Holier Than Thou
Fifth layer of ego – holier than thou.
The fifth is the layer from where morals enter: you become a moralist; you start feeling very good, ‘holier than thou’. Or, in frustration, in resistance, in struggle, you become an immoralist and you start fighting with the yourself, to show the whole world.
The child starts looking into things, experiences. When the parents feel good With the child, He thinks, “I am good.” When they pat him he feels, “I am good.” When they look with anger, they shout at him and they say, “Don’t do that!” he feels, “Something is wrong in me.” He recoils.
A small child was asked in school on the first day he entered, “What is your name?”
He said, “Johnny Don’t.”
The teacher was Puzzled. He said, “Johnny Don’t? Never heard such a name!”
He said, “Whenever, whatsoever I am doing this is my name – my mother shouts, ‘Johnny don’t!’ My father shouts, ‘Johnny don’t!’ so I think this is my name. ‘Don’t’ is always there. What I am doing is irrelevant.”
This is the fifth layer, the self-image. Sinner and saint are hooked there. Heaven and hell are the ideas of people who are hooked. They are continuously afraid of hell and continuously greedy for heaven. They want to be patted by God, and they want God to say to them, “You are good, my son. I am happy witty you.” They go on sacrificing their lives just to be patted and one torture to themselves just in order that God can say, “Yes, you sacrificed yourself for me.”
It seems as if God is a masochist or a sadist, or something like that. People torture themselves with the idea that they will be making god happy. What do you mean by this? You fast and you think God will be very happy with you? You starve yourself and you think God will be Very happy witty you? Is he a sadist? Does he enjoy torturing people? And that is what saints, so-called saints, have been doing torturing themselves and looking at the sky. Sooner or later God will say, “Good, you have done Well. Now come and enjoy the heavenly pleasures. Come here! Wine flows here in rivers and roads are of gold, and palaces are made of diamonds. And the women here never age, they remain stuck at sixteen. Come here! You have done enough, you have earned, now you can enjoy!” The whole idea behind sacrifice is this. It is a foolish idea, because all ego ideas are foolish.
