from: The Goose and the Bottle
Martin Cecil January 18, 1976
You remember the story that we've used in times past about the goose in the bottle. I think this related to some guru talking to his follower and telling this story that there was once a bottle in which there was a goose. Now, how can you get the goose out of the bottle? Of course, the usual human approach is to wonder how the goose got in there in the first place. Well, maybe it was a very small goose to start with, and it crept in through the neck, and then grew up inside. That sort of reasoning is not of much help unless you can figure out some way of reducing the stature of the goose so that it can come out through the neck again. The goose is in the bottle. Ah, now the goose is out of the bottle! There are very few people who really appreciate what this is saying, because the whole thing was in imagination anyway, and if you have the goose in the bottle in imagination, you can have the goose out of the bottle in imagination.
The goose in the bottle is a very good analogy, portrayal, of the state of human nature consciousness; it is contained in the restrictions indicated by a bottle. It's interesting that if the bottle is clear glass you can see out, you can see lots of things round about, but you're still in the tight restriction of the bottle. And this is the human nature state; there are restrictions on every hand. Individuals feel that they are in a trap, but it is a trap which they have created for themselves. The goose can be out of the bottle just as well as in the bottle. It requires what has been referred to as a flip in consciousness. One may have the consciousness of being a person who is in a bottle, who is surrounded by every sort of restriction. If he has that sort of a consciousness, he is likely to be protesting about it in one way or another, and we have a world full of protesters. The whole human state is the state of a goose in a bottle.
Now, if we describe it that way it could be rather hilarious: a goose in a bottle, that's the human nature state! But the goose may be out of the bottle; that need not be the state of consciousness. One may accept the state of consciousness that is the truth rather than the fallacy. One deliberately accepts the state of consciousness which one experiences. One may find all sorts of good reasons for retaining it, and people do. In recent years, of course, these reasons have been added to by all the psychological knowledge that has been proliferated. Our troubles, in other words the bottle, are dependent upon the fact that we have hereditary elements which keep us trapped. And not only hereditary elements but there are those things which occurred in our own personal experience, particularly during childhood, and these things have all built a very thick bottle in which we are supposed to find ourselves trapped. But we only find ourselves in the bottle because that's where we imagine that we are, that is our state of consciousness, that is what we accept for ourselves. And the very fact that we have accepted it for ourselves determines the nature of our behavior, because we're going to behave in a certain way if we think we're in a bottle. We're going to be protesting about this state of affairs; we don't like being in a bottle. We want to get out – and I don't know; I've never been in a bottle – but I imagine it would be a pretty difficult task to break out of a bottle. You have no room to get a swing at it, you know.
It has proven thus far to be an impossible task for human beings to break out of the bottle, no matter how much they protest. No matter how much effort they put into their protests in various ways they stay in the bottle, because that's their state of consciousness. As long as they have that state of consciousness they will stay in the bottle. The very fact that they are trying to get out of the bottle is indication that they believe that they're in the bottle. That's the state of consciousness. Well, one may insist on that, one may find all kinds of good reasons as to why one is in a bottle, how one got there, but none of the reasons which are brought to light in this fashion succeed in getting anyone out of the bottle. The only way one can come out of the bottle is to be out of the bottle, to be conscious of the fact that one is a person out of the bottle, one is not a goose in a bottle. There is the statement made sometimes, with respect to someone, that he is a silly goose. Well, that's the way it is with the whole of humanity, in a bottle, and nobody can figure a way of getting out of that bottle. It's a ludicrous sight, isn't it, when you begin to see what it really is, because we can either say the goose is in the bottle or we can say the goose is out of the bottle. We do not need to support and logically sustain the idea that we're in a bottle. How much human effort and energy is poured out in finding reasons as to why human beings are in the bottle, the idea being that if one can find the reasons why one is in the bottle, one can get out. But obviously, if there actually was a goose in a bottle, finding the reasons as to why he is in there wouldn't get him out.
Being out of the bottle is being through the gate of the kingdom. No one else can get you out of your bottle. You alone can say, "I’m out of the bottle." Someone else may tell you that it is possible for you to say that, someone else may provide some stimulus as to what the experience might be if you were out of the bottle, but you don't know what it means to be out of the bottle until you yourself decide that you are not in the bottle. Now, I’m sure that there is that rising up in you, even in this moment, which says, "Well, there's this, there's that, and there's the other thing. All these things are what keep me in the bottle." But they don't keep you in the bottle. You keep you in the bottle, by your own attitude, by your own state of consciousness. Anyone can be out of it in a moment. It may be of interest to give some consideration to all the reasons that spring up into your mind, thinking about these things, as to why you must be in the bottle: "Well, I have this heredity," "I had that childhood," "I had this sort of an education," "I don't have any education." On and on it goes as to why one must stay in a restricted state. And while on the one hand people say that they long to be free, on the other hand they're constantly arguing themselves into the state of restriction. The goose is out of the bottle; it's done!
If we are willing to accept the truth, then we all instantly find ourselves through the gate, in the kingdom. We didn't have to struggle to get in there, because we got out of the bottle. We simply decided that this is the true state, this is the truth, and no one was going to argue us back into the bottle again, not even ourselves. In the experience of the truth of ourselves we share spiritual expression, and this does certainly provide an external stimulus for those who are still children, or still childish, that they may awaken to a sense of responsibility, a realization that one has responsibility to offer what is necessary into the world, and not merely to be, or to expect to be, entertained by the world. This is all right for children; they can run around and play for a while, but they need to grow up eventually. While they are children they do not yet have the capacity to accept adult responsibility, and so something is provided of an external stimulus to keep them moving, to keep them moving in the right direction, and that is right. There are those who have said, "Oh, children should be allowed freedom to do as they pleased." Not at all. They need the offer of the external stimulus, and that needs to be very pointed at times. They're not going to learn otherwise; they're not going to develop the capacity to experience the reality of spiritual expression for themselves.
Human beings have become dependent on spiritual expression through others, and there has been scarcely any of that, so there has been a continued state of childishness on earth. The capacity has never been developed which was sufficiently mature to permit the reality of spiritual expression. Only those who are out of the bottle, so to speak, can give spiritual expression, because they are being stimulated by spirit in everything they think and say and do.
Let the expression of living reveal the fact, as we have described it this morning, that the goose is out of the bottle.
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