Before we enter into this Sutra we need to understand what is Pure Mind.
MIND IS MEMORY; it is like a computer. To be exact, it is a biocomputer. It accumulates all that is experienced, known. Through many lives, through millions of experiences the mind gathers memory. It is a vast phenomenon. Millions and millions of memories are stored in it. It is a great storehouse.
All your past lives are stored in it. Scientists say even in a single moment thousands of memories are being collected continuously – without your knowing, the mind goes on functioning. Even while you are asleep, memories are being formed. Even while you are asleep… somebody cries and weeps, your senses are functioning and collecting the experience. You may not be able to recall it in the morning because you were not conscious, but in deep hypnosis it can be recalled. In deep hypnosis, everything that knowingly and unknowingly you have experienced ever, can all be recalled back – your past lives also. The simple expanse of mind is really vast. These memories are good if you can use them, but these memories are dangerous if they start using you.
A pure mind is that mind who is master of its own memories. An impure mind is that mind who is continuously impressed by the memories. When you look at a fact, you can look without interpreting it. Then the consciousness is in direct touch with reality. Or, you can look through the mind, through interpretations. Then you are not in touch with reality. The mind is good as an instrument, but if the mind becomes an obsession and the consciousness is suppressed by the mind, then the reality will also be suppressed by the mind. Then you live in a maya; then you live in illusion.
Whenever you see a fact, if you see it directly, immediately, without the mind and the memory coming in, only then it is a fact. Otherwise, it becomes an interpretation. And all interpretations are false because all interpretations are loaded by your past experience. You can see only things which are in tune with your past experience. You cannot see things which are not in tune with your past experience, and your past experience is not all. Life is bigger than your past experience. Howsoever big the mind may be, it is just a tiny part if you consider the whole existence – so small. The known is very little; the unknown is vast and infinite. When you try to know the unknown through the known, then you miss the point. This is impurity. When you try to know the unknown by the unknown inside you, then there is revelation.
It happened: Mulla Nasrudin caught a very, very big fish in the river. A crowd gathered, because nobody has ever seen such a big fish. Mulla Nasrudin looked at the fish, and couldn’t believe that it is possible – such a big fish! With bulging eyes he moved around the fish but still couldn’t believe. He touched the fish but still couldn’t believe it, because he had heard about such a big fish only in fishermen’s tall tales. The crowd was also standing there with unbelieving eyes. Then Mulla Nasrudin said, “Please help me to throw this fish back into the river. It is no fish, it is a lie.”
Anything is true if it fits with your past experience. If it doesn’t fit, it is a lie. You cannot believe in God because it doesn’t fit with your past experience. You cannot believe in meditation because you have always lived in the market, and you only know the reality of the market, of the calculating mind, of the business mind. You don’t know anything about celebration – pure, simple, with no reason at all, uncaused. If you have lived in a scientist’s world, you cannot believe that there can be anything spontaneous because the scientist lives in the world of cause and effect. Everything is caused; nothing is spontaneous. So when the scientist hears that something is possible which is spontaneous – when we say spontaneous we mean that it has no cause, suddenly out of the blue – the scientist cannot believe. He will say, “It is no fish at all, it is a lie. Throw it back into the river.”
But those who have worked in the inner world know that there are phenomena which are uncaused. Not only that, that they know this, they know that the whole existence is uncaused. It is a different, totally different world from the scientific mind.
Whatsoever you see, even before you have seen it, the interpretation has entered. Continuously I watch people; I am talking to them – if it fits, even if they have not said anything, they have given me an inner nod, “Yes.” They are saying, “Right.” If it doesn’t fit with their attitudes, they have not said anything, the “no” is written on their face. Deep down they have started saying, “No, it is not true.”
Osho was talking with a friend. He has come just a few days before, very new. He believes in fasting, and when he was talking to him, that “Fasting can be dangerous. And you should not go on your own; you should ask an expert. And if you listen to me, I’m not for fasting at all, because fasting is a sort of suppression. The body is real. The body’s hunger is real; the body’s need is real. Don’t eat too much, because that too is against the body and a sort of suppression. And don’t go on a fast, because that too is unreal and that too is suppressing. That too is not in accord with nature. That’s why I call it unreal.”
Somebody is obsessed with eating food – he is mad, and somebody is obsessed with not eating food – he is also mad. Both are destroying their body – enemies – and the fasting has been used as a trick.
Whenever, you go on a fast your energy becomes low, has to become because the food is needed to keep it constantly flowing. After three, four days of fasting, your energy is so low that the mind cannot get any quota out of it, because the mind is a luxury. When the body has too much, then it gives to the mind. Mind is a later, very late arrival in the world. Body is basic and primary. First, body needs should be fulfilled – only then mind.
It is just like when you are hungry; you cannot support a philosopher in the town. When you are hungry the philosopher has to move from there; he cannot live there. Philosophy comes only when the society is affluent, rich. Religion comes only when the society is rich, when the basic needs are fulfilled. And the same is the economy in the body: first the body, second comes the mind. If the body is in trouble and is not getting the necessary quota for it, then the quota for the mind will be immediately cut.
And this is the trick that people have been playing with their own bodies: when the quota with the mind is cut, the mind cannot think because thinking needs energy. And people think they have become meditative because the mind has no more thoughts. It is not true. Give them food and thoughts will come back. When the energy is not flowing, the mind becomes like a summer river bed – the river is not flowing but the banks are there, everything is ready. Whenever there will be rain, again the river will flow. Whenever there will be energy, again the serpent will raise its head. The serpent is not dead – simply in a coma because the energy is not being supplied.
Fasting is a trick to create a false meditative state. And fasting is also a trick to create a bogus brahmacharya, celibacy – because when you fast, energy is not high, and the sex center cannot get energy.
There is again a question of economy: the individual lives through food; the society lives through sex, the race lives through sex. You are here because your parents loved each other, moved into sex. Your children will be here, you will be gone, if you move into sex. If you don’t move into sex then no more future. You don’t help the race to be here. If everybody becomes a brahmachari, a celibate, then the society will disappear.
Through food the individual body survives; through sex the body of the race. But the first is individual, because if the individual is not there, then how can the race survive? So individual is primary, race is secondary. When you are full of energy and the body is feeling good, then immediately the energy is supplied to the sex center. Now you have enough and you can share with the race. When the energy is flowing low, sex disappears. Just go on a fast of ten days, and by the tenth day you will feel that you are not interested in women. If you go on a longer fast of fifteen days, by the fifteenth day, even very beautiful playboy and playgirl magazines are there, you will not be able even to open them. They will lie there and dust will collect on them. You will not be tempted. By the twenty-first day, if you continue fasting, even nude women may be dancing there, and you will sit Buddha-like. Not that you have become Buddha-like… just good food for one day, and the next day you are interested in the playboy and the playgirl. And by the third day energy is flowing again; you are interested in women.
In fact, psychologists have made it a criterion: if a man is not interested in a woman, then something is wrong. If a woman is not interested in man, then something is wrong; energy is flowing low. And out of hundred cases, ninety-nine cases – they are true, they are right. Only with the hundredth case they will not be right, because he will be a Buddha – not that energy is flowing low; energy is the highest, at its peak, at its greatest. But now he is a different man moving in a different dimension where he is not interested in the other because he has become so satiated with himself. There is no movement for the other – not that the energy is lacking.
When Osho was talking to this newcomer, he could see on his face that he was nodding “no”. He has not said a single word but Osho knows that he is saying that “I cannot trust this.” And then he said, “But I am a believer in fasting, and I have come here because I believe in fasting. And whatsoever you are saying, I cannot feel in tune with it.”
You cannot listen because of the memory; you cannot see because of the memory; you cannot look at the facticity of the world because of the memory. Memory comes in – your past, your knowledge, your learning, your experiences – and they color reality. The world is not illusory, but when interpreted, you live in an illusory world. Remember this.
Hindus say the world is maya, illusory. When they say it, they don’t mean the world that is there, they simply mean the world that is inside you, the world of your interpretations. The world of facticity is not unreal; it is the brahma itself. It is supreme reality. But the world that you have created through your mind and memory and in which you live, which surrounds you, like an atmosphere around you… and you move with it and in it. Wherever you go you take it around you. It is your aura, and through it you look at the world. Then whatsoever you are looking at is not a fact, it is an interpretation.
Tags: Mind Is Memory Patanjali
