Yoga Sutra 48 Basic Cause

BEING BOUND TOGETHER AS CAUSE-EFFECT, THE EFFECTS DISAPPEAR WITH THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CAUSES.

Patanjali says that you are immoral, but that is an effect. You are greedy, but that is an effect. You feel anger; that is an effect. Find out the cause. Don’t go on fighting with the effects because that is not going to help. You can fight with your greed, and it will appear again from somewhere else.

You can fight with your anger; it will be repressed and will explode somewhere again. Effects cannot be destroyed by fighting with effects. That’s why yoga is not a system of morality, it is a system of awareness. The real cause has to be found. If you go on cutting and pruning the leaves of a tree it is not going to affect the tree. New leaves will come up. You will have to seek out the roots, the very cause. If you want to destroy the tree you will have to destroy the roots. With the roots destroyed, the tree will disappear. But you can go on cutting the branches; it is not going to destroy the tree.

In fact, wherever you cut one branch, three will come up. Prune a tree and it becomes denser and thicker. Cut the roots and the tree disappears.

Yoga says: morality goes on fighting with the effects.

You are greedy, you try to be non-greedy, but what happens? You can be non-greedy only if your greed can be diverted towards non-greed. If somebody says that if you become non-greedy you will go to heaven, and if you remain greedy you will go to hell, now what is he doing? He is giving you a new object for your greed. He is saying, “Become non-greedy; you will attain paradise and you will be happy there forever and ever.” Now, a greedy person will start thinking how to practice non-greed so he can reach heaven.

You are afraid; fear is there. How to get rid of fear? You can be made more afraid, and so much fear can be created about fear that you start repressing it. But that is not going to make you fearless; you will simply become more afraid. A new fear will arise, the fear of fear.

You are angry. It is simple for you to become angry, and very difficult to resist the temptation. Now something can be done. Why do you become angry? Whenever your ego is hurt, you become angry.

Now it can be taught to you that a man who is controlled is respected in society. A man who does not show his anger so easily is thought to be a great man. Then your ego is being enhanced: become more disciplined and controlled, and don’t be so easily tempted to become angry. Your ego is not destroyed; rather, it is strengthened. The disease may change its form, name, but the disease will remain. Remember this: yoga is not a system of morality because it doesn’t bother about effects.

That’s why there is no such thing as ten commandments.

People go on teaching each other without knowing the basic cause. And unless the basic cause is known, nothing can be done; the human personality remains the same; maybe a little modified here and there, polished here and there.

I have heard: A Polish man went to the eye hospital for an eye test. Seated in front of the chart, the doctor asked him to read through the lines one at a time. As the man got to the bottom line which read: C S V E N C J W, he hesitated. The doctor said, “Don’t look so worried. If you can’t read it, just try your best.” The Polish man said, “Read it? I know the fellow personally!”

It is so hard to accept that you don’t know, that you don’t know why you are egoistic. You don’t know why you get so easily angry. You don’t know why greed is there. You don’t know why lust is there, why fear is there. Without knowing the cause, you start fighting with the effects. You assume that you know. Many people come to me and they say, “Somehow, we would like to get rid of anger.” I ask them, “Do you know the cause?” They shrug their shoulders. They say, “Just, anger is there, and I get very easily angry and it disturbs me, disturbs my relationship, makes me more tense, creates anxiety, repentance, guilt.” But these are all effects.

Why, in the first place, does anger arise? – Nobody asks. And this is the beauty of it: if you ask about the cause, if you enquire about the cause, you will be surprised to find out that the cause is one. There are millions of effects but the cause is one, the root is one. Anger, greed, ego, lust, fear, hatred, jealousy, envy, violence: whatsoever the effect, the cause is one. And the cause is: that you are not aware enough. You can control anger, but that will not help you. It will be just controlling the disease within you, holding it in. It will not make you healthy. It may even make you more unhealthy.

You can see – a person who gets easily angry is never very dangerous. You can be certain that he will never commit any murder. He will never accumulate enough anger to become a murderer. Every day he catharts. Easily, with any provocation, he gets angry. That means that his steam no longer accumulates in him. He has a leaking system. Whenever there is too much steam, he lets it go.

A man who is very much controlled is a dangerous man. He goes on holding in steam; his energies become pent-up, dam. One day or other the energies will prove more than his control. Then he will explode, then he will do something really grave. A man who easily gets angry, easily cools also.

I have heard: “I’m sorry sir,” said the clerk, “but I’m giving in my notice.”

“But why?” asked his boss in surprise.

“Well sir, to tell you the truth, I can’t stand your foul temper.”

“Oh, come now,” pleaded the boss. “I know I can be a bit grumpy at times, but you must admit that no sooner is my temper on than it is off.”

“That’s true sir, but also, as soon as it is off, it is on again.”

But this type of man can never be a murderer. He never accumulates that much steam. People who simply get emotional are good people. They may not be very controlled, they can cry and weep and laugh, but they are good people. To be with them is better than to be with a religious man – moralistic, puritan, very collected, controlled. He’s dangerous.

In Osho Ashram – a young man had been in Teertha’s encounter group. He had taken training for many years in aikido. Now aikido, judo, karate, and all methods of ju-jitsu are disciplines of control.

You have to control yourself so much that a person becomes almost a statue, so controlled you cannot provoke him. And this man took part in the encounter group.

Now, the philosophy of an encounter group is totally different. It is to bring out whatsoever is inside you. Never accumulate it. Cathart, let it go, act it out. Encounter and aikido are totally diametrically opposite things. Aikido says: control – because the training of aikido is the training for a warrior. All the Japanese training is to make you a great warrior, and certainly they have developed methods which are tremendously dangerous. But they were meant to be so because the Japanese are very small people. Their height is very small, and they had to fight with people who were bigger than them. They had to create devices in which they could prove themselves stronger than the bigger people, stronger people, and they really found devices. The one device is to control every energy in you. It becomes a pooled-up thing. So the Japanese, the Chinese, they have lived with much control, discipline. They are dangerous. Once they attack you they will not leave you alive. Ordinarily, they will not attack you, but once they attack you, you can be certain that they will kill you.

Now this man who had been deeply in aikido was in the encounter group, and Teertha must have been insisting for him to bring things out, and he would not. His whole training – he told me later on – “My whole training is to remain controlled.” Now one girl participant in the group started hitting him. She was bringing her anger out, and he remained like a statue because his whole training is to not act out. He remained like a Buddha; not actually a Buddha, because a Buddha remains alert, not controlled. On the surface, both may look the same. A man who is controlled and a man who is aware may look the same, but deep inside they are totally different. Their energy is qualitatively different.

He became more and more angry inside, and also more and more controlled because his whole training was at stake. Then he threw a pillow at the girl, and even a pillow thrown by a man of aikido can be dangerous. He can hit you at such a delicate point, with such force, that even death can occur with a pillow. That is the whole training – one takes years – a small hit, but at the very delicate points.

The Japanese have worked out where to hit very slightly, and the person is gone. Just with a single finger they can defeat the enemy. They have found the delicate points to hit, and how to hit, and when to hit.

But then, he himself became afraid, afraid that he could kill the girl. He became so afraid that he escaped from the group and he came to me and complained. He said, “This type of group should not be allowed in the ashram. Someday, somebody may murder somebody.” He’s right, because the murderer in him is there. His fear is right; it is right about himself. He can be a murderer. In fact, training like that is training to make you a murderer of man, to make you a warrior.

Remember, if you control anger, greed, and things like that, they go on accumulating in the basement of your being – and you are sitting on a volcano. Yoga has nothing to do with repression. The belief of yoga is in awareness.