"On the boundary of one's being one creates a fort-like phenomenon, in order to defend, not to be vulnerable, to react, for security, safety; and the freedom of being is lost. One starts looking at others' eyes; their approvals, their denials, their condemnations. Appreciation becomes more and more valuable. The others become the criterion, and one starts to imitate and follow others because one has to live with others.

"A child is very soft, he can be molded in any way; and the society starts molding him – the parents, the teachers, the school – and by and by he becomes a character not a being. He learns all the rules. He either becomes a conformist, that is bondage, or he becomes rebellious – that too is another sort of bondage. If he becomes a conformist, orthodox, square, that is one sort of bondage; he can react, can become a hippy, can move to the other extreme, but that is again a sort of bondage – because reaction depends on the same thing it reacts against. You may go to the farthest corner, but deep down in the mind you are rebelling against the same rules. Others are following them, you are reacting, but the focus remains on the same rules. Reactionaries or revolutionaries, all travel in the same boat. They may be standing against each other, back to back, but the boat is the same.

"A religious man is neither a reactionary nor a revolutionary. A religious man is simply loose and natural; he is neither for something nor against, he is simply himself. He has no rules to follow and no rules to deny, he simply has no rules. A religious man is free in his own being; he has no molding of habits and conditionings. He is not a cultured being – not that he is uncivilized and primitive – he is the highest possibility of civilization and culture, but he is not a cultured being. He has grown in his awareness and he doesn't need any rules, he has transcended rules. He is truthful not because it is the rule to be truthful; being loose and natural he is simply truthful, it happens to be truthful."