We will have few questions related to Yoga Sutra 33.
Question was asked to Osho – WHY DO I ALWAYS ASK NEARLY THE SAME QUESTIONS, AGAIN AND AGAIN?
Osho’s replied – BECAUSE the mind itself is repetition. The mind is never original. It cannot be; by its nature it is such. The mind is a borrowed thing. It is never new; it is always old. Mind means the past – it is always out of date. And by and by mind becomes a pattern, a habit, a mechanism. Then you become very efficient in it.
Then you go on moving in the same rut, in the same routine, again and again and again.
You go on asking the same questions because you go on remaining the same mind.
Unless you are new your questions are not going to be new. Unless you drop the old mind completely, totally, utterly, the new question cannot get into you. The new question cannot get into you because there is no space, you are already filled by the old. And the mind has a persistent habit of repeating itself; it is more efficient. The mind is very stubborn. Even if it pretends to change, the change is not real, just a pretension, a modified form of the old. Maybe the language changes, the form changes, but the deep question remains the same… and the mind goes on persisting.
You have to see it. This question is good. At least, this question is not old.
This is from Saroj. She has been asking questions, and I have been never answering her, but today I decided to answer because this is a new glimpse, that she has understood one thing; that she has been asking again and again the same old thing. This understanding is new. A new morning, a new dawn has come to her mind. Her consciousness has become alert to a certain old pattern.
Help this awareness; cooperate with it. By and by you will start seeing yourself in two dimensions: the dimension of the mind – the old, the past; and the dimension of consciousness – always fresh and always new, always original. I will tell you one anecdote: A man excitedly ran up to another man on the street and slapped him heartily on the back. “Paul Porter,” he greeted him, “am I glad to see you! But tell me, Paul, what in the world happened to you? Last time I saw you, you were short and fat. All of a sudden you seem tall and thin.”
“Look, sir,” the puzzled man answered, “I am not Paul Porter.”
“Ah!” boomed the undaunted greeter, contemptuously. “Change your name too, eh?”
The mind has a persistent habit to go on believing in itself – even against all facts. Even if your old mind goes on giving you nothing but misery and hell, you go on believing in it.
People say that this is an age of unbelief. I don’t see it. The same old belief in the mind continues. Somebody is a Hindu; he believes in Hinduism because his mind has been conditioned to be a Hindu. Somebody is a Christian; he believes in Christianity because his mind has been conditioned to be a Christian.
Somebody is a communist; he goes on believing in communism because his mind has been conditioned to be a communist. All the three are one. They are not different people. They may have different names and labels, but the same thing is happening to all of them. They are all conditioned and clinging to the mind and they all believe in the mind.
I call that man religious who renounces the mind. I call that man religious who renounces all conditionings, who stops clinging to the mind, who starts moving into consciousness, who becomes more and more aware of the conditionings.
And in that very awareness one becomes loose of the conditions – and that is the only freedom there is. All else is just rubbish. All talk of freedom – political, economic, social – is just rubbish. There is only one freedom, and that freedom is freedom from conditionings, freedom from the mind, becoming alert, aware, attentive, and moving in a new dimension.
Good, Saroj, that you have become aware that your questions have been repetitively the same. That’s why I was not answering them. It is useless because when the mind goes on persisting in its old habit; it doesn’t listen.
Try always to find the new, the fresh, the young – that which is just being born.
Catch that before it becomes old and dissolve into it before it becomes a pattern.
Never make your life a patterned and structured thing. Let it remain a flow, unfrozen, fluid, moving always into the unknown.
Mind means the known. And you are the unknown. If you understand this, you will use the mind and you will never be used by the mind.
Another question – THERE ARE MANY WHO CAN SEE A LOT OF CONTRADICTIONS IN WHAT YOU ARE SAYING. ONCE YOU EXPLAINED WHY THIS IS SO. BUT UP TO THIS MOMENT I HAVE NOT COME ACROSS ONE SINGLE CONTRADICTION. EVEN WHEN THERE OBVIOUSLY SHOULD BE ONE. I JUST CANNOT SEE IT, EVEN WHEN I TRY TO. IS THERE ANYTHING WRONG WITH ME? PLEASE EXPLAIN.
Osho replied – No, nothing is wrong with you. The wrong is with others who keep on seeing contradictions, but they are in the majority. You will be alone. So don’t be overpowered by the majority. Don’t be dominated by the majority. Remain alone. Truth is never of the crowd; it is always of the individual. Truth is never of the many; it is always of the few, of the rare. It is not of the multitude; it is of the unique. This difference has to be understood.
The scientific truth is not unique. The scientific truth, in fact, debars the unique.
It only listens to the repetitive. Science goes on saying that unless an experiment can be repeated, it cannot be believed. When an experiment can be repeated a thousand and one times and it always gives the same result, then it gathers evidence of being true.
Religious truth is of the – unique. A Buddha cannot be repeated, a Jesus cannot be repeated. They come once and then they disappear. They come as if out of the blue and then they disappear again into emptiness – and there is no way to repeat them. That’s why science goes on denying them because science believes only in something which can become a mechanical repetition. If Buddha can be produced on order – if Buddha can be produced like Ford cars, on an assembly line, then science can believe. But that is not possible.
Religion is the realm of the unique, of the rare, of that which cannot be repeated, of the unrepeatable; and science is the realm of the repeatable. That’s why science remains part of the mind and religion goes beyond mind, because all that can be repeated, mind can understand.
People see contradictions in me because I don’t repeat. They see contradictions in me because their mind has been trained in a certain Aristotelian logic. The Aristotelian logic says that either this is white or black. If it is white then it cannot be black; if it is black then it cannot be white. The Aristotelian logic teaches you; either this or that. That is the base of all scientific minds. The religious mind says it is both; white is also black, and black is also white. It cannot be otherwise because religion sees so deeply that the opposites become one there.
Life must be death also, and death life also, because somewhere the religious mind, religious consciousness comes to understand that they are meeting – already they are meeting in you. Something is dying, something is being born.
Each moment I see you dying, each moment I see you reborn. You are not a continuity. Each moment something dissolves, each moment something new comes into existence. But you are not aware, so you cannot see the gap. Because you cannot see the gap it looks like a continuity.
Religion believes that there are no contradictions – there cannot be – because existence is one. Religion believes and sees that there is no polarity. Even if there is polarity it is not polar and opposite, it is complementary, because existence is nondual; it is one. Life cannot be separate from death and night cannot be separate from day and summer cannot be separate from winter and old age cannot be separate from childhood.
Childhood grows into old age, night changes into day, day changes into night.
No and yes are not a question of either/or; they are both together. Two points on one line – maybe on the extreme ends, but the line is one. So whenever a religious person exists, he cannot be consistent in the same way as a scientist is.
He has a deeper consistency. It is not apparent on the surface; it is deep in his being.
I am not a philosopher, and I am not trying to prove any theory to you, and I am not here talking to you to prove some hypothesis. There is nothing to prove.
Truth is there, already given. Religion has nothing to prove; it has no theory about it. It simply gives you a way, how to see that which is already there. I go on talking to you not that I have a theory. If I have a theory then I will be consistent.
I will always look whether it fits with my theory or not; if it fits, okay; if it doesn’t fit, I drop it. But I have no theory.
Everything fits with me. If I have a theory, then I have to look at my theory. Then the fact becomes secondary and the theory becomes primary. If the fact fits with the theory then it is okay; if it doesn’t fit then I have to ignore it.
I have no theory. Every fact, just by being a fact, fits with me, fits with me perfectly. Only very few will become aware of it. So don’t be worried. If others see contradictions, they have an Aristotelian conditioning.
My whole effort is to help you melt so your structure dissolves and by and by you can start seeing opposites as complementaries. If you love me – this will happen immediately because the heart knows no contradictions. Even if there is a contradiction on the surface, the heart knows somewhere deep down there must be a consistency, this contradiction must be meeting somewhere. It must be held together by something which Roes beyond the contradiction.
I am a unity. If you watch me, if you love me, you will be able to see the unity.
Once you see my unity, then whatsoever I say comes out of that unity. It has to be consistent. Whether rationally you can understand or not, that is not the point.
The heart has its own reasons, and those reasons are deeper than the reasons of reason.
When people listen to me, people who are not in any way committed to me, people who are not in any way deeply related to me, people who are not traveling with me into the unknown, then whatsoever I say, they understand it in their own way – they interpret it. Then it is not the thing that I have said.
Something else has entered into it; their interpretation. And because of their interpretation the whole color changes, the purity is lost, and then there are problems. Those problems are of their own making.
I have heard a story: Patrick went to confession and told the priest, “Father, I love my neighbor.”
The priest said, “That’s wonderful. I am glad to see that your attendance at services in this church has benefited you and taught you the ways of the Lord. Carry on the good work. That is the whole message of Jesus; Love your neighbor as thyself.”
Patrick went home, changed into some more comfortable dress and slipped next door. He rang the bell and said, “Is it all right?”
The lady said, “Well, Albert is out, but this is afternoon and broad daylight. Someone might see you coming here.”
“It is all right,” said Patrick, “I have got a special dispensation from Father O’Brien.”
Love thy neighbor as thyself. When Jesus says it he means something totally different. When Patrick interprets it it becomes totally different. “Love thy neighbor” is a prayer, it is a meditation, it is a whole way of being, but when the ordinary mind listens to it, it takes a different color. Love becomes sex. Prayer becomes infatuation. And the mind is very cunning; it goes on taking any support – whatsoever is available from anywhere – to its own ends.
When you listen to me, beware. You may be interpreting me in your own way.
When I say, “freedom” you may interpret it as “license.” Watch. When I say “love” you may interpret it as “sex.” Watch. Look at your interpretations because they are the traps – and then you will find many contradictions in me because I am there no more; now it is you reflected. You have many contradictions in you. You are almost a confusion. You have many minds in you, and you go on interpreting in many ways, and then you see contradictions – in your own interpretations.
Listen to me. Even more than listening – be with me. Then all contradictions disappear.
Tags: Heart Knows No Contradictions Patanjali
