivated in you, in your nature, by your parents, the society, the priest, the politician, the educators. The educator, from the kindergarten to the university, is in the service of the vested interests, of the establishment. His whole purpose is to destroy every child in such a way, to cripple every child in such a way that he adjusts to the established society. There is a fear. The fear is that if the child is left unconditioned from the very beginning he will be so intelligent, he will be so alert, aware, that his whole lifestyle will be of rebellion. And nobody wants rebels; everybody wants obedient people.

Parents love the obedient child. And remember, the obedient child is almost always the most stupid child. The rebellious child is the intelligent one, but he is not respected or loved. The teachers don't love him, the society does not give him respect; he is condemned. Either he has to compromise with the society or he has to live in a kind of self-guilt. Naturally, he feels that he has not been good to his parents, he has not made them happy.

Remember perfectly well, the parents of Jesus were not happy with Jesus; the parents of Gautam the Buddha were not happy with Gautam the Buddha. These people were so intelligent, so rebellious, how could their parents be happy with them? And each child is born with such great possibilities and potential that if he is allowed and helped to develop his individuality without any hindrance from others we will have a beautiful world, we will have a tremendous variety of geniuses. The genius happens very rarely not because the genius is rarely born, no; the genius rarely happens because it is very difficult to escape from the conditioning process of the society. Only once in a while does a child somehow manage to escape from its clutches.

Every child is being enveloped - by the parents, by the society, by the teachers, by the priests, by all the vested interests - enveloped in many layers of conditioning. He is given a certain religious ideology; it is not his choice. And whenever somebody is forced with no choice of his own you are crippling the person, you are destroying his intelligence. You are not giving him a chance to choose, you are not allowing him to function intelligently; you are managing it in such a way that he will function only mechanically. He will be a Christian, but he is not Christian by choice. And what does it mean to be a Christian if it is not your choice?

The few people who followed Jesus, who went with him, were courageous people. They were the only Christians: they risked their lives, they went against the current, they lived dangerously; they were ready to die, but they were not ready to compromise. The few people who went with Gautam Buddha were real Buddhists. But now there are millions of Christians around the world and millions of Buddhists around the world and they are all bogus, they are pseudo. They are bound to be pseudo - it is forced on them! They are enveloped in a certain religious ideology, then they are enveloped in a certain political ideology - they are told that they are Indians, that they are Iranians, that they are Chinese, that they are Germans; a certain nationality is imposed on them. Humanity is one, the earth is one! But the politicians wouldn't like it to be one because if the earth is one then the politicians with all their politics have to disappear. Then where will all these presidents and prime ministers go? They can exist only if the world remains divided.

Religion is one, but then what will happen to the pope, to all the stupid shankaracharyas, all the ayatollahs? What will happen to all these people? They can exist only if there are many religions, many churches, many cults, many creeds. There are three hundred religions on the earth and at least three thousand sects of these religions. Then of course there is a possibility for many priests, bishops, archbishops, high priests, shankaracharyas to exist. This possibility will disappear.

And I tell you, religiousness is one! It has nothing to do with any Bible, any Veda, any Gita. It has something to do with a loving heart, with an intelligent being. It has something to do with awareness, meditativeness. But then all the vested interests will suffer.

Hence parents who belong to a certain establishment, a certain nation, a certain church, a certain denomination, are bound to force their ideas on the children. And the strange thing is that the children are always more intelligent than the parents, because the parents belong to the past and the children belong to the future. The parents are already conditioned, enveloped, covered. Their mirrors are covered with so much dust that they don't reflect anything; they are blind.

Only a blind man can be a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Jaina or a Christian. A man with eyes is simply religious. He does not go to the church or to the temple or to the mosque; he will not worship all kinds of stupid images. All kinds of gods, all kinds of superstitions! Parents carry all these. When a child is born he is a clean slate, a tabula rasa; nothing is written on him. That's his beauty: the mirror is without any dust. He can see more clearly.

Mom: "Jimmy, did you fall over with your new trousers on?"
     Jimmy: "Yes, Mom, there wasn't time to take them off."

The first-grade teacher was talking to her class about nature and she called it "The World Around You." She asked little Helen in the first row, "Now, Helen tell everyone in the class. Are you animal, vegetable, or mineral?"
      "I'm not any of those," she replied promptly. "I'm a real live girl!"

A little fellow who was fishing off the end of a pier lost his balance while trying to land a fish and fell in the lake. Several men who were also fishing nearby rushed to his aid and pulled him out.
     "How did you come to fall in?" one of the men asked him.
     "I didn't come to fall in," the kid said. "I came to fish!"

A large family was finally able to move into a more spacious home. Sometime later an uncle asked his nephew, "How do you like your new house?"
     "Just fine," replied the lad. "My brother and I have our own rooms and so do my sisters. But poor Mom, she's still stuck in the same room with Dad!"

Every child is born intelligent, clear, clean, but we start heaping rubbish on him.

He has much more right than the parents because he is beginning his life. The parents are already burdened, they are already crippled, they are already depending on crutches. He has more right to be his own self. He needs privacy, but parents don't allow him any privacy; they are very afraid of the child's privacy. They are continuously poking their noses into the child's affairs; they want to have their say about everything.

The child needs privacy because all that is beautiful grows in privacy. Remember it: it is one of the most fundamental laws of life. The roots grow underground; if you take them out of the ground they start dying. They need privacy, absolute privacy. The child grows in the mother's womb in darkness, in privacy. If you bring the child into the light, among the public, he will die. He needs nine months of absolute privacy. Everything that needs growth needs privacy. A grown-up person does not need as much privacy because he is already grown up, but a child needs much more privacy. But he is not left alone at all.

Parents are very worried whenever they see that the child is missing or is alone; they immediately become concerned. They are afraid, because if the child is alone he will start developing his individuality. He always has to be kept within limits so that the parents can go on watching, because their very watching does not allow his individuality to grow; their watching covers him, envelops him with a personality.

Personality is nothing but an envelope. It comes from a beautiful word, persona; persona means a mask. In Greek dramas the actors used masks. Sona means sound, per means through. They used to speak through the mask; you could not see their real faces, you could only hear their voices. Hence the mask was called a persona because the sound was heard through it, and out of persona comes the word personality.

The child has to be continuously on guard because he is being watched. You can see it yourself: if you are taking a bath you are a totally different person. In your bathroom you can put aside your mask; even grown-up people who are very serious start singing, humming. Even grown-up people start making faces in the mirror! You are in private, you are perfectly aware that you have locked the door - but if you suddenly become aware that somebody is watching through the keyhole, an immediate change will happen to you. You will again become serious, the song will disappear, you will not be making faces in the mirror; you will start behaving as you are supposed to behave. This is the personality - you are back in the envelope.

A child needs immense privacy, as much as possible, a maximum of privacy so that he can develop his individuality with no interference. But we are trespassing on the child, continuously trespassing. The parents are continuously asking, "What are you doing? What are you thinking?" Even thinking! They even want to look in your mind.

There are a few tribes in the Far East where each child has to tell his dreams every morning to the parents, because even in the dreams he cannot be left alone. He may be dreaming wrong dreams, he may be thinking things he should not think; the parents have to be reported to. The early morning ritual is that first thing before breakfast he has to relate his dreams, what he has seen in the night.

Psychoanalysis is a very late development in the West, but in the East, in these Far Eastern tribes, psychoanalysis has been practiced by the parents for thousands of years. And of course the poor child does not know the symbology so he simply relates the dream as it is. He does not know what it means; only the parents know. But this is going too far. It is encroaching upon him, it is inhuman; it is overlapping on somebody's space.

Just because the child is dependent on you for food, for clothes, for shelter, do you think you have the right to do it? Because if the child says that he has seen that he was flying in his dream, the parents immediately know that that is a sexual dream. Now they will curb his behavior more, they will discipline him more. They will give him an early morning cold bath! They will teach him more about celibacy and they will teach him that, "If you are not celibate things will go wrong. If you think about sexuality you will lose all intelligence, you will go blind," and all kinds of nonsense.

A child needs immense privacy. The parents should come only to help him, not to interfere. He should be allowed to do things or not to do things. Parents should only be alert that he does not do any harm to himself or to anybodyelse - that's enough. More than that is ugly.

A tourist drove into a small town and spoke to a boy who was sitting on a bench in front of the post office.
     "How long have you lived herer the tourist asked.
     "About twelve years," the boy replied.
     "It sure is an out-of-the-way place, isn't it?" the tourist asked.
     "It sure is," the boy said.
     "There isn't much going on," the tourist said. "I don't see anything here to keep you busy."
     "Neither do I," the boy said. "That's why I like it."

The children like very much to be left alone; spaciousness is needed for their growth. Yes, parents have to be alert, cautious, so that no harm happens to the child, but this is a negative kind of cautiousness - they are not to interfere positively. They have to give the child a great longing to inquire about truth, but they have not to give him an ideology that gives him the idea of truth. They should not teach him about truth, they should teach him how to inquire about truth. Inquiry should be taught, investigation should be taught, adventure should be taught. The children should be helped so that they can ask questions, and the parents should not answer those questions unless they really know. And even if they know they should say it as Buddha used to say it to his disciples: "Don't believe in what I say! This is my experience, but the moment I say it to you it becomes false because for you it is not an experience. Listen to me, but don't believe. Experiment, inquire, search. Unless you yourself know, your knowledge is of no use; it is dangerous. A knowledge which is borrowed is a hindrance."

But that's what parents go on doing: they go on conditioning the child.

No conditioning is needed for the children, no direction has to be given to them. They have to be helped to be themselves, they have to be supported, nourished, strengthened. A real father, a real mother, real parents will be a blessing to the child. The child will feel helped by them so that he becomes more rooted in his nature, more grounded, more centered, so that he starts loving himself rather than feeling guilty about himself, so that he respects himself.

Remember, unless a person loves himself he cannot love anybody else in the world, unless a child respects himself he cannot respect anybody else. That's why all your love is bogus and all your respect is pseudo, phony. You don't respect yourself, how can you respect anybody else? Unless love for yourself is born within your being it will not radiate to others. First you have to become a light unto yourself, then your light will spread, will reach others.

It was examination day at school and a bad-tempered teacher was questioning a small boy about his knowledge of plants and flowers. The boy was unable to answer any question correctly. In frustration, the teacher turned to his assistant and shouted, "Go and bring me a handful of hay!"
     As the assistant turned to go out, the small boy cried, "And for me, just a small coffee, please!"

A man was driving along a country road when his car broke down. While he was fixing it, a small boy approached and asked, "What is that?"
     "It's a jack," said the man.
     "My father has two of those," said the boy.
     Then a minute later he asked again, "And what is that?"
     "That's a flashlight."
     "Oh, my father has two of those too. And over there? Is that a spanner?"
     "Yes," said the man, irritably.
     "My father has two those."
     The conversation went on in this vein for some time. Finally the repair was finished and the man got up and went to piss at the side of the road. As he was pissing he pointed to his reproductive machinery and asked, "Does your father have two of these too?"
     "Of course not!" said the boy. "But he has one that is twice as long!"

Children are immensely intelligent, they just need a chance! They need opportunities to grow, the right climate. Every child is born with the potential of enlightenment, with the potential of becoming awakened, but we destroy it. This has been the greatest calamity in the whole history of man. No other slavery has been as bad as the slavery of the child and no other slavery has taken as much juice out of humanity as the slavery of the child, and this is also going to be the most difficult task for humanity to get rid of it. Unless we arrange the whole of society in a totally different way, unless a radical change happens and the family disappears and gives place to a commune, it will not be possible.

Once this old pattern of family disappears into a more multidimensional set-up, humanity can have a new birth. A new man is needed and the new man will bring the very paradise that in the past we were hoping for in some other life. Paradise can be here now, but we have to bring about a new child.

Why do people voluntarily repress themselves and adopt crippling defense mechanisms?

For survival. The child is so fragile he cannot exist on his own. You can exploit this. You can force the child to learn anything you want him to – that's what a behaviorist like B.F. Skinner goes on doing in his lab. He teaches pigeons to play Ping-Pong, but the trick is the same: reward and punishment. If they play they are rewarded; if they don't play, if they are reluctant, they are punished. If they make a right move they are rewarded, given food; if they make a wrong move they are given an electric shock. Even pigeons start learning Ping-Pong.

That's what has always been done in the circus. You can go and see. Even lions, beautiful lions, are caged, and elephants are moving according to the whip of the ringmaster. They have been starved and then they are rewarded - punished and rewarded - this is the whole trick.

What you do in the circus with the animals you go on doing with your children. But you do it very unconsciously because it has been done to you; this is the only way you know how to train and bring up children. This is what you call "bringing up." In fact, it is bringing down; it is forcing them into a lower existence rather than bringing them up to a higher existence. These are all Skinnerian tricks and techniques - because of them we voluntarily start repressing ourselves and adopt crippling defense mechanisms.

A child does not know what is right and what is wrong. We teach him. We teach him according to our mind. The same thing may be right in Tibet and wrong in India; the same thing may be right in your house and wrong in your neighbor's house. But you force it onto the child: "This is right, you have to do it." The child gets approval when he does it and gets disapproval when he does not do it. When he follows you, you are happy and you pat the child; when he does not follow you, you are angry and you torture the child, you beat the child, you starve the child, you don't give your love to him.

Naturally the child starts understanding that his survival is at stake. If he listens to this mother and this father all is okay; if not, they will kill him. And what can the child do? How can he assert himself against these powerful people? They loom large. They are huge and powerful and they can do anything.

By the time the child becomes powerful he is already conditioned. Then the conditioning has gone so deep in him that now there is no need for the father and mother to follow him. The inner conditioning, what they call the conscience, will go on torturing him.

For example, if the child starts playing with his genitals - which is a joy to children, a natural joy, because the child's body is very sensitive - it is not sexual at all in the sense that you understand sexuality. The child is really very, very alive, and naturally when the child is alive his genitals are more alive than other parts of the body. That is where life energy accumulates - it is the most sensitive part. Touching and playing with the genitals the child feels tremendously happy - but you are afraid. It is your problem. You start being afraid that he is masturbating or something. It is nothing. It is sheer joy at playing with one's body. It is not masturbation or anything, it is loving one's body.

It is your guilt, your fear. Somebody may see that your son is doing this and what will they think of how you are bringing up your children? "Make them civilized, teach them not to do that!" So you stop it, you shout at the child. You say, "Stop!" again and again and again, and it goes deeper, deeper, deeper, and becomes a "conscience," an unconscious part of the child. Now there is no need for you. When he starts playing with his genitals something from the inside will say, "Stop!" and he will become afraid - maybe the father is looking or the mother is looking - and he will feel guilty. And then we teach him that there is God the Father who is always looking everywhere, even in the bathroom. He goes on watching you everywhere. This concept of God is crippling; then you are not free even in your bathroom! Nowhere are you free, that omnipotent God follows you like a detective wherever you are. When you are making love to a woman he is standing there. He won't allow you. He is a superpoliceman - in addition to the conscience that the parents have created.

That's why Buddha says that unless you kill your parents you will never become free. Killing the parents means killing the voice of the parent inside you, killing the conscience inside you, dropping these nonsense ideas and starting to live your own life according to your own consciousness. Remember, consciousness has to be more and conscience has to be less. By and by, conscience has to disappear completely and pure consciousness has to be lived.

Consciousness is the law - let consciousness be the only law. Then whatsoever you feel, it is your life. You have to decide. It is nobody else's life; nobody else has any right to decide. I am not saying that you will always be doing right - sometimes you will do wrong. But that too is part of your freedom and part of your growth. Many times you will go astray but that is perfectly all right - going astray is a way of coming back home. A person who never goes astray never comes back home, he is already dead. A person who never does anything wrong never enjoys doing anything right. He is just a slave. A mental slavery is created.

A human child is dependent on his parents for a long time - at least twenty-one to twenty-five years. It is a long time, almost one-third of his whole life. For a third of his life he is being conditioned. Just think - twenty-five years of conditioning! Anything can be forced on a person. And once you learn these tricks it is very difficult to forget them.

That's why it is so difficult to take a jump into reality and start living your life. Of course, in the beginning it will be very shaky; you will tremble many times, because naturally you will be going against your parents, you will be going against the society. Society is your parents' writ large; your parents were nothing but agents of this society. It is all a conspiracy - the parents, the teachers, the policeman, the magistrate, the president - it is all a conspiracy, they are all together and they are all holding the future of all children.

Once you have learned, unlearning becomes very difficult because after twenty-five years of constant repetition you are completely hypnotized. A de-hypnosis is needed; you have to drop all this conditioning.

Yes, it is simply survival, the need to survive. The child wants to live, that's why he starts compromising. He bargains. Anybody will bargain when there is a question of life and death. If you are dying in a desert and somebody has water and you are thirsty and you are dying, he can ask any price. He can manage anything, he can force anything upon you. That's what we have done up to now with children.

You ask, "Why do people voluntarily repress themselves and adopt crippling defense mechanisms?" It is not voluntary. It looks as if it is voluntary because by the time you become alert it is almost inside your blood and bones. But it is not voluntary, no child ever learns anything voluntarily - it is forced, it is violent.

You can watch any child. Every child resists, every child fights to the very end, every child creates trouble for the parents, every child tries hard this way and that to escape from this crippling mechanism. But finally the parents get hold of him because they are more powerful. It is simply a question of the powerful and the powerless.

So it is not unnatural that when children start to grow up they start taking revenge on the parents. That reaction is natural. It is very difficult to forgive your parents - that's why all societies teach you to respect them. If you cannot forgive them at least respect them; if you cannot love them, at least respect them. But that respect is formal, bogus. Deep down you remain angry.

If what I am saying is heard, if what I am saying becomes prevalent in the world someday, then children will really love their parents. Then children will be really in tune with their parents because the parents will not be enemies to them, they will be friends.

The human child is the weakest child in the whole of existence. His weakness is a blessing in disguise, but it can also be exploited - and that's what has been done down the centuries. The parents never allowed the weakness, helplessness, and dependence of the child to turn into independence, strength, integrity, individuality; they were determined that the child should remain obedient - naturally, because an obedient child is not a trouble. A disobedient child is a continuous trouble. But a disobedient child is a real human being.

The obedient child is just simple cow dung. A child who cannot say no has no integrity. And if a child cannot say no to something, his yes is meaningless. The yes has meaning only when the child is capable of saying no, too. Then it is up to his intelligence to decide. But it is easier for parents that a child always says yes. He is rewarded for being obedient and he is punished for being disobedient. And the situation is the same in the schools. Teachers want you to be obedient; it is easier for them to control you, to dominate you.

All my teachers were complaining to my father, and my father was telling them, "Who am I to complain to? Do you think I am in power? Do you think he is going to listen to me? Do whatsoever you want to do: punish him, expel him from the school - whatsoever you want to do, I absolutely agree to it. But don't bother me about him, because the whole day people are coming to me … have I nothing else to do? Or have I just to go on listening to what he has done to this teacher, that teacher, this neighbor, that neighbor?"

And he told me, "You can do anything you want, but don't spoil my business. Everybody is coming into the shop, and at first I think they are customers … but it turns out they are your customers."

I suggested to my father, "You do one thing. In your big shop, just in the corner you can write on a small board COMPLAINTS HERE in the back. You are saved from the trouble, and I will see those people. Let them come to me."

He said, "The idea is good, but have you seen in any shop a complaints box? People will think those complaints are against me and the shop; nobody will think they are against you. And you will play more mischief on those poor guys who have come in to complain."

I said, "It was just a suggestion to help you."

It is difficult for parents, it is difficult for teachers, it is difficult for priests; it is difficult for everybody to allow any kind of disobedience. Even God - who is omnipotent, all-powerful, the greatest despot, the greatest dictator - could not allow it; even he could not tolerate a little disobedience from Adam and Eve. They were thrown out of the Garden of Eden and they had committed no sin. In fact, since hearing that it was an apple tree I have been eating apples as much as possible. I don't see any sin arising out of eating the fruit from an apple tree.

But the question was not the apple tree.

The question was disobedience.

So the first thing is that obedience has to be forced; for obedience, fear has to be used. That fear becomes in religious terms, hell. For obedience, reward has to be used; in religious terms, that becomes paradise or heaven. And to keep control over everything a father figure is needed - so God becomes the father.

I know why they have not made God a mother. I know from my own experience that my mother would hide me in the house when my father was very angry and searching for me because I had done something. When my father would refuse to give me any money because I had done something that he had prohibited, my mother would manage to give me money. So I know that a mother cannot be such a disciplinarian as a father can be.

And a mother can be persuaded very easily, because she is nothing but love, she is nothing but heart. The father is head, logic, reason, discipline. The father is a man, and the society is man-made. My mother even used to enjoy it when I would come and say to her, "I have done something, and I am in urgent need of help."

She would say, "But first tell me what you have done. I will save you, I will try my best, but first tell me the whole story. You bring such juicy stories that I wonder why your father gets angry. He should enjoy them."

The priests, the father in heaven, the parents here on the earth, the teachers, the political leaders, they all want absolute obedience from everybody so that there is no question of any rebellion, no change, so their vested interests are protected. We have all become victims of their vested interests. It is time that things should be changed.

The obedient child is always mediocre; to be disobedient means a little intelligence is needed. The obedient child becomes a good citizen, goes to the church every Sunday; the disobedient child is unreliable. What will he do in his life? He may become a painter, he may become a musician, he may become a dancer - which are not very profitable professions - or he may become just nobody, a vagabond, enjoying his freedom.

I want you to jump out of this circle. Drop all fear. There is nothing to fear. There is no hell to be worried about and there is no paradise for which you have to be greedy.

Paradise is here. And if we drop the idea of paradise beyond death, we can make this paradise a thousandfold more beautiful.