Baron And Chrysanthemums

Multi-Dimensional

OBSESSION SIMPLY MEANS you are paying too much attention and energy to something which is not that important. Out of all proportion you have become focussed, hypnotized by something. Obsession is a kind of hypnosis that you have created within yourself. Then everything else disappears in your life and only one thing remains that becomes your focal point. Your life becomes one-dimensional: that is obsession.

Life has to be multi-dimensional. There are people who are thinking only of sex, only of sex – twenty-four hours a day. Deep down in their minds it is always lurking. They may be doing something else, but they are thinking of sex. Then it is an obsession. Sex itself is not an obsession, remember – I am not against sex. I am not against anything. Obsession means now sex has taken the place of everything. There are people who are obsessed with food; they are continuously thinking of food. And there can be a positive obsession or a negative obsession.

You must have heard about the great emperor, Nero. He was positively obsessed with food. He used to have four physicians always by his side – just to help him vomit. He would eat, and he would eat too much, and he would feel great discomfort and stomach ache. The physicians were there to help him vomit – and once they had helped him vomit he would eat again, IMMEDIATELY. He would eat sometimes twenty times a day; and obviously, twenty times he would have to vomit.

Now, this is an obsession. Food is not an obsession – twice or thrice it is okay, as is your need. It is a physical need, you need nourishment, but to become a Nero is pathological. Then there are people negatively obsessed with food. You can find them in India – they fast. They are continuously thinking of food, as if food is the only barrier to God and fasting is enough to take them to the ultimate. They are masochists torturing themselves. That is a negative obsession. And when you are fasting you are thinking of food, as much as Nero was thinking of food – Nero may not have been thinking so much. There was no time to think: if you eat twenty times, when will you think? But the person who is on a fast has twenty-four hours available. And when you fast you cannot sleep, because the body is hungry.

Sleep is a need when the body is fully nourished. You cannot sleep when you are on a fast – one or two hours at the most. So twenty-two hours you are thinking, and those two hours you will be dreaming about food. This is a negative obsession.

There are people positively obsessed with sex, who only think of sex and nothing else. In everything they think of sex. And there are negatively obsessed people: these people you call celibates, monks, brahmacharins, they are continuously thinking of sex too – in a negative way.

Obsession means anything becoming your whole life. Nothing is to become your whole life – everything has its own place, life should be an orchestra. It should not be only food, should not be only sex, should not be only money, should not be only power. It should not be any ONE thing, it should be many things, the whole variety. All the dimensions should remain available, then you will be rich.