To choose the camel as the lowest consciousness is perfectly right. The lowest consciousness in man is crippled; it wants to be enslaved. It is afraid of freedom because it is afraid of responsibility. It is ready to be loaded with as much burden as possible. It rejoices in being loaded; so does the lowest consciousness – being loaded with knowledge, which is borrowed. No man of dignity will allow himself to be loaded with borrowed knowledge. It is loaded with morality which has been handed over by the dead to the living; it is a domination of the dead over the living. No man of dignity will allow the dead to rule him.

The lowest consciousness of man remains ignorant and unconscious, unaware, fast asleep – because it is continuously being given the poison of believing, of faith, of never doubting, of never saying no. And a man who cannot say no has lost his dignity. And a man who cannot say no…his yes does not mean anything. Do you see the implication? The yes is meaningful only after you are capable of saying no. If you are incapable of saying no, your yes is impotent, it means nothing.

Hence, the camel has to change into a beautiful lion, ready to die but not ready to be enslaved. You cannot make a lion a beast of burden. A lion has a dignity that no other animal can claim; he has no treasures, no kingdoms; his dignity is just in his style of being – fearless, unafraid of the unknown, ready to say no even at the risk of death.

This readiness to say no, this rebelliousness, cleans him of all the dirt that the camel has left – all the traces and the footprints that the camel has left. And only after the lion – after the great no – the sacred yes of a child is possible.

The child says yes not because he is afraid. He says yes because he loves, because he trusts. He says yes because he is innocent; he cannot conceive that he can be deceived. His yes is a tremendous trust. It is not out of fear, it is out of deep innocence. Only this yes can lead him to the ultimate peak of consciousness; what I call godliness.

There are many heavy things for the spirit, for the strong, weight-bearing spirit in which dwell respect and awe: its strength longs for the heavy, for the heaviest.
What is heavy? Thus asks the weight-bearing spirit, thus it kneels down like the camel and wants to be well laden.

For the camel, for the lowest kind of consciousness, there is an intrinsic desire to kneel down and to be laden with as much load as possible.

What is the heaviest thing, you heroes? So asks the weight-bearing spirit, that I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength.

But to the strong man, to the lion in you, the heaviest takes on a different meaning and a different dimension….

That I may take it upon me and rejoice in my strength.

Its only joy is its strength. The camel’s joy is only to be obedient, to serve, to be a slave.