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Remember, this society has messed you up so much that man as such is almost on the verge of going insane.

All love, communication, friendship has disappeared; all aesthetic sensitivity has disappeared. People have become like zombies. They talk to each other yet they don’t talk, they don’t meet.

This society is an ill society. When I say “this society” I mean all the societies that exist in the world are more or less, in this way or that, ill.

For centuries in the past, we have been creating a model of man which is wrong. We are giving people ideals and saying “Unless you fulfill these ideals you will never be worthy.” And those ideals are impossible. We are giving people ideas of being perfect. Once the idea of being perfect enters one’s being, it turns one into a neurotic.

Accept your limitations, accept your imperfections. That’s what it means to be a human being. Accept yourself as you are – with joy, not in helplessness because God accepts you.

This is my basic teaching: God accepts you; accept yourself, love yourself. Let there be a great upsurge of self-love.

Out of that love, you will start becoming creative. A person who loves himself is bound to become creative.

I am not saying he will become famous, I am not saying that he will be a Picasso or an Ezra Pound or a Pablo Neruda, no. He may be, he may not be. But that is irrelevant. The real thing is to enjoy creativity.

Whatever you do, do it with joy, bring your total intelligence to it, be meditative in it.