5 The Hermit must abandon Opinions
All of us have opinions, which are stories that have been told to us that we have accepted as true. And they come to us from the past, our own and other peoples’ – our parents, our society, and so on. They form our conditioning, and when there is the right stimulus our opinions arise, we have this reaction to what is said or done, and I feel it’s a very lazy approach to life, the product of a lazy mind. We already know what we know and we’ve stopped learning. I think it’s a very inattentive way to live one’s life, when you have conclusions and answers ready for everything, it prevents you from meeting any particular situation with an awareness of its possibilities.
You may have an opinion about any subject, but you have to see that your opinions are formed by those who disseminate knowledge, which means the state, the religious authorities, your teachers, and the media and so on, who form the particular prejudices of your conditioning. This is so pervasive that even your experiences are formed by your conditioning, are interpreted in the light of your background. And then what happens when you meet someone who thinks differently? He has his opinion and you have yours, and you harden your hearts against one another, and in that case there is no communion. We are all victims of this, of our conditioning, our ideas, and our reasoning processes. But if you meet someone and you don’t react with the past then what happens? If you are open and have enough love to listen very – attentively to what another is saying then I feel that there is a possibility of transformation in that person. As long as there is division that cannot happen. Therefore love is the only thing that can bring about transformation.
Now what is true on the outside is also true of the inside, we live out our lives in a state of self-contradiction, fighting against ourselves, and trying to part ourselves from whatever we don’t like. There is a war going on inside each one of us, and the reason is our lives are governed by pleasure and pain, which are forces of division trying to shield us from reality. You have to see the danger of all this and put attachment to these things aside, and then you will be able make this journey to answer God’s call. Otherwise you will remain in the world, in the past, and you will never find fulfilment. You will live in a tiny world in which you’ve managed to get by – it may even be painful in this world – but at least you can cope without too much effort.
Part of the hermit life is to come to self-stripping through self-knowledge. When you’ve been stripped of self, which is attachment to pleasure and pain guided by a certain conditioning, and supported and given life by memory, when you’ve abandoned all the defences that keep you from reality, then you are open to God. Until you’ve done that you will never get close to yourself, and you will never know yourself or truth or God. As long as you are moving away from the present moment you are moving away from truth. We want to be elsewhere when we see in ourselves something we don’t like, but it means being away from God also, because God is only present to you in the living moment.
We all have justifications and rationalisations for the way we live our lives. These too are stories that we have accepted as true. We justify ourselves by appealing to an outside authority, an established system of belief. But these too are stories, or myths accepted by a group of people who have been moulded by these stories in the first place. So we tell all these stories, and we tell other people the same stories, and the whole process gives reason and comfort and support to ourselves. So you have to see this happening and go beyond that because until you do you are caught in a self-perpetuating trap.
I like to make this distinction between travelling in faith, and those caught up in belief. Opinions, justifications, and rationalisations are beliefs that you hold, but faith is a response to an experience of God’s presence or call in your life. Belief closes your eyes and protects you from reality; faith opens your eyes and allows you to go beyond yourself into the heart of reality. Then there’s a new way of living, there’s a new relationship you have with the world. You live in trust – not trusting in yourself and your own defence mechanisms, but trusting in God. As long as you trust in yourself you will live in fear, but with faith in God you will be able to travel without fear.