Children are intelligent: they are not yet covered by layers of dust, they have not yet gone through the factory called education, they have not yet been cultured; they are yet wild and they still have the freedom and the innocence and the joy of the wild animals. They act moment to moment.

But we start cultivating them, we start curbing their freedom. We start imposing, "Do this, don't do that." We start imposing do's and don'ts on them. Soon they will forget all about freedom, soon they will start acting out of the past, pretending. Soon they will be no more alive.

-Rajneesh

Down the ages that's what man has been doing: decorating his prison cell. You have really made it beautiful inside; it almost looks as if it is a temple. You have painted your chains beautifully. You have covered your chains with gold and silver; they look like ornaments. Hence you go on cooperating.

And freedom is the basic requirement if you want to know God, if you want to know at all what this life is and what the benediction of this life is and what the beauty of this existence is. If you want to know it at all you will have to come out of your prison. You will have to risk. Because the prison seems comfortable and you have lived in it so long, you have become accustomed to it. You will have to come into the open, under the sun and the moon and the sky. You will have to come into the wind. You may have lived so long in the cage that you may be afraid to open your wings again.

You may have completely forgotten that you have wings. This is the situation where man exists. But before We Can make a breakthrough out of the prison walls, we will have to understand how the prison is made, what the strategy is, of what it consists.

The most fundamental strategy is that the priests and the politicians and the pundits have been substituting every real thing with something unreal. That is the most fundamental strategy of how this prison, this slavery, has been created.

-Rajneesh

History says slavery has been destroyed; that is all bunk! It has not been destroyed, it has only moved from the gross to the subtle. Yes, you don't have chains on your hands and on your feet because the chains have become more subtle - they have gone into your mind, they have become more inner. On the outside you are enjoying freedom, democracy, equality, brotherhood - just empty impotent words - deep down there is no brotherhood, there cannot be.

How is there any possibility of brotherhood if there are Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans? How can there be any possibility of brotherhood if there are nations - India, Germany, England? It is impossible. Man is constantly at war, each moment you are living in conflict. And how can there be equality when you have been taught from the very beginning to be ambitious?

Ambition means that you have to be higher than the other. Ambition means that you have to prove your superiority that you have to prove everybody else is inferior to you, that you have to succeed.

-Rajneesh

MAN IS A SLAVE. He is not born as a slave, he is born free. He is born as freedom, but he is found in chains everywhere. He lives in chains, he dies in chains. This is the greatest calamity that has happened to humanity.

The moment a child is born the society starts transforming the child into a slave, it is not interested in free people. It is afraid of freedom; freedom seems to be dangerous. A slave is safe. And the society needs only slaves because they can be exploited. The priest is interested in slaves, the politician is interested in slaves, the pundit is interested in slaves.

These three p's are the most poisonous p's. These three have been the root-cause of human suffering, and man will remain chained, imprisoned, unless he gets free of the politician, the priest and the pundit. These three have to disappear from the world. Only then can man bloom in freedom.

-Rajneesh

I am teaching you to be yourself. I am teaching you to be fearless; I am teaching you not to yield to the social pressure; I am teaching you not to be a conformist. I am teaching you not to hanker for comfort and convenience, because if you hanker for comfort and convenience, the society will give them to you, but at a cost. And the cost is great: you get convenience, but you lose your consciousness. You get comfort, but you lose your soul.

You can have respectability, but then you are not true to yourself; you are a pseudo human being; you have betrayed your God and yourself. But the society wants that, that you should betray yourself.

The society wants to use you as a machine, the society wants you to be obedient. The society does not need you to function as an intelligent being, because an intelligent being will behave in an intelligent way and there may be moments when he will say, "No, I cannot do this."

-Rajneesh