Mary Magdalene was a disciple of Jesus. She was very much in love with him. One day, Jesus came to the home of Mary Magdalene. His feet were dirty, to clean his feet Mary poured a very precious perfume on his feet–the whole bottle. It was rare and expensive perfume. Judas another disciple of Jesus immediately objected. He said, “You should prohibit people from doing such nonsense. The whole thing is wasted, and there are people who are poor and who don’t have anything to eat. We could have distributed the money to poor people.”
To this Jesus replied, “You don’t be worried about it. The poor and the hungry will always be here, but I will be gone. You can serve them always and always–there is no hurry–but I will be gone. Look at the love, not at the precious perfume. Look at Mary’s love, her heart.”
With whom will you agree, Jesus or Judas? Judas is talking about the poor, and Jesus is simply looking at the feeling of Mary, the heart of Mary.
The conscience mind will agree with Judas. He was a very cultured man, very sophisticated, and a thinker. But he betrayed, he sold Jesus for thirty silver pieces. And when Jesus was crucified, he started feeling guilty. That’s how a conscience man functions–he started feeling very guilty, his conscience started pricking him and he finally committed suicide.
Judas was a good man, he had a conscience. But he had no consciousness. This distinction has to be felt deeply. Conscience is borrowed, given by the society; consciousness is our own attainment. The society teaches us what is right and what is wrong: we should do this and should not do that. It gives us the morality, the code, the rules of the game, in short our conscience. In other worlds, conscience is but an outside constable present inside. And this is how the society controls us. Judas had a conscience, but Jesus had consciousness.
