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Main Index
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many things. You will find the man in sickness, in health, the same. In sickness he will not be miserable. The body may be sick, the body may be in pain, but you can see the man is not affected by it. In pain or in pleasure he remains the same. In poverty or in richness he remains the same. His inner tranquility is not disturbed by anything. He may become famous, he may become notorious -- it doesn't matter. What others say about him no longer matters at all; what matters is his own experience of himself.
For the ordinary man what others say matters too much, because he has nothing of his own. Whatever he thinks he is, is just a collection of opinions of other people. Somebody has said, "You are beautiful," somebody has said, "You are intelligent," and he has been collecting all these. And hence he's always afraid: he should not behave in such a way that he loses his reputation, respectability. He is always afraid of public opinion, what people will say, because all that he knows about himself is what people have said about him. If they take it back, they leave him naked. Then he does not know who he is: ugly, beautiful, intelligent, unintelligent. He has no idea, even vaguely, of his own being; he depends on others.
But the man of meditation has no need of others' opinions. He knows himself, so it does not matter what others say. Even if the whole world says something which goes against his own experience, he will simply laugh. At the most, that can be the only response. But he is not going to take any step to change people's opinion. Who are they? They don't know themselves and they are trying to label him. He will reject labeling. He will simply say, "Whatever I am, I am, and this is the way I am going to be."
So in different situations... it will take a little longer time than an ordinary examination takes, but it is worth it. He should be put into every possible situation, and watched. A few qualities will start evolving very clearly out of him. His mental age will suddenly become equal to his bodily age -- which is measurable.
Ordinarily, the mental age remains near thirteen, although the person may be seventy. That's why... just
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