VBT – Meditation 108.4

VBT – Meditation 108.4

Natural Instincts

HOW TO DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN THE DICTATES OF THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND AND THAT OF THE INNER GUIDE? HOW CAN ONE RECOGNIZE THAT THE INNER GUIDE HAS COME INTO FUNCTION?

The first thing: because of Freud, much misunderstanding has arisen around the word “unconscious”. Freud completely misunderstood it, misinterpreted it. And he has become the very basis of modern knowledge about the mind. To Freud, unconscious meant simply the repressed conscious, the suppressed part of the conscious. So all that is evil and bad, immoral, has been suppressed. Because society cannot allow it, it has to be suppressed within. For Freud, that repressed part is the unconscious – but not for mystics. Freud is not a mystic; he has not entered his own unconscious. He has been simply observing cases of patients: ill people, abnormal people, mad, insane, pathological. He has been studying the pathological mind, and through the study of the pathological mind – and that, too, from without – he concluded that just underneath the conscious there is an unconscious mind. That unconscious mind carries all that has been suppressed from childhood, all that society has condemned. The mind has suppressed it, just to forget that it is there.

But it is there – and it goes on functioning. And it is very powerful: it goes on changing the conscious, it goes on playing tricks with the conscious. The conscious is really impotent before it, because whatsoever is repressed is repressed only because it is so powerful that society cannot cope with it. So society has been repressing it and society doesn’t know what else to do with it. For example, sex. It is so powerful that if you don’t repress it you won’t know what to do with it. It will lead you into dangerous paths. And it is such a forceful energy that the whole society will become chaotic if it is allowed completely. No marriage could exist, no love could exist, everything could be just a chaos if it was allowed total freedom – because then man would behave like an animal. If there were no marriage, no family, the whole society would be destroyed. Society depends on the unity of the family; the family depends on marriage; marriage depends on sex-suppression. Everything that is natural, forceful, has been inhibited, tabooed – so forcibly that you feel guilty about it and you go on fighting with it. Society has not only created policemen outside, it has created inner policemen, your conscience – a double arrangement so that you don’t go astray so that you cannot be natural, you have to be unnatural.

Now modern psychologists say that insanity is part of civilization – no civilization can be without madness. But mad people are suffering because you have forced such an order over them that their natural instincts are crushed. They have been crippled. It may be that your madmen are more powerful than you, that’s why their inner instincts have revolted and they have thrown their conscience, their mind, everything, overboard. That’s why they are mad. A better concept of humanity, a better organization, a better discipline with more knowledge and wisdom, may use them. They may prove geniuses; they may prove very talented people. They are. But they have such a force in them that they cannot repress, themselves. And society will not allow them to move because they are wild. Freud came to the conclusion that civilization needs the unconscious, the repressed part.

But really, for Tantra and yoga this unconscious is not the unconscious, it is just between the conscious and the unconscious, a small boundary. It is subconscious. The conscious has forced something down, but the conscious knows about it. It is not really unconscious, you know about it.

You may not want to recognize it, you may not want to be attentive to it, because you are afraid that if you give it attention it will come up. You have forced it into darkness but you are conscious about it.

The Freudian unconscious is not really unconscious, it is only subconscious. It is not a dark night, it is in the light, you can see it.