| |
condemnation is not the way. Every mistake is an opportunity to learn something; but the moment people start condemning you, they destroy your opportunity and they make you stubborn. They force you to commit the same mistake again and again just as a resistance. Your ego is hurt.
It is true that outside my communes the society is run by punishment or by reward. Reduced to the roots, the whole society outside is based on fear and greed. Fear as an ultimate consequence creates the idea of hell; greed, on the other hand, as a logical conclusion creates the idea of heaven.
The moment there is no fear in you and no greed, you will be surprised: hell and heaven have disappeared. They were just projections of your psychology; they disappear the moment you accept yourself -- and you can accept yourself only if people around you accept you, if they do not create some guilt in you, do not make you feel unworthy.
In a commune it is so easy to accept yourself, because everybody else is accepting you. Acceptance is the very climate of the commune. And there are great implications in it. If a man accepts himself without any guilt, God will disappear. God is your guilt projected. It was God who condemned Adam and Eve in the first place. It was God who drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden as a punishment, because they had disobeyed. This God seems to be more like Adolf Hitler -- no compassion even for his own creation.
And if Adam and Eve disobeyed, the whole responsibility goes to God, because why did he create disobedience in Adam and Eve in the first place?
God begins condemnation, expulsion, punishment -- and what a punishment! We do not know when Adam and Eve existed -- at least one million years ago, perhaps two million, three million years, or perhaps never. Most probably never. But we are still sinners because four million years ago Adam and Eve disobeyed God.
Do you think it is fair? Even the most fanatic Christian cannot say that it is fair. It is absolutely unfair. We have not done anything. This is strange, that four million years ago somebody did something, and you are jailed for it, imprisoned, sentenced to death.
|
|
|