Refine Your Senses – In Gita Verse 8.12 The yogic situation is that of detachment from all sensual engagements. Closing all the doors of the senses and fixing the mind on the heart and the life air at the top of the head, one establishes himself in yoga.
Krishna is explaining to us what is the difference between us and Yogi? Not of renouncing the world but Yogi uses his energy to grow in consciousness and we use it for our desires which is the outcome of our repressed sexulality.
Life arises out of sex, life consists of sex. You can grow your sex to such a refinement that it can become love, it can become compassion. But if you block the very energy of sex by celibacy, you have destroyed all possibilities of your growth.
As I wrote in Bhagavad Gita Verse 8.11, blog – Real awareness, which always leads you beyond sex, and celibacy happens on its own accord.
Buddha is not for repression. Buddha is for transformation. Repression is very easy. You can repress your sex – that’s what so many saints are doing. You can drop out of society, you can run away from women. You can go to the Himalayan caves and sit there, and you can think that you have attained celibacy – but this is not celibacy. Sitting there in your Himalayan cave, you will still dream about women – even more so, because you will be so far away from women. Your fantasy will become more psychedelic and colourful. Of course, you will fight with it, but by fighting you can force the desire deep into your unconscious – you cannot uproot it. By fighting nobody is ever changed. Only by awareness is a person changed.
The practice of Yoga says that Go Beyond Indulgence and Repression: Become more watchful and anger will be less and greed will be less and jealousy will be less.
I don’t say to you: ‘don’t be angry,’ because that’s what has been said to you down the ages. Your so-called saints have been telling you, ‘Don’t be angry!’ so you have learned ways of repressing anger. But the more you repress anger, the bigger the unconscious you are creating in yourself. You are throwing things into the basement, and then you will be afraid to enter into the basement, because all these things – anger and greed and sex – are there. You know! You have been throwing them there. All kinds of rubbish are there, and are dangerous, poisonous. You will not be ready to go in.
That’s why people don’t want to go in, because going in means encountering all these things. And nobody wants to encounter these things; one wants to avoid them. For thousands of years you have been told to repress, and because of repression you have become more and more unconscious. I cannot say to you repress. I would like to say to you just the opposite: don’t repress – watch, be alert.
When anger arises, sit down in your room, close your doors and watch it.
You know only two ways: either to be angry, be violent, destructive, or to repress it. You don’t know the third way, and the third way is the way of the buddhas: neither indulge nor repress – watch.
Indulgence creates habits. If you become angry today and again tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow again, you are creating a habit; you are conditioning yourself to be more and more angry. So indulgence cannot take you out of it.
That’s where the modern growth movement is stuck. Encounter groups, primal therapy, gestalt, bioenergetics…and so many beautiful things are happening in the world, but they are stuck at a certain point. Their problem is: they teach expression – and it is good, it is far better than repression.
If there is only this choice, repress or express, then I would suggest – express. But this is not the real choice; there is a third alternative, far more important than both these.
If you express; you become habitual; you learn by doing it again and again – you can’t get out of it.
It is just to balance the thousands of years of repression; it is just to balance. It is just to bring to light all that you have repressed as Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jainas, Buddhists. It is just to undo the centuries’ old harm that has been done to you.
But remember, these groups are not the end; they only prepare you for meditation. They are not the goal; they are just simple means to undo the wrong of the past.
Once you have thrown out of your system all that you have been repressing all along, then you have to move into watchfulness. Now it will be easier to watch.
Indulgence creates habit, repression gathers the poison within. In indulgence you throw the poison on others, but they are not going to remain silent – they will throw it back. It becomes a match: you throw your anger on others, they throw their anger on you – but nobody is helped, everybody is harmed and hurt.
And if you repress…. Because of this futility of indulgence, priests invented repression. It keeps you out of danger. Repression keeps you a good citizen, a gentleman. It keeps you out of the dangers of getting caught by the law, getting caught into enmity; it keeps you smooth. Repression helps you to become a better social person, that’s true. But it makes you a wound inside, just a wound, and the pus goes on gathering inside. Outside it functions as a lubricating agent, but inside you become more and more mad.
Meditate – meditation means watchfulness – and you will attain freedom and bliss.
Krishna says that be watchful, and you will be detached from all sensual engagements. Closing all the doors of the senses and fixing the mind on the heart and the life air at the top of the head, one establishes himself in yoga. You also will start growing in consciousness, which is the ultimate goal of human life, human birth.
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