BEING BOUND TOGETHER AS CAUSE-EFFECT, THE EFFECTS DISAPPEAR WITH THE DISAPPEARANCE OF CAUSES.
Find out the cause, and the cause is one. And things become simple, because you are not to fight with so many effects. You simply cut one root, the main root, and a whole tree of a thousand and one branches simply disappears, withers away. Become more aware.
Out of sleep arises the dream state; dreams start floating. Have you seen, sometimes in a dream you dream that you are awake? Exactly the same is happening: in thinking, you think you are awake.
As in a dream you can dream you are awake, in thinking you can think you are awake – but you are not. Real awakening happens only when all thoughts have disappeared – there is no cloud inside you, not a single thought floating, just pure you. It is just a purity, a clarity of perception; just a vision with no object in your vision, the whole sky empty. If you look at anything, no word arises in you.
You see a rose flower: not even this much arises in you, that “This is a beautiful flower.” You simply see the rose there, you here, and between you two, no verbalization. In that silence, for the first time you know what being aware is, what is this state of wakefulness – and that cuts the roots. Now try it in many ways.
One way is: when you get angry try to be aware. Suddenly, you will see that either you can be angry or you can be aware; you cannot be both together. When sexuality arises try to be aware. Suddenly, you will see that either you can be aware or you can be sexual; you cannot be both together. That will help you to see the fact: that awareness is the antidote, not control. If you become more and more aware, energy starts moving in a totally different dimension. The same energy that was moving in anger, in greed, in sex, is freed, starts moving like a pillar of light inside you. And that awareness is the highest state of human evolution. A man becomes a God when he is aware. Unless you attain that, your life has been a wastage. We live as if we are drunk.
Let me tell you a few anecdotes.
After a wild night in Old Mexico, the tourist woke up with a raging hangover and only a dim memory of the night before. Beside him in the bed lay a filthy, ugly, wrinkled and toothless hag. Retching with disgust, he ran to the bathroom, where he bumped into a pretty, young Mexican girl. “Hey, was I drunk last night?” he asked her. “I think you must have been,” came the reply. “Otherwise you would not have married my mother.”
Whatsoever you have done up to now, one day, suddenly you will see that all has gone wrong.
Whosoever you are married to, whatsoever your life has been motivated by up to now, whatsoever your desire has been up to now, one day you will become aware and see that it has always been as if you have been drunk.
John Smith was a notorious tippler. One night, after an evening in the town, he was taking a short-cut home through a cemetery when he tripped over a gravestone and fell flat on his face. He did not regain consciousness until the next morning, and the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes was the gravestone above his head. Now, John Smith is a common name, and the grave he was lying on happened to belong to another man with the same name. As the words ‘Sacred to the Memory of John Smith’ came into focus, he muttered to himself, “Well, that’s me alright, but I don’t remember a damned thing about the funeral!”
When a person starts meditating, he is coming out of a long drunkenness of many lives. For the first time, one cannot even believe how one has lived up to now. It seems like a nightmare – horrible.
That’s why people don’t even try to be aware, because the first glimpse of awareness is going to scatter, to destroy their whole life that they had been thinking had any meaning up to now. Their whole life is going to become meaningless, insignificant. The fear of awareness is the fear that it may prove your whole life wrong. That’s why only very courageous people try to meditate, try to become aware. Otherwise, people just go on moving in the same vicious circle of the same desires, and the same dreams, and the same thoughts; and they come again and again back to life, and again die – from the cradle to the grave….
Just start thinking a little, contemplate about what you have been doing: repeating a few unconscious desires, repeating something which never gives you any blissfulness, which always frustrates you.
Still you go on as if you are hypnotized. In fact, that’s what yoga says: that we are in a deep hypnosis.
Nobody else has hypnotized us, we are hypnotized by our own minds; but we live in a hypnosis.
I have heard: As the drunk staggered homeward, he was wracking his brains for a means of concealing his condition from his wife. Finally he thought of a bright idea: he could go in and pick up a book. “After all,” he thought, “who ever heard of a drunk reading a book?” Putting his plan into action, he let himself into his house, walked straight into the lounge and sat down. A minute later, his wife came stamping down the stairs and peered round the door. “What do you think you’re doing?” she asked. “Just reading, dear,” replied the drunk. “You’re blind drunk again, you alcoholic idiot,” ranted his wife. “Now close that suitcase and come to bed.”
Whatsoever you are doing in your unconscious state, whatsoever it is, I say unconditionally, is going to be idiotic. You also feel that sometimes, but again and again you drop the subject. You don’t remember it for too long because that seems to be too much of a risk.
You love a woman: if you become aware, the love might disappear because your love might be just a hypnosis, as it is ordinarily. You are ambitious, you are trying to reach to the capital to become a president or a prime minister: now you will be afraid of becoming aware, because if you become aware suddenly the whole thing will look stupid, and you have staked your whole life for it.
Just the other day I saw a picture of Senator Humphrey crying, because he had been trying for his whole life to become the President of America, and this was his last chance, and there seemed to be no possibility. So, standing before his admirers he started weeping. Tears came to his eyes and he said, “Now I am old, and this seems to be my last chance; I will never be standing again for President.” Crying like a small child… Your politicians are just small children playing and fighting with each other.
If you become aware, you may suddenly see the whole nonsense of your efforts. You may stop, and that ‘somewhere’ deep inside you is always felt. You are after money….
Osho wrote – Once it happened: A very rich man used to come to listen to me. Suddenly he stopped. After many months I suddenly met him on a morning walk. I asked him, “Where have you been? You have disappeared suddenly?” He said, “Not suddenly; but I became, by and by, afraid. I will come to listen to you, but now is not the time. I am young, and listening to you, by and by, I was getting less and less ambitious. Now that will be dangerous. I have to attain my ambitions first. In my later years, when I have become old, then I will meditate, but this is not for me now. First I had come to you just out of curiosity, but by and by, I was getting caught in it. I stopped myself. It was difficult to stop, but I am a man of willpower.”
You cannot become aware because you have many investments in your foolishness, in your ignorance, in your unawareness. In this sleep, in this slumber, you have invested your life, and many things. Now, the first ray of awareness, and you will feel that your whole life has been a wastage. You are still not courageous. That’s why people go on changing effects, because then there is no danger. And they never touch the root.
Once it happened: I was travelling with Mulla Nasrudin. Suddenly he became aware that he had lost his ticket. He looked in all his pockets: in the coat, in the shirt, in the pants – but I was watching. He was not looking in one of his pockets. So I told him, “You are looking in every pocket, in the suitcase, in the bag and everything. Why don’t you look in this pocket?” He said, “I am afraid. If the ticket is not there I will drop dead. I am leaving it so that the hope remains that if it is not anywhere, at least that pocket is still there; maybe it is there? If I look into it and it is not there, I will drop dead.”
You know where to look, but still you are afraid. Then you go on looking in other places just to remain occupied. You go on looking in money, in power, in prestige, in this and that, but never inside you, never in your inner being. You are afraid; it seems that if you look there and nothing is found you will drop dead. But those who have looked there have always found it. Not a single exception has ever happened of one who has gone within and has not found the treasure. This is one of the most universal facts. Even scientific facts are not so universal; this fact is without any exception.
Whenever, in any country, in any century, any woman or any man have looked into themselves, they have found the treasure. But one has to look, and for that a great daring is needed. You have arranged your world outside of yourself. Your love, your power, your money, your fame, your name: all are outside you. One who wants to go in will have to leave these things, will have to close his eyes; and one clings to the very end.
Life goes on frustrating you; that’s a blessing. Life goes on frustrating you again and again. Life is saying, “Go within.” All frustrations are simply indications that you are looking in the wrong direction.
Fulfillment is possible only in the right direction. Life frustrates you because life is a tremendous blessing. If you are satisfied outside you will be lost forever; then you will never look within. But in spite of all the frustrations you go on hoping.
I have heard about a man: “Why did you quit your last job?” “Well, the boss said I was sacked, but I did not take any notice. He was always saying that. So I went in the next day and all my things had been cleared out of my office. Then I went in the day after and my name plate had been taken off the door, and the following day I found someone else sitting in my chair. ‘This is too much!’ I thought to myself; so I resigned.”
But even that is not too much to you. Every day you are sacked, every day you are fired, every day you are frustrated, every moment. Whatsoever arrangements you make are destroyed every moment, whatsoever you propose is; disposed. All your hopes simply prove hopeless, and all your dreams turn into dust and leave a very bitter taste in the mouth. You feel continuously nauseous, but still you go on clinging: some day, maybe, from somewhere, your dreams may be fulfilled. This is how you go on hanging on to the very illusory world of your projections. Unless you become alert and see the hopelessness of your hopes, unless you drop, all hoping you will not turn in, and you will not be able to destroy the cause.
Tags: Patanjali Yoga Sutra 48 Deep Hypnosis
