samarkadian
Active member
Life is mixed up. Life is not pure. I am wearing a watch made in Switzerland, a suit made in Italy and a tie most likely made in the USA or since most things in the USA are made in Korea… Life is mixed up; life is not pure. The search for purity is an attack on reality – It is the refusal to accept the complex tapestry that human cultural organisations are.
5) Personal responsibility. We are all responsible for our actions, however accidental they may appear. If I knock over the glassware or crockery at someone’s dining table, break some expensive pieces of their dinner set, I must take responsibility for my actions. Obviously on the surface it is a mistake but it is very likely born out of my envy of him and his wine glass or something, some hostile destructive intent is hidden in that somewhere. I can’t just brush it off by saying it was a mistake. It was a mistake but I committed that mistake and I have to be responsible for that mistake. The epileptic cannot get away without an apology for breaking somebody’s fine china. The epileptic needs to apologise. Even if it was out of his control, it was his action; it was his brain that messed the crockery up. As Freud says, the ego is first and foremost a bodily ego. Personal responsibility involves first and foremost an ownership of the body – its demands, its sensations, its agenda and its use and then the conscious and unconscious fantasies and drives emanating from the body and affecting the body in a dialectical feedback loop. One has to be responsible for one’s body, one has to be responsible for one’s sexual life, real or imagined, and one has to be responsible for one’s aggression, one’s hostile feelings – expressed, suppressed, conscious and unconscious. One is responsible for one’s life.
6) Total mortality. A mentally healthy person has to know that he will be dead – some people in the audience will not agree with this but that’s alright – complete and total mortality. We are all going to be dead. Nobody from this room is going to get out alive, nor is anyone from this world, unless there is a five million-year-old man hiding in Australia (we only think of Australia because it is kind of far away!), laughing at me. The fact is: all human beings die. The day we are born, on the day I was born a bullet was shot and that bullet is travelling in the air and is coming towards my forehead and I am merrily walking towards it and so are you, and so also are you. All human beings die but it is not enough to merely accept that.
Of course, those of you who are young, in your twenties and thirties, you don’t have to worry about such things yet – Consider yourselves immortal. You will find out that that’s not true anyway. But when you are 50 or 60 the clock begins to tick and you can hear the rumble of the footsteps of death, at 3 a.m., when the wind blows, you can hear it. But it is not enough to accept that one will be dead, that is not enough. What is more important is to accept that one will be really dead and finally dead and totally dead. There ain’t no coming back, either as a rat or a mouse or as a beautiful woman. (I would like to come back as a beautiful, gorgeous South Indian woman lawyer – that’s what I would like to be!). He says I’ll take you but that is not going to happen, it is not going to happen. I have to live with this fantasy; it is not going to take place. Once I die, I’m dead, and so are you.
And the idea of heaven and hell? When I was 12 my father asked me, do you believe in heaven and hell? When you’re 12 years old you’re awkward and you don’t really know what the hell is going on anyway so I mumbled something incomprehensible but he was in one of those moods, he said no, no, no, tell me, do you believe in heaven and hell, and I again tried to wiggle out of it by mumbling something silly so he gave me a stern lecture. He said look, these guys who made up the idea of heaven and hell, these are mostly people of the desert – Jesus, Moses, Muhammad. (They are all born within 300 miles of each other, and that’s also weird actually, I mean, suppose somebody said all psychoanalysts are born in Bangalore wouldn’t you be puzzled – Why?!) He said look, these were people from a hot climate; they were social reformers who were trying to do some good for people. And people don’t move unless you give ’em something and they had nothing to give ’em so they gave them a few fantasies. And because it was a hot climate they made heaven cold and hell hot. If Jesus, Moses or Muhammad had been born in Alaska, trust me, ladies and gentlemen, hell would be cold and heaven would be hot.
Think also of another strange thing – why is it that heaven is always up, nobody says you will go (down) to heaven. Why? Think about it. Why is heaven up? Because when we’re babies we spend at least one year lying supine, lying unable to stand up, and even when we stand up we stand up weakly after a little while and then our mother picks us up onto her lap or our father picks us up onto his lap. And when they carry us we are up, when they put us down we are down. That (down) is hell; this (up) is heaven. These ideas are based on psychological experiences.
But the idea of heaven and hell is a fantasy for god’s sake, just as reincarnation is a fantasy – they are not really going to happen. When you die you are dead. Your children will remember you fondly and your grandchildren will remember you vaguely, and your great grandchildren will forget about you. If you write a few books and give a few lectures perhaps a few more people will remember you. But sooner or later people will forget about you. Who reads Sophocles? (I heard someone in the back say who the hell is Sophocles – That’s exactly the point; that is exactly the point!) All of us start out and live with fantasies and may die as active memories. But we are dead, we are not coming back, please don’t harbour such illusions – there is total mortality.
1) Factual uncertainty 2) Conceptual complexity 3) Moral ambiguity 4) Cultural impurity 5) Personal responsibility 6) Total mortality. This package of factual uncertainty, conceptual complexity, moral ambiguity, cultural impurity, personal responsibility and total mortality, this is the suitcase, the heavy suitcase of sanity. It is a burden that a mentally healthy person has to carry. Fundamentalism relieves this burden.
We carry this burden because compensating factors are offered to us. We are offered safety, we are offered the pride of having an identity, we are offered the pride of having continuity in time, a sense of belonging, we are offered the factor of sexuality, we are offered the factor of efficacy, we are offered the honour of generativity – these compensating packages help us to bear the burden of sanity. When there is a threat, a real or manufactured threat to the compensating factors of safety, identity, continuity, individuality, efficacy and generativity, when this package is really threatened or a manufactured threat is made to this package then the reality becomes very, very difficult to bear and a person regresses into a simplistic world.
Now instead of uncertainty he is offered certainty. The fundamentalist leader says we know exactly what’s going to happen and what should happen. We know it, we can predict it, we can control it. Instead of complexity he is offered simplicity. He is told this thing means just this thing. Instead of moral ambiguity – things can be good, things can be bad, maybe this behaviour is sometimes good, maybe sometimes this behaviour is bad, he is offered moral clarity – this is right, this is wrong. You eat pork you go to hell, remember, you don’t eat pork, you won’t go to hell. What about the poor pig?
When my son was five years old he asked me about the story of Abraham and Isaac. I said, well, god was testing Abraham’s love for him so he said if you really love me you will sacrifice your son, this is your parichay, your initiation. (Even god carries out this sort of test, you know, he’s not certain about himself. He’s like a lover saying please tell me you love me, please, tell me you love me, if you love me you’ll make an omelette for me today. God is like that – an uncertain lover. He says please praise me, the Book begins by saying ‘Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim’ – In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful – I begin in his name, with praise to god. Why? He is the one writing the book and yet he’s praising himself, it doesn’t make sense to me!) Anyway, in answer to my son’s question about Abraham and Isaac I said, well, look, god was testing Abraham and said if you really love me you will kill your son. You sacrifice your son and I’ll know that you really love me. And Abraham said, what the hell, you know, I have to prove to god that I love him. So he put a blindfold on his eyes and took a sword and chopped off his son’s head but when he opened his eyes the son, Isaac was standing right there and a lamb had been cut and lay dead in his place – That’s what the origin of the festival Id-ul-Zuha or Bakri Id is. But I’m proud of what my five-year-old son said in response. He thought for a second and said, but that was not fair of god, what did the poor lamb do? What did the poor lamb do?
cont..
5) Personal responsibility. We are all responsible for our actions, however accidental they may appear. If I knock over the glassware or crockery at someone’s dining table, break some expensive pieces of their dinner set, I must take responsibility for my actions. Obviously on the surface it is a mistake but it is very likely born out of my envy of him and his wine glass or something, some hostile destructive intent is hidden in that somewhere. I can’t just brush it off by saying it was a mistake. It was a mistake but I committed that mistake and I have to be responsible for that mistake. The epileptic cannot get away without an apology for breaking somebody’s fine china. The epileptic needs to apologise. Even if it was out of his control, it was his action; it was his brain that messed the crockery up. As Freud says, the ego is first and foremost a bodily ego. Personal responsibility involves first and foremost an ownership of the body – its demands, its sensations, its agenda and its use and then the conscious and unconscious fantasies and drives emanating from the body and affecting the body in a dialectical feedback loop. One has to be responsible for one’s body, one has to be responsible for one’s sexual life, real or imagined, and one has to be responsible for one’s aggression, one’s hostile feelings – expressed, suppressed, conscious and unconscious. One is responsible for one’s life.
6) Total mortality. A mentally healthy person has to know that he will be dead – some people in the audience will not agree with this but that’s alright – complete and total mortality. We are all going to be dead. Nobody from this room is going to get out alive, nor is anyone from this world, unless there is a five million-year-old man hiding in Australia (we only think of Australia because it is kind of far away!), laughing at me. The fact is: all human beings die. The day we are born, on the day I was born a bullet was shot and that bullet is travelling in the air and is coming towards my forehead and I am merrily walking towards it and so are you, and so also are you. All human beings die but it is not enough to merely accept that.
Of course, those of you who are young, in your twenties and thirties, you don’t have to worry about such things yet – Consider yourselves immortal. You will find out that that’s not true anyway. But when you are 50 or 60 the clock begins to tick and you can hear the rumble of the footsteps of death, at 3 a.m., when the wind blows, you can hear it. But it is not enough to accept that one will be dead, that is not enough. What is more important is to accept that one will be really dead and finally dead and totally dead. There ain’t no coming back, either as a rat or a mouse or as a beautiful woman. (I would like to come back as a beautiful, gorgeous South Indian woman lawyer – that’s what I would like to be!). He says I’ll take you but that is not going to happen, it is not going to happen. I have to live with this fantasy; it is not going to take place. Once I die, I’m dead, and so are you.
And the idea of heaven and hell? When I was 12 my father asked me, do you believe in heaven and hell? When you’re 12 years old you’re awkward and you don’t really know what the hell is going on anyway so I mumbled something incomprehensible but he was in one of those moods, he said no, no, no, tell me, do you believe in heaven and hell, and I again tried to wiggle out of it by mumbling something silly so he gave me a stern lecture. He said look, these guys who made up the idea of heaven and hell, these are mostly people of the desert – Jesus, Moses, Muhammad. (They are all born within 300 miles of each other, and that’s also weird actually, I mean, suppose somebody said all psychoanalysts are born in Bangalore wouldn’t you be puzzled – Why?!) He said look, these were people from a hot climate; they were social reformers who were trying to do some good for people. And people don’t move unless you give ’em something and they had nothing to give ’em so they gave them a few fantasies. And because it was a hot climate they made heaven cold and hell hot. If Jesus, Moses or Muhammad had been born in Alaska, trust me, ladies and gentlemen, hell would be cold and heaven would be hot.
Think also of another strange thing – why is it that heaven is always up, nobody says you will go (down) to heaven. Why? Think about it. Why is heaven up? Because when we’re babies we spend at least one year lying supine, lying unable to stand up, and even when we stand up we stand up weakly after a little while and then our mother picks us up onto her lap or our father picks us up onto his lap. And when they carry us we are up, when they put us down we are down. That (down) is hell; this (up) is heaven. These ideas are based on psychological experiences.
But the idea of heaven and hell is a fantasy for god’s sake, just as reincarnation is a fantasy – they are not really going to happen. When you die you are dead. Your children will remember you fondly and your grandchildren will remember you vaguely, and your great grandchildren will forget about you. If you write a few books and give a few lectures perhaps a few more people will remember you. But sooner or later people will forget about you. Who reads Sophocles? (I heard someone in the back say who the hell is Sophocles – That’s exactly the point; that is exactly the point!) All of us start out and live with fantasies and may die as active memories. But we are dead, we are not coming back, please don’t harbour such illusions – there is total mortality.
1) Factual uncertainty 2) Conceptual complexity 3) Moral ambiguity 4) Cultural impurity 5) Personal responsibility 6) Total mortality. This package of factual uncertainty, conceptual complexity, moral ambiguity, cultural impurity, personal responsibility and total mortality, this is the suitcase, the heavy suitcase of sanity. It is a burden that a mentally healthy person has to carry. Fundamentalism relieves this burden.
We carry this burden because compensating factors are offered to us. We are offered safety, we are offered the pride of having an identity, we are offered the pride of having continuity in time, a sense of belonging, we are offered the factor of sexuality, we are offered the factor of efficacy, we are offered the honour of generativity – these compensating packages help us to bear the burden of sanity. When there is a threat, a real or manufactured threat to the compensating factors of safety, identity, continuity, individuality, efficacy and generativity, when this package is really threatened or a manufactured threat is made to this package then the reality becomes very, very difficult to bear and a person regresses into a simplistic world.
Now instead of uncertainty he is offered certainty. The fundamentalist leader says we know exactly what’s going to happen and what should happen. We know it, we can predict it, we can control it. Instead of complexity he is offered simplicity. He is told this thing means just this thing. Instead of moral ambiguity – things can be good, things can be bad, maybe this behaviour is sometimes good, maybe sometimes this behaviour is bad, he is offered moral clarity – this is right, this is wrong. You eat pork you go to hell, remember, you don’t eat pork, you won’t go to hell. What about the poor pig?
When my son was five years old he asked me about the story of Abraham and Isaac. I said, well, god was testing Abraham’s love for him so he said if you really love me you will sacrifice your son, this is your parichay, your initiation. (Even god carries out this sort of test, you know, he’s not certain about himself. He’s like a lover saying please tell me you love me, please, tell me you love me, if you love me you’ll make an omelette for me today. God is like that – an uncertain lover. He says please praise me, the Book begins by saying ‘Bismillah ar-rahman ar-rahim’ – In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful – I begin in his name, with praise to god. Why? He is the one writing the book and yet he’s praising himself, it doesn’t make sense to me!) Anyway, in answer to my son’s question about Abraham and Isaac I said, well, look, god was testing Abraham and said if you really love me you will kill your son. You sacrifice your son and I’ll know that you really love me. And Abraham said, what the hell, you know, I have to prove to god that I love him. So he put a blindfold on his eyes and took a sword and chopped off his son’s head but when he opened his eyes the son, Isaac was standing right there and a lamb had been cut and lay dead in his place – That’s what the origin of the festival Id-ul-Zuha or Bakri Id is. But I’m proud of what my five-year-old son said in response. He thought for a second and said, but that was not fair of god, what did the poor lamb do? What did the poor lamb do?
cont..