Just think for a moment: if you have no past, who are you? Suddenly the whole edifice of the ego
collapses. The man of power is not really powerful in his own right: he is just a vehicle for the power
of God. He has no claims. He simply functions as a representative of the whole. He is utter freedom,
utter joy. He knows no boundaries, he is infinite. Space and time are no more relevant to him. He is
beyond space, beyond time.
That is the meaning of being enlightened. Disappearing as a character, disappearing as a person,
disappearing as an ego... and becoming one with the whole: UNIO MYSTICA. That mystic union...
and you are no more there, and God is. And God is power.
The bridge from necessity to power is consciousness.
--- надополнето: 29 јуни 2012 во 08:36 ---
CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING MORE ABOUT OBEDIENCE? IS IT NOT GOOD TO SERVE
OBEDIENTLY IN A NOBLE CAUSE?
AWARENESS IS THE ONLY VIRTUE WITH ME REMEMBER. If you serve with awareness, it is
Good. If you serve in an unconscious way, it is bad. It is not a question of a noble cause. If you are
unconscious, even a noble cause is going to be very ignoble. It is the consciousness that you bring
to it that matters.
You can look in the history books: all kinds of mischief have continued on the earth in the name of
noble causes. Christians. Mohammedans, Hindus, have been fighting, destroying each other – for
noble causes. Communists, socialists, fascists, have been bringing more and more violence into the
world and more and more murder – for noble causes.
Do you think Adolf Hitlers cause was not noble? If it had not been noble, how could a very intelligent
race like the Germans have followed him? And remember that the Germans are one of the most
intelligent races on the world-map. This age’s four great minds who have dominated the whole
world, all have come from Germany. Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein
– these are the four great names of our times. They all came from the German mind, from German
sources.
How could such an intelligent people follow this stupid megalomaniac, Adolf Hitler? In the name of
a noble cause. The noble cause was: the world is in chaos and the world has to be dominated and
ruled by the noble people, by the Aryans. Do you know? – the word ’arya’ means noble. The world
has to be dominated and ruled by the noblest of the noble.
ARYA IS a Sanskrit word. It means the noblest. Now, behind the word ’noble’, Adolf Hitler was
hiding all kinds of ugly things. And thousands and thousands of intelligent people followed him,
obediently – because the cause was noble! Millions of Jews were burnt – in the name of a noble
cause – millions suffered in concentration camps. And the people who were torturing them were
not unintelligent people, were VERY efficient and intelligent people. And they were doing their duty,
obediently, for a noble cause.
What happened in Russia? Joseph Stalin, another man of the same type as Adolf Hitler, murdered
and butchered millions of people – again in the name of a noble cause: Communism has to be
established, and any sacrifice is not too much. If communism, the paradise, the classless society,
can arrive on the earth, then no sacrifice is too much.
And the same has been happening down the ages: the Christian crusades, the Mohammedan
JEHADS – wars of religion to SAVE religion. Of course, when Islam is in danger it has to be
saved, and the people who are creating the danger have to be destroyed – in the name of a noble
cause. When Christianity is in danger, then everything is allowed. And who decides when Islam is
in danger? Who decides when Christianity is in danger? Who decides who is an Aryan and who is
not?
Jews think they are the chosen people of God, and Adolf Hitler thinks Nordics, the purest Aryans,
are the chosen people of God. Now there cannot live two people who think that they are the chosen
people of God: one has to be destroyed, the competitor has to be destroyed. Look at the whole
inhuman history of humanity and you will always find it is obedience to noble causes that has caused
immense misery, that has made the whole life of humanity a nightmare.
You ask me: IS IT NOT GOOD TO SERVE OBEDIENTLY IN A NOBLE CAUSE?
No. Serve only with awareness. Obey only with awareness. Obedience should NOT be for
something exterior. Obedience should be something interior. You should be able to see what is
at stake. And you will be able to say yes or no according to your own conscience. Only then can the
world become a little better, a little more human.
The people who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – just two persons! – they
could have said no. It was so obvious that the one hundred thousand people who lived in Hiroshima
were utterly innocent – small children, women, old people. Why drop an atom bomb that would
destroy them immediately, within seconds? Within ten seconds Hiroshima was a dead city. Just ten
seconds before, it was alive. It was time... people were taking their breakfast, people were singing,
people were doing ALL kinds of things. Just a few seconds before, all was so alive. And after just a
few moments, the whole of Hiroshima was just a cemetery – all dead people.
The person who dropped the bomb could have said no, but he was obediently serving a noble cause.
What was the noble cause? – democracy. These big words are very dangerous, because behind
them you can hide anything. Now in the name of democracy, capitalism hides itself. And in the name
of equality, communism hides itself. Watch all big words, and whenever a politician uses a big word,
be aware – there must be something fishy about it.
And don’t go on following. It is better to die... if the man who was going to drop the atom bomb had
said NO, it is possible he would have been court-martialled. So what? He could have said, ”You kill
me – that seems to be a lesser evil. I would like to die” – and that would have been a noble cause!
– ”You shoot me, but I simply say no. I will not drop this atom bomb on innocent people.”
The people who were destroying poor Vietnam could have said no. And the same is continuously
repeated everywhere, all around the globe. Now it is time we should become more aware.
Obedience has been exploited. Obedience has been a very subtle strategy of the politician and the
priest. If it comes out of your awareness, if you see that this is good – not that your leaders, your
politicians, your priests, say it is good, but you feel it is good, it has to be your response – then do
it by all means. But if you see... your individual conscience has to decide. That’s my whole point:
each individual has to create his own consciousness and conscience – only then will we be able to
create a better world. Otherwise, this world is going to commit suicide within twenty-five years.
By the end of this century, this foolish idea of obedience to noble causes is going to destroy the
whole of humanity, and not only humanity – with humanity, all life on this earth, all trees, all birds, all
animals – all kinds of life. And there are millions of kinds of life on this earth. This earth is a festival.
If you go on carrying this stupid idea that has been put into your mind down the ages... throughout
the ages, you have been fed this idea with your mother’s milk: Obey! I teach you awareness. And,
of course, out of awareness a totally different kind of obedience arises. Then you say yes because
your heart says yes. and if your heart says no, then say no, and risk all for your no. That is human
dignity.
ARTHUR KOESTLER WRITES ABOUT AN EXPERIMENT. Meditate over it:
A series of highly original experiments was started by Doctor Stanley Milgram. The purpose of the
experiments was to discover the limits of the average person’s obedience to authority when ordered
to inflict severe pain on an innocent victim in the interests of a noble cause.
The noble cause was education. It involved three people: the professor, who was the authority
figure in charge of the proceedings; the learner or victim; and the experimental subject, who was
asked by the professor to act as teacher and to punish the learner each time he gave the wrong
reply. Punishment was by electric shocks of growing severity, administered by the teacher on the
professor’s orders. The learner or victim was strapped into a kind of electric chair. The teacher was
seated in front of an impressive shock-generator which had a key-board of thirty switches ranging
from fifteen volts to four hundred and fifty volts. There were also verbal inscriptions on the machine
ranging from ’slight shock’ to ’intense shock’ to ’danger: severe shock’.
In fact, the whole gruesome set-up was based on make-believe: the victim was an actor, the shockgenerator
was a dummy. Only the teacher, at whom the experiment was aimed, believed in the
reality of the shocks he was ordered to administer and of the shrieks of pain and cries for mercy
uttered by the victim.
The basic procedure was as follows: the learner was given to read a long list of paired words, that
is ’blue box’, ’nice day’, ’wild duck’, etc. Then in the examination he was given one test word, for
instance, ’blue’, with four alternative answers, that is ’ink, box, sky, lamp’, and had to indicate which
was the correct answer. The teacher was instructed by the professor to administer a shock each time
the learner gave a wrong response, and moreover to move one level higher on the shock generator
each time the learner gave the wrong answer. There was a fifteen volt increment from one switch to
the next.
To make sure that the teacher was aware of what he was doing, the actor who played the role of the
learner uttered complaints which increased in stridency according to the voltage, from mild grunts
starting at seventy-five volts, in a crescendo, until at one hundred and fifty volts the victim cried out,
”Get me out of here! I won’t be in the experiment any more. I refuse to go on!”
Remember that the teacher believed that the victim too was a volunteer.
At three hundred and fifteen volts, after a violent scream, the victim reaffirmed vehemently that he
was no longer a participant. He provided no answers, but screamed in agony whenever a shock
was administered. After three hundred and thirty volts he was not heard from... yet the professor
instructed the subject to treat no answer as a wrong answer, and to continue to increase the shock
level according to the schedule. After three shocks of four hundreds and fifty volts, he called off the
experiment.
How many people, in an average population, do you think would obey the command to carry on with
the task of torturing the victim to the limit of four hundred and fifty volts? The answer seems to be a
foregone conclusion: perhaps one in a thousand – a pathological sadist.
Before starting his experiments, Milgram actually asked a group of psychiatrists to predict the
outcome. With remarkable similarity, they predicted that virtually all subjects would refuse to obey
the experimenter. The consensus of the psychiatrists was that most subjects would not go beyond
one hundred and fifty volts, that is when the victim asks for the first time to be released. They
expected that only four percent would reach three hundred volts, and that only a pathological fringe
of about one in a thousand would administer the highest shock on the board.
In actual fact, over sixty percent of the subjects continued to obey the professor to the very end –
the four hundred and fifty volt limit. Remember: sixty percent.
When the experiment was repeated in Italy, South Africa and Australia. the percent of obedient
subjects was somewhat higher. In Munich it was eighty-five percent.
The act of shocking the victim does not stem from destructive urges, but from the fact that the
subjects have become integrated into a social system which is based on obedience. To prove this
point, Milgram carried on a further series of experiments in which the teacher was told that he was
free to inflict on the learner ANY shock level of his own choice on any of the trials. Though given full
opportunity, almost all subjects administered the lowest shocks, the mean shock level being fifty-four
volts.
Remember that the victim’s first mild complaint came only at seventy-five volts.
In the original experiments, when the teacher acted on orders, an average of twenty-five out of
forty subjects administered the maximum shock of four hundred and fifty volts. In the free-choice
experiment, thirty-eight out of forty did not go beyond one hundred and fifty volts – victim’s first loud
protest – and only two subjects went up to three hundred and twenty-five and four hundred and fifty
respectively
The vast majority of the subjects, far from deriving any pleasure from shocking the victim, showed
various symptoms of emotional strain and distress. Some broke into a sweat, others pleaded with the
professor to stop, or protested that the experiment was cruel and stupid. Yet two-thirds nevertheless
went on to the bitter end.
We have been taught for centuries to obey – and to obey in the noble cause is a virtue; to disobey
is a vice, is a sin. Disobeying any noble cause will create guilt in you. Obeying will make you feel
good. AND YOU may even be obeying it in spite of your own conscience. You will see the futility, the
stupidity, the cruelty of it.
The man who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima slept very well that night, and in the morning when
he was asked how he was feeling, he said, ”Perfect!” People could not believe it. They said, ”Could
you sleep in the night? One hundred thousand people have been burnt by you – could you sleep in
the night?”
He said, ”I slept VERY well, because I had done my duty. And when one does one’s duty well, one
earns a good sleep.”
Truman was the President of the United States when the atom bomb was dropped. When he was
asked, ”How do you feel?” he said, ”I feel great! A noble cause has been served – democracy has
won over fascist forces.”
Remember always: big words are very dangerous. And big words have a very hypnotic power in
them: democracy, God, religion, Bible... great words have a VERY hypnotic power over you. They
can create a great unconsciousness in you, and you can go on doing things which you would have
never even dreamt of doing without those big words.
So remember, ’noble cause’ is a very dangerous game. Who decides what is noble? Let EACH
individual decide according to his own conscience.
And why in Munich was the percentage the highest? – eighty-five percent. Because Germans are
very obedient. That has been their training, that has been their conditioning – and they have been
praised for it. That has become part and parcel of their inner mechanism.
The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission
to authority.
It is very easy to dispense with your responsibility. You can always say, ”What can I do? – I have
been ordered.” And the higher person can say he has been ordered from a higher authority, and so
on and so forth. Even the President can say, ”I have been advised by the military experts.” And so
on and on, round and round it goes. Nobody is REALLY responsible. Responsibility can always be
shoved on somebody else’s shoulders.
And a really religious person is a responsible person. He says, ”I am responsible. If I am doing
something, then I am responsible, and I have to think it over, whether to do it or not. If my
OWN awareness allows it, I will do it; otherwise, whatsoever the consequences, I AM GOING TO
DISOBEY. ”
So obedience is not a value to me at all, neither is disobedience a disvalue. Your own understanding
is the value. OUT of that, obedience is good; OUT of that, disobedience is also good.
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