Pythagoras, The golden verses of Pythagoras, Vol. 1 Philosophia Perennis Chapter 10: Bliss Beyond All Duality, Question 4

The fourth question

Question 4

AFTER NEARLY THREE MONTHS, I AM STILL THINKING ABOUT TAKING SANNYAS AND DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY I HAVE SUCH RESISTANCE TO IT WHILE IT SEEMS SO EASY FOR SO MANY OTHERS. CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THIS?

Carol Baker,

WE WILL HAVE TO GO DEEP INTO THIS PROBLEM. You have become incapable of willing; you have forgotten how to will on your own. And this happens to almost everybody in this world. From your very childhood, parents start deciding for you -- they don't allow you to decide. They don't allow you to will on your own: they will for you, they think for you, they decide for you.

And I can understand. The child is helpless -- it is bound to be so, the parents have to decide for him. Otherwise the child will not survive. It is the obligation of the parents to think, will and decide for the child. But there is another obligation also, which all the parents down the ages have remained oblivious of -- and the other is far more important.

When the child has become capable of deciding, willing, thinking, they should relax with him. They should allow him to decide on his own -- they should help, in fact they should support, provoke, they should tempt the child, to think on his own.

But no parents do it. They enjoy the idea that the child is still dependent on them, they enjoy the idea that the child is obedient. They enjoy the idea that the child always looks up to them -- it is very ego-fulfilling. They fulfill the first duty, which is necessary -- but they never fulfill the second necessity, which is far more important.

If the parents really love the child they will be very alert. The moment they see that the child can decide about something on his own, they will leave the child alone. They will not enforce anything upon him.

But this does not happen. This society is very ill -- and the reason for its illness is because nobody is ever allowed to will and think on his own. So everybody is looking for somebody to be ordered by.

"For three months," you say, Baker, "I have been thinking and thinking about taking sannyas." For three months? You can go on thinking for three years and three lives -- but you have forgotten how to think, and you don't know how to take a step into the unknown. You have not been supported in your childhood to will, to experiment.

Even if sometimes the experiment takes you into errors and mistakes, then too it is worth it -- because one learns only through errors. There is no other way of learning, there is no safer way of learning. Learning comes only through this dangerous path: you have to try and experiment. Remembering always, whatsoever you are doing may be wrong -- there is no guarantee.

How can the new' be guaranteed? And your parents are not here, and your teachers are not here, and your priests are not here, and your so-called leaders are not here. You are left alone here, in a very new situation, and you don't know what to do. You have never tackled, it seems, any problem on your own.

This is what Thomas Hanna has called "the state of a humanoid". Very rarely will you find a human being in the world. The people who are known as human beings are humanoids. A humanoid is a person who has never been allowed to will on his own and has become crippled, paralysed, and is always in search of somebody to command him.

The humanoid is a person who is always seeking some tyrant -- who needs a tyrant to say what to do and what not to do, who is always seeking a leader, who is always seeking a state of slavery where he can throw his responsibility of thinking. Thinking is a burden to a humanoid; it is not a joy, he is not exhilarated by it. He feels anxious. He cannot take any decision, he is afraid he may go wrong.

A humanoid is a person who has not really become a grownup. And that's what the whole world is full of: humanoids. Nobody is really a grown-up person; everybody is seeking a father figure.

Stand on your own feet. And I am not saying take sannyas or don't take sannyas. Who am I to say? Stand on your own feet: meditate over it. And there is nobody else to order you. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders. That's what being grown-up means: "I take the responsibility. I go into this experience, knowing fully that I may be moving in a wrong direction or I may be moving in a right direction -- who knows?" It is always a perhaps.

And the humanoid is very much afraid of the perhaps. He needs guarantees; he is always looking for somebody to say it is so. And then he can go to foolish extremes -- he can consult tarot cards to decide what to do and what not to do. He can go to Sona, or he can go to an astrologer or a palmist. But he wants somebody else to decide for him. He wants to throw the responsibility on somebody else -- if something goes wrong he can always say, "What can I do? That tarot reader was wrong. What can I do? That palmist was stupid."

You want somebody else to take responsibility for your life. Then how are you going to grow? And how will you become a freedom? You will remain encaged.

Drop this state of being a humanoid. And the only way to drop it is to start willing on your own, deciding on your own. And whenever you make some mistake, take the responsibility. And there is nothing wrong in making a mistake. It is only by committing mistakes that one knows what is right. By knowing the false, one knows what the true is. By falling again and again one knows how not to fall. By going astray again and again one comes to recognize how not to go astray again. There is no other way.

But you have been brought up with a wrong conditioning -- and everybody has been brought up in that way. Your parents, your teachers, your leaders, your priests, are humanoids -- because their parents, their teachers and their priests were humanoids, and so on and so forth... you can go back. And every humanoid turns other people into humanoids.

When a child is born to you, you will make the same mistake that your parents have made with you. You will not allow the child to function on his own. Otherwise, you will be surprised -- children are so intelligent. Yes, they need your guidance and they need your help -- they are helpless, but they are utterly intelligent too. So the parent has to be very very alert how far to help and when to stop helping. It is good to hold your child's hand when he is learning to walk, but don't go on holding his hand for his whole life.

And this is what is happening psychologically. Even if your parents are gone, you are still walking with your hands in their hands; you are still leaning, clinging to them. And if you cannot find your father you immediately go to the priest. It is not accidental that you call the priest 'father'. He is not a father at all, particularly the Catholic priest -- it is so stupid and foolish to call him a father. What kind of father is he? He is a celibate monk! How can he be a father? But you call him a father.

You call God also 'father'. And where is the mother? In your whole trinity not a single woman: God the father, Christ the son, and the Holy Ghost... unless the Holy Ghost is a woman. Or maybe the whole trinity is just gay.

Why do you call God 'the father'? A search, a deep psychological search, to have a father who is always there protecting you, safeguarding you, guiding you, sending commandments: do this, don't do that. You can rely on him -- and the more you rely on him, the less you are.

And the tendency has become so deep-rooted, you have become so habituated to it that you are not even aware of what you are doing. This bondage has to be dropped. And that's what sannyas is all about! It is not a new prison. I am not here to function as your father.

Do you remember one very strange statement of Jesus? Christians don't pay much attention to it -- in fact they feel embarrassed. Jesus said to his disciples, "Unless you hate your father and your mother, you cannot follow me." Does not look like a Jesus statement -- a man of love, of tremendous love, who says, "God is love," who teaches love, is saying, "Hate your father and your mother -- only then can you follow me."

If you show it to a Christian priest, he feels embarrassed. I have done it many times, and they feel very embarrassed and they want to get out of it somehow. But you cannot get out of it: it is there. But it is a tremendously significant statement.

Jesus does not mean your actual father or your actual mother, but the psychological search for the father and the mother. The psychological search to depend on something or somebody -- that has to be dropped. You have to start hating this dependence, you have to start hating this slavery.

But if somebody helps you to drop this slavery you will fight with him -- because you think this slavery is something very valuable.

You fought with Jesus, you fought with Socrates, you are fighting with me. And the only thing that is disturbing you is that I am trying to take all the chains off you. But you don't think those chains are chains -- you think they are great ornaments, golden, very valuable, that if they are taken you will be naked, you will be poorer. This is the state of a humanoid. And each humanoid has to become a human being.

Each child is born as a human being but the society cripples him and creates a very artificial being: the humanoid. And all the societies do it -- Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Buddhists, Jainas -- all the societies do it. The whole history of humanity up to now has been a history of great slavery.

Only once in a while has a man escaped out of the wheel of slavery -- a Buddha, a Krishna, a Bahauddin, a Pythagoras, a Zarathustra -- but only once in a while. It is really surprising how these people managed to escape -- and became real, authentic human beings, because the wheel is big and the structure is immense and very complicated. And the society takes the grip of you so greatly, and from every nook and corner of your being, and from such an early age, that its slavery penetrates, permeates your very unconscious.

You are not aware of what the society has done to you. Your society has made you very ill at ease, it has made you very miserable. That's why you like these things -- when somebody says life is suffering, you immediately agree. Not because life is suffering, not because this statement that life is suffering has any logical support to it -- no logical support is there. But why do people immediately agree? Because their experience supports it. They know only misery, they know suffering -- they immediately agree. "Yes," they say, "life is a misery. How to get rid of it?"

I declare to you: Life is bliss! You need not get rid of life -- you have to get rid of the way that you have learnt to be. You have to get rid of your humanoidness, you have to get rid of all that has been imposed upon your nature and is foreign to you. You have to become an authentic human being.

Becoming a sannyasin is a simple gesture that you are ready to become free. Free from nationality: the sannyasin will not think of himself as an Indian or a German or an Italian. Even if he has to carry a passport, he will not think deep down in his consciousness that he is an Italian. He is simply universal.

A sannyasin will not think of himself as a Christian or a Hindu or a Mohammedan -- although there is no need to go on telling people about it, because I don't want you to create unnecessary troubles for yourselves. As it is, you have enough troubles. But deep down you will know, "I am now just a human being." You will transcend all barriers of nation, race, colour, religion.

And basically, fundamentally, you will drop your upbringing, and you will become innocent again and you will start exploring life.

Now what is the fear? For three months you have been thinking -- three months wasted unnecessarily. If you had become a sannyasin, in three months you would have experienced what it is! You are eating from the tree of knowledge -- you could have eaten from the tree of life.

Let experience be the decisive factor, always and always. Carol Baker, you have done enough thinking. And I don't think anything else is left to think about. Three months is a long time, and you must have gone round and round, about and about. What else is there to think now? Experience! I invite you to experience. Participate! Don't see things from the outside.

If to paint a bamboo one has to become a bamboo, then to know about sannyas one has to become a sannyasin.

Pythagoras

VOL. 1, PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS

Chapter-10

Bliss Beyond All Duality