Osho - Finger
Pointing to the Moon
Chapter 5. Let
Go and Fly
Only a person free from holding
onto the ego attains to self-nature.
Therefore, becoming spotlessly
clean like the full moon, one becomes ever blissful and self-luminous.
On cessation of the sense of
doing, all anxieties cease. On cessation of the anxieties, all desires cease.
The cessation of desires is emancipation - and this is called jeevanamukti,
liberation while living.
Seeing all, everywhere, in
every direction, as brahma, the absolute reality - on the ripening of the
feeling of such goodwill do desires cease.
Never be negligent of your
allegiance to brahma, the absolute reality, because that is the only death -
say the ones who are well-rooted in brahma.
Even if shifted aside, the
algae do not lose time in covering the water again.
Similarly, even if a wise man
swerves from his allegiance to brahma even for a little while, illusions cover
him.
In this sutra many valuable
things are said - not only valuable but original also.
Only a person free from holding
onto the ego attains to self-nature.
A very deep truth is revealed
in this. The ego has not caught hold of you, it is you who has caught hold of
the ego. The world has not caught hold of you, it is you who has caught hold of
the world.
Sufferings are not clinging to
you, they are your very own creations. Sufferings are not chasing you, they
have not taken any resolve to give you trouble, they come to you only at your
own invitation.
Normally we do not think this
way. We think, why are there sufferings? Why is there this worldly anguish? Why
is this cycle of birth and death? Why does this ego torment me? How to be free
of it? Constantly this thought runs within us: How to be free of it? You must
have all encountered this question sometime or the other - how to be free of
it? - otherwise it would have been impossible for you to come here.
But this sutra will disappoint
you greatly, because it says the very question of becoming free does not arise
because the ego is not holding onto you, the world is not stopping you in any
way, your births have not invoked you, it is all due to your own will. So it is
wrong to ask, "How to be free of all these?" The right thing to ask
is, "How, in what manner and with what trick, am I holding onto all this
misery and trouble?"
One should not raise the
question of becoming free of all these. The question should be: What is our
methodology, what is the pattern with which we catch hold of sufferings? We go
on catching hold of sufferings, and with our own hands we go on imposing upon
ourselves more worlds, more births, more incarnations. The question should be:
Why do we go on creating newer and newer expanses and skies of desires? This is
what is needed to be understood.
This will have several implied
meanings. One meaning will be that liberation is not some attainment which is
to be achieved. The world is certainly to be lost, but liberation is not to be
achieved. If you are ready to drop the world, then you will find that your
liberation is already the case. You are already free, but you have managed to
remain in bondage through great self-trickery.
If you have seen how parrots
are caught in the jungles you will understand. A rope is tied across two
supports. The moment a parrot comes and sits on the rope, he immediately hangs
upside down because the rope has turned due to his weight. Now the parrot feels
that he is caught. The upside- down hanging parrot feels that he is caught,
badly caught, his feet are entangled, now there is no way to get away. It is
the parrot who is clutching the rope tightly, the rope is not holding him at
all.
But what the parrot feels also
appears logical, "The rope which has turned me upside down, it has caught
me, it must be holding me!"
So the parrot stays hanging. He
tries in all possible ways to straighten himself up so he can fly away, but he
is unable to manage to do that because the rope is very light compared to the
weight of the parrot - so no matter how much he tries, he always swings back to
his upside-down position. Thus, the more he tries, the more convinced he
becomes that there simply is no way of release.
If the parrot could understand,
it could undo its grip and fly away the same moment. But it tries first to sit
upright. Even if it leaves the grip in its upside-down position it can fly away
because the rope has not caught it. But the parrot has never flown in an
upside-down position; whenever it has flown it has been standing upright. It
knows only one way of flying. It thinks that perhaps flying has some
unavoidable connection with standing right side up on two feet.
How is the parrot hanging
upside down to understand that it can also fly here and now, and that it is not
caught at all? But because it is hanging upside down it fears that if it leaves
the rope it will fall on the ground and die. So it clutches the rope tightly.
And howsoever late its catcher may come, he will find the parrot hanging there.
Man's consciousness is more or
less in the same situation. Nobody has caught you. Who is interested in
catching you? This world has no interest in holding you. What could be the
purpose, what would the world achieve through holding you? No, nobody is
interested in catching hold of you.
You have caught yourself. But
there are some illusions which give you the idea that you are caught by others.
The greatest illusion is that
you think yourself to be so valuable that the whole world is interested in
catching you. This is egoistic to feel that all the miseries are rushing
towards you only; that so many miseries pay so much attention to you; that all
the hells are created just for you! They are all just for you, and you are
sitting in the center. As if this whole cosmic arrangement goes on running just
for you - and you are nothing but a parrot hanging upside down on a rope!
But the reasons for the
creation of this illusion are more or less the same as those for the parrot.
As soon as a human child is
born many tragic events take place side by side. They are a must, that is why
they take place. A human child is born the most helpless of all animals in this
world. The child of no other animal is born so helpless. Children of other
animals can walk and run and can set out in search of their food soon after
they are born, but a human child will require twenty-five years after birth to
be ready to set out in search of his own food... twenty-five years!
A human child is the weakest of
all animals at birth. Biologists say that something has gone wrong somewhere.
They say that for a mature birth, the human child should remain in the womb for
twenty-one months. But the human female is weak, she cannot keep the child so
long in her womb.
Thus, according to some
biologists, the whole human race is an abortion. No human child is born fully
developed, all are born partially developed. By contrast, children of all
animals are born fully developed.
But for the human child this
partially developed birth is a blessing as well as a curse. In this world there
is nothing that is one-sided, there are always two sides to everything. It is
unfortunate that the human child is weak, but this is a blessing also because
it is due to this weakness that man became superior to all other animals. There
are some deep reasons for that. Because the human child is born very weak - he
requires great assistance, otherwise he will not survive - just to provide that
assistance the unit of 'family' came into existence, otherwise there is no need
for a family.
In animals there is no family
life because it is not needed. A human child will simply die without a family -
hence the mother, the father, and the sacred institution of family. It is all
born out of that weakness of the child. On the basis of the family, the
society, the nation, and the whole network of civilization was born. And
because a human child is born helpless he does not possess the basic instincts.
The animal child is born and it comes with intelligence - just enough to live
its life. But the human child does not arrive with such intelligence; if we
leave him unattended he will die. There is no way he will survive. This is why
the human child has to be trained.
No animal child needs any
training. A human child needs to be taught. He does not come prepared with
anything, everything has to be taught. Therefore there are schools, colleges
and universities. These are institutions born due to this human weakness. We
have to impart all education, everything; one thing after the other has to be
taught. A great effort has to be made, and still there is no certainty that the
child will learn! Thus all arrangements of education and conditioning are
developed becuase of the weakness of the human child. This sutra has some
relationship to this reality.
Because the child is helpless,
the parents have to pay a lot of attention to it. Because of this attention the
child feels, "I am the center of the world, the whole world is revolving
around me."
A child cries a little and the
mother comes running. A child becomes slightly ill and the father is in
immediate attendance along with a doctor. The small child knows that everything
moves at his slightest bidding. A slight noise, a slight crying, a slight
indication of trouble calls the whole family to his service. And for the child
the house is the whole world, he knows no other world. So a natural illusion is
created in the mind of the child that, "I am the center of the world, all
arrangements are just for me, everything is happening just for me, everybody is
looking just toward me."
This illusion settles deep in
us, and then for the rest of our lives we go on living with the assumption that
we are the center. This brings tremendous pain; this is why the ego hurts -
because it is not true, you are not the center of the world. The world runs
very happily without you. It faces no obstacles at all because of your absence.
But somewhere in some corner of your mind you go on feeling, "I am the
center." And you are always waiting for this world to accept that you are
the center.
This is the very search of the
ego.
The sutra says, Only a person
free from holding onto the ego... one who is prepared to give up that concept
of ego which has grown and deepened from childhood... attains to self-nature.
This is inevitable; this
creation of the ego from the very birth of the child is inevitable. This is an
unavoidable evil. But to get stuck there and not to move on destroys our whole
life because then we remain deprived of knowing that entity which is hidden
within us. We will be able to know it only when we drop our ego. Why? Why in
religion is there so much emphasis on dropping the ego? The emphasis is because
one who feels that he is the center of the world remains deprived of knowing
his own center. That man lives believing a false center to be his center. A man
who believes that he is the center of others' eyes never bothers to seek if he
in reality has any center of his own, and thus a pseudo center is born. This
pseudo center is dependent on others, and therefore one only gains unhappiness
from the ego.
When you say, "You are a
good man," you are reinforcing my ego. Tomorrow, if you say, "No, it
was a mistake, you are not a good man," then you have just withdrawn the
brick you lent to my ego and with which I had built up the castle; it then
comes to the verge of collapsing.
The ego is created through the
eyes of others, through the ideas of others; ego is dependent on others. And
remember, whatever is dependent on others cannot be your center. So we worry
too much about who says what, who says good things about us and who says bad
things.
A friend had come to me who
said, "This is my problem"... he is present here... he said,
"This is my very problem, that somebody says something, a small thing, a
quite insignificant thing, and I am so hurt that I cannot sleep the whole
night." For example, he said, "I had gone to a shop to buy some
material. I wanted to buy some material, but I did not like what the shopkeeper
had showed me. The shopkeeper said, 'Leave it. I knew when I first saw your
face that you would not buy any.' I could not sleep that night, trying to work
out why this shopkeeper spoke like that."
Our ego is dependent on what
others say. The people all around us either contribute to our ego or they take
away some of it. This is why we are concerned the whole time as to what people
are saying or thinking about us. That is our capital. Collecting others'
opinions contributes to our pride - but what is the reliability of others'
opinions? Their opinions are in their hands. Today they may be extending it in
our favor, tomorrow they may not. Today they may have a good opinion of us,
tomorrow they may have a bad one - and they have their own motivations.
That shopkeeper had his own
motivations. He gave a hit to the ego. Now two things could have happened
through it. One was that this man might have purchased the material, just to
save face if for nothing else. And it would have been better if he had made a
purchase, for at least he would have saved himself from a whole night's
sleeplessness. But then another worry would have gripped the mind - "Why
did I buy the cloth which I did not want?" And you all have bought many
such items that you never wanted to buy, but on many occasions your ego goads
you to buy.
In the West, salesmen are
slowly being replaced in shops by saleswomen. Now there are no more salesmen,
only saleswomen! Now there is no sense in keeping the word salesman in use.
When a male customer enters a shop to buy a pair of shoes and a beautiful
salesgirl approaches him, fits a pair of shoes on his feet with her own hands,
ties the laces carefully and smilingly adds, "Beautiful!
This pair looks so beautiful on
your feet," now, howsoever much that pair of shoes may be pinching him, it
is his compulsion to buy them. He will have to buy them. Now it is no more a
question of shoes, now you are buying something else, the shoes are just an
excuse.
We have all bought many such
things which we never wanted. Our whole life is a similar collection of things,
and the ego is the total collection of all this. We have stolen the shine from
the eyes of others, put it all together and that has become our flickering
light. But it is always the others who are the masters, any day they want to
they can pull back the support.
Even the biggest of leaders is
not bigger than his followers. He cannot be, because his whole leadership is in
the hands of others. Today they have given it, tomorrow they can take it away.
Therefore, however great a
leader may be he is a follower of his followers. He has to follow them.
He has to watch in which
direction the followers are going, then he runs and stands in front of them.
He has to mark the direction of
the wind, the direction of his followers, and his whole expertise is in then
running and standing in the front. And this is why, all the time, every day,
the leader goes on changing his statements. He has to change. That is what is
called keeping the follower's views in mind. You have received your ego from
them. Your prestige, position, everything you have received from them - it is
all borrowed. And whatever is a borrowed thing, it is not you. You were there
before all these things were received. When death snatches all this away from
you, you will still be there.
You have created a false
center, and if you have taken yourself to be this center, why then will you
then search for your real center? You have taken it for granted that this is
the real center.
What is your image in your own
eyes? It is an image created by others. It is others who have created it -
somebody has given color to it, somebody has drawn its eyes, somebody has drawn
the feet, and that is all you are. But this is only a paper image, one small
shower of rain will wash off all its colors. But this situation is born out of
the inevitabilities of life.
Psychologists say that a child
becomes aware of others first, not of himself. Naturally, when a child opens
his eyes, he sees his mother. How can he see himself? The other, the 'thou', is
seen, not the 'I'. Slowly his acquaintance enlarges. He sees his father, his
brothers, sisters, and the family, and this way he is slowly learning to
experience the other. And it is in contrast and relation to this other that he
begins to experience his 'I'.
It is very interesting to note
that the experience of 'I' is not the first. I am, but I do not experience
myself first, I experience others first. Naturally when I experience the others
first, then the 'I' that I will create will be based on the opinions of these
others.
Therefore, the psychologists
say, a child who has received love from the mother and the father and has
received the appreciation of the family has got a feeling of self-love. But a
child who has not received any love from the parents, any appreciation of the
family - a kind of pathetic personality develops in him, because if the people
through whom the child first became aware of his 'I' did not express their joy
and happiness about him, the 'I' of that child becomes poor and destitute
forever.
He did not receive the
nourishment.
Psychologists say that
something is missing in a child that is brought up in the absence of a mother,
and this can never be compensated for because the child's very first experience
of 'I' remains crippled. The person from whom that first understanding of 'who
I am' was to be born, the 'thou' from whom the first glimpses of 'I' were to
come, was never there to give those glimpses. That person was never there to
reflect the experiences of dignity, respect, pride, honor and love.
If a mother had not danced
within herself on the birth of her child, if a mother was not overwhelmed with
joy and if her whole being was not thrilled all over, then the 'I' of that
particular child will remain crippled forever. He will suffer a lot. He will
have to find crutches. He will be in great difficulty.
We get our first experience of
'I' from others, and we continue to get it from others all along. Slowly,
slowly we accumulate opinions, approval, certificates, views of others, a
prestige and a respect from the society. On this false center we remain hanging,
whereas our real center is hidden behind it.
'Thou' cannot be first, 'I' is
first - it is another matter that we only come to know it much later. When a
child is born, he is born with his 'I', with his soul. But that center remains
hidden and another new center gets created. Then we hold on to this new center.
We do so because we do not know any other center, and we are afraid that if we
let go of this center we may be hanging in mid-air, and if we do not take care
we may be lost. We are afraid that everything may go topsy-turvy, chaotic.
Hence we hold on fast to it like that parrot holding fast to the rope, because
of the fear that it may fall down and be hurt.
We also go on holding on to
this 'I' because we do not see anything else that can be held for support.
We move on its support and keep
holding tight lest it may slip out of our clutches. This brings misery because
it is not the true center.
This situation of ours is like
a person who is born with a treasure, but who mistakenly thinks it buried in a
ditch and goes on digging for it fruitlessly.
Our real center is an emperor;
our soul is sheer bliss and a treasure. But this 'I' is a false ditch where,
however much we may dig, we will find no treasures whatever. Digging there we
can never reach to our self-nature. Therefore the sutra says: Only a person
free from holding onto the ego attains to self-nature. What is to be done then?
Gurdjieff was a remarkable
mystic. When his grandmother was on her deathbed he asked her, "Do you
have any life experiences and conclusions that you think are worth passing on
to me?"
His grandmother then said a
very strange thing to him. She said, "If you can remember one thing
throughout your life that will do. That is: Never do anything as others do it -
never do any work as others do it, always try to do it differently."
Gurdjieff later on developed a whole philosophy around it and formed "The
law of otherwise" - always doing things differently from others.
Gurdjieff made great effort to
apply this advice and a unique person was born in him, because not doing
anything as others do it brings tremendous results. The first outcome is that,
as one's ego is nourished only when one does things the way others do them,
naturally there is nothing to nourish your ego. On the contrary, people will
laugh at you.
Gurdjieff has said, "My
grandmother told me, 'I am nearing my death and I will never know whether you
followed my advice or not. So give me a demonstration before I die.' An apple
was there near her bed; she gave it to me and asked me to eat it, but making
sure that I did not eat it the way others do."
This child Gurdjieff must have
found himself in great difficulty: what to do? But children are very inventive.
If the parents do not kill their inventiveness completely there would be many
inventors in the world. But inventions seem to be dangerous, because anything
new brings uneasiness.
Gurdjieff took the apple and,
bringing it close to his ear, he first tried to hear it, then bringing it near
to his eyes he looked at it, he kissed it and touched it with closed eyes, then
danced while still holding it in his hands, jumped and ran, and then he ate the
apple. His grandmother said, "I am satisfied."
"Later," Gurdjieff
said, "this became a principle in my life - not to do anything the way others
do but to bring some originality of my own to it." People used to laugh at
him and call him mad. They would say, "What sort of man is this? What is
he doing - hearing an apple with his ears?"
Gurdjieff said, "I had not
realized it then, but another outcome was that I was no longer worried about
others. What others are saying or what their opinions are about me, or what
others think about me - this concern simply dropped; I just became alone,
absolutely alone on this earth. Because of this," Gurdjieff writes
further, "I did not have to undergo that suffering all others go through.
No false center was ever created within me and I never had to make any effort
to destroy my ego. It never formed in the first place."
What is to be done? Drop
bothering about the others. I watch you in the morning when you are meditating.
You are meditating, but an idea remains lurking, "Someone must be watching
me... what will the others say?"
Just today a friend came to me.
He said, "Whatever you say, I will do it alone. But doing it here in front
of so many people...." There will be no benefit in doing it alone. There
will be no benefit, because benefits of meditation are multi-dimensional. Your
courage to go mad in front of so many people simply knocks down your ego. Your
childlike behavior in front of so many people suddenly removes you from your
ego and throws you to your center. This will not happen in your aloneness.
In aloneness, everybody is a
singer in his bathroom. And everybody can make faces in the mirror in the aloneness
of his bathroom - not only children, but grownups too. Such stories are luckily
not told by the mirrors. But these things are of no value, and are no help - no
help at all!
Drop worrying about others,
stop thinking about the opinions of others; start reducing your craving for
others' attention. The search for others' attention is the food for the ego.
The others' attention is food, the ego gets nourished by it. Therefore the more
people pay attention to you, the juicier it feels to you, the more you feel you
are something. But if nobody pays any attention to you, you are in a house and
nobody even looks at you....
Gurdjieff was experimenting
with his disciples. He and his thirty disciples lived in a big house, and he
told them to live there in such a way as if the other twenty-nine did not
exist. They were not to speak with anyone, not to make any signs, not to make
any gestures which may create any communication. Even if one passed by someone
else, he had to remember that he was all alone there, nobody else was there in
the house. Knowingly or unknowingly nothing was to be done by anyone that may
indicate the presence of the other. If someone stepped on somebody else's toes,
he was not to make any apology - for there was no one else present there. Even
if because of somebody's mistake an ember from the fire was to fall on
someone's hand, no one was to ask for any forgiveness - for there was no one
else present there. No one was even to express through their eyes, "I am
sorry."
Gurdjieff asked these thirty
disciples to stay like that for three months. Twenty-seven disciples ran away
after some time, only three remained to the very end, but those three were
transformed into totally different persons.
What was the purpose of this
experiment? Let us understand. It is very easy not to pay any attention to
others, or not to apologize, even if you kick someone! This is very easy, there
is no difficulty in it.
This is how we always want it
to be. But this is not the significant point. So what meaning does this
experiment carry?
Remember, its meaning is deep
and hidden. Gurdjieff had asked you not to pay any attention to the fact that
there is someone else present, but then also to understand well that others
also will not pay any attention to you. That is where the catch is. You will
not pay attention to others, you are alone; others will not pay attention to
you, they are twenty-nine. You will not receive twenty-nine other people's
attention, for three months, at all!
All transactions are mutual. I
give you attention, you give me attention. It is a business. I am fulfilling
your ego, you are fulfilling mine. But in this experiment the exchange will
cease at both the ends.
What was the reason for those
twenty-seven disciples running away? Many of them said later, "We felt as
if we were suffocating, that we would die, that we were choking."
Actually their throats were not
choking, it was their ego's throats that were choking. They were thinking,
"Three months! And there will be no food for our egos! By the time we are
out of this place we will be empty." Those three courageous disciples who
stayed, after three months they came out as different persons altogether. What
had changed in them?
Ouspensky was one of those
three disciples who had stayed through the experiment. Later he said,
"This man Gurdjieff was amazing, because in three months.... And we had no
idea that this was a device to kill our egos. We had thought that the
experiment was being carried out to bring peace and silence to our minds. We
were not even told that our egos will be killed. After three months we became
as though we did not exist; only our being remained. There was no tune of 'I'
arising anywhere in us."
The day no tunes of 'I' arise
within you, that day you are standing at your real 'I'. That real 'I' is called
the soul. And naturally then your individuality becomes spotlessly clean like
the full moon - ever blissful and self-luminous.
The light already exists there,
the bliss already exists there, it is only a question of a small jump from your
'I' to the soul. The spotless cleanliness is already there, it has never been
disturbed.
Another important sutra, equally
original and wonderful.... Words many times hide the real meaning and it is not
seen. And because those words are familiar it becomes difficult to dive deep
into them.
You all must have heard these
words before, none of them are unfamiliar, but their arrangement here is
totally unfamiliar.
On cessation of the sense of
doing, all anxieties cease. On cessation of the anxieties, all desires cease.
The cessation of desires is emancipation - and this is called jeevanamukti,
liberation while living.
On cessation of the sense of
doing, all anxieties cease... We all want to destroy anxieties. Who is the man
who does not want to be free from anxieties? But we do not want to be free from
being the doer. We want to be free from anxieties but we do not want to be free
from the doer - and anxiety is the shadow of the doer. A person who thinks,
"I am doing this," cannot save himself from anxiety. The anxiety will
go on piling upon him. The more he thinks, "I am doing," the more
anxious he will become.
The people of the East have
invented ingenious devices. One of them was to feel, "I am not doing, God
is doing." This was a technique of meditation. The technique was:
"Not even a leaf of the tree moves without the permission of God."
There is nothing like this in actuality. If God had to issue permission to
every single leaf, by now he would have gone mad. Imagine telling every single
leaf, "Now move, now stop."
No, there is no such God
anywhere to move and stop every single leaf. But this statement has nothing to
do with God anyway, it is simply a technique of meditation, a device, because a
person who believes that "Not even a leaf moves without his
permission," slowly starts dropping the notion of "I am doing."
"He is the doer," such a man believes, "I am nothing at all. I
may be instrumental at the most. If he makes me move, I move; if he makes me
walk, I walk; if he makes me get up, I get up."
Thinking that everything is
happening through God and we are just puppets in his hands has allowed a great
phenomenon to take place in this world; the people in the East have become
totally anxiety free. The anxiety-free time that the East has known has been
known nowhere else on the earth, and the anxiety-laden time that the West is
knowing presently has also never been known before anywhere. But the cause
originates from the same source. In the West God became a doubtful entity, the
concept of destiny lost all meaning.
I do not say that the concept
of destiny is right, but the device in the concept of destiny that
"Everything is happening as per destiny," ended in the West. Neither
God survived nor fate nor destiny - the whole responsibility fell on man.
"I am doing. Whatever I am doing, I am doing." The 'I' remained
because there is no way of denying it.
It makes no difference whether
God is or is not, but if you can leave aside your doer in favor of God - even
if he may not be - it begins to have an effect on you: you become anxiety free.
In the West, anxiety has
deepened. American psychologists say that three out of every four people are
mentally sick... three out of four! How long can that fourth person remain
unaffected in the middle of these three! These three are trying in every
possible way to drown the fourth. It is a big figure if three out of four
persons have become mentally disturbed and sick. What is the reason?
The East has never produced so
many mad people as the West.
In the West the madness goes on
increasing and slowly, slowly is taken for granted. Even Freud eventually
accepted after a lifetime of research on the mind that there was no way of
curing man; man will remain more or less mad. He accepted his inability. And if
Freud accepts his inability it is very meaningful, because this man devoted
fifty years of his life to exploring the human mind and he has done some deep
research. He says there is no way man can be made fully healthy.
But Freud is not aware that
fully healthy people have lived on this earth and fully healthy societies have
also lived. But those societies had concepts altogether different. The deepest
of those concepts was: "I am not the doer." They had found a device:
the doer is God, fate, destiny - somebody else. "I am just an instrument
and am like a leaf - moving when moved, not moving when not moved, winning or
losing when made to win or lose. I am nowhere in it."
This had a two-fold effect. One
was that when you are not the doer, then there arises no reason to worry about
anything. Then defeat is accepted as well as victory. When victory is none of
your doing, it does not create an ego; and since defeat is also none of your
doing, it does not give one sleepless nights, nor does anxiety take over one,
neither does it pain one's heart. And another more interesting thing also
happens: if someone else wins there is no envy in your mind about it, because
if he has won it is not his achievement, it was God's will that it should
happen that way. Neither he is bigger because he has won, nor are we smaller
because we are defeated. It is all God's will.
A very peaceful mental state
develops if the feeling of being a doer drops. It is not necessary that one
should believe in God for this. Buddha dropped it without believing in God,
Mahavira dropped it without believing in God. This is a little more difficult.
If one has to drop the doer without believing in God, one has to deepen his
witnessing very much. Just remain a watcher; whatsoever is happening, just
remain a watcher. If there is defeat, just watch that you are witnessing the
defeat; if there is victory, just watch that you are witnessing the victory. Neither
you lose nor you win, you are only the witness. When it is morning, you witness
that morning has come; when it is evening, you witness that evening has come.
When the darkness of the night gathers, you witness that the darkness has come.
When the sun rises and there is light, you witness that the light has come.
You remain a watcher in your
own place - whether it is day or it is night, whether it is happiness or
unhappiness, whether it is defeat or victory. Thus when a person settles in
witnessing the doer dissolves; the doing no longer remains yours. You no longer
remain the center of doing, you become the center of seeing, witnessing,
knowing. The doing goes on happening around you in existence.
Mahavira says, "My stomach
is hungry, I watch it; a thorn pierces my foot and the foot is in pain, I watch
it; the body becomes sick, a sickness has come, I watch it." Even at the
time of death, Mahavira will go on watching that the body is dying. You will
not be able to watch that the body is dying, you will feel that you are dying.
If you have been the doer your whole lifetime, then you will have to do the
dying also. When you have done everything, to whom can you leave the act of
dying? One who disowns life, he also disowns death. One who has kept watching
life as a witness, he watches death also as a witness.
If the doing dies, in other
words if the doer disappears, the anxieties die. The second statement is an
even deeper truth than this:
On cessation of the sense of
doing, all anxieties cease.
It appears as if there is some
mistake in this sutra. In the scriptures it is always said: when desires die,
all anxiety dies. And this is what you may have heard also, that if there is no
desire, there is no anxiety. This sutra is saying just the opposite. It says:
if the anxiety ceases, the desires cease. On the death of doing anxiety dies,
and on the death of anxiety desires die. Why?
Have you ever observed that
when you are more anxious you are more full of desire, that when you are more
tense sexual desire arises more in you, because with sex that tension can be
released and one can become lighter. When your mind is in anger, then too
sexual desire arises more in you. When your mind is in a joyous, blissful
state, sexual desire is less. If the mind is totally and constantly in a
blissful state, there simply will be no sexual desire. There are reasons for
this. When the mind reaches a certain limit of tension due to anything, the sex
center functions like a safety valve, it is a safety valve. When your anxiety
increases and becomes too much, when you are not able to tolerate it and so
much energy is flowing around in your body that it makes you uneasy, your body
finds a way of throwing that energy out.
The sex center is a safety
valve. Wherever any energy is functioning, safety valves have to be there.
Nature has done the same.
If you are heating up a
kerosene pressure stove, some arrangement has to be there so that if you pump
in too much air, the excessive amount of air gets released. When you have
electrical fittings done in your house, fuses have to be provided so that if
excess current is drawn into a circuit the fuse will burn out, disconnecting
the flow of electricity. The fuse does not permit more than a certain amount of
energy to pass through it. As soon as too much current begins to be drawn, the
fuse will burn out because of the excess energy trying to flow and everything
will be safe again.
The body has a biological
safety valve through the sex center. Whenever excess energy accumulates in your
body and uneasiness grows and anxiety grips you, there is a struggle within
you, then it is necessary that either you become a witness and all this trouble
subsides, or the second possibility is that the energy flows out of your body
and you become weak. Then under the influence of that weakness all this trouble
cools down - because one needs strength even for the troubles to continue.
Therefore it is often the case
that weak people are gentle people. It does not mean that they actually are
gentle people, all it means is that they do not possess that much energy which
is necessary for doing evil.
Have you ever observed that fat
people are usually cheerful, very sociable, and usually not quarrelsome. Why?
If you ask a physiologist he will say that a fat person cannot fight; if he
does, he will be beaten, hence he becomes so sociable because he cannot afford
this fighting business. If he attempts it, he is bound to be beaten. So they
are always smiling. This smile means, no fighting, please; everything is alright,
no need to move into fighting.
A fat person cannot run. And in
a fight there are only two alternatives: either you fight or run away - and he
can do neither. So he becomes non-quarrelsome. But it does not mean he has
transcended fighting. No, in man everything lies deep within, and it is useful
to become aware of these things.
So whenever you are full of
anxiety, unhappiness and misery, desire will arise in your mind. Either you
become a witness, in which case the energy that is entangled in anxiety will be
released and, riding on it, you will set forth on the upward journey.... Or, if
you cannot become a witness, the energy which is making you restless, which has
created a cyclonic turmoil in you will be released through the safety valve of
the sex center; you will become weak and you will feel you have become lighter,
relieved.
Freud has described sex as a
natural tranquilizer, a soothing drug. Man returns home tired and weary from
the whole day of problems of all sorts and engulfed in anxieties. If he is able
to release the energy through sex, he falls asleep peacefully in the night.
This is the reason why women do
not take much interest in sex, because they very soon come to realize that they
are functioning only as a safety valve to the man. They soon discover that
there is no love or anything of the sort in it, it is all instrumental. They
soon come to realize that slowly, slowly they have become an instrument for
this man through whom he releases his energy and goes to sleep. And it often
happens that after intercourse the man turns over and falls asleep, whereas the
woman remains weeping because for her there cannot be a bigger insult than just
being used like a thing.
An unaccountable number of
women come and tell me that they have no interest at all in sex. The reason for
this is not their lack of interest in it, the whole reason is that man has used
them as a thing and their interest has turned sour. In fact the reality is just
the opposite; women are more sexual than men, they have more energy for sex.
But they do not appear sexual, instead they appear quite disinterested in sex.
Their attitude toward man appears to be, "Okay, take what you want and be
done with it. One less problem for me!" But they seem to have no more
interest than this. The reason for this is not that they do not have any sex
desire within, but because they have a feeling of hurt at their being used as a
thing. They are pained at being treated like a thing and not as individuals.
But all of this brings other results.
A man is able to release his
energy through sex, but what is the women supposed to do? So women turn
quarrelsome, nagging, overbearing. They throw out their energies through these
other routes twenty-four hours a day, because the sexual safety valve device is
not functioning for them, and they come to think this device is only for men.
Now this is a very paradoxical
thing. Women should be more sweet, but it does not happen that way; they should
be more gentle, but it does not happen that way; they should be more harmonious,
but it does not happen that way. What is the matter? Somewhere some mistake is
happening in the natural arrangements. And the mistake is, that what could have
been the natural outlet to their energies is blocked and they have lost
interest in it. To become a witness is arduous, so all those energies go on
circling within and they come out in different forms.
The woman will drop utensils
from her hands - usually it has to be chinaware, so it falls and breaks.
In this breaking, her energies
are getting an outlet. You can prepare a complete chart of such events to find
out yourself as to when such things happen more in your household. And you will
inevitably discover that they break more during the days when the energies of
the woman do not get released - then through so many methods like anger,
tension, etc. the woman will throw out her energy.
When there is great anxiety of
the mind, it runs toward indulging desires. Therefore this sutra says that on
the death of anxieties, all desires die. This is a very unique and ancient
sutra. And it is now that the psychologists are able to discover this. If you
become anxiety free, your desires will become very weak. If you become
completely anxiety free, your mind will not even move towards desires. Desires
become inevitable to release the storm when it arises within you beyond a
certain limit. When there are no storms of that intensity, the desires become
very weak. But the energy does not get weakened; the desires weaken, but the
energy goes on accumulating.
Everything gets transformed at
a certain limit. Water turns into steam when heated up to one hundred degrees.
On the accumulation of one hundred degrees of heat, the water then becomes
steam. When your semen, your energy, continues to become accumulated within to
a certain point - without any storms happening and with no necessity arising
for uselessly throwing the energy out - then suddenly, when the energy
accumulation reaches a certain level, which is like the hundred degree point,
it begins to rise upwards instead of flowing downwards.
Have you observed: water flows
downwards and steam rises upwards. Water, whose nature is to flow downwards,
suddenly at one hundred degrees temperature becomes steam and starts rising
upwards, towards the sky.
This is the phenomenon that
happens within you too: there is a point, a level, an evaporating point where
evaporation happens. When the energy accumulates up to that point, suddenly you
find that what used to flow outwards has begun to flow inwards, what was a sin
till yesterday has turned into a virtue, and what looked like an enemy till
yesterday, there is no greater friend than it - all this comes to be realized.
The cessation of desires is
emancipation.
When there is no desire you are
liberated. And one can be liberated while living, there is no need to be
liberated after dying. One who is unable to be liberated in life should not
hope that he will attain it on death, because one dies the same way one was
living. As you lived, so will you die; nothing different is going to happen in
dying. Death is the ultimate culmination of life. Only to a jivanamukta, the
one who has known liberation now and here, death becomes liberation while
living too.
Seeing all, everywhere, in
every direction, as brahma, the absolute reality - on the ripening of the
feeling of such goodwill do desires cease.
Never be negligent of your
allegiance to brahma, the absolute reality, because that is the only death -
say the ones who are well-rooted in brahma.
Even if shifted aside, the
algae do not lose time in covering the water again.
Similarly, even if a wise man
swerves from his allegiance to brahma even for a little while, illusions cover
him.
So it is necessary to keep
constant awareness. Losing awareness even for a moment will not do.
To remain aware is necessary up
to such a time as there remains not even the smallest quantity of algae or
grass within. When all algae and grass are burned in their very seed form then
there is no need for remaining aware, because awareness at that stage becomes
your very nature.
Enough for today.
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