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Asceticism You have seen Sannyasins lying upon nails. Why do
they do that? Perhaps to prove their saintliness. But when they do so in
public, well, the suspicion is legitimate that it is something like a pose.
There are some perhaps who do the thing sincerely and seriously, that is to
say, they do not do it merely to make a show. In their case we might ask why
they do so. They say it is to prove to themselves their detachment from the
body. There are others: they go a little further and say that one must make the
body suffer in order to free the soul. But I tell you that the vital has a
taste for suffering and imposes suffering on the body because of this perverse
taste for suffering. I have seen children who, when they got hurt, would press
the part hurt in order to get more pain and it was a pleasure to them. I have
seen bigger persons also doing the same thing – morally I mean. It is a very
well-known fact. I always tell people 'If you are unhappy, it is because you
want to be unhappy. If you suffer, it is because you like suffering, otherwise
you would not have the thing.' I call it an unhealthy state; for it is contrary
to harmony and beauty; it is a kind of unhealthy need for strong sensations. Do
you know, Page – 54 cruelty gives very strong sensations. The nerve tension produced in you when you impose suffering on someone, well, it does bring a sensation: they need that in order to feel, otherwise they would not feel. It is for that reason that whole races are particularly cruel. They are inconscient, inconscient vitally. They may not be unconscious mentally or otherwise. But they are unconscious vitally and physically, physically above all. If one has a sense of beauty can he be cruel?
It is a psychological problem. It depends upon the
region where there is the sense of beauty. There may be a physical sense of
beauty, a vital sense of beauty and a mental sense of beauty. If you have the
moral sense of beauty, that is to say, a sense of decency and nobility, you can
never be cruel. You will be always generous; your movements will consist of
fine gestures. But, as I say often, man is composed of many different bits
pieced together. For example, I frequented very much the artists. I knew all
the great artists of the end of the last century and the beginning of the
present. I lived among them. They had really a great sense of beauty. But
morally some were very cruel. It is because when you see an artist in his study
at work you find him living in an atmosphere of great beauty, but when you see
the gentleman at home, he is a different person, having very little contact
with the artist he was. Here he becomes vulgar and commonplace. Many of them
are indeed like that. But there are always exceptions. Some have a unified
personality, that is to say, they live their art and are truly generous, fine.
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