Conditioning – In Gita Verse 15.7 The living entities in this conditioned world are My eternal fragmental parts. Due to conditioned life, they are struggling very hard with the six senses, which include the mind.
Krishna says that even though everything in this existence is My eternal fragments. Because of conditioning there’s dust on their consciousness.
Religions have been conditioning you, politicians have been conditioning you: you are a conditioned mechanism. Only through meditation is there a possibility to uncondition the mind. Only a meditator goes beyond conditioning. Why? Because every conditioning works through thoughts. If you feel you are a Hindu, what is it? – A cluster of thoughts given to you when you were not even aware of what was being given to you. A cluster of thoughts and you are a Christian, a Catholic, a Protestant. Only in meditation thoughts dissolve – all thoughts. You become thoughtless. In that thought-less state of mind there is no conditioning: you are no longer a Hindu, nor a Christian, nor a Communist, nor a Fascist. You are no longer anybody – you are simply yourself. For the first time all conditioning has been dropped. You are out of the prison.
Only meditation can uncondition you. No social revolution will help, because the revolutionaries will again condition you in their way. In 1917 Russia went through a revolution. Before it, it was one of the most orthodox Christian countries. The Russian Church was one of the most orthodox – more orthodox than the Vatican – but then, suddenly, Russians changed everything. Churches were closed – they were converted into schools, Communist Party offices, hospitals – religious teaching was banned, and they started conditioning people for Communism. Within ten years everybody was an atheist. Just in ten years! By the year 1927 the whole of religion disappeared from Russia; they conditioned anew.
But it is the same: whether you condition a man as a Catholic, Christian, or you condition a man as a Communist, it makes no difference, because the whole question is of conditioning. You condition, you don’t give him freedom – what difference does it make whether you live in a Christian hell or a Hindu hell, or you live in a Christian slavery or a Hindu slavery? What difference does it make? There is no difference. If you live in a Hindu prison, hmm?…Just the label. Then someday there comes revolution: they tear away the label; they put “Communist Prison.” Then you are happy and rejoicing that you are free – in the same prison! Only the words change. First you were taught there is a God, he created the world; now you are taught there is no God and nobody has created the world; but both things are being taught to you.
And religion cannot be taught. All that can be taught will be politics. That’s why religion itself has been the greatest form of politics in the past. And there is no possibility of any social revolution, because all revolutions will again condition you.
With this question will arise how to de-condition our brain?
There has never been any consciousness which has not been programmed. In the very upbringing comes the programming. Even if the child is brought up not by you but by wolves in the wild, the wolves will program the child.
There have been cases… Just a few years ago a twelve years old child was found who had been brought up by the wolves in the forest in north India. He could not stand even on his two feet. He ran like a wolf; even the best runner could not manage to keep pace with him. He had been programmed by the wolves.
The problem is, you have to bring the child up, and somebody has to take care, and whoever is going to take care is going to, knowingly or unknowingly, condition the mind of the child. It is not a question that you have to program consciously. But how the child will learn the language… It is a program. That’s why every language is called the mother tongue, because the child never finds the father speaking in the presence of the mother. Naturally he is conditioned by his mother.
There is no possibility of anybody being brought up unprogrammed.
And we have a question, “Are there any techniques to de-condition our brain?” There are techniques to de-condition, but that is re-programming. You can call it deconditioning, but in fact, what are you doing? You are putting B in place of A. The only possibility is meditation; that’s why meditation should not be called a technique. It is simply relaxing into your own inner world, alone – without a guide, without scriptures – and becoming so silent that not a single ripple of thought remains. That’s the only way of canceling all programming.
Meditation is the only way – not the technique – in which you can find your self-nature, your Buddha-nature in its purity, in its virginity, untouched by anybody. But there are people who are trying to de-program; in fact they are simply re-programming.
Krishna says there is only one possibility: that is individual flowering of no-mind. You attain thoughtlessness. then nobody can condition you, then all conditionings drop. Then, for the first time, you are free. Then the whole space is yours: without any limitations, without any walls, in life you move, you live, you love, you rejoice, you delight. In that space you will have your own experience that you are part of Whole, Me.
Tags: Conditioning
