The lion represents two things.
One: it never moves in a crowd. It is always alone, it loves solitude. It is an individual, utterly an individual. It is not like sheep.
The sheep can exist only with the crowd, with the mob. Alone it is very frightened, alone it is very nervous. It does not know what to do, where to go. It depends on the crowd to be led, to be guided.
And the irony is that others are also dependent on the same crowd. So everybody is dependent on everybody else thinking that others know better. They all live in an illusion.
But that's the situation of the ordinary human being too. They live as part of the mob psychology they don't have their own psyche yet. Hindu -- yes, Mohammedan -- yes, Christian -- yes, but it is very rare to find an individual. They can become Communistic very easily. That is another crowd.
My disciples have to be individuals. Each has to depend on himself. That's why I am not giving detailed instructions to you so you cannot depend on anything.
You have to fall upon yourself. Sometimes it looks cruel but that's the only compassionate way to help: Unless you are thrown back again and again you are not going to be an individual, you will remain part of a crowd.
You can change crowds, that's not difficult. You can change your affiliations, your labels but the basic thing is missing: You don't have an independent soul. The lion represents individuality.
And secondly the lion represents immense courage. It never escapes from any challenge. It may die but it will not turn its back. It is better to die than to be a coward.
To be a coward is a far uglier phenomenon. Death is not ugly. Death can be beautiful if you die courageously. If you die accepting a challenge joyously, dancingly, as Socrates died, as Jesus died, as Mansoor died, it is one of the most beautiful phenomena on the earth.
Death depends on you. If you are a coward even life is ugly, what to say about death?
If you are courageous even death is beautiful, what to say about life?
So remember these two things.
Be an individual and be absolutely courageous. That's my way: Individuality and courage.
Hence I insist again and again that god is freedom, religion is freedom.
And if anything makes you a slave then it's not religion and it has nothing to do with god.
_Abridged From:_
*Eighty Four Thousand Poems*