WHEN THE MIND IS DISTURBED BY WRONG THOUGHTS, PONDER ON THE OPPOSITES.
This is a beautiful method and will be very useful for you. For example, if you are feeling very discontented, what to do? Patanjali says ponder on the opposite: if you are feeling discontented, contemplate about contentment, what is Contentment. Bring a balance. If your mind is angry, bring compassion in. Think about compassion; and immediately, the energy changes. Because they are the same; the opposite is the same energy. Once you bring it in, it absorbs. Anger is there: contemplate on compassion.
Do one thing: keep a statue of Buddha. Because that statue is the gesture of compassion. Whenever you are angry, go into the room, look at Buddha, sit Buddha-like, and feel compassion. Suddenly you will see a transformation happening within you: the anger is changing, excitement gone… compassion arising. And it is not different energy; it is the same energy – the same energy of anger – changing its quality, going higher. Try it.
It is not suppression, remember. People ask, “Is Patanjali suppressing? Because when I am angry, if I think about compassion, will it not be a suppression?” No. It is sublimation: it is not suppression. If you are angry and you suppress anger without thinking of compassion then it is suppression. You go on pushing it down and you smile and you act as if you are not angry – and anger is bubbling there and boiling there and ready to explode. Then it is suppression. No, we are not suppressing anything, and we are not creating a smile or anything; we are just changing the inner polarity.
The opposite is the pole. When you feel hateful, think of love. When you feel desire, think of desirelessness and the silence that comes in it. Whatsoever the case, bring the opposite in and watch what happens within you. Once you know the knack of it, you have become a master. Now you have the key: any moment anger can be changed into compassion, any moment hate can be turned into love, any moment sadness can become ecstasy. Suffering can become bliss because suffering has the same energy as the bliss; the energy is not different. You just have to know how to channel it.
And, there is no suppression because the whole energy of anger becomes compassion – nothing is left to suppress. In fact, you have expressed it in compassion.
There are two ways of expression. In the West now, catharsis has become very important. Encounter groups. Primal Therapy-all believe in catharsis. Osho’s Dynamic Meditation is a method of catharsis because people have lost the key to sublimate. Patanjali does not talk about catharsis at all. Why doesn’t he talk about it? People had the key, the knack. They knew how to sublimate. You have forgotten, so Osho has to teach you catharsis.
Anger is there; it can be transformed into compassion, but you have no idea how to do it. And it is not an art which can be taught; it is a knack. You have to do it, and learn it through doing it; there is no other way. It is just like swimming: you have to swim, and err, and sometimes get into danger, and sometimes you will feel lost, the life is lost, you are drowning. You have to pass all those, and then the knack comes, then you know what it is. And it is such a simple thing, swimming.
Have you observed? There are a few things you can Learn but you cannot forget: swimming is one of those things. Or cycling – you can learn but you cannot forget. Everything else you can learn and you can forget. A thousand and one things you learned in your school; now you have almost forgotten all. The whole school system seems such a wastage. People learn, and then nobody remembers.
Just to take the examination… then finished. Then nothing is remembered. But swimming you cannot forget. If you have not been to the river for fifty years and suddenly you are thrown in, you will swim again as fresh as ever – you will not have a single moment of hesitation about what to do. Why does it happen so?
Because it is a knack. It cannot be forgotten. It is not a Learning; it is not an art.
And learning, art, can be forgotten, but a knack? A knack is something that goes so deep into your being it becomes part of you. Sublimation is a knack.
Patanjali never talks about catharsis; Osho has to talk about it because of you. But once you understand, and if you can sublimate, then there is no need for catharsis because catharsis is, in a way, a wastage of energy. But, unfortunately, nothing can be done right now. And you have been suppressed for so many centuries that sublimation looks like suppression, so only catharsis seems to be the way. First you have to relieve – you become a little weightless, unburdened – and then you can be taught the art of sublimation.
Sublimation is using the energy in a higher way, the same energy being used with a different quality to it. But you can try. Many of you have gone through Dynamic Meditation for a long time. You can try: next time when anger is there, sadness is there, just sit silently and allow the sadness to move towards happiness – just help – push it a little. Don’t do too much and don’t be in a hurry. Hmm?… Because the sadness will be reluctant at first to go towards happiness. Because for centuries, for many lives, you have not allowed it to move that way, it will be reluctant. Like a horse whom you are forcing towards a new path on which he has never been, he will be reluctant. He will try to go to the old pattern. to the old path, to the old rut. But by and by persuade, seduce. Tell Sadness then, “Don’t be afraid. It is really groovy; come this way. You can become Happiness, and there is nothing wrong in it and nothing is impossible.”
Just persuade, talk to your sadness, and one day you will suddenly find the sadness has moved into a new channel: it has become happiness. That day the yogi is born, not before it. Before it you are simply preparing.
IT IS NECESSARY TO PONDER ON THE OPPOSITES BECAUSE WRONG THOUGHTS, EMOTIONS, AND ACTIONS, SUCH AS VIOLENCE, RESULT IN IGNORANCE AND INTENSE MISERY – WHETHER THEY BE PERFORMED, CAUSED, OR APPROVED THROUGH GREED, ANGER, OR DELUSION IN MILD, MEDIUM, OR INTENSE DEGREES.
Whatsoever is negative is dangerous for you and for others. Whatsoever is negative is already creating hell for you and for others; it is creating misery for you and for others. Be alert. Even if you think it is a negative thought, it has already become a reality in the world. It is not only that when you act it becomes reality: a thought is as real as any action. If you think to murder a man, you have already murdered. The man may live, but you have done your work: the man will not be able to live as fully as possible – as it was possible. You have killed him a little.
And the man may be able to live, but you have become a murderer and your own energy will carry that murder quality in you.
Thought, emotion, or action – we don’t make any distinction between them.
They are the same. They are just like the seed and the plant and the tree. If the seed is there, already the tree is thereon the way, it is coming. So whenever you catch a negative thought, immediately sublimate it, transform it. It is dangerous.
Every thought finally becomes action; every thought finally becomes a thing.
Have you watched it sometimes? You come in a new room in a hotel to stay, and suddenly you feel a change within you. Or you come to a new house and there is a strange feeling that you are no longer yourself. It happens according to a certain law. In a hotel room many things go on happening; many types of people come and go. It becomes a very, very crowded place. A hotel room is a very, very crowded place – thousands of thoughts are being released in that room. It is not empty, as you think it is; it is not. Those thoughts vibrate there. When you go in, suddenly, you are under the influence of so many thoughts.
You move into a new house – it is strange. It takes almost three weeks, twenty-one days, for you to settle and to feel that this is your home, because in twenty-one days, by and by, your thoughts expel the thoughts that were already there and they get hold of the house. Then things become easier, you feel at home – as if you have come back to your own self.
Sometimes, if a murderer was living in a room and was continuously thinking about murder and planning and this and that and if within six minutes after he leaves, you go in the room and you stay there; he may not have committed the murder, but you may commit murder – because his thought is so powerful at that moment. Within six minutes the thought is as powerful as it can ever be. By and by it dissipates. Or, if the man was thinking of committing suicide, somebody else can commit it. Your thoughts can become action for somebody else.
But whenever you think anything negative you are creating bad karma for you and others; you are changing the nature of reality. The same happens with a positive energy, positive thought: whenever you send a thought of compassion to the world, it is received. You create a better world – just by thinking about it.
And if you can attain, to a no-mind state you create a space around you which is empty. In that empty space somebody else can become a Buddha someday.
Hence, so much respect and so much honor is paid and so much reverence for some places in the world – Mecca, Medina, or Jerusalem, or Girnar, Kailash.
Thousands of people have become Buddhas from those spots. They have left a vacuum there, a very alive vacuum, and so powerful that no thoughts can enter into that vacuum. If you can find the right spot on Kailash and you can sit in that spot, suddenly you will be transformed – you are in a whirlpool of no-mind. It will cleanse you. The same happens with negative as it happens with positive.
Whenever you feel something negative, immediately change it into positive – sublimate it. I am not saying force it, I am not saying suppress it – I am saying allow it, help it, to become the opposite; help it to move to the opposite. And it is not difficult! One just has to know the knack.
Tags: Patanjali Yoga Sutra 25.2 Know The Knack
