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<title>-012_Are not Dogs more Faithful than Men.htm</title>
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<p class="paracenter">ARE NOT DOGS MORE FAITHFUL THAN MEN?
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Yes, for it is their nature to be faithful and they have not man's mental complications. What prevents men from becoming faithful is the complexes of their mind. Most men are not faithful because they are afraid of being dupes, afraid of being cheated, exploited. Also behind the faithfulness they have there is always a large dose of egoism hidden, there is a bargaining more or less conscious, a give and take: 'I am faithful to you. You too must be faithful to me, in other words, you must be nice to me, must not exploit me etc.' Dogs do not have these complexities, for they have a very rudimentary mind. They have not this marvellous capacity of reasoning which drives man to commit such foolishness. But, of course, we cannot go back to the dog state. What we have to do is to rise higher, to become a super-man, to have the dog's quality on a higher level, if I am allowed to say so, i.e. instead of being faithful instinctively, blindly, half-consciously, through a kind of binding need, it must be a conscious, willing, deliberate faithfulness, above all, free from egoism. There is a point where all the virtues meet: it is the point that is beyond egoism. If we take faithfulness or devotion or love or
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-39</p>
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<p class="para">the will to serve,—all these when they are above the level of egoism are similar to one another in the sense that they give themselves and ask no return. And if you get up a step higher, you see they are done not through the sense of duty or abnegation but out of an intense joy that carries its own reward, which needs nothing in exchange, for it is joy itself. But for that you should have risen very high where there is no longer any turn-back on oneself, these movements that draw you down—that kind of sympathy for oneself, the self-pity that one feels for oneself and says &quot;Poor me!&quot; This is a most degrading sentiment and it pulls you immediately into a dark hole.
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You must leave that far behind if you will have the joy of faithfulness, the joy of self-giving, that does not notice at all whether it is properly received or not, whether there is an answer or not. Never to wait for a return in exchange for what one does, wait for nothing, not through asceticism or the sense of sacrifice, but because of the joy of being in that consciousness: that is sufficient, that is much more than what one can receive from anything outside.
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<br><p class="pageno">Page-40</p>
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