the miracle of letting go HAPPY HANS There is an old fairytale about a certain Hans, who returned to his mother’s house with a lump of gold as large as his head. Hans was given this lump of gold by his master as wages for his apprenticeship. During his return journey home, he first exchanged the lump of gold for a horse. He exchanged the horse for a cow, the cow for a pig, the pig for a goose, the goose for a whetstone. Finally, he dropped the whetstone in the well. Now there was no end to his happiness.
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t is a well-known fairytale, but who dwells on the fact that a profound truth underlies it? It is the truth of Dao, the wisdom of the ‘miracle of letting go’ that is expressed here by a few metaphors. ‘Happy Hans’ – the apparent fool – may be seen as the human being who devotes his life to the great task of true human genesis. What does ‘true human genesis’ mean? And how should we imagine the path to the goal of true human genesis? He who receives a lump of gold as large as his head from his master as wages for his apprenticeship in the school of experience of the world, has apparently worked well. He has used his tools, thinking, willing and acting, and his intelligence, in a sensible way to accomplish his work of ‘becoming conscious’ to his master’s full satisfaction. Such a person far surpasses the crowd; he is lucky. He is a happy Hans, a happy servant of his master. And now that ‘happy Hans’ has been released by the master of the world, by fate, with the lump of gold of his acquired treasure of experiences, he longs for home! He feels that he is able to begin his homeward journey with the true value of his treasure of experiences. During his apprenticeship until this moment, which has given him the necessary basic preparation for his task, he received from the master, from the cosmic intelligences that accompany the development of humanity, a lump of gold as large as his head. He therefore possesses a properly functioning person-
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ality, a perfectly working instrument for the individual, a powerful ego. This is, therefore, the wage that Hans has acquired at his workplace on earth during countless experiences in the world of matter, the lump of gold as large as his head. With it, Hans is able to consider the world in an intelligent way. He is able to distinguish good from bad (is he really able to do so?). Time and again, he gains new experiences and freely makes a decision about the path he wants to walk. And now that Hans has finally acquired the ‘lump of gold’, he wants to go home. He wants to return to the ‘mother’, to the primordial source of everything that ‘is’, to Dao, because the return to the ‘mother’ is the way, on which the task of true human genesis must first be completed. After all his experiences in the world, Hans has ultimately recognised this wisdom. Indeed, with the wage of his apprenticeship, the lump of gold of his mind, he wants to return from the world of matter into the bosom of the divine order, of the original kingdom. And with it, he devotes himself to his true destiny, namely human genesis in the sense of a transition to autonomous, creative thinking that fulfils the Divine plan. After all, he now possesses the lump of gold, a personality matured by experience, with which he can freely determine his goal. Hans is very happy about this. On this return journey, he will voluntarily gain wholly unexpected experiences, which in no way corre-
