A friend of mine told me that there’s an African tribe where capital
punishment consists of being ostracized. If you were kicked out of New York, or
wherever you’re residing, you wouldn’t die. How is it that the African
tribesman died? Because he partakes of the common stupidity of humanity. He
thinks he will not be able to live if he does not belong. It’s very different
from most people, or is it? He’s convinced he needs to belong. But you don’t
need to belong to anybody or anything or any group. You don’t even need to be
in love. Who told you you do? What you need is to be free. What you need is to
love. That’s it; that’s your nature. But what you’re really telling me is that
you want to be desired. You want to be applauded, to be attractive, to have all
the little monkeys running after you.
You’re wasting your life. Wake up! You
don’t need this. You can be blissfully happy without it.
Your society is not going to be happy to
hear this, because you become terrifying when you open your eyes and understand
this. How do you control a person like this? He doesn’t need you; he’s not
threatened by your criticism; he doesn’t care what you think of him or what you
say about him. He’s cut all those strings; he’s not a puppet any longer. It’s
terrifying. “So we’ve got to get rid of him. He tells the truth; he has become
fearless; he has stopped being human.” Human! Behold! A human being at
last! He broke out of his slavery, broke out of their prison.
No event justifies a negative feeling. There
is no situation in the world that justifies a negative feeling. That’s what all
our mystics have been crying themselves hoarse to tell us. But nobody listens.
The negative feeling is in you. In the Bhagavad-Gita, the sacred book of the
Hindus, Lord Krishna says to Arjuna, “Plunge into the heat of battle and keep
your heart at the lotus feet of the Lord.” A marvellous sentence.
You don’t have to do anything to acquire
happiness. The great Meister Eckhart said very beautifully, “God is not
attained by a process of addition to anything in the soul, but by a process of
subtraction.” You don’t do anything to be free, you drop something. Then you’re
free.
It reminds me of the Irish prisoner who dug
a tunnel under the prison wall and managed to escape. He comes out right in the
middle of a school playground where little children are playing. Of course,
when he emerges from the tunnel he can’t restrain himself anymore and begins to
jump up and down, crying, “I’m free, I’m free, I’m free!” A little girl there
looks at him scornfully and says, “That’s nothing. I’m four.”
The fourth step: How do you change things?
How do you change yourselves? There are many things you must understand here,
or rather, just one thing that can be expressed in many ways. Imagine a patient
who goes to a doctor and tells him what he is suffering from. The doctor says,
“Very well, I’ve understood your symptoms. Do you know what I will do? I will
prescribe a medicine for your neighbor!” The patient replies, “Thank you very
much, Doctor, that makes me feel much better.” Isn’t that absurd? But that’s
what we all do. The person who is asleep always thinks he’ll feel better if
somebody else changes. You’re suffering because you are asleep, but you’re
thinking, “How wonderful life would be if somebody else would change; how
wonderful life would be if my neighbor changed, my wife changed, my boss
changed.”
We always want someone else to change so
that we will feel good. But has it ever struck you that even if your wife
changes or your husband changes, what does that do to you? You’re just as
vulnerable as before; you’re just as idiotic as before; you’re just as asleep
as before. You are the one who needs to change, who needs to take medicine. You
keep insisting, “I feel good because the world is right.” Wrong! The
world is right because I feel good. That’s what all the mystics are saying.
Note: new website on tony demello by his brother bill. go to
