Pythagoras, The golden verses of Pythagoras, Vol. 2 Philosophia Perennis Chapter 10: Known, Unknown, Unknowable, Question 5

The fifth question

Question 5

WHY ARE YOU AGAINST CULTIVATING A MORAL CHARACTER?

FIRST TO CULTIVATE ANYTHING is to become pseudo. Cultivation means you will be creating something around yourself WHICH YOU ARE NOT. Cultivation means you will create a split, cultivation means you will create a facade. Cultivation means you will live in a camouflage: you will be one thing and you will pretend to be something else; you will do one thing and you will say another thing.

Cultivation means you will repress -- that's why I am against cultivation. Cultivation does not create true morality; it creates only ugly puritans. It creates only the so-called righteous; it creates people who are pretenders. It creates the attitude of holier-than-thou, that's all. It gives a great ego satisfaction.

And it also creates a prison. When you cultivate something, you are imprisoned in it, because deep down you are just the contrary. For example, you are violent -- you can cultivate non-violence. What will be the result? On the surface there will be a thin layer of non-violence, only on the surface; it will not even be skin-deep. Scratch any non-violent man just a little bit and you will find violence arising. Beware of non-violent people; they are the most dangerous people if you scratch them.

If you scratch a violent person he may not be so violent, because he does not carry a long long repressed violence in him; he does not accumulate. He explodes once in a while so there is no accumulation. But the non-violent person, the Gandhian, the so-called religious person, beware of him; he is a dangerous person. He is carrying great explosive forces in himself. Just a little scratch will prove to be a spark and he will explode; he can prove murderous, he can be very dangerous. And when you create non-violence around yourself and inside you are boiling with violence, you live in a prison.

A newspaper was running a competition to discover the most high-principled, sober, well-behaved local inhabitant. Among the entries came one which read: "I don't smoke, touch intoxicants, or gamble. I am faithful to my wife and never look at other women. I am hard-working, quiet and obedient. I never go to the theater or the cinema. I go to bed early every night and rise at dawn. I attend chapel regularly every Sunday without fail. I have been like this for three years... but just wait till next spring when they let me out of here!"

Just look at your so-called moral people -- they are living in a prison. And they all have to become diplomatic. They all have to have backdoors to their lives, otherwise they will go crazy. Cultivated morality arouses only two alternatives: one is to go mad -- if the person is sincere he will go mad -- the other alternative is that he will be a hypocrite. And naturally people choose to be hypocrites rather than going mad, and I cannot condemn them either. That is more intelligent.

That's why you see such hypocrites all over the place around the world. They are everywhere -- pretenders. You know them. They live a totally different life behind the walls. They have two lives: their real life is underground. They are living in such inner conflict that they cannot be happy. And the person who is not happy will not allow anybody else to be happy either. These people are sad, they have long faces; they are tense, they live in constant conflict and anguish, and they would like everybody to live like that. Naturally, they will condemn all joy, they will condemn all laughter. They will condemn EVERYTHING that is playful, that is fun. They will reduce you to utter seriousness, and seriousness is illness, it is pathological.

Life is available only to those who are playful. Life is not for the serious; for the serious is the grave. Life is for those who are festive, who know how to celebrate.

I am against cultivating a moral character, because cultivating a moral character does not give you real morality. That's why I am against it. The real morality has not to be cultivated: it comes as a shadow of being more aware. It is a consequence of consciousness.

If your conscience is not a consequence of your consciousness, then your conscience is ugly, dangerous, poisonous. Then your conscience is nothing but the policeman that the society has implanted in you. Then your conscience is nothing but your parental voice, the priests shouting inside you, "Don't do this -- do that!" You are not free, you are not a free man: you are controlled from within -- a very subtle strategy to control humanity. That's what your so-called conscience is.

The real conscience does not come from the outside: it wells up within you; it is part of your consciousness. I don't say cultivate morality: I say become more conscious -- and you will be moral. But that morality will have a totally different flavour to it. It will be spontaneous; it will not be ready-made. It will be moment-to-moment alive, flowing, changing. It will reflect all the colours of life. It will be appropriate to the moment; it will be responsible. You will respond to the situation with full awareness -- not because Moses has said to do it, not because Jesus has said to follow it, but because your own God inside feels this is the way to respond. Then you are functioning from the very source of consciousness, and that is true morality. It has not to be cultivated. The cultivated means the false.

That's why I say the real man of character has no character. The real man of character is characterless. The real man of character cannot afford to have a character, because the character means that which you have learnt in the past; character means the past. And you have to respond to the present moment. Your character will come between you and the present. It will force you to behave according to the past pattern, and when you behave according to the past pattern you are never appropriate.

So your so-called moral people are never appropriate, they cannot be. They miss the moment. They function out of the past so they cannot relate to the present. And there is only one life, ONLY one life: to relate to the present.

I think that what we are observing is a very subtle phenomenon, a subtle approach. It may be as successful as a college friend I once knew. He met a girl at a football game, and they hit it off so well that he took her to a show. That went fine, so he asked her to dinner. They enjoyed a leisurely dinner at a good hotel and followed that with a night club and dancing.

Along toward midnight, they were having a snack at a table for two and he said to her, "You know, I have had a wonderful time ever since I met you this afternoon. I think we have hit it off swell together, don't you?"

"Sure," she agreed. "I have enjoyed it too."

"I would like to have breakfast with you in the morning." And he looked at her eagerly, "May I?"

"Yes," she answered, "I would like that very much."

"All right, what will I do: call you or nudge you?"

These are the roundabout ways, diplomatic ways. The so-called moral people cannot go direct in anything; they always go roundabout. They always have to be cautious, because they have to keep their masks; they cannot drop their masks. And one lie leads into another ad infinitum, and slowly slowly a person becomes just a bundle of lies.

The true man of character is authentic, is whatsoever he is. He is utterly nude, naked; he is not hiding. I would like the new humanity to be of those who are brave. Long we have lived like cowards; long long, we have suffered like cowards. It is time now to come into the open, under the sun -- to be sincere, to be authentic, to be whatsoever you are. There is NO need to hide, because every other human being is just like you. There are neither saints nor sinners but only human beings.

The whole dichotomy of the saints and the sinners is the by-product of the cultivated character. And you will be surprised that sinners are more innocent than your so-called saints. You will see in the eyes of sinners more the quality of childlikeness, more sincerity, more innocence, more truth, than you will ever find in the eyes of your so-called saints. Their eyes will be cunning -- they have to be because cultivation brings cunningness.

I would like a totally different humanity in the world, where saints and sinners have disappeared, where there are only authentic people, open to the wind, open to the rain, open to the sun... open!

This will be hated by the society very much. This will be a great problem for the society, because the open person immediately makes you uneasy if you are closed, because the open person immediately hits at the very root of your being. The open person immediately makes you feel inferior, ugly, false. The open person immediately makes you feel unintelligent, stupid.

That's why Socrates is poisoned -- an open person. Not a saint, but a man of tremendous awareness. A sage not a saint. Jesus is crucified -- a sage not a saint -- because he was not fulfilling the expectations of the society. He was moving with thieves -- now saints don't move with thieves. He was moving with socially condemned people: gamblers, drunkards, prostitutes. He was at ease with humanity at large, with everybody. This was not tolerable. The rabbis, the saints of those days, the moralistic people, the puritans, could not tolerate it. He HAD to be crucified.

This has been happening down the ages. Now this has to be stopped! You have crucified enough. And now we have to explode in such a tidal wave on the earth that even if they crucify, they cannot find so many crosses. One Jesus can be crucified, one Socrates can be poisoned....

My effort is to create so many open people that it becomes almost impossible to crucify and to poison them. To give the quality of openness, simpleness, innocence, to SO many people -- only then can the quality of this rotten society be changed, can it be made alive. It is dull, dead. Life no more circulates in its veins.

I am against the cultivated moral character because it is neither moral nor healthy. I am against character because character creates only an armour around you; it is a defence measure, it does not allow you to be open. And a person who is not open lives in a grave.

And NATURALLY he becomes cunning.

A man walks into a bar in New York City with a parrot on his shoulder and says, "Anyone who can guess the weight of this bird gets a blow job."

One very large, rough looking customer, sitting with a group of friends, decides to toy with this man and proceeds to yell, "That bird weighs two hundred and fifty pounds."

First man: "Oh, we have a winner already!"

People become cunning. They can't say what they want. They can't be true; they are always hiding, playing games, deceiving others and deceiving themselves. This is not the true way to live this tremendously beautiful life. This is not the way to appreciate this gift from God. One should live authentically. Authenticity is morality -- and by 'authenticity' I don't mean following somebody else's commandments but living according to your own light.

Be a light unto yourself, that's all. That is my only message, and it will bring character and a character which will not be a prison. It will bring morality, and a morality which will not be hypocrisy. And it will bring a totally new kind of life to you: responsible, alive, innocent, playful... it will open the doors of the mysterious to you.

And if you ARE authentic, available, then God showers on you from all directions. It will bring great benediction to you -- not the cultivated character but the uncultivated, spontaneous consciousness.

Pythagoras

VOL. 2, PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS

Chapter-10

Known, Unknown, Unknowable