Wheel And Axis – In Gita Verse 8.22 The Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is greater than all, is attainable by unalloyed devotion. Although He is present in His abode, He is all-pervading, and everything is situated within Him.
Krishna says that I am present in everything – means he says that my presence is like the axis of the wheel. Without the axis the wheel cannot move but the axis is always still. Unless we become aware of this centre which is non moving within us we will not realise our Godliness.
There has been a long misunderstanding about these two things: keeping the mind still and mindlessness. There have been many people who have thought that they are synonymous. They appear to be synonymous, but in reality they are as far apart as two things can be, and there is no way to bridge them.
So first let us try to find the exact meaning of these two words: The difference is very delicate. A man who is keeping his mind still and a man who has no mind will look exactly alike from the outside, because the man who is keeping his mind still is also silent. Underneath his silence there is great turmoil, but he is not allowing it to surface. He is in great control.
The man with no mind, or mindlessness, has nothing to control. He is just pure silence with nothing repressed, with nothing disciplined – just a pure empty sky.
Surfaces can be very deceptive. One has to be very alert about appearances, because they both look the same from the outside – both are silent. The problem would not have arisen if the still mind was not easy to achieve. It is easy to achieve. Mindlessness is not so easy to achieve; it is not cheap, it is the greatest treasure in the world.
Mind can play the game of being silent; it can play the game of being without any thoughts, any emotions, but they are just repressed, fully alive, ready to jump out at any moment. The so-called religions and their saints have fallen into the fallacy of stilling the mind. If you go on sitting silently, trying to control your thoughts, not allowing your emotions, not allowing any movement within you, slowly, slowly it will become your habit. This is the greatest deception in the world you can give to yourself, because everything is exactly the same, nothing has changed, but it appears as if you have gone through a transformation.
The state of no-mind or mindlessness is just the opposite of stilling the mind – it is getting beyond the mind. It is creating such a distance between yourself and the mind that the mind becomes the farthest star, millions of light years away, and you are just a watcher. When the mind is stilled you are the controller. When the mind is not, you are the watcher. These are the distinguishing marks.
When you are controlling something you are in tension; you cannot be without tension, because that which is controlled is continuously trying to revolt against you, that which is enslaved wants freedom. Your mind sooner or later will explode with vengeance.
The process of controlling and repressing and disciplining is taught by all religions, and because of their fallacious teaching humanity has not moved a single inch – it remains barbarous. Any moment people start killing each other. It does not take a single moment to lose themselves; they forget completely that they are human beings, and something much more, something better is expected of them. There have been very few people who have been able to avoid this deception of controlling their mind and believing that they have attained mindlessness.
To attain mindlessness a totally different process is involved: I call it the ultimate alchemy. It consists only of a single element – that of watchfulness.
Krishna says – A man who wants to enter into the world of mindlessness has to learn only one thing – a single step and the journey is over. That single step is to do everything watchfully. You move your hand watchfully; you open your eyes watchfully; you walk, you take your steps alert, aware; you eat, you drink, but never allow mechanicalness to take possession over you. This is the only alchemical secret of transformation.
A man who can do everything fully consciously becomes a luminous phenomenon. He is all light, and his whole life is full of fragrance and flowers. The mechanical man lives in dark holes, dirty holes. He does not know the world of light; he is like a blind man. The man of watchfulness is really the man who has eyes.
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