REFLECTIONS ON MY MASKS
Joseph E. Thomas

 

This is a Sunday morning, the 29^th of August 1999. As I look out through the window of my breakfast room everything outside seem beautiful. It is sunny, pleasant, and quiet. I feel tickled to see those cheerful roses, chrysanthemums, and water lilies, and the dancing leaves on the trees. I feel that they appear just the way they truly are. Believe me, I am not going to worry about the rest of the world this morning. Instead I am going to share with you my reflections on my hypocrisies, and see how I can be myself, just the way I am supposed to be.
 

I gained (I don’t want to use the word “spent” in this context) most of my day yesterday seeing and listening to H. H. The Dalai Lama in Chicago. He didn’t look as pretty as the academy award winner Goldie Hawn who spoke at the meeting, pleading for the Tibetan cause. Nor was he dressed as elegantly as the veteran TV journalist Bill Kurtis who introduced His Holiness to the audience. Yet, as this funny looking monk with a shaven head, wearing an unfashionable robe and a pair of eyeglasses too big for his small ‘eastern’ eyes walked into our midst, there was an explosion of transcendent energy all over the hall. I could feel his radiant presence everywhere! I don’t think of any human being holy or saintly. But as I watched this man walk through the traditional Tibetan reception line towards us I felt as though a sacred light had walked into our midst, like the biblical description of the risen Christ appearing in the room where his disciples had huddled together. The Dalai Lama’s gait was that of a Spirit moving while the body was trying to catch up with it. Only an infant could imitate his transparent smile. His loving, graceful, and all-embracing demeanor was something I had never witnessed in any other human being. He appeared as an embodiment of love, compassion, and forgiveness crowned with sacred wisdom. Above all, he was what I saw! He did not have to articulate at length to explain his message of love and compassion. He was the message! His presence said it all.

 

This led me to a difficult question I hate to ask. Am I truly what I appear to others? As much as I project a nice guy-image, my success in maintaining it perhaps depends on how skillful I am in hiding my dirty linen from people around me. Image! “Joe, it all depends on the image you create,” a friendly boss once advised me. These days we can even hire image-makers. Did you know that? I can imagine they can even create an image for you like that of the image-free Dalai Lama!

 

It lightens my burden when I think that I am not the only image-conscious guy in the world. I feel better when I think that all men – and women – are hypocrites. That is how I protect myself from the annoying feelings of guilt. Do you remember the original meaning of the word hypocrite? In ancient Greek the word hypocrite meant an actor.  Greek plays were popular in Jesus’ time. The actors were called hypocrites; of course a benign word at the time. The only people Jesus was furious at were the hypocrites. Not the stage actors, but the people who lived their lives as if they were playing to an audience. They lived as though this life was a costume party. ‘Don’t be like the hypocrites’, Jesus admonished his audience.

 

Let me switch to my Psychologist’s persona for a moment. After all, I made a living playing a Psychologist all my adult life. Do you remember the meaning of the Greek word persona? It means a mask. Actors used to wear masks, representing the characters they portrayed on stage, as in the Kathakali operas of Kerala. The word “personality” originated from the word persona. Okay then, for my own comfort I am going to assume that everybody wears a persona or mask. Some psychologists think that when there is a big disparity between your mask and what you really are, anxiety erupts from within you. “What if my mask falls off while on the stage” he fears. He will be exposed before all the spectators! The more disparate one’s own mask is from his true face, the more embarrassing it becomes. So he becomes vigilant about keeping his mask in place, leading to a pernicious apprehension.

 

I had a colleague once who pretended to be an expert in everything relevant to our practice of psychology. But I could easily sense that she had no expertise in the areas she was talking about and that she was only posing so as to appear competent. I would then probe a little by asking her some questions as if I was not conversant in that topic. This would make her nervous and she would quickly make up an answer. When she sensed that I wouldn’t leave it at that (Um…Am I a bit cruel?) she would become embarrassingly anxious and try to change the topic or find an excuse to leave the room right away.

 

The Dalai Lama did not appear to have any pretensions, and he made no effort to act “as if.” He was there with us fully present, wore no masks, and appeared calm. It takes a lot of courage to appear as one’s own true self.

 

I had a colleague I had worked with for over three years. But I did not remember her name when I was going to introduce her to my new assistant. It was an embarrassing moment for me. Forgetting the name of a friend who worked next to you for three years! That incident awakened me to a lot of soul searching about my relationships with people. I had known her for a while. She was a person with whom I have had friendly business transactions. We have also shared our concerns in day-to-day living. But she was a person to me only partially; only her business persona and the superficial friend-persona interacted with those of mine. A measured, constricted openness, without letting her enter my full consciousness. Even the sharing of personal concerns was perhaps a way to consolidate our professional relationship. It did not matter to me how beautiful she looked or what her name was. I was not connected to those parts of her self, or with her as person. When our business transactions and friendly chats were over she disappeared from my mind. It wasn’t important to me what happened to her afterwards, and what her life was like in between our meetings. I was not a good friend, only the image of one. A make-believe game! I could care less whether her name was Susan or Bob. After all, I was not connected with her as a total human being. I kept part of my self away from her and out of reach from her -- those parts that I had considered socially undesirable and unattractive. I had created a likable mask for myself and I got this far wearing it. My thinking had been that I would rather live in angst than expose my crooked eyes and the scars on my face to gain self-acceptance and peace of mind. I have gotten used to my mask. My mask seems important to me. Often I feel that I am my mask.

 

Besides the Psychologist and friend, I wear the masks of husband, father, and teacher – just like King Ravana of the Indian epic Ramayana. Ravana had ten faces on his neck. As most of us do, I split my consciousness into different segments and play a role to match each mask that goes with it. I tend to identify myself with those masks and would try to make the world believe that I am that mask. My true being has sheaths and sheaths of masks around it that I myself can’t touch me. Frankly, I have begun to realize that I am not always the same as the role I have played before others. Often I say things in a way that will make me look good. Well, you might think that I am just about to declare all my deceptions before the entire world right now and obtain an enlightened awareness of my true self. Sorry, I am not ready yet. I just don’t trust the world enough to do that.

 

We see people – including myself -- who show off their big houses, flashy automobiles, expensive jewelry, and so on. Our ego and identity inflate in proportion to the material value of our possessions. The house or car becomes our identity. We are as big as the size of our houses, or as rich as the price tag on our cars. I am my house! I am my car! I can understand why people do this. The world gives them respect. When I used to drive an opulent-looking Mercedes the people on the streets and the parking-lot attendants treated me with respect, as if I was one notch above them. I could see that in their eyes -- that adoring look! And I soon felt very uncomfortable with that attitude as well as uneasy about driving a car that looked like a showpiece. So when I switched to a Honda Civic the same people didn’t care a ‘diddle’ about me. Hey, I was the same person, I thought. But people respected the German-made metal box, and not the Indian-made chocolate chip that occupied the driver’s seat.

 

Can you imagine Jesus, Buddha, or Gandhi trying to get their identities from the material things they may have possessed? If Jesus had owned anything it must have been a hammer and a chisel. And he threw them away later as a snake would shed its old skin. He did not even own his own tomb. Neither did he write a book to perpetuate his name in this world. What a liberation!

 

Now I take very little pride in showing off with expensive cars and houses. But haven’t I tried to show off my academic achievements and professional status? All those diplomas and certificates I have displayed on the wall of my office? And swimming upstream in the world of Who’s Who! I have done all that. The prefix of “Doctor” is a quick way to get instant recognition. I believe that any idiot can get a doctorate if he/she has persistence and has nothing better to do. I don’t like people addressing me as “Dr. Thomas” these days, placing my identity in an occupational compartment. I was not born with the title “Psychologist” inscribed on my face. I shall not die as one either. My mother never called me a Psychologist. She doesn’t even know what a psychologist is. Just as my body is vehicle for my soul, my Ph.D. is only a vehicle to get to do a few things I enjoy doing a few hours a week. I think that tying my identity to a profession is more malignant than identifying with my material possessions. It is easier to get rid of my house and car than it is to shred my diplomas and publications when I think of treading the path of self-awareness.

 

I have also tried to tie my identity to my body and how I looked. How could I forget the pastime of standing before the mirror figuring out how to part my hair to conceal the gray ones or to color it to look young as if Nature had made a mistake by accelerating my age? We have narcissistic body-builders and Playboy centerfold-aspirants among us who feel that they are their bodies. In my clinical practice I get to see a lot of these people with ugliness behind the veil of beauty and civility. But, as a therapist I try to see through and connect with the real person – the real human being hidden behind their masks. That real person beyond the pretensions and appearances – physical, emotional, and spiritual -- is beautiful, regardless of how repulsive they may appear on the surface. Like a diamond in a pile of garbage! That “true person” is similar to my own inner self, and is profoundly lovable. It is not one’s beautiful body, erudition, and opulence that I connect with. All those things may deteriorate or change, but his/her true self, the true person, will not. It is that person that I want to connect with. “And the last secret is,” says Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, the Kabbalist, “that everything is One,” as the Lord is One (Deuteronomy 6:4). All of us are members of a single living organic unity, Kushner writes (Honey from the Rock).

 

Having said all this I don’t want you to think that there is anything intrinsically wrong with having a big house, expensive car, attractive physique, or an advanced academic diploma. In a practical world those things may have a place. The problem comes when these masks get stuck on to our faces, and when we confuse a mask with our real face. The Bhagavat Gita calls this attachment. What is “attachment”? Whenever you feel “this house is mine, this child is mine, or this work is mine” you have attachment to these. In his book Karma Yoga Swami Vivekananda says, “Never say mine. Whenever we say a thing is mine, misery will immediately come. Do not even say “my child” in your mind. If you do, then will come the misery. Do not say “my house”; do not say “my body”. The whole difficulty is there. The body is neither yours nor mine, nor anybody’s. These bodies are coming and going by the law of nature, but we are free, standing as witness.”

My true nature will be revealed when I rise above me and mine.

 

There is a Sanskrit mantra “Neti! Neti! Neti!” I am not that! I am not that! I am not that! The seeker after his own true self repeats this mantra to himself whenever he catches himself identifying with a false self, such as a big car, or big business. In that process the seeker peels off the fake selves and proceed to identify with the true self. There is also a Buddhist concept of “homelessness” as an ideal – meaning to see all identities as constructed, that those identities are not your core being.

 

The Upanishads say that when all the desires that cling to one’s heart are cast off the mortal becomes immortal. When all the knots of the heart are eradicated even when a man is alive, the mortal becomes immortal. (Katha Upanishad II iii 14-15).

 

Once upon a time, according to the Hindu mythology, there was a Maharishi (sage) called Viswamitra. He was a brahmachari who had taken a vow of celibacy. He lived alone on the bank of a river and spent almost all his time in meditation. He had a problem though. He did not know how to cook nor had the inclination for it. Well, God always provides for us, they say. There was another Maharishi called Vasishta living on the other side of the river with his beautiful wife Arundhati who could cook well. They decided that Arundhati would wade through the usually shallow river and serve a home-cooked meal to Viswamitra once a day. One late afternoon, soon after she had reached Viswamitra’s place it started to rain heavily and a flash flood ensued. How could she cross the river to go back home? It was getting late already. She panicked and asked Viswamitra what to do. He told her, “ Go up to the river. If Vasishta is a true brahmachari the river will part and you can walk across.” She dashed to the river and, lo and behold, the river parted to provide her with a dry walkway. Like the way Jehova did for Moses and the Israelites. When Arundhati got to the other side of the river a thought hit her like a flash; “He was putting me on. How could Vasishta be a brahmachari? He is my husband!”

 

Sure, he was married. But he was a Yogi who had achieved detachment of his true Self from his body. His body’s passions were not attached to his Self. He was not his body. He was his true self, the eternal self, with its boundaries expanded to blend with the Cosmic Self. Vasishta’s identity was located in his true self, not in his body. In that sense he was a brahmachari although he was a married man who loved his wife. The eternal self or what we refer to as the “soul” or “spirit” is not subjected to erotic love and marriage. There are no husbands and wives, and no marriages in heaven, said Jesus.

 

I know that many of my women friends are not sure if they would want such a man to be their husband. One of my women friends confronted me with fury when I narrated this story to her. The feeling that your husband is not married to “you” may be painful to live with. Is it a fake marriage then? Are you not supposed to own the whole of him when you marry him? But mind you, my women friends, your “spirit” or self also can be equally free as his is. You can have marital bliss, and yet can be free from the miseries of “attachment” and clinging to the bio-psychological organism when you identify yourself with your true self and stay connected to him without “owning” him or clinging to him. Marriage of the higher self is a marriage of love, not a marriage of sex, and not a marriage of two people who feel deprived, unhappy, and lonely without the other. In a “deprivation model” I would think of my love as “you make me happy and I feel miserable without you”. So, in order for me to feel happy all the time I try to own her and secure my happiness for the future. Paradoxically, from the moment I try to own her my misery begins.

 

I believe that we have to accept ourselves the way we are before we can peel off the masks we wear. Have you read Gandhi’s autobiography My Experiments with Truth? Here was a man the whole of India worshipped as saint and leader. They called him Mahatma, which means the Great Soul. Millions were ready to die for him. And then, this man wrote his autobiography from his prison cell explicitly narrating his petty thefts during his childhood, his sneaking out once to eat goat meat behind his parents’ back to “get strong”, and with his passions overtaking his sense of propriety making love to his wife while his father was dying in the adjacent room. Did he really have to publish all that? When I first read his autobiography during my college days I felt very uneasy about this “Great Soul”. As I meditate on his self-disclosures now I can appreciate the greatness of Gandhiji. He had the courage to accept himself as he truly was. He had the spiritual strength to present himself to the world just as he was. Gandhiji did not want to be the Ravana with ten different faces. His aspiration was to be like Rama, the divine incarnation of an integrated and authentic godhead.

 

I remember presidential candidate Jimmy Carter’s much-vilified interview with Playboy magazine -- the interview in which he said that he had lusted in his heart for other women. I respected Jimmy Carter a great deal and voted for him too. (I know that this does not make me fashionable!) But I would have respected him more if he had stood firmly by his self-disclosures rather than acting awkward and embarrassed about it later.

 

In a recent interview in India the Dalai Lama said that during sleep he sometimes had dreams seeing himself being angry, or meeting with women. But in the dream itself he says to himself, “But I am a monk.” And that is that. People like me however, might muse, “Did this spiritual leader known all over the world have to talk about this in public and tarnish his image?”

 

I thought about this passage from the Bible this morning: At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” Then Jesus called a little child to him, set him in the midst of them, and said, “Assuredly I say to you, unless you are converted and become as children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” A child wears no masks. Has no hypocrisy. And the child is fully present at whatever he/she does or says. He/she has no duplicity, and gives no mixed messages.

 

Pope John XXIII wrote once that during his sleep he would some times see very interesting things or a solution to some big problem. In the dream itself he would think that “Oh, I must tell this to the Pope.” When he wakes up he says to himself, “But I am the Pope!” See how we split our own existence!

 

At yesterday’s meeting someone from the audience asked the Dalai Lama to comment on the genocide of Tibetans and Tibetan culture by the Chinese government. I noticed a shadow of sadness on his face for a moment. But that cloud vanished instantly. His response was objective and with great compassion for the darkness in the Chinese soul. Even when he was speaking on the atrocities of the Chinese I could sense a glow of loving compassion in this man. No bitterness! Only forgiveness!

 

Gandhi fought British colonialism with the same attitude. He never hated the British people. Several Englishmen were his followers and friends. He was only doing his duty to liberate the human spirit, and that included the British too, from the evils of exploitation and oppression. The oppressor has more to worry about than the oppressed. The oppressor needs to get love, compassion, and forgiveness to liberate him from the darkness of evil in his soul. Winston Churchill was puzzled when Gandhi, “the half-naked fakir,” asked Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of British India to stay on and be the Governor-general of free India. I am impressed by Gandhi’s ability to detach the evil from the evildoer, forgive the evildoer and connect with his human spirit with love. You may have read that Jesus had the same feelings for the Roman soldiers while they hanged him on the cross. “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do,” said Jesus.

 

My question for myself today is this. If people like the Dalai Lama can obtain Joy and Peace why can’t I? What stops me from experiencing unconditional joy and peace of mind? Is it not, at least to a great extent, my masks, and my attachment to ‘things’ that block my liberation from angst?

 

This beautiful morning, as I look at those lovely flowers in my garden, my prayer is this: “Lord! As a gardener pulls away the weeds from his garden, dig out the roots of all the false egos from within me. Help remove all the masks stuck on my face. Let me have the joy of seeing the beauty of my true self.”

 

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