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saying to you. You were taught that you have to follow whatever your teachers or your priests are doing. Nobody ever told you to search for your own voice -- "Have you got any voice of your own or not?"
So your voice has remained very subdued and other voices are very loud, very commanding, because they were orders and you had followed them -- in spite of yourself. You had no intention to follow, you could see that this is not right. But one has to be obedient to be respected, to be acceptable, to be loved.
Naturally only one voice is missing in you, only one person is missing in you, and that is you; otherwise there is a whole crowd. And that crowd is constantly driving you mad, because one voice says, "Do this," another voice says, "Never do that! Don't listen to that voice!" And you are torn apart.
This whole crowd has to be withdrawn. This whole crowd has to be told, "Now please leave me alone!" The people who have gone to the mountains or to the secluded forests were really not going away from the society; they were trying to find a place where they can disperse their crowd inside. And those people who have made a place within you are obviously reluctant to leave.
But if you want to become an individual in your own right, if you want to get rid of this continuous conflict and this mess within you, then you have to say goodbye to them -- even when they belong to your respected father, your mother, your grandfather. It does not matter to whom they belong. One thing is certain: they are not your voices. They are the voices of people who have lived in their time, and they had no idea what the future was going to be. They have loaded their children with their own experience; their experience is not going to match with the unknown future.
They are thinking they are helping their children to be knowledgeable, to be wise, so their life can be easier and more comfortable, but they are doing just the wrong thing. With all the good intentions in the world, they are destroying the child's spontaneity, his own consciousness, his own ability to stand on his feet, and to respond to the new future which their old ancestors had no idea of.
He
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