"They never came to know what existence has made them, and for what.

"Your soul is part of existence. Your self is a social institution. So the first thing to remember is that the distinction is unbridgeable. If you want to seek and know who you really are, you will have to go through the radical change of destroying your own self, because if you don't destroy the self, and by some accident you come to discover the soul, you will not be one. That's what is called schizophrenia by psychologists.

"You will be split. Sometimes you will behave like the self, and sometimes like a soul. You will be in a constant tension. Your life will become simply a deep anguish and anxiety – and it is impossible to live such a life. Hence the society, the educational system, the parents, the priest, everybody around you, tries in every way to create such a strong self that you never become aware of the hidden soul. The journey is not long, but certainly very arduous.

"The self is not a simple thing, it is very complex. You are a brahmin, you are a doctor, you are a vice-chancellor, you are a president; you are beautiful, you are very knowledgeable, you are rich, super-rich – all these dimensions are of the self. And the self goes on accumulating more money, more power, more prestige, more respectability; its ambition is unfulfillable. You go on and on creating more and more layers of self. This is the misery of man, the basic misery.

"Man does not know who he is, yet he goes on believing that he is this, he is that. If you are a doctor that is your function, not your reality; if you are a president that is your function, just as somebody else's function is to make shoes. Neither the shoemaker knows his self nor the prime minister knows his self. Parents start from the very beginning, from the very first day… And this false ego, self, or whatever you call it, becomes almost your reality, and the real is forgotten.

"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."