“Are you saying we are slaves to our conditionings?”
“That would be an understatement!”
“Really?”
“The truth is your whole personality is nothing but a totality of conditionings! From the way you eat and drink to how you think, what your values are to your emotions, all of it is just a massive collection of conditionings!”
“How about our real personality?”
“There are three steps to finding that out.”
“Which are?”
“First, you have to know your ‘I’ness.”
“What does that mean?”
“Who and what exactly is the being you refer to when you say ‘I’?”
“Then?”
“Then you have get rid all of your conditionings!”
“How?”
“Again, in three stages… First, you must cleanse yourself from the conditionings imposed on you by your environment. Then, you must be cleansed from the value judgments that you have adopted as a result of these conditionings. And finally, you must purify yourself from all the emotions that are generated by these judgments that result from the conditionings!”
“I’m pretty confused.”
“OK, let us break it down. From the moment you were born, be it through your parents, neighbors, the TV or the newspaper, you have been constantly taught to think and act in a particular way, have you not?”
“Yes.”
“So, we can say that all of your behaviors are the results of these ‘conditionings’ then. Thus, the first step you must take is to rid yourself of the idea of their necessity.”
“You mean I must get rid of the idea that these behaviors are necessary or the behaviors themselves?”
“If you don’t want the society in which you live to think you are crazy, then just get rid of the idea of their necessity. If you abandon the behaviors too, your ‘nonconformist’ lifestyle will lead you to become accused, insulted and defamed by your society, making your life unbearable. All of these reactions will put a great deal of psychological pressure on you and may even take you away from your purpose. So there is no need to be an outward rebel, it is better and much more befitting to comply with the society externally, while maintaining your unconditioned outlook internally.”
“So, I should live in compliance with the conditions of my environment outwardly but, in respect of my cognition and awareness, be completely unconditioned?”
“Absolutely! This is the first stage… Then comes the second stage, where you must forego all of the ‘value judgments’ that have been formed by those conditionings, for they are nothing but the enforced beliefs of certain rulers or dominant figures in the society, in order to keep the masses under control and subservient to their will.
“This is also known to you as forming a ‘public opinion’. Your kind has named the process of conditioning groups of people to all think in a particular way ‘forming a public opinion’ – it is an act of collective conditioning.
“In order for your true identity to manifest you need to become completely cleansed from the value judgments that stem from your conditionings.”
“OK, but then… What will I base my value judgments on?”