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sense of authenticity and originality is very clear. Existence is always original and always authentic. It never creates two persons exactly the same.
You don't have to be like me or like anybody else. That is not disciplehood, that is becoming a carbon copy. And to be a carbon copy is one of the ugliest things in the world. But all the religions have been doing that -- creating carbon copies, calling them great saints. They are simply fake, actors, they are simply acting. How can you have the heart of Jesus ? How can you have the perceptivity of Jesus? How can you have the courage...? You can pretend. You can have hair like Jesus, you can have the beard, you can carry a cross. You can even start believing that you are Jesus Christ.
One man in America started believing that he was Abraham Lincoln. Every effort was made, but he would stutter just the way Abraham Lincoln used to stutter and he would walk the way Abraham Lincoln used to walk -- he was a little lame. And his face was very similar and he had grown the beard. The family was tired. Finally, they took him to a psychiatrist, who used a lie detector.
There exists a machine now that can detect lies. You don't know it but it may be hidden just underneath you -- you may be standing on top of it. It is like a cardiogram. A few questions are asked -- very simple, no possibility for lying -- such as "What do you think, is it day or night?" And then the man naturally says, "It is day."
"What do you think, are the trees green or blue?" The man naturally says, "They are green." A few questions were asked in which he could not lie, and the detector was making a harmonious graph. Then suddenly the psychiatrist asked him, "Are you Abraham Lincoln?"
The man was getting tired; everybody was making a laughingstock of him. The family thought that he had gone insane and he was being dragged to this doctor, to that psychoanalyst. So finally he dropped the idea. He thought, "It is better to lie." He said, "I am not Abraham Lincoln." The family was surprised. But the lie detector said that he was lying, because deep in his heart he knew perfectly well he was Abraham Lincoln.
Copying,
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