VBT – Meditation 97.4
Tapascharya
We all are facing this question everyday in our life – CONFRONTATION OF ONESELF IN ALONENESS IS VERY FEARFUL, VERY PAINFUL. WHAT TO DO?
It is fearful and it is painful, and one has to suffer it. Nothing should be done to avoid it, nothing should be done to divert the mind, nothing should be done to escape from it. One has to suffer it and go through it. This suffering, this pain, is just a good sign that you are near a new birth, because every birth is preceded by pain. It cannot be avoided, and it should not be avoided because it is part of your growth. This pain and this suffering is known traditionally as TAPASCHARYA, austerity.
This is the meaning of TAPAS – arduous austerity, effort.
But why is this pain there? This should be understood because understanding will help you to go through it, and if you go through it knowingly, you will come out of it more easily, and sooner.
Why is there pain when you are alone? The first thing is that your ego gets ill. Your ego can exist only with others. It has grown in relationship, it cannot exist alone. So if the situation is one in which it can exist no more, it feels suffocated, it feels just on the verge of death. This is the deepest suffering. You feel just as if you are dying, but it is not you who is dying but only the ego which you have taken to be yourself, with which you have become identified. It cannot exist because it has been given to you by others. It is a contribution.
When you leave others you cannot carry it with you. Think of it in this way: when you are in society, people think you are a very good person. This goodness cannot exist when you are lonely and alone because this is what people thought about you. Now those people are there no more. Your image cannot be helped. It has become foundationless. By and by it will disappear and you will feel very bad because you were such a good person and now you are no more. And not only good people will suffer, if you are a bad person that too was given by others to you. That too is a way of getting attention. When many people consider you bad they give you attention. They cannot be indifferent to you, they have to be aware of you. You are somebody, a bad man, dangerous. When you move into loneliness, you become nobody. That bad image will disappear and you were feeding on it, your ego was feeding on it. So bad men and good men are not basically different – both are gaining their egos. Their mediums differ, but their goals are the same.
The bad depends on others, the good also. They exist in society. The saint and the sinner, they exist in society. Alone you are neither a saint nor a sinner. So in aloneness all that you know about yourself will fall; by and by it will disappear. You can prolong your ego for a certain period – and that too you will have to do through imagination – but you cannot prolong it for long. Without society you are uprooted; the soil is not there from where to get food. This is the basic pain. You are no longer sure who you are: you are just a dispersing personality, a dissolving personality. But this is good, because unless this false you disappears, the real cannot emerge. Unless you are completely washed and become again clean, the real cannot emerge.
This false you is occupying the throne. It must be dethroned. By living in solitariness all that is false can go. And all that is given by society is false – really, all that is given is false, all that is born with you is real. All that is you by yourself, not contributed by someone else, is real, authentic. But the false must go. And the false is a great investment: you have invested so much in it, you have been looking after it so much. All your hopes hang on it. So when it starts dissolving you will feel fearful, afraid, trembling. What are you doing to yourself? You are destroying your whole life, the whole structure.
There will be fear. But you have to go through this fear, only then will you become fearless. I don’t say you will become brave, no. I say you will become fearless. Bravery is just part of fear.
Howsoever brave you are, the fear is hidden behind. I say fearless. You will not be brave, there is no need to be brave when there is no fear. Bravery and fear both become irrelevant. They are both aspects of the same coin. So your brave men are nothing but you standing on your head – just in SHIRSHASANA. Your bravery is hidden within you and your fear is on the surface; their fear is hidden within and their bravery is on the surface. So when you are alone you are very brave, when you think about something you are very brave, but when a real situation comes you are fearful. It is said about soldiers, the greatest of them, that before going to the front they are as afraid as anyone.
Tags: Tapascharya
