To often I have met people who are cloaked in what I call a pious ego. There is an aura about them that says quite loudly. “I KNOW”. The most obvious examples of this can be found among very active evangelicals but no religious persuasion seems to escape this trap. I might even suggest this attitude is at the base of most religious conflicts which is, to say the least, the greatest offense of all and certainly NOT religious in any sense of the word. The mystic Osho speaks of an example of this in the following excerpt from one of his discourses Take It Easy Vol.1 # 5.
Just the other day I was reading a lecture of U. G. Krishnamurti. He says he went to see Ramana Maharshi. He was not attracted - because he was chopping vegetables. Yes, Ramana Maharshi was that kind of man, very ordinary. Chopping vegetables! U. G. Krishnamurti must have gone to see somebody extraordinary sitting on a golden throne or something. Ramana Maharshi just sitting on the floor and chopping vegetables? preparing vegetables for the kitchen! He was very much frustrated. Then another day he went and saw him reading jokes. Finished for ever! This man knows nothing. This man is very ordinary. He left the ashram; it was not worth it. But I would like to say to you: this man, Ramana Maharshi, is one of the greatest Buddhas ever born to the world. That was his Buddhahood in action! U. G. Krishnamurti must have been in search of a pretender. He could not see the ordinariness and the beauty of it and the grace of it. And this same man, U. G. Krishnamurti, lived with Swami Sivanand of Rishikesh for seven years - and that chap was just stupid - and practised yoga with him. And after seven years he recognized that he has nothing; but after seven years, he took seven years. That simply shows that he also has a mighty dull mind. Seven years to see that Sivanand has nothing. Seven seconds are more than enough! And with Ramana Maharshi, seven seconds were enough - because he saw him chopping vegetables or reading jokes, looking at cartoons. That’s how the ordinary mind, the egoistic mind functions. The ego is always searching for something bigger, some bigger ego. And the true sage has no ego; he is an ordinary man. He is utterly ordinary - that is his extraordinariness! I would like to say to U. G. Krishnamurti: he should have looked in the eyes of Ramana Maharshi. He looked only at the hands which were chopping vegetables. He should have looked into his eyes - with what love he was chopping the vegetables. He should have looked into his eyes to see what love he was. He was the Real Man. There is only one indication and that is love. But to understand love you have to be a little silent, a little loving, a little open. If you are full of prejudices about how the enlightened man should be, then you will go on missing. You should not have any prejudices. Just look into the eyes of a real man, and suddenly something will start stirring in your heart too. Tears will come to your eyes, your energy will have a great delight, your heart will throb with new vigour. Your soul will spread its wings.
Some interesting quotes that speaking to the points brought up in my previous post all the more interesting because they are not, mostly, from so called “religious” people and yet, perhaps these people are more religious than those who claim it as the foundation of their character.
Man is a Religious Animal. He is the only Religious Animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion—several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn’t straight.—Mark Twain
Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst.—C.S. Lewis
If you have two religions in your land, the two will cut each other’s throats; but if you have thirty religions, they dwell in peace.—Voltaire
We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.—Jonathan Swift
Men rarely (if ever) invent gods superior to themselves. Most gods have the morals and manners of a spoiled child.—Robert Heinlein
The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.—Friedrich Nietzsche
The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.—Richard Burton
Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love.—H. L. Mencken
Most of us spend the first six days of the week sowing wild oats, then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.—Fred Allen
A psychological view of the relito8iusd ego is covered in brief in this extract from a book titled
Against Wholeness: The Ego’s Complicity in Religion by Volney Patrick Gay
Many students of religion suggest that wholeness or the attainment of an integrated self is an especially valuable goal whose attainment marks a moment of religious insight. Theoreticians like Jung, Allport, and Maslow strongly support this belief. Freud does not. To reconcile the two camps one must either drop Freud altogether or confine his critique of religion to an attack upon neurotic religion, or more exactly, religion based upon superego functioning. One could then claim that healthy religion is a function of the ego, e.g., the ego’s tendency towards integrated functioning and the attainment of ‘wholeness’. I argue that this ploy, which is itself a function of an egosyntonic desire for wholeness, is altogether wrong. It misrepresents Freud’s ego psychology and it therefore misrepresents his critique of the ego’s role in religion as well. First, his theoretical, as opposed to his literary, critique of religion is also a critique of certain characteristics of the ego. Second, these characteristics, especially the ego-syntonic drive towards feelings of wholeness, are functions of the ego’s obedience to repetition compulsion. Third, the later texts on religion cannot be understood apart from their roots in Freud’s earliest theory of ego functioning, especially the physicalist program he developed in his “Project” of 1895. The ego creates and takes part in religious dramas which present an illusory world of wholeness and completion of self. But as the seat of reality testing it must pierce the veils as quickly and as repeatedly as it weaves them. We look in the things we count for an order we can follow in the counting, beginning here and going on this way to end up there; but usually this order is more or less arbitrary, our choice of a sequence where none is unmistakably present. Telling a story we may likewise want to follow the natural succession of events. But it is not in the nature of things that they always come one after another in time; it is owing to the arbitrariness of language that they have to come one after another in the telling.
This is, of course, a bit heady for the present company, me included, no doubt the reason I did not pursue a career in psychology. Unfortunately, some of the best minds are the worst writers.
The (PFKaP) is God. A very child like god but nonetheless god.
So, I dont exist?
what an odd respond, Tom. What is the implication? I know you are such an elnightened person that I’m sure you can educate all of us on what is truly right and wrong.
please, tell us more about cliched middle-eastern pop-philosophy, preferably in a sanctimonious, and perhaps even hypocritical tone.
