"Condemnation"

 

     How to be egoless. You cannot be egoless unless you look at the foundations of your ego to find it. You are greedy and you think you are non-greedy – this is the ego. If you are greedy and you know and accept totally that you are greedy, then where can you allow your ego to stand? If you are angry and you say that you are angry – you do not say it to others, but you feel it deep down, you feel the helplessness – then where can your anger stand? If you are sexual, accept it. Whatsoever is there, accept it.

     The non-acceptance of nature creates the ego, the non-acceptance of your suchness – your TATHATA, that which you are. If you accept it, the ego will not be there. If you do not accept it, if you reject it, if you create ideals against it, there will be ego. Ideals are the stuff the ego is made of.

     Accept yourself. But then you will look like an animal. You will not look like a man because your concept of man is in your ideals. That is why we go on teaching others not to be like animals, and everyone is an animal. What can you do? You ARE an animal. Accept your animality. And the moment you accept your animality, you have done the first thing to go beyond animals – because no animal knows that it is an animal, only man can know. That is going beyond. You cannot go beyond by denying.

     Accept! When everything is accepted, suddenly you will feel that you have transcended. Who is accepting? Who accepts the whole? That which accepts has gone beyond. If you reject, you remain on the same plane. If you accept, you go beyond. Acceptance is transcendence. And if you accept yourself totally, suddenly you are thrown to your center. Then you cannot move anywhere. You cannot move from your suchness, from your nature, so you are thrown to your center.

     All these tantric techniques which we are discussing and trying to understand are different ways of throwing you to your center, of throwing you from the periphery. And you are trying to escape from the center in many ways. Ideals are good escapes. Idealists are the most subtle of egoists.

     Many things happen.... You are violent and you create an ideal of nonviolence. Then you need not go into yourself, into your violence; there is no need. Then this is the only need – to go on thinking about nonviolence, reading about nonviolence, and trying to practice nonviolence. You say to yourself, ”Do not touch violence,” and you are violent. So you can escape from yourself, you can go to the periphery, but then you will never come to the center. That is one thing.

     Secondly, when you create the ideal of nonviolence, you can condemn others. Now it becomes very easy. You have the ideal to judge everyone with, and you can say to anyone, ”You are violent.” India has created many ideals; that is why India continuously goes on condemning the whole world. The whole mind of India is condemnatory. It goes on condemning the whole world: everyone else is violent, only India is nonviolent. No one seems to be nonviolent here, but the ideal is good for condemning others. It never changes you, but you can condemn others because you have the ideal, the criterion. And whenever you are violent you can rationalize it – your violence is an altogether different thing.

      These past twenty-five years we have been violent many times, but we have never condemned our violence. We have always defended and rationalized it in beautiful terms. If we are violent in Bengal, in Bangladesh, then we say that it is to help the people there to obtain freedom. If we are violent in Kashmir, it is to help Kashmiris. But you know, all those who are warmongering say the same. If America is violent in Vietnam, it is for ”those poor people.” No one is violent for himself; no one ever has been. We are always violent to help someone. Even if I kill you it is for your own good, it is to help you. And even if you are killed, even if I kill you, just look at my compassion. Even for your own good I can kill you. So go on condemning the whole world.

     When India attacked Goa, when India went to war with China, Bertrand Russell criticized Nehru, saying, ”Where is your nonviolence now? You are all Gandhians. Where is your nonviolence now?” Nehru replied by banning Bertrand Russell’s book in India. The book Russell wrote was banned. This is our nonviolent mind.

     This was a good discussion. The book should have been distributed free, because he argued beautifully. He said, ”You are a violent people. Your nonviolence was just political. Your Gandhi was not a sage, he was just a diplomatic mind. And you all talk about nonviolence, but when the moment comes you become violent. When others are fighting, you stand on your high altar and you condemn the whole world as violent.”

    With individuals, with societies, with cultures, with nations, this happens. If you have ideals, you need not transform yourself. You can always hope to be transformed in the future by the ideals themselves, and you can condemn others very easily.