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Main Index
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be practiced. It is a disciplinary measure imposed from outside. This is why a moralist is never free, why he becomes more and more mechanical, more and more dependent on his code. His consciousness does not awaken but falls into deeper and deeper sleep. And eventually he becomes nothing more than a sluggish lump.
Like the moralist, the immoral man is also just a slave to his habits. The immoral man follows the dictates of his own nature and the moral man follows those of society. They both live by external guidelines; they are both dependent.
The only activity that is truly independent is the search for the self. And only the man who realizes that self attains real freedom. Freedom is only possible when there has been the experience of the self. How can any kind of real freedom be possible unless the existence of the self is known, unless a man knows who he really is?
From this experience of the self a new kind of discipline arises in a man. It is not imposed externally; it is natural, self-inspired. It comes from within. And the kind of morality that springs forth then is a different thing altogether. It is not the labored imitation of any prescribed set of rules but the spontaneous manifestation of one's inner being. The morality that exists after this is not geared to acquiring anything, it exists for distribution, for the sharing of what has been acquired.
REMEMBER ONE TRUTH ALL YOUR LIFE -- to deceive another is eventually to deceive yourself. Whatever you do to someone else always comes back to you.
WHAT IS GOOD CONDUCT? Conduct behind which evil intentions, preconceived opinions or selfish motives lurk is certainly not good conduct. Such conduct is both impure and imcomplete. It is impure because other things are mixed up in it; it is incomplete because something outside must be added to it to complete it.
Good conduct in complete in itself. It needs no future event to complete it. Good conduct is blissful on its own; its very birth is its bliss. Bliss is inherent in the very existence of good conduct -- not in any future fruition, not in any outward achievement.
Once in a lonely forest I came across a man
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