{Undefine Yourself} - Freeing yourself from yourself
-
It is not only with you, it is with everybody who has been brought up by a
hypocritical society. Its whole training
is to hide your original face, to wear
masks -- masks which are appealing to people, masks which are appreciated
by
people. And always remembering to adjust according to others peoples
ideas.
For millions of years our whole way of life has
been of adjustment, of
compromise. And compromise with whom? With a crowd -- in which
everybody else is also compromising,
where nobody is opening up his reality,
where everyone is afraid of being himself, because from the very beginning
he
has been told, "The way you are is not going to be acceptable."
You have to be acceptable, and that means you
have to live according to
ideals, formalities, mannerisms. You have to be, more or less, an actor in a
drama -- and
do your best. Never expose yourself, never be naked and
nude. Hide yourself -- first from others, and finally from yourself.
Force
yourself into such darkness that even you cannot see who you are.
Dont take it as a personal problem; it is our
social reality. It is the way we
have been manufactured, modified, continuously painted, white-washed --
according
to others ideas. Just because those ideas are ancient and old,
and because man has lived according to those ideas for
centuries, it has
been thought that they must be right; otherwise people would have
rejected them long ago. The longer
an ideal has lived, the more valuable it
becomes. The more rotten it is, the deadlier it is, the more respectable, the
more honorable it must be.
It is difficult to fit with these ideals, it
is arduous. It is a tremendous
struggle against yourself, against nature, against existence, against life. But
you
have been told by your parents, by your teachers, by your priests, by
everybody -- and with good intentions -- "Dont assert
yourself. Keep
yourself out of the way, be a perfect hypocrite, and your life will be a
successful life."
In short, it is ambition, success, a desire to
fulfill the ego that has been
used to force you into darkness. If you want success, if you want Nobel
Prizes, if you
want to be honored by the society, respected by the masses,
then you have to do one thing absolutely: Never be yourself!
Hide yourself,
and just function according to the expectations of others.
It is this conditioning that will keep you unaware-unawake.
Try to discover
who you are in God's eyes, even if you don't believe in a traditional God,
{or any God}.
It may
bring disrespect, it may take away your so-called success.
You may become a nobody from being a very famous celebrity.
But there
will be tremendous satisfaction and contentment, and a great relaxation.
Who cares, in the first place, to be crowned
by idiots? It is an insult, it is
not respectability.
I remember a day . I had asked the education
minister to appoint me to
some university. I had all the necessary qualifications -- I was a "Gold
Medalist," I had
topped the university. He said and he knew me, because
before becoming the education minister he was a vice-chancellor;
he had
heard me speak in his university. He had appreciated me very much, and he
had told me, "Any time you need my
help, I will be available."
I said, "You remember, it is because of your
promise, I have approached you
directly."
He said, "Thats right, and I will do everything.
You put in the application."
So I wrote the application. He said, "Now a character
certificate is needed."
I said, "That is difficult."
He said, "What is the difficulty? Cant you get
a character certificate from
your vice-chancellor? Or from the head of the Department of Philosophy, or
the dean of
the Faculty of Arts? It is just a formality."
I said, "It is not a question of formality. I
cannot get a character certificate
from the vice-chancellor. He is not a man of character, how can I ask him
to give
me a character certificate? I will have to find a man -- and it is
going to be a very difficult task -- to whom I can
give a character
certificate. Then only is it worth having his character certificate for me."
He said, "My God. You are making unnecessary
trouble for yourself, and for
me."
I said, "Do you think you deserve a character
certificate from me? I know
you well; otherwise I would have asked, Write a character certificate for
me. Why should
I go anywhere else? You are here, the education minister
himself writes character certificates -- but I will not accept
it. I know all
the ins and outs of your life. I have been in the university where you have
been a vice-chancellor,
and there have been very few vice-chancellors who
were so corrupt as you were. It is your corruption that has brought
you to
the post of education minister."
There is no point being worried about other people;
their opinions mean
nothing.
The only thing that matters in life is your own
opinion about yourself, your
own respect for yourself. Nobody can destroy your dignity then, because it
is not dependent
on anybodys opinion.
Come out in the open -- even if it goes against
the whole world. Enjoy your
original being.
To me, thats what rebellion is, thats what religion
is.
A man who had lived an average sort of life died,
and went to meet Saint
Peter.
"Can I come into heaven?" he asked.
"Heaven?" said Peter. "This is not it; heaven
is much higher up, and can
only be reached by very long ladders. You take this chalk and start
climbing," he added.
"For each sin of adultery, fornication, lechery or
whatever, chalk off one rung."
The man kept on going for ages;
his legs ached, his arms ached, and he
met no one. All at once, he saw a robed figure descending the neighboring
ladder.
"Excuse me," he said to the figure, "are you by any chance an angel, going
back for more candidates?"
"No, indeed.
I am the pope, going back for more chalk."
All these popes, and kings, and queens, and presidents
if you knew their
inner reality, you would not accept awards from them; it is a humiliation.
You would simply like
to be a nobody, but utterly contented, satisfied with
yourself, with your nature, enjoying it in utter innocence.
Hymie Goldberg, on a visit to India, was appalled
by the countrys chaotic
traffic. He asked his host why it was so disorderly.
"In some countries," his host said, "they
drive on the right, in others on the
left. Here we drive in the shade."
You want these stupid people to be respectful
towards you, you want their
appreciation. They are utterly unconscious. They dont know themselves,
and they are prescribing
a lifestyle for you -- and you accept it ...
