Why am I afraid of society?

Why think about society at all? Who can stop you? Who can stop you, unless you are prepared to be stopped? And why are we prepared to be stopped? Because we have entered into a surreptitious kind of contract with the society.

You are not afraid of the society.

You are afraid of letting go of your privileges, your emoluments that you get from the society.

Your self-worth comes from the society, so you are afraid of the society.

That — “What happens if the society takes away my self-worth?”

The society has given you your name, it gives you a certain respect, it gives you all your identities. You are afraid that the society can take all of them away. You have entered into a business contract with society. That is the reason why you are afraid. You are taking so much from them, you don’t want this to stop. You want to keep taking from them.

Students across campuses often come to me and say, “This is what we want to do. I want to do this, I want to do that, but my family does not allow me. Under pressure of these people I have given up, and now I want to do this. I really think that I love that field, but I am not really being allowed.”

And there are people in their final years of graduation, they come up and say, “Well, we are students of…