Chapter 13: Freedom’s Gate
People trapped in civilization’s spider-web have no place to land which is free, as do the birds. There is a story of two birds who loved each other so much that they forgot everything else, even themselves; even that they existed. They soared over the mountains, dived into the virile foliage of the forests and jungles, rose into the blue yonder, sang their joy to all creation.
One day the male bird found himself alone. He waited patiently awhile. Later he flew into every thicket looking. Then, he visited the houses of people, first the poor peasant houses, thinking his kind-hearted mate might have gone to sing for these people so that, for a moment, they could forget their hunger. The bird was not in any of these houses.
At last, with a heavy heart, the bird sought its mate in the palatial home of a mighty prince who was known to use all things and beings for his own pleasure only, with no regard for the feelings of his subjects.
The bird-mate was there. It had been trapped and was sitting in a beautiful golden cage pining away, slowly dying, longing for its mate and not even noticing the gold bars of the cage, the expensive furniture and sumptuous room.
The distraught male bird flew back and forth outside the window through which he could see his sweetheart, but not be with her. How could he possibly help her escape?
One day, as the captive bird, as usual, watched her mate flying back and forth before her window, she suddenly saw him drop out of sight. She was heartbroken. Her lover was dead! She had nothing to live for any longer.
But he came back. Again he flew back and forth before her window -and then again he dropped right down, out of sight. Now the captive bird began to wonder.
When her sweetheart returned again, flew back and forth and then again dropped out of sight, she realized he must have tried to convey a message. But what?
Then she knew! Like her beloved bird-mate outside, she now dropped down and lay still on the bottom of the cage, as dead.
The prince and his family came in and saw the bird lying still on the floor of the cage.
“Oh, Shamandra, my Prince”, wailed the wife, “we have killed her. The poor bird has died from sorrow and loneliness.”
She took the cage to the open window, opened the little door and stuck her hand in to take out the bird she thought was dead.
The bird flew away, free, and joined its mate.
“You gave me the message,” she said, “that I must die to become free.”
Some interpret this story in the same vein as Solon, the Greek sage who said to Croesus, the King,
“Only behind the grave do you find happiness.”
But there is a more subtle interpretation, widely held:
You must die before death to find freedom and happiness. You must play dead.
How do you play dead? And what do you gain by it? If you love, you play dead. You become so absorbed in the beloved you do not exist any more. There is no self, no feeling of a separate being. Also, if you are absorbed in a task, you play dead. If you rush into battle to defend your country, your principles, you are playing with death and you may really die, too. If you contemplate greatness, you are dead to yourself. You are lifted outside yourself.
Are you a bird in a golden cage? When you forge yourself, you become free. You may become happy. Why? Because you have become a living part of the great pulsating creation.
This is the stirring symbol of the CROSS: Where your little self is nailed to the cross and dies, your larger, wider self comes to life.
Those friends from a previous chapter on war, who had come to accept what happened to them with such equanimity that even bestial torture no longer affected them, had “died before death”, and very effectively so. However, even in your daily work, on the assembly line in the office, you may profitably practice this art. When you no longer worry about what the man next to you makes an hour or a month, when his promotion history cannot excite you; when you just do your work serenely, cooperate cheerfully, you have played your petty self down; you have died before death. You are happier and more efficient; you are on your way to spiritual insight.
I hear you object. Keeping abreast of payroll and promotion histories of your associates keeps you on your toes and competitive.
Yes, that is the current superstition. However, competition in the payroll field breeds hypocrisy, yes-men and fakers. Every keen observer knows the, joke of hierarchies.
Competition is profitable only in planning and building a better gadget, a more serviceable system. If society and the hierarchy rewards you — fine. But we all know that is not always the case, not even very often. There is the usual dragging of feet. Besides, who is there to judge a superior effort? Such a judge would have to be a bit superior himself. Superior to what? Whom? Superior to the general trend. And who would expect such to be on top of the hierarchy in a position to judge? That is not the way hierarchies are made. Hierarchies are made by accident or majority. And why or how would a majority put an unusual genius on top?
This talk boils down to this: No sane man will expect recognition or reward. His joy is in knowing that he has done well. Some were crucified for doing well, for being true. Be glad if you haven’t been!
In the coinage and currency of your self-respect and your own inner joy, it pays to play dead even in your daily lives, in your shop, in your office. It pays to die before death. Your shop and your office are no less sacred than your church.
The very expression, “Play dead; die before death”, at first suggest something slightly unpleasant, a bit ghoulish, perhaps, and so it may actually appear when you start out on this quest. As you work yourself into it, your viewpoint gradually changes until it becomes entirely different.
You are, at first, like a man living in a deep, dank cave and somebody comes along and wishes to take you out to see what he calls sunshine, but his enthusiastic description of life under an open sky awakens your deep suspicion of his sincerity and good faith-even of his mental health. You think he is, in short, a nut!
But if he approaches the matter differently and talks to you about dying, you look up: Yes, that makes sense. There are two facts of life-death and taxes. So you go along with him. You understand and you comply, even though the prospect seems at the time dim, at best.
Being of the type, perhaps, who will “try anything once” you go along, mockingly, muttering to yourself.
You become deeply shaken for:
There is really a blue sky and, of all things — a sun!
That sun is so warm, so big, so radiant, you forget yourself in your fascination.
One of the functions of forgetting is moving the debris of unprofitable thoughts out of your mind so it may function more smoothly. Your concept of being a lone self is debris, or becomes debris when you focus on the wonder of creation and, for example, one of its products, the Sun, which seems a very formidable achievement, sign-and-symbol. There is hardly room in your mind and heart for two — the miracle of creation and yourself. So you yourself withdraw, resign, disappear or die — so that the beauty of creation may live or — you may prefer to say — so that your truer and deeper self may live and act and move for the improvement of your community.