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In fact, manhood to be human -- begins with this choice. Manhood begins with this decision. Manhood begins with this resolve. Man is standing at the cross roads. All beasts are on a unidimensional road. They can therefore have no choice.
Man can become violent or nonviolent as he wishes. This is man's freedom. Beasts haven't got it. It is the helplessness of a beast. That is why there is no difference between the nature of beasts and the fact of being beasts. There is no distance between the future and the past of a beast. There is no difference in being a beast and in the possibility of what it can be. The beast is what it can be. That which is possible, is actual. There is no distinction between the actuality and possibility of beasts. The whole matter is different in the case of man. Man can be different from what he is The actuality of man is not his possibility. He can be something else tomorrow from what he is really today. So we can't tell any dog that you are something less of a dog, but we can tell a man, you appear to be something less of a man. To tell any dog that you are something less of a dog is completely an absurd statement. It doesn't have any meaning. All dogs are complete dogs. There may be weak dogs, there may be strong ones also but there is no difference in their doghood. But there is a difference of degrees in manhood. We cannot tell any Krishna that there is no difference in manhood -- gentlemanliness -- between you and Hitler. We cannot tell any Buddha that there is no difference between you and Ravana. It so happens at times, That we have to say about someone, there is hardly any gentlemanliness in him, and we have to say about some other person that there is not much of humanity in him that he can be called divine-god. Whenever we use the word God for some person, it means that there is so much humanity in them that it is found insufficient to call him man. What a man is, is not everything; much more can happen to him. There is a very great potentiality in him. His past is linked with his journey -- through beasthood, that condition is that of violence. And what he can be is his nonviolence.
The nature of man is that which
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