From Yoga Sutra 10, we will have few questions.
DO POSITIVE THOUGHTS BRING HAPPENINGS TOO? – LIKE WISHING FOR ENLIGHTENMENT.
THAT IS TOO MUCH ASKING from positive thoughts because enlightenment is beyond duality: it is neither negative nor positive. When both the polarities are dropped, it happens. With positive thoughts many things are possible – not enlightenment.
You can be happy, but not blissful. Happiness comes and goes; the opposite always exists with it. When you are happy, just by the side of happiness, unhappiness is waiting for its own time. It is standing in the queue. When you are loving, it is positive; hate is waiting for its own time.
Positive cannot go beyond duality. It is good as far as it goes, but to ask enlightenment from it is too much. Never expect that. Negative has to be dropped to attain the positive. Positive has also to be dropped to attain the beyond. First drop the negative, then drop the positive; then nothing is left. That nothingness is enlightenment; then there is no more mind.
Mind is either negative or positive, happy, unhappy, loving, hateful; anger, compassion, day and night, birth and death – all belong to mind. But you don’t belong to mind. You are beyond it – encased in the mind, but beyond it.
Enlightenment is not of the mind. It is of you. The realization that “I am not the mind” is enlightenment. If you remain negative you remain in the valley part of the mind. If you are positive, you attain to the peak part of the mind. But neither transcends the mental plane of your being: drop both.
It is difficult to drop the positive. It is easy to drop the negative because the negative gives you misery. It is a hell; you can drop it. But look at the misfortune: you have not even dropped that. You cling to the negative also. You cling to misery as if it is a treasure. You cling to your unhappiness just because it has become an old habit, and you need something to cling. Not finding anything, you cling to your hell. But, remember, to drop the negative is easy, howsoever difficult it seems. Compared to the positive it is very easy because it is misery.
To drop the positive means to drop the happiness; to drop the positive means to drop all that looks like flowers, all that is beautiful. The negative is the ugly, positive is the beautiful. The negative is death, positive is life. But if you can drop the negative… so take the first step. First feel the misery, how much misery is given by the negative to you. Just watch how misery arises out of it: just watch and feel. The very feeling that the negative is creating misery will become the dropping.
But the mind has a very deep trick. Whenever you are miserable, it always says somebody else is responsible. Be alert, because if you are a victim of this trick then the negative can never be dropped. This is how the negative is hiding itself. You are angry. The mind says somebody has insulted and that’s why you are angry – that is not right. Somebody may have insulted, but that is just an excuse. You were already waiting to be angry. Anger was accumulating within you, otherwise somebody would have insulted – there would have been no anger.
The insult may become the visible cause of it, but it is not really the cause. You are boiling within. In fact, the person who insults you helps you. He helps you to bring your inner turmoil out and be finished with it. You are in such bad shape that even insults help you. The enemy helps you because he helps you to bring all negativity out. At least you are unburdened for a time being.
Mind has this trick to always divert your consciousness towards the other. Immediately something goes wrong and you start looking who has done this. In that looking you miss, and the real culprit is hiding behind.
Make it an absolute law that whenever something is wrong, immediately close the eyes and look for the real culprit. And you will be able to see because it is the truth. It is a reality. It is true that you accumulate anger; that’s why you become angry. It is true that you accumulate hate; that’s why you feel hatred. The other is not a real cause. In Sanskrit, they have two terms. One term is karan – the real cause, and another term is nimitta – the unreal cause. And the nimitta, the unreal cause which appears as cause but is not the cause, befools you. It has been befooling you for many, many lives.
Immediately close the eyes and go in whenever you feel something miserable happening, because that is the right moment to catch the culprit red handed. Otherwise you will not be able to catch it. When the anger has disappeared, you will close the eyes. You will not find anything there. In a red-hot situation, don’t miss the point. Make it a meditation.
And if you start feeling no need is there for any method to drop the negative… Negative is so ugly, it is such a disease – how you are carrying it is amazing. Dropping is nothing; carrying is amazing. It has riddled all the Buddhas – how you carry and why you carry all of your diseases so lovingly? You are so careful about them; you protect all that is wrong. Protected, it gets deeper and deeper roots in you.
Once realized that this is my own negativity which creates the problem, it falls by itself. And then there is a beauty, when the negative mind falls by itself. If you try to drop it, it will cling – because the very effort to drop it shows that your understanding is not mature. All renunciation is immaturity; you are not ripe for it. That’s why effort is needed to drop it. I am carrying rubbish; do I need any effort to drop it, except the understanding that this is rubbish? If I need any effort to drop it, that means I am supplementing my understanding with effort. Understanding itself is not enough – that’s why effort is needed.
All those who have known, they say effort is needed because your understanding is not there. It may be an intellectual thing, but really you have not felt the situation, otherwise you simply drop it. A snake passes the path; you simply jump. There is no effort in the jump. You don’t decide to jump; you don’t make a logical syllogism within you that “There is a snake, and wherever there is a snake there is danger; hence, I must jump.” You don’t make a logical step-by-step syllogism. Even Aristotle will jump. Later on he can make the syllogism, but right now, when the snake is there, the snake doesn’t bother about your logic, and the whole situation is so dangerous… the very understanding that the situation is dangerous is enough.
For the negative to drop, no effort is needed – only understanding. Then arises the real problem: how to drop the positive – because it is so beautiful. And for you who have not known the beyond, it is the ultimate in happiness – so happy. Look at a couple in love; look at their eyes, the way they walk hand in each other’s hand: they are happy. Tell them to drop this positive mind and they will think, “are you crazy?” For this they have been waiting and now it has happened. And here comes a Buddha and says, “Drop it.”
When somebody is succeeding, reaching higher and higher on the ladder, tell him to drop it. That is his very purpose, in his eyes. And if he even thinks to drop it, he knows he will drop in misery.
Because from the positive where you will move? – You know only two possibilities: positive or negative. If you drop the positive, you move to the negative. That’s why negative has to be dropped first so there is nothing to move to the negative. Otherwise, if you drop the positive, immediately the negative enters. If you are not happy, then what will you be? – Unhappy! If you are not silent, what will you be? – A chatterbox! Hence, drop the negative first so one alternative is closed – you cannot move that way. Otherwise energy has a routine movement from positive to negative, from negative to positive. If the negative exists, there is every possibility the moment you drop the positive you will become the negative.
Tags: Patanjali You Are Beyond
