Yoga Sutra 47 Become Desireless

TATRA DHYANAJAM ANASAYAM.

ONLY THE ORIGINAL MIND WHICH IS BORN OF MEDITATION IS FREE FROM DESIRES.

So how to attain this original mind? Now, one of the most important problems in religion has to be understood: the original mind is free from desires, and the way to attain it is to become desireless.

A problem arises for the thinking intellect: What is primary? – Whether we have to drop the desires, and then can we attain the original mind? But then the problem arises that if only the desires are dropped when the original mind is attained, then how can we drop desires before it is attained? Or, if the original mind has to be attained, then desires drop of themselves, of their own accord, as a consequence of it. Then we have to attain the original mind when desires are still there, and the original mind cannot be attained without dropping desires, so a paradox arises. But the paradox is only because your intellect divides. In fact, the original mind and being desireless are not two things; it is just one phenomenon talked about in two ways. It is just one energy – call it desirelessness or call it the original mind – it is not two things. It happens simultaneously; I know.

Unless the original mind is attained you cannot become absolutely desireless, but you can become ninety-nine point nine per cent desireless, and that is the way. You start understanding your desires.

Through understanding, many of them simply disappear because they are simply stupid. They have not led you anywhere except into more and more frustration. They have opened doors for hell and nothing else – more anguish, more anxiety, more pain and agony. Just look at them; they will disappear. First, desires which have led you into frustration will disappear, and then you will attain a more keen perspective. Then you will see that desires which you have been thinking up to now, desires which have led you into pleasure, have also not led you into pleasure – because whatsoever seems to be pleasant finally, eventually, turns sour and bitter.

So pleasure seems to be a trick of desire: to trick you into pain. First the painful will drop, and then you will be able to see that the pleasure is illusory, unreal, a dream. Ninety-nine point nine per cent of desires will disappear through understanding, and then the final happens. It happens simultaneously: a hundred per cent of desires disappear, and the original mind arises in a single moment, not as cause and effect, but simultaneously, together.

It is better to use Carl Gustav Jung’s term for it: synchronicity. They are not related as cause and effect. They appear together simultaneously, and that too has to be said that way because I have to use language. Otherwise they are one, two faces of the same coin. If you look through understanding, meditation, you will call it the original mind. If you look through your desires, passions, you will call it desirelessness. When you call it desirelessness it simply shows that you have been comparing it with desire; when you call it the original mind, it simply shows that you have been comparing it with the mechanical mind, but you are talking about one and the same thing.

Wherever you are, you are in a mechanical mind. Whoever you are, you are in a mechanical mind, imprisoned. Don’t feel sorry for yourself. That’s natural. Every child has to learn something; that creates a mind. And every child has to learn ways to survive in the world; that creates the mind. Don’t feel angry against your parents or against your society; that is not going to help. In love they have helped you; it was natural.

You need a mind to survive, and every society tries to force every child because all children, as born, are wild. They have to be tamed, they have to be framed. They come frameless. It will be difficult for them to survive and live in a world where much struggle goes on, where survival is a continuous problem. They have to become efficient in certain ways to protect themselves. They have to be armoured, protected, sealed against the inimical forces in the world. They have to be taught to behave like others; they have to be taught to be imitative. The mechanical mind is created through imitation. The original mind is created by dropping imitation.

I have heard: Three ghosts were playing cards when a fourth ghost opened the door and came in.

The draft from the outside blew all the cards on the floor. The new ghost was a child ghost – very young, very new to the world of ghosts. One of the ghosts looked up and said, “Can’t you use the keyhole like everybody else?”

Now even ghosts have to be trained: “There is no need to open the door; come through the keyhole as everybody is doing!”

That’s how parents go on teaching you – imitate – and those who are great imitators are appreciated.

A child who does not imitate is punished. A rebellious child is punished, an obedient child is praised.

Obedience is thought to be a great value, and rebellion a great disvalue. The whole society tries to make you obedient, forces you: through awards, through punishments, fear, appreciation, ego-enhancement. There are a thousand and one ways to force you to just imitate others, because that is the only way to give you a frame, to give you a narrowness, to give you a tamed discipline. But of course, this is at a very great cost. It had to happen, it has happened, and there was no other way. Nobody could have avoided it, and I don’t see that there will ever be a possibility of avoiding it completely. More or less, it will be there.

People ask Osho, if I had to teach children, what would I teach them? But whatsoever you teach them will give them a mind. You can teach them rebellion, but that too will give them a mind. They will start imitating rebellious people. Again they will be framed.

Krishnamurti has a few schools around the world to teach children so that they don’t become imitators – but they become imitators all the same. They start imitating Krishnamurti. The problem is very subtle. When you teach the children not to imitate, they start imitating you; they say, “Don’t imitate!” You teach them that imitation is a disvalue, and of course, you use the same means. If they imitate they are condemned; everybody looks down upon them. If they become rebellious, they are appreciated. It is the same mechanism of award and punishment, of fear and greed. They become imitation rebels, but how can a rebel be an imitator?

There is no way to avoid the mind, but there is a way to come out of it. It has to be accepted as a necessary evil of being born in a society, of being born out of parents. It is a necessary evil to be tolerated. Of course, make it as loose as possible, that’s all. Make it as liquid as possible, that’s all.

A good society is the society which gives you a mind, and yet keeps you alert that one day this mind has to be dropped – “This is not any ultimate value; it has to be gone through but gone beyond also. It has to be transcended.” A mind has to be given, but there is no need to give an identity with the mind. If the identity remains a little relaxed, when people are grown up they will be able to come out of it more easily, with less pain, less agony, less effort.

Whether you are rich or poor, whether you are white or black, whether you are educated or uneducated, it makes no difference; we are in the same boat: the boat of the artificial mind. And that’s the problem. So you can become rich from being poor, or you can renounce your riches and can become a beggar, a Buddhist bhikkhu, a monk, but that will not change you. You will still remain in the same boat. You will simply be changing roles. You will be changing personalities, but your essence will remain confined.

I have heard: The millionaire saw the old tramp wandering around his garden and shouted to him, “Get out of here this minute!” The tramp said, “Look here mister, the only difference between you and me is that you are making your second million, while I’m still working on my first” – not much of a difference.

The poor man, the rich man, the educated, the uneducated, the cultured, the uncultured, the civilized, the primitive, the Western, the Eastern, the Christian, the Hindu: it makes no difference.

Differences may be of some quantity, but not of quality. We are all in the mind, and the whole of religion is an effort to get beyond it.