Yoga Sutra 47 Beginning Of The Endless

DESIRES ARISE FROM THESE THREE-FOLD KARMAS WHEN CIRCUMSTANCES ARE FAVORABLE FOR THEIR FULFILLMENT.

Whatsoever you do remains like a seed in you. And whenever a certain circumstance arises which can be helpful to you, the seed sprouts. Sometimes we carry seeds for many lives. The right circumstance, the right season may not come across, but whenever it comes it creates very complex problems. Suddenly, you come across a man on the road and you feel very, very repelled, and you have not ever known the man. You have not even thought about him, heard about him; an absolute stranger, and suddenly you feel repelled, or, you feel attracted. Suddenly you feel as if you have met him before. Suddenly you feel as if a deep surge of love-energy is arising in you for this stranger, as if you have been always close, always close. A seed has been carried from some other life – a certain circumstance – and that seed starts sprouting. Suddenly, you are miserable for no reason at all. And you think, “Why am I miserable? Why?” There seems to be no cause in the visible world. You may be carrying a seed for this misery; just a right moment has arrived.

Julia came to her father with her head downcast. “Poppa,” she said, “you know that rich Mr. Wolfe? Well, he betrayed me, and I am going to have a baby.”

“My God!” said the father. “Where is he? I will kill him! Give me his address. I will murder him!”

Dashing to the rich man’s home, he cornered him and in a loud voice told him what he intended to do. But the rich Mr. Wolfe was quite calm. “Don’t get excited,” he said. “I am not running away, and I intend to do right by your daughter. If she has a boy, she gets 50,000; if it is a girl, shegets 35,000. Is that fair?”

The father halted, while the look of anger on his face changed. “And if it is a miscarriage,” he pleaded, “will you give her another chance?”

Suddenly, the circumstances had changed. Now a seed of greed sprouts. He had come to murder, but just the mention of money and he had forgotten all about murder; he’s asking, “Will you give her another chance?”

Watch… watch yourself continuously; circumstances change and you immediately change.

Something in you starts sprouting, something starts closing.

The man of original mind remains the same. Whatsoever happens, he watches it, but there are no longer any seeds of desire left from the past. He does not act through his past, he simply responds; out of nothingness comes his response. Sometimes you also act in that way, but very rarely. And whenever you act that way, you feel a tremendous fulfillment and satisfaction and contentment. It happens sometimes.

Somebody is dying, drowning in the river, and you simply jump without any thought. You don’t think whether to save this man or not, whether he is a Hindu or a Mohammedan, or a sinner or a saint, or why you should be worried. No, you don’t think so. Suddenly, it happens. Suddenly, your mind is pushed away and your original mind acts. And when you get that man out, you feel tremendous contentment, as you have never felt before. A harmony arises in you. You feel very fulfilled. Whenever something out of your nothingness happens, you feel blissful.

Bliss is a function of your nothingness.

BECAUSE MEMORIES AND IMPRESSIONS RETAIN THE SAME FORM, THE RELATIONSHIP OF CAUSE AND EFFECT CONTINUES EVEN THOUGH SEPARATED BY CLASS, LOCALITY, AND TIME.

And it goes on… your life changes: you die in this body, you enter into another womb, but the innermost form clings with you. Whatsoever you have done, desired, experienced, accumulated, that fur coat clings with you; you carry it with you. The death, ordinary death, is only the death of the body; the mind continues. The real death, the ultimate death we call samadhi, is not only the death of the body; it is the death of the mind as such. Then there is no more birth, because then there is no seed left to come back to, no desire to be fulfilled. Nothing left, one simply disappears like a fragrance….

AND THERE IS NO BEGINNING TO THIS PROCESS AS THE DESIRE TO LIVE IS ETERNAL.

Philosophers go on asking, “When did this world start?” Yoga Is a very tremendous thing: the world has never started. The desire has no beginning, because the desire to live is eternal. It has always been there. Yoga does not believe in any creation. It is not that God created the world on some day, at some moment. No, desire has always been there. There was no beginning for desire, but there is an end to it. This has to be understood. It is very logical, but if you understand you will be able to feel the point.

Desire has no beginning, but it has an end. Desirelessness has a beginning, but has no end; and the circle is complete. Desire has no beginning but has an end. If you become aware, the end comes, and the end starts desirelessness. Desirelessness has a beginning, but then there is no end to it. “The world has no beginning”; we have been saying in the East, “it has continued always and always; but it has an end.” For a Buddha, it ends. Then it is no longer there. Just like a dream, it disappears. But the no-world – nirvana, kaivalya, moksha – which has a beginning but no end. So we never ask when the world started. We have not bothered about it because it has never started.

We have not paid much attention to the birth dates of Krishna, Buddha, Mahavir, but we have paid much attention to the day that they attained enlightenment – because that is the real beginning of something which is never going to end. The enlightenment day of Buddha is very significant; that we have remembered, that we have worshipped again and again, again and again. Nobody knows when he was born; nobody has bothered about it. In fact, the myth says that he was born on the same day as the day he died, and he became enlightened also on the same day. My feeling is, we have forgotten his birthday and his death day; we remember only his enlightenment day. But only that is significant: not his birthday or also his death day, because that is the only significant thing that happens in a life – the beginning of the endless.

Desire has no beginning, has been always here, but it can end. Desirelessness can begin and will never end. And between desire and desirelessness, the circle is complete. It is the same energy. That which has been desire becomes desirelessness. It is the same energy. And of course, desirelessness never ends. A man who has attained has become liberated, never comes back, because evolution cannot go backwards. There is no way to go backwards. Higher and higher we go, until the ultimate is attained. But from that, there is no point of falling back.

AND THERE IS NO BEGINNING TO THIS PROCESS AS THE DESIRE TO LIVE IS ETERNAL

Try to be aware of your desire because that has been your life up to now. Don’t be caught in it. Try to understand it. Don’t try to fight also, because that is again getting caught in it in another way. Just try to understand it: how it grips you, how it enters into you and makes you absolutely unconscious.

I have heard:

“Abe, I have a wonderful bargain for you. I can get an elephant for 200.”

“But Izzy, don’t be an idiot. What am I going to do with an elephant?”

“What are you going to do with an elephant? Don’t be an idiot yourself! Think of the bargain. Where can you pick up an elephant for 200, tell me?”

“But I have a two-room flat. Where am I going to put an elephant?”

“What is the matter with you? Don’t you recognize a bargain when you see one? As a matter of fact, I have even better news for you. If you want, I can get you two elephants for 300.”

“Ah, now you are talking.”

Now a man who has only a two-room flat has forgotten completely.

Watch desire. It goes on befooling you; it goes on leading you astray. It goes on leading you into illusions, into dreams.

Watch.

Before you take a step, watch, be alert. And by and by, you will see desires disappear, and the energy that was invested in desires is released. Millions are the desires, and when the energy is released from all those desires you become a tremendous upsurge of energy. You start soaring high. Naturally, the energy goes on pooling inside. The level of energy goes higher and higher, and one day, you start overflowing from sahasrara. You become a lotus, a one-thousand-petalled lotus.