“Doubt” – Sanskrit has many words for doubt, English has only one word. So try to understand, I will explain to you. There is a doubt against trust. In Sanskrit it is called shanka – doubt against trust, one pair. Then there is a doubt called sanshaya – Patanjali is talking about sanshaya now – doubt against certainty, against decisiveness. A man of uncertainty, a man who is not decisive, he is in sanshaya – in doubt. This is not against trust because trust is to trust in somebody. This is against self-confidence; you don’t trust in yourself. That’s a different thing.
So whatsoever you do, you are not certain whether you want to do it or don’t want to do it, whether it will be good to go into it or not – an indecisiveness. With an indecisive mind, you cannot enter on the path – not on the path of Patanjali. You have to be decisive. You have to make a decision. Difficult it is because a part of you always goes on saying no. Then how to take the decision? Think about as much as you can; give it as much time as you can. Think about all the possibilities, all the alternatives and then decide. And once you decide, then drop all doubting.
Before that, use it: do whatsoever you can do with the doubt. Think about all the possibilities and then choose. Of course it is not going to be a total decision; in the beginning it is not possible. It will be a major decision – majority of your mind will say yes. Once you decide, then never doubt. The doubt will raise its head. You simply say, “I have decided – finished It is not a total decision; all doubts are not discarded. But whatsoever could be done, I have done. I have thought it out as completely as it was possible and I have chosen.”
Once you choose then never give doubt again any cooperation, because doubt exists in you through your cooperation. You go on giving energy to it, and again and again you start thinking about it. Then an indecisiveness is created. Indecisiveness is a very bad state of affairs – you are in a very bad shape. If you cannot decide anything, how can you do it? How can you act?
How Aum – the sound and the meditation – will help? It helps, because once you become silent, peaceful decisions become easier. Then you are no more a crowd, not a chaos: many voices talking together and you don’t know which voice is yours. Aum, the chanting, the meditating on it – voices become silent. Many voices – now you can see they are not yours. Your mother is speaking, your father is speaking, your brothers, your teachers, they are not yours. You can discard them easily because they don’t need any attention.
When you become silent under the chanting of Aum, you are sheltered, calm, quiet, collected. In that collected-ness you can see which is the real voice which is coming from you, which is authentic. It is as if you are standing in a marketplace, and many people are talking and many things are going on, and you cannot decide what is happening. In a share-market, people are shouting – they know their language – you cannot understand what is happening, whether they have gone mad or not.
Then you move to a Himalayan retreat. You sit in a cave, you simply chant. You simply calm down yourself, all nervousness disappears, you become one, collected. In that moment, decisiveness is possible. And then decide, and then don’t look back. Then forget – it is decided and decided. Now there is no going back. Then go ahead.
Sometimes the doubt will follow, bark at you just like a dog. But if you don’t listen, don’t pay attention, by and by it stops. Give it a chance, think all that is possible, and once decided, drop it, and aumkar will help you to come to a decisiveness. Here, doubt means indecisiveness, carelessness. The Sanskrit word is pramad. The pramad means as if one is walking in sleep. Carelessness is part of it; the exact translation will be, “Don’t be a zombie: don’t walk in hypnosis.”
But you live in hypnosis not knowing it at all. The whole society is trying to hypnotize you for certain things, and that creates pramad: that creates a sleepiness in you. What is happening? You are not aware, otherwise you will be simply surprised what is happening. It is so familiar. That’s why you don’t become aware. You are being pulled by many manipulators, and their method of manipulating you is creating hypnosis in you.
For example, on every radio, on every TV screen, on every film, on every newspaper, magazine, they go on advertising for a certain thing – “Lux toilet soap”. You think you are not affected, but every day you hear, “Lux toilet soap, Lux toilet soap, Lux toilet soap”. It is a chanting. In the night, on the streets, neon lights say “Lux toilet soap.” And now they have found it out that if you flicker the light it is more impressive. If it goes on and off, then it is even more impressive because then you have to read it again: “Lux toilet soap”. Then the light goes on, comes again, and you have to read it again: “Lux toilet soap”.
You are chanting Aum It is going deeper in your subconscious. You think you are not bothered, you think you are not befooled by these people – all these beautiful naked women standing near Lux toilet soap and saying, “Why am I beautiful? Why is my face so beautiful? Because of Lux toilet soap.” You know that you are not, but you are affected. Suddenly, one day you go to the market, go to the shop, and you ask for a Lux toilet soap. The shopkeeper asks, “Which soap?” Then suddenly it bubbles up: “Lux toilet soap.”
You are being hypnotized by businessmen, political leaders, educationists, priests, because everybody has an investment in you if you are hypnotized. Then you can be used. The politicians go on saying that “This is your mother country, and if the mother country is in difficulty, go to the war: become a martyr.”
What nonsense The whole earth is your mother. Is earth divided into India, Pakistan, Germany, England, or is it one? But the politicians are continuously hammering your mind that only this part of the earth is your mother; you have to save it. Even if your life is lost, it is very good. And they go on: devotion to the country, nationalism, patriotism – all nonsense terms, but if they are hammered continuously, you become hypnotized. Then you can sacrifice yourself.
You are sacrificing your life in a hypnosis because of slogans. A flag, an ordinary piece of cloth, becomes so important through hypnosis. This is “our national flag” – millions can die for it. If there are beings on other planets and they look sometimes at the earth, they will think, “These people are simply mad.” For a cloth – a piece of cloth – because you have insulted “our flag”, and this Cannot be tolerated…
Then religions go on preaching: you are a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan, this and that, and they make you feel that you are a Christian, and then you are on a crusade: “Kill others who are not Christians. This is your duty And they teach you such absurd things, but you still believe because they go on saying it. Adolf Hitler says in his autobiography, “Mein Kampf”, that if you repeat a lie continuously it becomes a truth. And he knows. Nobody knows as well as he knows because he repeated himself and created the phenomenon.
Pramad means a state of hypnosis, manipulated, moving sleepily. Then carelessness is bound to come because you are not yourself. Then you do everything without any care. You move and stumble on. In relationship with things, with persons, you continuously are stumbling; you are not going anywhere, you are just like a drunkard. But everybody else is just like you, so you don’t have the opportunity to feel that you are a drunkard.
Be careful. How will Aum help you to be careful? It will drop hypnosis. In fact, if you simply chant Aum without meditating, it will also become a hypnosis: that is the difference between the ordinary chanting of a mantra and Patanjali’s way. Chant it and remain aware.
If you chant Aum and remain aware, this Aum and its chanting will become a dehypnotizing force. It will destroy all the hypnosis that exists around you, that has been created in you by the society and the manipulators, politicians. It will be a de-hypnotization.
Once it was asked in America, somebody asked Vivekananda “What is the difference between ordinary hypnosis and your chanting of Aum?” He said, “Chanting of Aum is a dehypnosis: it is moving in the reverse gear.” The process seems to be the same, but the gear is reversed. And how does it become reverse? If you are meditating also, then by and by you become so silent and so aware, so careful, that nobody can hypnotize you. Now you are beyond the reach of priests and politicians – the prisoners. Now, for the first time, you are an individual, and then you become careful. Then you move with care, each step with care because millions are the pitfalls all around you.
“Laziness” – alasya: there is much laziness accumulated in you. It comes for certain reasons – because you don’t see the point of doing anything. And even if you do, nothing is achieved. If you don’t do it, nothing is lost. Then a laziness settles in the heart. Laziness means simply that you have lost the zest for life.
Children are not lazy. They are bubbling with energy. You have to force them to go to sleep; you have to force them to be silent; you have to force them to sit for a few minutes in order to relax. They are not tense: this is your idea. They are full of energy – such tiny beings with so much energy From where this energy comes? They are still unfrustrated. They don’t know that in this life, whatsoever you do nothing is achieved. They are unaware – blissfully unaware: that’s why so much energy.
And you have been doing many things, and nothing is achieved – laziness settles. It is like dust settling in you – of all failures, frustrations, every dream gone sour. It settles Then you become lazy. In the morning, you think, “For what to get up again? For what” There is no answer. You have to get up because somehow bread is to be earned. And there is a wife, and there are children, and you are caught in the trap. You move to the office somehow; you come back somehow. There is no zest You drag. You are not happy doing anything.
How the chanting of Aum and meditating on it will help it? It helps – certainly helps, because when for the first time you chant Aum and watch and meditate, the first effort in your life seems to bring a fulfillment. You feel so happy chanting it, you feel so blissful chanting it, that the first effort has succeeded.
Now a new zest arises. The dust is being thrown. A new courage, a new confidence is attained. Now you think you also can do something, you can also achieve something. Everything is not a failure. Maybe the outward journey is a failure, but the inward journey is not a failure. Even the first step brings so many flowers. Now hope arises; confidence settles again. You are again a child – of the inner world… a new birth. You can again laugh, run, play. Again you are born.
This is what Hindus call the twice-born. This is the next birth, a second birth. The first birth was in the outside world. It has proved a failure; that’s why you feel so lethargic. And by the time one is forty, one starts thinking of death – how to die, how to be finished.
If people don’t commit suicide, it is not that they are happy. It is only simply because they don’t see even any hope even in death. Even death seems to be hopeless. It is not because they love life that they are not committing suicide – no. They are so frustrated that they know that even death is not going to give anything. So why commit unnecessarily? Why take the trouble? So go on as things are.
Tags: Patanjali Yoga Sutra 9 Doubt
