Transitory Stage

There will be few questions from Yoga Sutra 12

NATURE ABHORS DISORDER, AND DISORDER SETTLES ITSELF AUTOMATICALLY IN DUE TIME. THEN WHY HAS THE WORLD ALWAYS BEEN IN CHAOS AND DISORDER?

THE WORLD has never been in chaos and disorder, only the mind. The world is absolutely orderly. It is not a chaos, it is a cosmos. Only the mind is always in chaos, and will always be in chaos.

Something has to be understood: the very nature of the mind is to be in chaos because it is a transitory stage. From nature to supernature, the mind is just a transition. No transitory stage can be in order. How can it be in order? When you move from one stage to another, the inbetween is bound to be in chaos.

There is no way to put the mind in order. When you are transcending nature and moving into supernature, changing from the outer to the inner, changing from the material to the spiritual, there is bound to be a gap between the two when you are nowhere, when you don’t belong to this world and you yet don’t belong to the other. This is the chaos – this has been left, and death has not been achieved yet. In the middle, everything is a disorder. And if you remain in the middle, then you will always be in chaos. Mind has to be transcended. It is not something to live with.

It is like a bridge: it has to be crossed, the other shore has to be attained. And you have made a house on the bridge. You have started to live on the bridge. You have become attached to the mind. You are in a trap because you are nowhere. And how can you settle in the land of nowhere?

The past will go on inviting you, “Come back, come back to the shore you have left.” And there is no going back because you cannot move in time backwards. There is only one going, and that is forward, ahead. The past goes on having deep influence on you because you are on the bridge, and even the past seems to be better than to be on the bridge. Even a small hut is better than to be on the bridge. At least it is a house; you are not on the road.

Continuously the past of human beings, the animal hood, has an appeal. It says, “Regress back.” It says, “There is no going away.” The animal within you goes on calling you, “Come back.” And it has appeal, because compared to the bridge it is better. But you cannot go back. Once a step has been taken it cannot be undone. Once you move ahead, you cannot go back. You can cherish the dream and you can waste your energy, the same energy which would have led you ahead.

But going back is not possible. How can a young man become a child again? And how can an old man become a young man again? That’s not possible, even if biologically some day it becomes feasible that science helps your body to become young again. That’s possible because man is very cunning, and it can deceive the cells of the body. It can give them a new program and they can regress, but your mind will remain old. Your body may become young, but how can you become young? All that you have experienced will be with you. It cannot be thrown back.

One cannot regress. The shore that is left is left forever. You cannot become an animal again. It is better to drop that appeal and infatuation of going back. The sooner you drop it, the better. Man enjoys things which give him a feeling of the past, of animal-hood. That’s why sex has so much appeal. That’s why people become food addicts, go on eating, obsessed with food. That’s why greed, anger, jealousy, hate have appeal: they belong to the animal kingdom. There is the shore that you have left, the shore of the animal kingdom, and there is another shore that you have not yet reached, not even in your dreams – the kingdom of God. And between these two, you stand in the mind. You cannot go back. It is difficult to move ahead because the past goes on pulling you and the future remains unknown, vague, like a mist. The other shore you cannot see; it is not visible, not that it is very far away. The shore that you have left is visible. The other shore that you are approaching is invisible by its very nature – not that it is very far away; that’s why it is invisible. Even when you have attained to it, it will remain invisible. That is its nature.

The animal is too; much visible. Where is God? Has anybody ever seen God? – Nobody. Because it is not a question of your seeing or not seeing. God is invisibility, the very unknowability, the very incomprehensibility. Those who have attained they also say they have not seen, and they have attained!

Because God cannot be an object. It is the deepest depth of your own being. How can you see it? The shore that you have left is in the outside world, and the shore that you are approaching is in the inside world. The shore that you have left was objective; the shore that you are approaching is subjective. It is the very subjectivity of your being. You cannot objectify it. You cannot see it. It is nothing which can be reduced to an object and you can see it. It is the seer, not the seen. It is the knower, not the known. It is you in your deepest core of being.

The mind cannot go back, and cannot comprehend where to go ahead. It remains in chaos, always uprooted, always moving, not knowing where, always ongoing. The mind is a search. When the goal is attained only then the search disappears.

Remember: look at the world; it is a cosmos. The sun rises every morning without fault, infallibly. And the night follows day, and again day follows night. And in the night sky, millions and millions of stars move on their path. Seasons follow each other. If man is not there, where is chaos? Everything is as it should be: the ocean will go on roaring and the sky will go on again and again being filled by clouds, and the rain will come, and the winter, and the summer, and everything moves in a perfect wheel. There is no chaos anywhere except within you, because nature is settled wherever it is. Nature is not progressing anywhere. In nature there is no evolution. In God also, there is no evolution. Nature is happy in its unconsciousness, and God is blissful in his consciousness.

You are in trouble between the two. You are tense. Neither are you unconscious, nor are you conscious – just hovering like a ghost. You are not anchored anywhere. Without any roots, without any home, how the mind can be at ease? It seeks, gropes – finds nothing. Then more and more you get worked up, more and more frustrated, more and more irritated. What is happening to you? You are in a rut. This will continue unless you learn something which can un-mind you, which can void the mind.

That is what meditation is all about. Meditation is a way of un-minding your being, of dropping the mind, of moving from the bridge, moving into the unknown, taking a jump into the mysterious. That’s why I say don’t calculate, because calculation is of the mind. That’s why I say the spiritual search is not step by step; spiritual search is a sudden jump. It is courage, it is not calculation. It is not of the intellect, because intellect is part of the mind. It is more of the heart.

But deeper you go, the more you will feel it is even beyond the heart. It is neither of thinking nor of feeling. It is deeper and total, more existential than both. Once you start working on how to attain no-mind, only then, by and by, peace will settle on you. By and by a silence will descend, and a music will be heard – the music of the unknown, the music of the unuttered. Then everything is in order again. It is the passage of the mind, and it has to be so because you drop the past where you were settled and rooted, and you move into a new future where you will be again settled and rooted.

But in the middle is man. Man is not a being, man is a passage. Man is not something; man is only a journey, a rope stretched between nature and supernature. That’s why he is tense. If you remain human, you will remain tense. Either you have to fall to the level of below human, or you have to raise yourself to the level of the beyond human.

Only humanity is in chaos. Look at the nature – the crows caw, the sparrows twitter, and everything is perfect. There is no problem in nature. Problem comes into existence with the human mind, and problem dissolves when the human mind dissolves. So don’t try to solve the problem of life by the mind itself. It cannot be done. That is the most foolish thing one can do. Understand that the mind is a bridge – watch it. It is not eternal, it is momentary.

It is just like when you change a house: the old house was settled; everything was in its place. Then you change the house, then the furniture, then the clothes then the things that… Everything that was settled is unsettled, and you move into a new house. Everything is a chaos. You have to fix it again. When you are changing a house, the one house you lived always, and the other house you have not reached; you are just on the way in a lorry with all your luggage.

This is what mind is: it is not a house, it is just a passage to be passed. And once you understand this something of the beyond has penetrated in you. Understanding is of the beyond; it is not of the mind. Knowledge is of the mind. Understanding is not of the mind. Watch why you are in chaos and an understanding will start dawning upon you.