As If – In Gita Verse 18.16 Therefore one who thinks himself the only doer, not considering the five factors, is certainly not very intelligent and cannot see things as they are.
Krishna says one who is identified with the body, doer cannot see things as they are.
One philosopher has written a very strange book. The book is called THE PHILOSOPHY OF AS-IF.
Really, this is our whole lives. We behave as if we are bodies; we behave as if we are material. We behave always not as we are, but AS IF – the “as if” is always there. How does this happen? – This which is impossible – how does this impossibility happen? What is the key? What is the clue?
The clue is very simple. The logic in the trick is very simple. You begin to be identified with anything which is pleasurable, because if you feel identified with the pleasure, you can feel more pleasure.
If you do not feel identified with pleasure, then you cannot feel pleasure at all, really. So the lover begins to feel identified with the beloved, the friend with the friend, the father with his son, the mother with her son; they begin to feel identified. The mother feels as if she is living, in the son, and that if the son succeeds, the mother succeeds. If the son achieves, the father achieves. Then the son becomes just an extended part of the father’s ego.
With whatsoever we feel as pleasure, we begin to be identified. The moment the son becomes rebellious or becomes a criminal, the father tries to destroy the identification. He says, “Now, no more. You don’t belong to me at all.” Why? Why does the son belong at all?
Let me tell you one anecdote – he is an old man, an old politician, with many ambitions unfulfilled, obviously. A politician can never feel fulfilled. That is intrinsically impossible. He is now seventy-five. His son died; he was only forty, but he was a minister in a state.
The son was a minister; this old man could never be a minister, he had tried in every way. And now he says, “There were many chances but I just escaped; I never wanted to be in any post.” He had tried everything possible, but now he says that he is beyond. But his son was a minister… he had two sons – one was just ordinary; the second was extraordinary. The old man has never felt identified with the first son – never. His identity was with the second one, who was a minister. Then the second son died, and this old man began to feel that he could not live anymore.
He went to a wise man and asked, “What to do? I think of committing suicide, I cannot live anymore. My son has died; my young son has died, and I am old and I am still…. It is not good – the father should die first.”
Wise man asked him, “Had your son been a criminal, bad, evil, unsuccessful, would you have felt the same?”
He pondered over it and said, “No.” Then a wise man told him, “It is not the death of the son which has become so significant to you, really – it is your death, your ambition’s death.”
Wise man asked him, “If your other son dies, will you commit suicide?” He said, “I have never loved him at all. He is just ordinary.” He loved his ambition, not his son. The other son is as much a son, but there has been no communication between the two, ever. They have not even talked. He said, “No, if he had not been up to my conceptions I would not have felt like this.”
The ego begins to be identified with something which is pleasurable. And this is the logic of our minds, the logic of this whole illusion, that we feel that our body is the source of pleasure. Of course there are pains and there are sufferings, but we always transfer pains and sufferings to others.
Suffering is always created by someone else.
We continue to be identified with the body because we feel this is the source of pleasure. Whenever someone else’s body becomes the source of pleasure, we begin to be identified with that also. But always, pain comes from someone else; suffering comes from someone else. With this trick, this deep involvement in identification becomes possible.
The truth, the fact, is quite different: the body is both OR neither. Either it is both the source of pain and pleasure…. Remember this; it is both, because it cannot be one or the other. Pleasure and pain are ONE. Your body is the source of BOTH. If you can feel this and realise this, then they both negate each other; the pain and the pleasure both negate each other and the body becomes neutral. Or, feel that pleasure and pain both come from outside, both are devices. They both come from outside; don’t divide, take them as a whole. Then also there is no identification with the body; the body is neutral.
And if the body is neutral, this rishi says you become a soul; otherwise, you are a conditioned soul.
Krishna says this conditioned soul is the bondage; this conditioning is the bondage. This is the only disease, the spiritual disease: to be conditioned so much, identified so much with the body that one begins to feel as if one is the body. This “as if” must be broken.
Tags: As If
