Wake-Up – In Gita Verse 2.67 As a strong wind sweeps away a boat on the water, even one of the roaming senses on which the mind focuses can carry away a man’s intelligence.
Krishna says by giving an example of the boat which we also have noticed many times that strong wind can sweep away a boat, but never realised that our unconsciousness also sweeps away our consciousness. We pass through many circumstances but so unconsciously. We don’t want to take our own responsibility. We just want to live in our unconsciousness, where we feel safe. We don’t want to wake-up. We want to run away from ourselves.
It is not only you; almost everybody is running as fast as he can from himself. And the problem is, you cannot run away from yourself.
Wherever you go you will be yourself.
The fear is of knowing oneself. It is the greatest fear in the world. It is because you have been so immensely condemned by everybody for the smallest things – for the smallest mistakes, which are absolutely human – that you have become afraid of yourself. You know that you are not worthy.
That idea has sunk very deep into your unconscious – that you are not deserving, that you are utterly worthless. Naturally, the best way is to get away from yourself. Everybody is doing it in different ways: somebody is running for money, somebody is running for power, somebody is running for respectability, somebody is running for virtue, saintliness.
But if you look deep down, they are not running for anything, they are running away from. This is just an excuse, that somebody is running after money madly; he is deceiving himself and the whole world. The reality is that money gives him a good excuse to run after it, and hides the fact that he is running from himself. That’s why when he accumulates money; he comes to a point of tremendous despair and anguish. What has happened? That was his goal; he has achieved it – he should be the happiest man in the world.
But the people who succeed are not the happiest people in the world, they are the most miserable. What is their anguish? Their anguish is that their whole effort has failed. Now there is no more to run after, and suddenly they are encountering themselves. At the highest peak of their success they meet nobody else but themselves. Strangely enough, this is the fellow they have been running from.
You cannot run from yourself. On the contrary, you have to come closer to yourself, deeper into your being, and to drop all the condemnatory tones that have been handed over to you by everybody you have known in your life. The parents, the husband, the wife, the neighbours, the teachers, the friends, the enemies, everybody is pointing to something that is wrong in you. From no source comes any appreciation.
Humanity has created a very strange situation for itself in which nobody is at ease, nobody can relax, because the moment you relax you face yourself. Relaxation becomes almost a mirror, and you don’t want to see your face because you are so much impressed by the condemnatory opinions of others.
That is one of the reasons why people are also afraid of solitude; they want a crowd, they want always to have people surrounding them, they want friends. It is very difficult for people to remain silent and peaceful in – aloneness. The reason is that in aloneness you are left with yourself – and you have accepted the stupid idea that you are ugly, that you are sensuous, that you are lustful, that you are greedy, that you are violent; there is nothing that can be appreciated in you.
Going inwards is the whole secret of all alchemical transformation of being. Running away is simply wasting tremendous valuable time, and a life that could have been a great song, a great creativity, a tremendous festival of lights. The farther away you are from yourself, the darker your life will become, the more miserable, more anxiety ridden, more wounded, condemned, rejected by yourself.
Krishna says to Arjuna that because of your unconsciousness what you are seeing is your rejection from Kauravas. In that your consciousness has swept away. You are miserable and want to run away from this war, but you are not actually running away from war you are running away from yourself, which is your consciousness.
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