An Inner Mechanism

Questions from Yoga Sutra 16

SURRENDER HAPPENS WHEN THERE IS NO EGO, BUT WE ARE WITH EGOS. HOW CAN WE MOVE TOWARDS SURRENDER?

THE EGO is you. You cannot move towards surrender; in fact you are the barrier, so whatsoever you do will be wrong. You cannot do anything about it.

You simply, without doing anything, have to be aware. This is an inner mechanism: whatsoever you do is done by the ego, and whenever you don’t do anything and remain just a witness, the non ego part of you starts functioning.

The witness is the non-ego within you and the doer is the ego. The ego cannot exist without doing anything. Even if you do something to surrender, it will strengthen the ego and your surrender will become again a very subtle egoistic standpoint. You will say, ‘I have surrendered.’ You will claim surrender, and if somebody says that it is not true, you will feel angry, hurt. The ego is now there trying to surrender. The ego can do anything; the only thing that the ego cannot do is non doing, witnessing.

So just sit silently, watch the doer, and don’t try in any way to manipulate it. The moment you start manipulating, the ego has come back. Nothing can be done about it; one has just to be a witness to the misery that ego creates, of the false pleasures and gratifications that ego promises. Doings in this world and doings in the other world; the spiritual world, the Divine, the material, whatsoever the realm, the doer will remain the ego. You are not supposed to do anything and if you start doing something you will miss the whole point. Just be there, watch, understand, and don’t do it. Don’t ask, ‘How to drop the ego?’ Who will drop it?

Who will drop whom? When you don’t do anything, suddenly the witnessing part is separate from the doer; a gap arises. The doer goes on doing and the seer goes on seeing. Suddenly, you are filled with a new light, a new benediction: you are not the ego, you have never been the ego; how foolish that you ever believed in it.

There are people who are trying to fulfill their egos; they are wrong. There are people who are trying to drop their egos; they are wrong. Because when the witness arises you simply see the whole game. There is nothing to be fulfilled and nothing to be dropped. The ego is not of any substance. It is made of the same stuff that dreams are made of. It is just an idea, an air bubble – just hot air within you and nothing else. You need not drop it, because in the very dropping or in asking how to drop it, you believe in it, you are still clinging to it.

It happened that a Zen Master awoke one morning and he told his disciple, ‘I had a dream in the night. Will you please interpret it for me?’ The disciple said, ‘You wait, I will bring some cold water so you can wash your face.’ He went away to fetch water and returned. The Master washed his face. By that time, another disciple passed nearby and the Master called him and said, ‘Listen, I had a dream last night. Will you please interpret it for me?’ The disciple looked, and seeing that the Master had washed his face he said, ‘Wait, better that I fetch a cup of tea for you.’ He brought a cup of tea. The Master sipped the tea, laughed and blessed both of the disciples. He said, ‘You did well. If you had interpreted my dream, I would have thrown you out of the ashram, because when a dream is finished and one comes to know that it was a dream, what is the meaning of interpretation?’ Even to interpret it shows that you are still in it. You still think that it is substantial.

That’s why in the East we have never bothered about interpreting dreams. Not that we did not come upon the reality of it. Four or five thousand years before Freud, the East stumbled upon the reality of dreams, the phenomenon. We were the first to divide consciousness into three realms: the waking, the dreaming, and deep sleep. But we never bothered to interpret, because a dream is a dream; it is not substantial. One has to just awake out of it, that’s all. And if you are already awake it is better to wash your face. Cold water will help more than the whole psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud. If you are awake, then a cup of tea is better than all of the Jungs put together. Be finished with it.

In the first place, the dream is false, and then you start interpreting the dream. By your very interpretation it goes on taking on a new reality for you; it again becomes substantial. Not only is this so with the dream, it is so with your whole life. Your whole life is like a dream; it needs no interpretation. To know this much is enough: that it is a dream. You have to come out of it.

And how do you come out of a dream in the morning? Have you ever observed?

If you have observed, you will know how to come out of the ego. How do you come out of a dream in the morning, or out of sleep? How do you come out? You were fast asleep a second before, and then, suddenly, you hear the noises of the birds, the milkman is knocking on the door, the servant woman has come and started cleaning the floor: the morning noises. What is happening? – You are becoming more aware. Just a moment before, you were deep in sleep with no awareness; then suddenly, the birds, the milkman, the servant, the wife talking to the children, the children resisting, not ready to get up. By and by, things are arising into consciousness; you are becoming alert. You may still doze a little: you may change sides, close your eyes, doze a little, but even in your half-sleep, half-wakefulness, you go on listening to things. You become aware and sleep is no longer there. The more aware you become, the more the dreams disappear.

The same is to be done while awake: listen more, feel more, be more alert in whatsoever you do. If you are taking a bath, then feel the touch of the water running over you, feel it as much as you can. The very feeling, the awareness, will bring you out of the ego; you will become a witness. If you are eating, then eat; but taste more, be more sensitive, be more in your eating and don’t allow your mind to go here and there. Remain there fully alert, and by and by you will see that something is arising out of the sea of sleep; you are becoming more alert, aware.

In your awareness there is no dreaming, no ego. That’s the only way. It is not a part of doing something, it is part of being aware; and the distinction must be remembered. You cannot do awareness, it is not an action. You can be aware, it is part of your being. So feel more, smell more, listen more, touch more, be more and more sensitive… and suddenly, something arises out of the sleep, and there is no ego; you are surrendered.

Nobody ever surrenders; one suddenly finds one moment that one is surrendered, surrendered to God, surrendered to the total. When you are not, you are surrendered. When you are, how can you be surrendered? You cannot surrender – you are the barrier, you are the very stuff that the barrier is made of. So don’t ask, ‘How do I surrender?’ This is the ego asking. When I talk about egolessness or surrender, your ego starts feeling greedy for it. You think, ‘How come I have not achieved this state up to now? I? – And have not achieved such a state up to now? I will have to achieve it! This surrender cannot escape me. I will have to fetch it somewhere, somehow; it has to be got, it has to be purchased.’

The ego is feeling greedy for it and now the ego asks, ‘How to do it?’ The ego is the greatest technician in the world. The ego lives on know how. The ego is the very base of all technology. In the East technology could not develop because people became more and more alert to the ego, and the very root was cut. They lived surrendered lives.

How can you be a technician, a technologist, if you live a surrendered life? Then you leave everything to life and you float. Then you don’t bother about what to do and how to do it. The West has become very, very expert in technology. The reason is that the West has been trying to protect, feed the ego, and the ego is the base inside: the whole structure of technology is based on the ego. If ego drops, the whole structure of technology drops. The world becomes again natural, not man made.

Then it is the creation of God. And God has not finished the creation yet, as Christians think. They think that He finished it within a week, in fact, within six days, and on the seventh day He rested.

God has not finished creation. Creation is a continuum; it continues. It is not ever going to be finished. At every moment God is creating. In fact, to say that God is creating is wrong – God is creativity, creativity and continuum; an eternal creativity. But man, as the ego, stands against God. Then man starts trying to conquer nature. He starts trying to rape nature. The whole of technology is rape.

Surrendered, you are in love; with technology you are in rape. You are trying to rape the whole of nature, and the base is the ego.

Don’t ask, ‘How?’ Just try to understand me, just try to see the point. Not much intelligence is needed. Everybody has enough intelligence to see the point. Just see the point and try to live with that vision, that understanding, that perception, that’s all. Just watch the ways of the ego, and you be the watcher, never be the doer. The distance between the watcher and the doer is not very far if you are not alert. Just by your side is the doer. You slip from the watcher into the doer, and you are the ego; you slip out of the doer and into the watcher, and you are surrendered, you are no longer the ego.