Hassidism, The True Sage Chapter 6: The perfect swimmer, Question 4

Question 4

HOW CAN I BE AUTHENTIC? HOW CAN I SPEAK AND ACT THE TRUTH WHEN THE SOCIETY AND THE WORLD ON WHICH I HAVE TO DEPEND FOR MY WORLDLY NEEDS ARE BASED UPON LIES AND UNTRUTH

Then be untrue. Then don't create any misery for yourself. But the life for which you are going to be untrue will be taken away from you sooner or later. Death is certain.

So if you want to live in an untrue society, comfortably -- then live comfortably. But that comfort is not leading you anywhere except death.

Whatsoever you call a comfortable and convenient life, I call only a comfortable way to die. It is slow suicide.

But the choice is yours. I am not forcing any goal, any structure on you. I am simply stating bare facts: that if you want to be comfortably, conveniently dying, compromise with the lies that surround you. But you will never feel comfortable deep down. An unease will remain inside your heart.

And I know well that if you become authentic and true, it is going to be arduous. Otherwise, why should so many people be liars? Why should so many people live a life of lies? It is arduous. It is TAPASCHARYA. It is austerity.

When you start -- becoming authentic, you will be in conflict. But that conflict is worth it. It is the price one has to pay to attain to inner life. One has to pay it. You cannot avoid it.

If you want a life of infinite bliss, a life which is beyond death, a life which is eternal, then you have to pass through the austerity -- and the austerity is only in the beginning. It is in the beginning only -- because you become a stranger to a life where everybody is a liar, and where everybody is a hypocrite, and where everybody is trying to show the way he is not.

If you become true, you don't fit -- but that is only in the beginning. You don't fit with the society, but immediately you fit with God. And one who fits with God does not bother whether he fits with the society or not. He has entered into a greater harmony.

Only in the beginning, while you are not in the greater harmony and you have lost contact with this tiny society and it's so-called harmony, in the transitory period, in this gap there will be a little uneasiness. You will feel a stranger, an alien -- alienated. But that is only for a small period of time -- and it is worth it.

Once you enter into the greater harmony of God, the cosmic harmony -- with the trees and the rivers and the rocks and the sands -- who bothers about your stupid society and the establishment and the government? Who bothers? They have nothing to give. The whole structure is false. They only pretend. They only promise. They give you hope, but nothing comes out of it.

Once you know the greater harmony, you are not bothered. You accept the fact that you will be in a little rebellious conflict with the society. That's why every religious man is rebellious. If a religious man is not rebellious, know well, he is simply pseudo-religious, he is not religious.

A Christ is religious, but not the Vatican Pope. The Pope is pseudo, false. He fits with the society. Christ is rebellious. Christianity is against Christ. All religions are pseudo-religious. Buddhists are against Buddha, and Jains are against Mahavir, and Christians are against Jesus, and Jews are against Moses and Baal Shem. They live in a different harmony; the harmony is of the total.

Your society is a tiny thing. Just think of the earth -- what it is: a tiny lump in the vast universe. Nothing much to brag about. And then on the earth, there is human society -- even a smaller part. And then in that human society, even smaller and smaller patterns: Christians, Protestants even smaller. And it goes on and on. You make smaller wholes against the bigger whole, and then you are suffocated. Then you don't have any freedom to move, you don't have any space around you.

Why not look at the sky and have the whole space which is available? But you say: 'No, I am a Hindu; I cannot move into the whole sky of humanity. I am a man; I cannot move in the whole space of all beings. I am a soul; I cannot move into the whole space of existence.'

Why do you confine yourself? It gives a little comfort, I know. It feels good that you are an Indian; you have somewhere to belong to. It feels good that this country is yours; it gives you a certain solidity, something to stand up on. But then it becomes the imprisonment also.

To be left in the open sky one feels afraid, alone -- but freedom is always in aloneness. Aloneness is tremendously beautiful, but in the beginning it looks tremendously terrible, because you have never known aloneness. You have always lived in the family, in the society, in the establishment, this and that. You have never been alone. Religion is: the art to be alone. Religion is: what you do with your aloneness. It has nothing to do with the crowd. It is to come to the original source of one's being, to the very center.

So, the choice is yours. I am not forcing anything on you. If you want to live comfortably -- of course a hypocrite's life, false, untrue, tasteless, boring -- then live in the prison. It is very comfortable and convenient. But if you want freedom then you have to be a little courageous, because freedom is only for those who are adventurous.

If you want to move into the infinite sky of God, the cosmos, you have to leave the small wholes that you call the society, the religion, the church. You have to come out of them -- out of the caves that your mind, in fear, has created.

Remember always, rebelliousness is the very substance of religion. And there is no other beauty in the world, no greater ecstasy than to be a rebel. You have to understand the word. I don't mean that by being a rebel you have to be a revolutionary, no.

A revolutionary is again in the same trap. He is trying to change the society. He is concerned with the society and the stale. A revolutionary may be against this society, but he is not against society as such. A revolutionary is against this society and wants to create another society of his own imagination -- his own utopia -- but he is not against society.

A rebel is a dropout. He does not bother about this society or any other society. He knows all societies will be imprisonments. At the most, they can be tolerated -- that's all.

There is no possibility of any society which will be really free. The society cannot be free. No revolution is going to succeed; all revolutions have failed. And those who know -- they know that revolution as such is not possible.

To change the crowd is not possible because the crowd doesn't have any heart. To change the structure is not possible because people cling to structure. They can change it if you give them another structure. They can change this structure for another.

A capitalist society can become a socialist society. A socialist society can become a communist society. A communist society can become a fascist society. They can change structure, they can change their presence, they can change their slavery. But they cannot be free. A crowd is afraid to be free. It clings. It wants to belong.

The inner emptiness forces everybody to belong to somebody, to something -- to some dogma, to some party, to some nation, to some philosophy, to some church. Then one feels: 'I am not alone.'

Freedom is the capacity to be alone. And when you are infinitely alone, a purity, an innocence is achieved. That purity is religiousness.

A rebel is one who has dropped all hope of social revolution. A rebel is one who knows that society will always remain the same. Revolution will change the outer form but deep down it will remain the same.

Only the individual can change, only the individual can become a Buddha. The society can never become enlightened. All societies will remain barbarous, crude, primitive. Only individuals can reach to that height -- the peakest peak -- of being totally alone, totally silent, totally one with existence.

Be rebellious. And don't mistake revolution for rebellion. Revolution is the game of society. Rebellion is the insight that the society is going to follow its own rotten, beaten path.

You drop out -- I am not saying that you escape from it. That dropping out is an inward phenomenon. You remain in it, but you are no more of it. You don't belong to it. On the surface you go on.

You go to the market, you go to the office, to the factory. You fulfill things, but deep down, you are no more part of it. You become a lotus flower; the water of the society does not touch you. This is what I mean by a dropout.

I don't mean a hippie, because the hippie will come back sooner or later. He will have to come back. That's why there are not old hippies -- only young people. By the time they reach thirty, they are going back to the establishment; then they become afraid. By the time they reach thirty, they get married, they have children. Now, what to do? They move back to the establishment. Now their children will become hippies, but they themselves become squares.

Even when hippies or others drop out of the society, they create their own society. Then they start belonging to THAT society.

If you are a hippie and you don't have long hair, you will be a stranger among hippies. If you are a hippie and you are not dirty. and you wash your face, and you take a shower every day, you will not fit.

They have their own rules; they have their own alternate society. It is small, but they have their own rules, forms, manners, language, ways of relating, and they are as traditional as anybody else. They have their own tradition. Maybe it is a tradition against tradition, but it is a tradition. They have their own conformity.

A real dropout is one who has dropped out from within. On the surface he goes on moving, lives in the society because there is nowhere else to go -- but deep down he has moved. He closes his eyes and he is no more a part of the society. When he comes home, he forgets the factory, the market, the office -- everything. The society remains an outer thing; he doesn't allow it to enter inwards. That's what I mean when I say a dropout.

A dropout is a drop-in!I Drop in, and you will be a real dropout.

Hassidism

THE TRUE SAGE

Chapter-6

The perfect swimmer