In today’s post, Sadhguru speaks on how to live without morals, doing everything joyfully and well.

Sadhguru:
Shankaran Pillai was a very good man. After a brief illness, he died. Being a good man, he naturally went to heaven. At heaven, the angels welcomed him and then opened his account book. You know, they keep accounts of everything there. As they turned pages they found only good deeds, cover to cover. This caused a little confusion among the angels. They came to Shankaran Pillai and said, “Mr. Pillai, there is a little problem. We have various types of accommodation in heaven. For one bad deed, you get the highest level of heaven. For two bad deeds, the next level. Three bad deeds – the one below that. In this way, there are many levels of heaven. But for no bad deeds, there is no accommodation here. We have never received a man like you until now, without a single bad deed. So we don’t know what to do with you.”

“What nonsense,” said Shankaran Pillai. “I was such a good man in the world, nobody wanted to come anywhere near me. I only lived with the hope of going to heaven. And now, there is a problem here as well?”

The angels met amongst themselves and after a discussion they said, “Don’t you worry Mr. Pillai. We have found a solution. We are giving you three extra hours life. Your body is still intact, anyway. You go back and commit just one bad deed. We will then place you in the highest heaven. Nothing is lost.”

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And lo, he became alive once more. He sat up and began to think of ways to commit a bad deed. He had never committed one before. An hour-and-a-half later, he suddenly realized that there was a woman well past her prime in the neighborhood, who had been casting inviting glances at him. Being a good man, he never looked her way. Now he thought, “Okay, adultery is a bad deed.” So he went to the lady’s house and knocked on the door. As she opened it, Shankaran Pillai said, “I want you.”

“Why Mr. Pillai, they told me just yesterday evening that you were on your death bed. What is this?” she said.

“It doesn’t matter, I want you,” said Shankaran Pillai, and he went in. Whatever he lacked in practice, he made it up with his enthusiasm to go to heaven. Nature took over and things happened. Now, he looked at his watch, time ticking away. He didn’t want to die in her house. So he began to leave in a hurry. “I need to go. I need to go,” he said.

He rushed to the door and the lady came to see him off. As he was leaving, the woman said, “Mr. Pillai, do you know what a good deed you have done for me today?”

One more good deed. If you are too good, you will neither make it here nor there. Your goodness always comes in comparing yourself with somebody or something isn’t it? How do you certify yourself as a good person? You look at others – he’s not okay, she’s not okay – compared to all these people, I am a good person. If you have to be really good, you have to make everybody else in the world bad. Please see, those who think they are very good in their minds, nobody is okay in their opinion. Have you noticed this?

If nobody is okay in the world to you, it is not a question of goodness; it just means you are sick in your head. Your goodness is just a kind of madness. Maybe it is needed to keep some balance in society sometimes, but not for your evolution. Your morality will not evolve you. Right now, you are being good with great difficulty. You are holding on to your ethics, because you have no consciousness. You picked up ethics from outside - your society, your religion or your profession. If you begin to recognize life and respond to life, you would find that you do not need morals. You would just know how to be. You would simply be incapable of doing anything harmful. You would not hold back or control yourself just because somebody told you this is the way you must be. The very way you are, there would be no question of harm. It wouldn’t exist in you. Effortlessly, you could be good.

Modern science has proved to us beyond a doubt that everything in the existence is one energy, manifesting itself in millions of forms. Or in other words you and I are the same energy. Suppose for one moment, you actually experienced within yourself that all the people around you are actually a part of you. Not in thought, but an actual experience, just like you experience the ten fingers of your hands. If this happens, do I need to teach you morality and ethics? Do I need to tell you not to harm this person, not to kill this person, or not to rob that person? No.

Yoga is just that. The word yoga comes from the word union. Where you see everything as one in your experience. The whole process of yoga is to evolve beyond the sense perception, so that you can experience the existence as one. If you experienced all people as a part of you, no one would have to teach you ethics. You would joyfully go and do what is needed.

Photo Credit:  Cornelia Kopp @flickr