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others' opinions.
It is because of this that if you want to remember your past you can go back only up to a certain moment -- and that moment will be the age of either four years or three years, at the most three years. After that there is a complete blank. You have been here during those three years, but you don't remember anything. You were nine months in your mother's womb -- you don't remember anything at all.
The reason you cannot now remember these three years is because you had no personality. It is the personality which accumulates opinions of others and creates a false identity, a certain idea of "Who I am." You don't know exactly who you are, because to know who you are you will have to dig deep within yourself through the whole rubbish that has accumulated in the name of personality. You will have to become a child again.
That's what is meant when Jesus says, "Unless you are born again you cannot understand what I'm saying." And it was said to a rabbi, well learned, a man named Nicodemus. He was a professor in the Jewish university of Israel. He wanted to meet this charismatic young man -- so courageous... hiding behind crowds, Nicodemus had heard Jesus many times. He himself was a professor but he had never heard anybody speak the way Jesus was speaking, with such authority. He was not quoting the scriptures, he was simply quoting his own experience -- hence the authority.
Nicodemus became interested but he was not courageous enough to come to Jesus in the daytime, because if others see, what they will think? Jesus was uneducated, a carpenter's son -- perhaps what you call an illegitimate son, because virgins cannot give birth to legitimate sons. And he had no acquaintance with the ancient traditions of Judaism but he was speaking like a born prophet.
Once in the middle of the night when there was nobody else and all his followers had gone to sleep and Jesus was doing his last prayer, Nicodemus came in darkness and said, "Forgive me. I am not a courageous man, I am a coward. I wanted to meet you many times but in the crowd, before the crowd, I could not gather courage. So I have come in the middle of the night, but
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