VBT – Meditation 13.3
Conditioning And Discipline
If you are not aware of your roots, of your centre, you can never be aware of your death. Death is only for man. It exists only for man because only man can become aware of his roots, aware of his centre, aware of his totality and his rootedness in the universe.
If you live without a centre, if you feel you are an outsider, then anguish will result. However, if you feel that you are at home, that you are a growth, a realisation of the potentiality of the existence itself – as if existence itself has become aware in you, as if it has gained awareness in you – if you feel that way, if you really realise that way, the result will be bliss.
Bliss is the result of an organic unity with the universe, and anguish is the result of an enmity. But unless you know the centre you are bound to feel a thrownness, as if life has been forced upon you.
The Hara, which is located two inches below the navel, “That is the centre from where one enters life and that is the centre from where one dies and goes out of life. So that is the contact centre between the body and the soul. If you feel a sort of wavering left and right and you don’t know where your centre is, that simply shows that you are no more in contact with your Hara, so you have to create that contact.”
Once one becomes aware of the Hara, many things start happening. “For example, there will be less thinking because energy will not move to the head; it will go to the hara. The more you think of the hara, the more you concentrate there, the more you will find a discipline arising in you. That comes naturally; it has not to be forced.
The more you are aware of the Hara, the less you will become afraid of life and death – because that is the centre of life and death. Once you become attuned to the Hara centre, you can live courageously. Courage arises out of it: less thinking, more silence, less uncontrolled moments, natural discipline, courage and a rootedness, a groundedness.”
The Difference Between Conditioning And Discipline?
There is a great difference. They are totally different dimensions, and not only different but diametrically opposite too. Conditioning is something forced from the outside upon you against your will, against your consciousness. It is to destroy you, it is to manipulate you. It is to create a pseudo personality so that your essential man is lost.
Discipline is totally different. Discipline is out of your own choice; it is out of your own will. Discipline, the very word, comes from a root which means learning. Discipline means you start learning on your own, because nobody seems to teach you the truth. People are interested in teaching you Hinduism, communism, Mohammedanism; nobody is interested in teaching you the truth. When you start seeking, searching, learning, on your own – knowing perfectly well that nobody is going to support you, you have to go alone – discipline begins.
Discipline is your protection against conditioning. Discipline is your effort to get rid of all conditioning. Discipline is your rebellion, your revolution.
To be a disciple simply means to be with a man who is not going to condition you. A master is one who unconditions you. That is the definition of a true master: one who UNconditions you, simply unconditions you, and does not REcondition you.
Discipline comes out of your own inner feelings, out of your own love. It is surrender but it is not a slavery. It is a surrender but not a slavery because YOU are doing it. If it is forced, then it is slavery, then it is conditioning.
Avoid all conditioning situations. Avoid people who condition you, even though they say it is for your own sake; even though they say it is for your own good, beware of all those poisoners.
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