Sufism, Vol. 1 Sufis: The People Of The Path Chapter 6: The Passion for the Impossible, Question 4

The fourth question:

Question 4

WHY DOES RELIGION CREATE SO MUCH GUILT?

Religion does not create guilt -- if it creates guilt it is not religion. Yes, Mohammedanism, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, they create guilt. Let that be your definition of religion: if it creates guilt it is not a religion. It is something else pretending, something else garbed as religion, posing as religion -- but it is not religion. Religion creates celebration, not guilt.

These are hidden things which don't want to expose themselves. These so-called religions are more political than religious. Their whole idea, desire, ambition, is how to dominate people, how to control people. And naturally, guilt is one of the best mechanisms ever evolved to control people, to dominate people. Make them feel guilty! Once they start feeling guilty they are in your control. All dictators do that, all politicians do that.

And your priest is just a politician behind the mask. The popes, the SHANKARACHARYAS, are all politicians; they are not religious people. They have a very hidden politics how to dominate humanity, how to control people, how to make slaves out of people. And, of course, there is no better trick than creating guilt. It is a psychological technique.

How does it function? To create guilt you first have to create an impossible ideal. You have to give an impossible ideal which cannot be fulfilled, which is inhuman, which is not possible at all.

For example, in India they have created guilt about sex. If you have any sex desire you start feeling like a great sinner. Sex has been condemned.

Now sex is such a natural thing -- like eating, breathing. Only one thing is different about sex: it can be transcended. But there is nothing intrinsically wrong about it. One can go beyond it. And when one goes beyond it there is great freedom, there is great joy -- greater than sex can ever bring. But still sex is not sin. Sex is beautiful, healthy.

But if it is condemned then you have a great trick, a great technique in your hands. Millions of people will be controlled through it because they will not be able to get beyond it. In fact, the more they think it is a sin, the less is the possibility of going beyond it -- because to go beyond one has to go through. So it is very cunning to keep people in sexuality and keep them feeling guilty and keep them continuously afraid. that they are doing something wrong.

When a person feels that he is doing something wrong he is trembling inside. He cannot be a rebel. He cannot stand on his own, he knows he is guilty. He is not good, he is not worthy enough of anything. He cannot hope to be happy. He knows he is a sinner. Hell is waiting for him. Now you can manipulate, you can do whatsoever you want to do with this man; he is available, he is ready to become a slave. This is a psychological slavery.

You have taken away his respect for himself, you have taken away his worth. He feels himself to be dirty -- how can he love himself? How can he respect himself? He will be a victim of anybody who wants to control him. the parents will control him, the wife will control him, the husband will control, children will control, the society will control. Everybody will control him because something immensely valuable has been destroyed in him -- his respect for himself. He has lost that. And he will remain miserable, continuously miserable. How can you be happy if you don't have any respect for yourself?

And such a natural thing as sex -- and so difficult to get rid of it. Yes, people can transcend but nobody can get rid of it.

Let me tell you something. Just the other day I was reading that the psychologist Dr. Paul Cameron reports that males spend a great deal of time thinking about sex. In a survey of four thousand people he found that males between the ages of twelve and seventeen think about sex once every two minutes. This rate continues into young adulthood and drops to every five minutes in middle age -- that is, forty to forty-five -- and finally tails off to once every ten minutes after sixty-five.

Females give thoughts to sex every two-and-a-half minutes as teenagers -- they are little more saintly, half a minute's difference -- once every three minutes in young adulthood, once every ten minutes in middle age -- forty to forty-five -- and once every twenty minutes after sixty-five.

And that too seems to me to be just because of conditioning -- because females down the ages have been conditioned more than males against sex. They were expected to remain virgins. That too is male ego.

Why? Why should you try to find a virgin to get married to? Why? The male ego. The male ego always wants to be there first, to be the first everywhere! Hence the woman has to remain a virgin. And boys are boys. Virginity was not expected of boys, but girls were very much protected. Women have been more repressed. But out of thousands of years of repression there is only half a minute's difference. Not much.

So ladies, please, don't feel too saintly.

But this survey is very important. It shows how natural sex is. Now if you create guilt, if you make people feel that this is sin, you are destroying their respect for themselves. And you are making them afraid. And the so-called religions make you afraid that you will suffer in hell and they also make you greedy -- you will have your rewards in heaven if you follow their dictates. So greed and fear.... And between the two guilt is created.

When the father of Sirhan, the assassinator of Senator Robert Kennedy, was asked why his son did it and how he could do it, the old man said, 'I just don't know. I am crushed and confused. I taught my children to fear God.'

The man said, 'I taught my children to fear God so I am very much confused about how he could do such an ugly, ghastly act, such a horrible thing.' But the old man does not know that fear of God is not a good thing. It is precisely because of the fear that he could do such a thing.

If you are too much afraid -- if you are too much afraid of being yourself -- then there are two possibilities: either you become a so-called false saint, you pretend to be that which you are not, or you become a criminal, you assert whatsoever is the case. But in both the ways you become abnormal. Fear creates abnormality. Either you become a saint -- the so-called saint, the mahatma, a hypocrite -- or you become a criminal. It depends how you react. If you are a cowardly man you will become a mahatma and if you are a brave man you will become a criminal. But both are wrong. Neither cowardly saints and hypocrites nor brave criminals are needed.

Brave saints are needed, courageous saints are needed -- that is a totally different thing. You cannot create that out of fear. And for small things man has been made so afraid.

Listen to this story....

There was a young English boy by the name of Orrie. He was from a home of very meagre circumstances. On nights when they didn't have enough food for supper, they resorted to a dish known as Sparrow Pie. He was met at the back door by his mother one day, and she told him to go for some sparrows for sparrow pie.

The best way to hunt them was to go to a group of trees in a cemetery, late in the evening. He crept carefully up -- and was ready to make a mighty sweep with a big stick, when suddenly he fell into a freshly dug grave, as yet unoccupied. He tried to get out, but it had rained and the sides were as slick as glass.

He knew his mother would send someone for him, and she did -- his big brother. But just as he got near the grave another terrible thing happened -- his brother also fell into the grave. It was dark and he didn't know he was not alone so he pushed and shoved, but it had rained in his end of the grave as much as in the other end, and the harder he pushed and shoved, the harder he fell to the bottom. Young Orrie had enjoyed the show but knew that all good things must come to an end, so he decided to make as much of the dramatic situation as possible. He sat up very straight in his end of the grave, gathered all his diaphragmatic tones well underneath him, and with all the eerie, ghastly tones he could muster he said, 'Friend, can't you let a man rest in peace?'

There was a deadening silence in his end of the grave, then something that resembled a rocket zoomed by young Orrie's head, and his brother, who hadn't been able to make six feet to the top of the grave, made twenty feet past it on his first jump.

Fear works! Priests came to know it very early -- fear works. Create fear and then you can make people do anything you want them to do. Fear creates such an intensity that one puts one's whole life at the stake.

You go to the monasteries... it is because of fear that people are in the monasteries, struggling hard with sex, with food, with sleep. It is just fear, fear of hell. Or greed -- which is another aspect of the same thing. Greed and fear are two aspects of the same coin. A greedy person is an afraid person and a fearful person is a greedy person. A really courageous man has no greed and no fear. He lives his nature in a natural way.

A prominent politician, when he was a candidate for an important municipal office, said to three negroes that he would give a fat turkey to the one who would give the best reason for being a Republican.

The first one said, 'I'se a 'Publican cause de 'Publican set us darkies free.'

'Very good, Peter,' said the politician. 'Now, Bill, let me hear from you. '

'Well, I'se a 'Publican 'cause dey done give us de protective teriff.'

'Fine,' exclaimed the politician. 'Now, Sam, what do you have to say?'

'Boss,' said Sam scratching his head and shifting from one foot to the other. 'Boss, I'se a 'Publican 'cause I wants dat turkey.'

People are religious either out of fear or out of greed, they are not religious out of awareness or out of love. And all these religions which have created guilt in man have created an irreligious world.

Beware -- because in you also the same mechanism has been put. Everybody carries guilt inside himself -- as if you are naturally wrong, that to be natural is to be wrong. Anger is wrong, sex is wrong, joy in food is wrong, laughter is wrong... all good things seem to be wrong.

And then one goes on repressing. And howsoever you repress, nature goes on asserting. You repress it and it asserts. When-it asserts and you have to do something against your mind, then there is guilt -- then you know that you have fallen again, you have committed the sin again.

Be free from guilt. If you really want to go closer to God, be free from guilt. Accept nature, welcome it. It is perfectly good.

Sex is good, sometimes anger is good. When I say 'sometimes', I mean whenever anger is spontaneous it is good. And if you allow anger its spontaneity you will never accumulate anger. And you will not explode out of proportion. And your system will be clean, it will be a momentary thing -- something happens and you respond.

If your anger is spontaneous, relevant, responsible, true to the moment, is not a reaction but a response -- it has beauty. You simply say that you are alive, nothing else.

But if you go on repressing your anger -- feeling that anger is wrong, anger is wrong, don't do it, when you are feeling angry, smile, go on smiling -- you are gathering poison. And after a time there comes a limit; when the poison is too much it will explode. And it will explode in a situation where you will look foolish, stupid, mad, because the situation didn't demand it. Have you not observed it? When you really become angry out of repression you are always irrelevant, your response is not to the point. It comes from the past.

For example, for many days you have been repressing anger in the office, in the marketplace, with the friends, in the club -- then one day suddenly it breaks through on your child: You hit him hard. And you pretend that you are doing it for his own good. And you know that he has just been an excuse, that the poor child is suffering absolutely unnecessarily from your anger. And the child can see that he has not done anything, not at least in the proportion that you are being hard with him. And you know that in the face of the child you have projected the face of your boss, you have projected the face of your wife, you have projected so many faces, so many situations. Now the poor child is a victim.

This anger is ugly. And this anger comes because you have been taught that anger is wrong -- never be angry.

All that is spontaneous is beautiful. And I am not saying there are not states of consciousness where anger disappears -- but it disappears only by being spontaneous. Anger, greed, fear, sex, all disappear. Slowly, slowly, when you have experienced life in its truth, in its reality, when you have lived it in all its possibilities, a moment comes when you grow beyond it. Then those things become toys left behind. They look childish, immature, juvenile. It is not that you condemn them and it is not that now you hope you will get to heaven -- there is just nothing in them. You have not sacrificed anything, there is no sacrifice.

Mr. Khrushchev wanted to find out what people really thought of him. Naturally they would not tell him if they recognised him, so he dressed in an elaborate disguise, put on glasses and a false moustache, and flew to a small town in the Urals.

There he met a farmer and said, 'Tell me, what do you think of Khrushchev?'

The farmer answered, 'Sh-h-h-h... you crazy or some-thing?'

He looked around furtively and took the Premier inside his farmhouse. He closed all the windows, bolted the doors, pulled down the shades, then whispered, 'I like him.'

This is the situation of man -- so much fear. So much fear has been put into your system, into your blood. With your very mother's milk it has gone into you. You have been brought up in fear.

If you really want to be with me, drop guilt. And the same energy that has become a guilt complex becomes celebration once it is released. Celebration is the right attitude. Celebrate all that God has given to you. I promise you that if you can celebrate all that God has given to you, you will become worthy of more.

Sex disappears one day and you become capable of love. And one day love disappears and you become capable of prayer. And one day prayer disappears and you become a God yourself. But one has to start to live that which has been given to you.

I have heard....

Sister Agnes was walking through the park near the convent when she was attacked and raped several times by her assailant.

Hearing of her horrible misfortune the Mother Superior hurried to the hospital and met the doctor on duty.

'Oh, doctor! How is poor Sister Agnes?'

'She is doing fine,' said the M.D. 'They should be through with the plastic surgery in a few hours.'

'What!' exclaimed the Mother Superior. 'Why in God's name would she need plastic surgery?'

'We are trying to get the smile off her face.'

That's what your so-called religions have done to people. Repression, repression, repression. They have not allowed you to be yourself, to be a natural being. They have crippled you, paralysed you.

Of course, it is easy to control paralysed people, it is easy to control crippled people, it is easy to dominate dead people. People who enjoy their life are difficult to control. It will be difficult to send people to war if they are really living their sex life truly. It will be impossible. Why? Why should a man who is immensely satisfied go to war? Because some stupid politicians are fighting about some stupid problems? -- where the boundary should be of one country, a few miles here or a few miles there? For those stupid things can you convince people to go and die? You cannot. If they are really living their life they will laugh at the whole ridiculousness of it -- 'Why?'

But right now it is just the opposite. People are so ready to go to war because they are so dead. War gives them a feeling of life, at least some thrill. They are so bored -- bored with the wife, bored with the husband, bored with the children, bored with the whole thing that is so-called life. War brings a little joy. People feel happy when there is war. You can see a subtle joy on the face of the soldiers going to the war. You can see thrill, adventure, all around. Why? Their life is so dull that in comparison even death seems to be far better.

If people's life is a celebration you cannot drive them to war. For foolish reasons -- ideological, religious -- you cannot drive people to war. They will simply refuse. They will laugh at the whole nonsense of it. You cannot force people to do ugly jobs, jobs that simply destroy their souls.

But dead people can be forced anywhere. You can make a man a clerk and for his whole life he will simply move files from here to there. His whole life he will shift files. There will be no joy in his life. But a guilty person cannot expect more. Even this is too much; it is God's blessing that he is employed.

Dead people will go on living. A man will go on sleeping with a woman he does not love. He is so guilty that he feels it is God's blessing that he even has a woman that is okay. A woman will go on living with a man she hates, feels repelled by. Guilty people can be forced into any hole, into any dungeon.

But when people are happy they will live their life. When they are happy they will become woodcutters, gardeners, farmers, fishermen, they will be singers, dancers, poets, painters. Or if somebody enjoys being a clerk it is another thing. Then he chooses it. But it is his CHOICE.

And people will not be so mad after money. Money is a substitute for love. When you don't get love you start trying to have more money, more money. Money is a substitute for love. That's why people who are very miserly about money are very loveless people. They cannot afford to be loving. If they are loving they cannot be miserly -- these don't go together. A loving person is never a miser and a miser is never a loving person. He need no love. His love is money, his God is money, he worships money. That's enough.

Then there are power addicts who spend their whole life trying to get more and more powerful -- how to reach New Delhi or Washington or Moscow. Their whole life seems to be just an effort to reach the capital. For what? Why do people enjoy power so much? Why this madness, this political madness? The reason is that they don't have any power over themselves. They need a substitute. They can feel happy if they have power over others. A man who has power over himself need not bother. Why should he bother to have power over others? It is enough, it is more than enough that he has power over himself.

That's why in India we call a sannyasin 'swami'. 'Swami' means one who has power over himself. His whole search is that 'I should be myself. It is enough, it is immensely satisfying, that I am a master of my own self.' That's enough. Why should you bother to be master of others?

But people are missing that basic mastery, hence they are driven into mad ways, into mad paths -- politics, money, power, prestige, fame. These are all ugly things. These are neurotic things.

And religions have not only condemned it, they have created a subtle mechanism for you to condemn yourself. The priest cannot follow you everywhere, the parents cannot go with you everywhere, so they have created a very subtle mechanism -- almost like an electrode of Delgado. They have put a conscience in you that goes on condemning. If the parents have said, 'Don't make love to this woman, she is not yet your wife and love is prohibited,' you may be alone with the woman, it may be a full moon night and you may be feeling like loving and she may be feeling like loving and the parents are no more there -- they are far away, miles far away, maybe dead -- but the conscience is there. Deep in your heart somebody goes on saying, 'Don't do this. This is wrong.' Even if you do it you will not enjoy it because the parents will go on interfering. If you don't do it you will be miserable, if you do it you will be miserable -- either way you will be miserable.

I have heard....

Parents nowadays, particularly in America, are too busy even to punish their kids! Mothers are running to bingo games, fathers are running off to golf courses and bowling alleys. And mothers have their boyfriends and fathers have their girlfriends. Before they leave the house they just say, 'Son, we left a strap on the bed. If you do something wrong, hit yourself six times.'

It may not be done actually like that but that is what conscience tries to do. Hit yourself. Whenever you do something which has been taught as wrong, hit yourself, punish yourself. This is the most criminal thing to do to a child. To create a policeman in him against himself, that's what conscience is.

My whole effort here is to kill your policeman. I am not saying become irresponsible and I am not saying go mad or insane, I am saying be freed of the policeman. Rather than having a conscience, have consciousness -- which is the true thing. Let consciousness decide, not conscience.

Conscience is borrowed, it is parental, it is suicidal, it is political. A man who has a conscience is never a free man, he is a slave. He is not inside a prison but the prison is inside him; the prison is there inside him. The jailor is sitting there just in his own heart, pulling his strings.

Drop this policeman. Say goodbye to it forever. Become more alert, become more loving, become more natural, become more ordinary, drop ideals. Don't try to be extraordinary -- that's how you have been befooled. And don't try to become perfect images of something which does not exist in reality.

Don't try to become a Christ or a Buddha or a Krishna. Just try to become yourself -- that's what God wants you to be. If he had wanted Buddhas he would have created more Buddhas. He never creates again. Once is enough. He has created you as a unique human being. Respect this unique human being that you are and live it authentically.

Drop all guilt, fear, greed. Enjoy each moment of life as a great blessing from God, a BARAKA.

Sufism

VOL. 1, SUFIS: THE PEOPLE OF THE PATH

Chapter-6

The Passion for the Impossible