Lack of awareness is taking the transient for the eternal, the impure for the pure, the painful as pleasurable and the non-self for the self.
Egoism is the identification of the seer with the seen.
Attraction, and through it, attachment, is towards anything that brings pleasure.
Repulsion is from anything that causes pain.
-Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras
What is avidya? The word means ignorance, but avidya is not ordinary ignorance. It has to be understood deeply. Ignorance is lack of knowledge. Avidya is not lack of knowledge but lack of awareness. Ignorance can be dissolved very easily; you can acquire know ledge. It is only a question of training the memory. Knowledge is mechanical; no awareness is needed. It is as mechanical as ordinary ignorance. Avidya is lack of awareness. One has to move towards more and more consciousness, not towards more and more knowledge. Only then can avidya be dissolved.
Avidya is what Gurdjieff used to call ‘the spiritual sleep’. Man moves, lives, dies, not knowing why he was alive, not knowing from where he was coming, not knowing where he was moving, for what. Gurdjieff calls it sleep, Patanjali calls it avidya: they mean the same thing. You don’t know why you are. You don’t know the purpose of your being here in this world, in this body, in these experiences. You do many things without knowing why you are doing them, without knowing that you are doing them, without knowing that you are the doer. Everything moves as if in a deep sleep. Avidya, if I am to translate it for you, will mean ‘hypnosis’.
Man lives in a deep hypnosis. I have been working on hypnosis, because that is the only way to bring man out of hypnosis, to understand it. All awakening is a sort of dehypnotization, so the process of hypnosis has to be understood very, very clearly. Only then can you move out of it. A disease has to be understood, diagnosed; only then can it be treated. Hypnosis is the disease of man, and de-hypnosis will be the way. […]
I worked on many people, and this is my finding: that a person who can be hypnotized can be de-hypnotized, and a person who cannot be hypnotized finds it very difficult to move on the spiritual path, because the ladder goes both ways. If you can be hypnotized easily, you can be de hypnotized easily. The ladder is the same. Whether you are hypnotized or de-hypnotized, you move on the same ladder; only the directions differ.
Suddenly a woman looks attractive to you, or a man, but do you know the reason why? It is something like hypnosis. Of course, it is natural; nobody has hypnotized you; nature has hypnotized you. This power of nature to hypnotize is what Hindus call maya, the power of illusion. You are under an illusion, in a deep hallucination. You live like a somnambulist; fast asleep you go on doing things, not knowing why. And whatsoever reasons you give are rationalizations, they are not true reasons.
You see a woman, you fall in love, and you say, ‘I have fallen in love.’ But can you give the reasons why? Why has it happened? You will find some reasons. You will say, ‘Her eyes are so beautiful, the nose so shapely, and the face like a marble statue.’ You will find reasons, but these are rationalizations. In fact, you don’t know, and you are not courageous enough to say that you don’t know. Be courageous! When you don’t know, it is better to know that you don’t know. That will be a breaking point. You may come out of the whole hallucination that surrounds you. Patanjali calls it avidya. Avidya means lack of awareness. This is happening because of lack of awareness.
What happens in hypnosis? Have you ever watched a hypnotist, what he does? First, he says, ‘Relax.’ And he repeats it, he goes on saying, ‘Relax, relax, relax . . . ‘ Even the continuous sound of ‘relax’ becomes a mantra, a T. M. That’s what happens in T. M. You repeat a mantra continuously; it gives sleep. If you have a case of insomnia, then T. M. is the best thing to do. It gives you sleep, and that’s why it has become so important in the United States. The United States is the only country which is suffering deeply from insomnia. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is not just an accident there, he is the need. When people suffer from insomnia, they cannot sleep, they need tranquilizers. And Transcendental Meditation is nothing but a tranquilizer — it soothes you. You continuously repeat a certain word: Ram, Ram, Ram. Any word will do: Coca. Cola, Coca Cola — that will do; it has nothing to do with Ram. Coca-Cola will be as perfect as Ram, or even more so, because it is more relevant. You repeat a certain word continuously; the continuous repetition creates a boredom, and boredom is the base for all sleep. When you feel bored you are ready to go into sleep.
A hypnotist goes on repeating, ‘Relax, relax.’ The very word penetrates into your body and being. He goes on repeating it and he tells you to cooperate, and you cooperate. By and by, you start feeling sleepy. Then he says, ‘You are falling deeply asleep — falling, falling, falling into the deep abyss of sleep’ — he goes on repeating. And just by repetition you fall asleep.
This is a different type of sleep. It is not ordinary sleep because it is induced; somebody has induced it in you. Because somebody has induced it, it has a different quality. The first difference, and very basic, is that you will be asleep for the whole world but not for the hypnotist. You will not listen to anything now; you will not be able to hear anything now. Even if a bomb explodes it will not disturb you. The trains will pass, the airplanes will fly, but nothing will disturb you. You will not be able to hear anything. You are closed to the whole world but open to the hypnotist. If he says something, you will immediately listen, you will listen only to him. There is only one opening left — the hypnotist, and the whole world is closed. Whatsoever he says you will believe, because your reason has gone to sleep. Intelligence doesn’t function. You have become like a small child who has trust, so whatsoever the hypnotist says, you have to believe. Your conscious mind is not functioning; your conscious mind has gone to sleep. Only the unconscious mind functions. Now even an absurd thing will be believed. If the hypnotist says that you have become a horse, you cannot say, ‘No,’ because who will say no? In deep sleep, trust is perfect; you will become a horse, you will feel like a horse. And if he says, ‘Now you neigh like a horse,’ you will neigh. If he says, ‘Gallop, jump like a horse,’ you will jump and gallop.
Hypnosis is not ordinary sleep. In ordinary sleep you cannot say to somebody that you have become a horse. In the first place, if he hears you he is not asleep. In the second place, if he hears you and he is not asleep, he will not believe what you are saying. He will open his eyes and laugh and say, ‘Have you gone mad? What are you saying? Me, a horse?’
Hypnosis is induced sleep. It is more like an intoxicant than like sleep. You are under the influence of a drug. The drug is not chemical ordinarily, but it is chemical deep down in the body. Just the repetition of a certain word changes the chemistry of the body. That is why mantras have been so influential all through the history of man. Continuously chanting a particular word changes the chemistry of the body because a word is not just a word; it has vibrations, it is an electric phenomenon. The word vibrating continuously: Ram, Ram, Ram — Ram passes through the whole chemistry of the body. The very vibrations are soothing; they create a small humming inside you just as a mother will sing a lullaby when a child is not going to sleep. A lullaby is a very simple thing: one or two lines continuously repeated. And if the mother can take the child near her heart, then the effect will happen sooner because the heartbeat gives another rhythm. The heartbeat and a lullaby both together, and the child is fast asleep. This is the whole trick of chanting and mantras: they give you a good induced sleep; you will feel fresh afterwards. But there is nothing spiritual in it. There is nothing spiritual because spirituality is concerned with being more aware, not less aware.
Watch a hypnotist. What is he doing? Nature has done the same to you. Nature is the greatest hypnotist; it has given you suggestions. Those suggestions are carried by the chromosomes, the cells of your body. Now scientists say that a single cell carries almost ten million messages for you. They are in built. When a child is conceived, two cells meet: one from the mother, and one from the father. Two chromosomes meet; they bring millions of messages. They become the blueprint, and a child is born out of those basic blueprints. They go on multiplying; that’s how the body increases.
Your whole body is made of small invisible cells, millions of them. And each cell carries messages, just like each seed carries the whole message for the whole tree: what type of leaves will come out of it, what type of flowers will come out of it, whether they will be red or blue or yellow. A small seed carries the whole blueprint for the whole life of the tree. The tree may live four thousand years. For four thousand years the small seed carries everything about it. The tree need not bother and worry; everything will be implemented. You also carry seeds: one seed from the father, one from the mother. And they come from millennia, because your father’s seed was given to him from his father and mother. In this way, nature has entered you.
Your body comes from nature; you come from somewhere else. That somewhere else is God. You are a meeting point of consciousness and the unconsciousness of the body. But the body is very, very powerful, and unless you do something you will remain under its power, possessed. Yoga is the way to overcome. Yoga is the way not to be possessed by the body and to become the master again. Otherwise, you will remain a slave.
Avidya is slavery, the slavery of the hypnosis that nature has brought on you. Yoga is transcending this slavery and becoming a master. Now, try to follow the sutras.
A sutra means a seed. It has to be worked from many, many dimensions, then it will become a tree of understanding in you. A sutra is a very condensed message. It had to be so in those days because when Patanjali created Yoga Sutras, there was no writing. They had to be memorized. In those days you could not write big books, just sutras. Sutra means an aphorism, just a seed-like thing which can be memorized easily. And for thousands of years the sutras were memorized by disciples, and then their disciples. Only after thousands of years were they written, when writing came into existence. A sutra has to be telegraphic; you cannot use many words, you have to use the minimum. So whenever you want to understand a sutra, you have to magnify it. You have to use a magnifying glass to move into the details of it.
Lack of awareness is taking the transient for the eternal, the impure for the pure, the painful as pleasurable and the non-self for the self.
Says Patanjali, ‘What is avidya? — lack of awareness. And what is lack of awareness? How do you know it? What are the symptoms? These are the symptoms: taking the transient for the eternal.’
Look around — life is a flux, everything is moving. Everything is moving continuously, changing continuously. Revolution is the nature of things all around. Change seems to be the only permanent thing. Accept change and everything changes. It is just like the waves in an ocean: they are born, for a little while they exist, and then they dissolve and die. It is just like waves.
You go to the sea. What do you see? You see the waves, just the surface. And then you come back, and you say that you have been to the sea and the sea was beautiful. Your report is absolutely wrong. You have not seen the sea at all; just the surface, the waving surface. You were just standing on the shore. You looked at the sea, but it was not really the sea. It was just the outermost layer, just the boundary where winds were meeting with the waves.
It is like when you come to see me, and you just see my clothes. Then you go back, and you say that you have seen me. It is just like coming to see me, and just going around the house and looking at the outer walls, then going back and saying that you have seen me. Waves are in the sea, the sea is in the waves, but waves are not the sea. They are just the outermost, the most distant phenomenon from the center of the sea, from the depth.
Life is a flux; everything moving, changing into another. Patanjali says, ‘To believe that this is life is lack of awareness.’ You are very, very distant, away from life, from the center, the depth of it. On the surface there is change, on the periphery there is movement, but at the center nothing moves. There is no movement, no change.
It is just like the wheel of a cart. The wheel goes on moving and moving and moving, but at the center something remains unmoving. On that unmoving pole, the wheel moves. The wheel may go on moving on the whole earth, but it moved on something which was not moving. All movement depends on the eternal, the non-moving.
If you have seen only the movement of life, Patanjali says, ‘This is lack of awareness, avidya.’ Then you have not seen enough. If you think that somebody is a child, then he becomes a young man, then an old man, then he dies — you have seen only the wheel. You have seen the movement: the child, the young man, the old man, the dead, the corpse. Have you seen that which was unmoving within all these movements? Have you seen that which was not a child, not a young man, and not an old man? Have you seen that on which all these stages depend? Have you seen that which holds all, and always remains the same, and the same, and the same, which is neither born nor dies? If you have not seen that, if you have not felt that, Patanjali says, ‘You are in avidya, lack of awareness.’
You are not alert enough because you cannot see enough. You don’t have eyes enough because you cannot penetrate enough. Once you have eyes, the vision, the perception, the clarity, and the penetrating force of it, you will immediately see that change is there, but it is not all. In fact, it is just the periphery which changes, which moves. Deep down in the foundation is the eternal. Have you seen the eternal? If you have not seen, this is avidya; you are hypnotized by the periphery. The changing scenes have hypnotized you. You have become too involved in them. You need a little detachment, you need a little distance, you need a little more observation. Taking the transient for the eternal is avidya; taking the impure for the pure is avidya.
What is pure and what is impure? Patanjali has nothing to do with your ordinary morality. Ordinary morality differs. Something may be pure in India and impure in China. Something may be impure in India and pure in England. Or, even here, something may be pure to Hindus and impure to Jains. Morality differs. In fact, if you start penetrating the layers of morality, they differ with each individual. Patanjali is not talking about morality. Morality is just a convention; it has utility, but it has no truth in it. And when a man like Patanjali talks, he talks about eternal things, not local things. Thousands of moralities exist in the world, and they go on changing every day. Circumstances change, then the morality has to change. When Patanjali says ‘pure’ and ‘impure’, he means something absolutely different.
By ‘purity’ he means natural; by ‘impurity’ he means unnatural. And something may be natural to you or unnatural to you, so there cannot be any criterion. To take the impure for the pure means to take the unnatural for the natural. That’s what you have done, what the whole of humanity has done. And that’s why you have become more and more impure. Always remain true to nature. Just think of what is natural, find it. Because with the unnatural, you will always remain tense, uneasy, uncomfortable. Nobody can be comfortable in an unnatural situation, and you create unnatural things around you. Then they become a burden and they destroy you. When I say ‘unnatural’, I mean something foreign to your nature.
For example: a milkman comes, you take the milk, and you say that it is impure. Why do you say that it is impure? You say it is because he has poured water into it. But if the water were pure and milk were also pure, then two purities would make double purity. How can two purities meet, and the thing become impure? But they become impure. Pure water and pure milk meet, and both will become impure. Water will be impure, milk will also be impure, because something foreign, something from the outside has entered in.
When I was a student in university, I had a milkman. He was very famous around the university hostels. People believed that he was a very saintly man and would never mix water into milk, which is the usual practice in India. It is almost impossible to get pure milk, almost impossible. The man was really a very good man. He was an old man, an old villager; absolutely uneducated but very good hearted. Because of his saintly nature he was known around the university as Sant. One day I asked him, when we had become familiar with each other and a certain friendship had grown between us, ‘Sant, is it really true that you never mix water and milk?’ He said, ‘Absolutely true!’ But then I said, ‘It is impossible. Your prices are the same as other milkmen; you must be running the whole business at a loss.’ He laughed. He said, ‘You don’t know. There is a trick in it.’ I said, ‘Tell me the trick, because I have heard that you even put your hand on Ramayana, the Hindu bible, saying that you never mix water into milk.’ He said, ‘Yes, that too I have done, because I always mix milk into water.’
Legally he is perfectly right. You can take an oath and you can swear; there will be no trouble about it. But whether you mix water into milk or you mix milk in water is the same, because mixing with something makes it impure.
When Patanjali says, ‘Taking the impure for the pure is avidya,’ he is saying, ‘Taking the unnatural for the natural is avidya.’ And you have taken many unnatural things to be natural. You may have completely forgotten what is natural. You will have to go deep within yourself to find the natural. The whole society makes you impure; it goes on forcing things on you which are not natural, k goes on conditioning you, it goes on giving you ideologies, prejudices, and all sorts of nonsense. You have to find what is natural to you on your own.
Just a few days ago a young man came to me. He asked, ‘Is it good for me to get married? Because I have a spiritual inclination, I don’t want to get married.’ I asked him, ‘Have you read Vivekananda?’ He said, ‘Yes, Vivekananda is my guru.’ Then I asked him, ‘What other books have you been reading?’ He said, ‘Sivananda, Vivekananda and other teachers.’ I asked him, ‘This idea of not getting married, is it coming from you or from Vivekananda and Sivananda and company? If it is coming from you, it is absolutely okay.’ He said, ‘No, because my mind goes on thinking about sex, but Vivekananda must be right that one has to fight with sex. Otherwise, how will one improve? One has to attain to spirituality.’
This is the trouble. Now this Vivekananda is water in the milk. It may have been right for Vivekananda to remain celibate; that is for him to decide. But if he was impressed by Buddha and Ramakrishna, then he is also impure.
One has to follow one’s own being and nature, and one has to be very true and authentic, because the net is vast and the pit. falls are millions. The road forks on many, many dimensions and directions. You can be lost. Your mind thinks of sex; Vivekananda’s teaching says, ‘No!’ Then you have to decide. You have to move according to your mind. I told the young man, ‘It is better that you get married.’ Then I told him an anecdote.
Socrates was one of the greatest suffering husbands ever born. His wife, Xanthippe, was one of the most dangerous of women. Women are dangerous, but she was the most dangerous woman. She would beat Socrates. Once she poured the whole teapot on his head. Half his face remained burned for his whole life. To ask such a man what to do!… One young man asked, ‘Should I get married or not?’ Of course, he expected that Socrates would say, ‘No’ — he had suffered so much for it. But he said, ‘Yes, you should get married.’ The young man said, ‘But how can you say that? I have heard so many rumors about you and your wife.’ He said, ‘Yes, I say to you that you should get married. If you get a good wife you will be happy, and through happiness many things grow because happiness is natural. If you get a bad wife, then non attachment, renunciation will grow. You will become a great philosopher like me. In either case you will be profited. When you come to ask me whether to get married or not, the idea to marry is in you, otherwise why should you come to me?’
I told this young man, ‘You have come to ask me. That shows that Vivekananda has not been enough; still your nature persists. You should get married. Suffer it, enjoy it, the pain and the pleasure. Move through both and become mature through experience. Once you become mature, not because Vivekanand or anybody else says so, but because you have become mature and ripe, the foolishness of sexuality drops; it drops. Then brahmacharya arises; the real celibacy arises, the pure celibacy arises, but that is different.’
Always remember that you are you. You are neither Vivekananda nor Buddha nor me. Don’t get too impressed; impression is an impurity. Don’t get too influenced; influence is an impurity. Be alert, watch, observe, and unless something fits with your nature, never take it. It is not for you or you are not ready for it. Whatsoever the case, at this moment it is not for you. You have to move through your own experience. Suffering also is needed for you to come to a ripeness, a maturity. You cannot do anything in a hurry.
Life is eternal, there is no hurry in it. Time is not lacking. Life is absolutely patient; there is no impatience in it. You can move at your own pace. No need to take shortcuts; nobody has ever been successful through shortcuts. If you take the shortcut, who will give you the experience of the long, long journey? You will miss it. And there is every possibility that you will come back to it, and the whole thing will have been a wastage of time and energy. Shortcuts are always an illusion. Never choose the shortcut; always choose the natural. Maybe it will take a long time — let it. That’s how life grows; it cannot be forced.
When Patanjali says, ‘Lack of awareness is taking the impure for the pure, ‘ purity means your ‘naturality’, as you are, uncontaminated by others. Don’t make an ideal of anybody. Don’t try to become like a Buddha; you can become only your self. Even if a Buddha tried to become like you, it would not be possible. Nobody can become like anybody else. Everybody has his own unique way of being, and that is purity. To follow your own being, to be yourself, is purity. It is very difficult because you get impressed, because you get hypnotized. It is very difficult because there are logical people who convince you. It is very difficult. They are beautiful people; their beauty impresses you. There are wonderful people around; they are magnetic, they have a charisma. When you are around them you are simply pulled; they have a gravitation.
You have to be alert, more alert of great persons, more alert of those who have a magnetism, more alert of those who can impress, influence and transform you, because they can give you an impurity. Not that they want to give it to you; no Buddha has ever tried to make anybody like himself. Not that they want it, but your own foolish mind will try to imitate, make the ideal of somebody else and strive to become like that. That is the greatest impurity that can happen to a man.
Love Buddha, Jesus, Ramakrishna, be enriched by their experiences, but don’t be impressed. It is very difficult because the difference is very subtle. Love, listen, imbibe, but don’t imitate. Take whatsoever you can take but always take it according to your nature. If something fits your nature, take it — but not because Buddha says to.
Buddha insists again and again to his disciples, ‘Don’t take anything because I say it. Take it only if you need it, if you have come to the point where it will be natural for you.’ Buddha becomes a Buddha through millions of lives, millions of experiences of good and bad, sin and virtue, morality and immorality, pain and pleasure. Buddha himself has to pass through millions of lives and millions of experiences. And what do you want? Just listening to Buddha, being impressed by him, you immediately jump and start following him. That is not possible. You will have to go on your own way. Take whatsoever you can take but always move on your own way.
I always remember Friedrich Nietzsche’s book Thus Spake Zarathustra. When Zarathustra was talking leave of his disciples, the last thing that he said to them was very beautiful. It was the last message; he had said everything. He had given his whole heart to them and the last thing he said was, ‘Now listen to me and listen as deeply as you have never listened. My last message is, “Beware of Zarathustra! Beware of me!”‘
This is the last message of all enlightened people, because they are so attractive; you can fall a victim. And once something outside of you enters your nature, you are on a wrong path.
Says Patanjali, ‘Lack of awareness is taking the impure for the pure, the painful as pleasurable.’
You will say, ‘Either of the things that Patanjali says may be true but we are not so foolish to take the painful as pleasurable.’ You are. Everybody is — unless one becomes perfectly aware. You have taken many things as pleasurable which are painful. You suffer the pain and you cry and weep, but still you don’t understand that you have taken something which is basically painful and cannot be changed into a pleasure.
Every day people come to me about their sexual relationship saying that it is painful. I have not come across a single couple who has said to me that their sex life is as it should be — perfect, beautiful. What is the matter? In the beginning they say that everything was beautiful. In the beginning it always is! With everybody, the sex relationship is beautiful in the beginning, but why does it turn sour and bitter? Why after a little while, even before the honeymoon is over, does it start becoming sour and bitter?
Those who have words on human consciousness, deeply they say, ‘The beginning, the beauty in the beginning is just a natural trick to befool you.’ Once you are befooled, the reality comes up. It is just like when you go fishing and you use a little bait; in the beginning, when two persons meet, they think, ‘Now this is going to be the greatest peak experience in the world.’ They think, ‘This woman is the most beautiful woman,’ and the woman thinks, ‘This man is the greatest man there has ever been.’ They start in an illusion, they project. They try to see whatsoever they want to see. They don’t see the real person. They don’t see who is there, they just see their own dream projected; the other becomes just a screen and you project. Sooner or later the reality asserts. And when sex is fulfilled, when the basic hypnosis of nature i6 fulfilled, then everything turns sour.
Then you come to see the other as he is: very ordinary, nothing special. The body is no more a fragrance — it perspires. The face is no more divine — it has come nearer to an animal’s. From the eyes, now God is no longer looking at you, but a ferocious animal, a sexual animal. The illusion is broken, the dream is shattered. Now the misery starts.
And you had promised that you would love the woman forever; the woman had promised that even for future lives she would be your shadow. Now you are tricked by your own promises, trapped. Now how can you fall back? Now you have to carry it.
Hypocrisy enters, pretensions, anger. Because whenever you are pretending, sooner or later you will get angry; pretension is such a heavy weight. Now you take the hand of the woman and hold it, but it simply perspires and nothing happens; no poetry, only perspiration. You want to leave it but the woman will feel hurt. She also wants to leave it, but she also thinks that you will feel hurt, and lovers have to hold hands. You kiss the woman but there is nothing but a bad mouth odor. Everything goes ugly, and then you react, then you take revenge, then you throw responsibility on the other, then you try to prove that the other is guilty. He or she has done something wrong, or she has deceived you; she pretended to be something which she was not. And then, the whole ugly affair of a marriage.
Remember, lack of awareness is taking the painful as pleasurable. If something is a pleasure in the beginning and in the end, it turns painful, remember that it was painful from the very beginning; only lack of awareness has deceived you. Nobody else has deceived you, only lack of awareness. You were not alert enough to see things as they were. Otherwise, how could pleasure turn into pain! If there were really pleasure, as time passed, it would have become greater and greater pleasure. That is how it should be.
You sow the seed of a mango tree; as it grows, will it become the fruit of a neem tree, bitter? If in the first place the seed was of the mango, it will be a mango tree, a big mango tree. Thousands of mangoes will come out of it, sweet. But if you plant a mango tree and in the end, it turns out to be a neem tree, bitter, absolutely bitter, what does it mean? It means the tree has not deceived you but you mistook the seed of a neem tree for the seed of a mango tree.
Otherwise, pleasure grows more pleasurable, happiness grows more and more happy. Finally, it turns into the highest peak of bliss; but then one has to be aware when one is sowing the seeds. Once you sow the seeds, you are caught because then you cannot change. Then you will have to reap the crop also. And you are reaping the crop. You always reap the crop of misery and you never become aware that something must be wrong with the seed. Whenever you have to reap misery, you start thinking that somebody else has been deceiving you: the wife, the husband, the friend, the family, the world, but some. body else. The devil or somebody is playing tricks on you. This is avoiding facing the reality that you have sown wrong seeds.
Lack of awareness is taking the painful as pleasurable. And this is the criterion. Ask Patanjali, Shankaracharya, Buddha; this is the criterion: if something turns finally into pain, it must have been painful from the beginning. The end is the criterion, the final fruit is the criterion. You should judge a tree by the fruit; there is no other way to judge it. If your life has become a tree of misery, you should judge that the seed was wrong, something that you have done wrong; move back.
But you never do that. You will commit the same mistake again. If your wife dies and you had thought many times that if she died it would be good — it is difficult ro find a husband who has not thought many times that if his wife died it would be good — ‘I am finished and I am not going to look at another woman again’ — but the moment the wife dies, immediately the idea of another woman comes into the mind. The mind starts thinking again, ‘Who knows? This woman was not good but the other woman can be. This relationship didn’t come to a beautiful end but that doesn’t close all the doors; other doors are open.’ The mind starts working. You will fall into the same trap again and you will suffer again. And you will always think, ‘Maybe this woman and that woman….’ It is not a question of a woman and a man, it is a question of being aware.
If you are aware, then with everything that you do you will do looking at the end. You will be fully alert to what is going to be in the end. Then if you want it to be painful, if you want to live in pain and misery, it is up to you to choose. But then you cannot make anybody else responsible. You know perfectly well that you sowed the seed and now you have to reap it. But who is so foolish that alert, aware, he will sow bitter seeds? For what?
And lack of awareness is to take the non-self for the self:
These are the criteria.
You have taken the non self for the self. Sometimes you think you are the body, sometimes you think you are the mind, sometimes you think you are the heart; these are the three traps. Body is the outermost layer. When you feel hungry have you not always said, ‘I am hungry’? — lack of awareness. You are just the knower that the body is hungry; you are not hungry. How can consciousness be hungry? Food never enters consciousness; consciousness is never hungry. In fact, once you come to know consciousness, you will find that it is always satiated, never hungry. It is always perfect, absolute; it lacks nothing. It is already the very pinnacle, the very peak, the ultimate growth; it is not hungry. And how can consciousness be hungry for food.? — body needs it.
A man of awareness will say, ‘My body is hungry.’ Or, if awareness goes even deeper, he will not say ‘my body’; he will say, ‘This body is hungry, the body is hungry.’
One great Indian mystic went to America. His name was Ramteerth. He always used to speak in the third person. He would never use ‘I’. It looked awkward because people who didn’t know him couldn’t follow what he was saying. One day he went back to the house where he was staying in America. He went in laughing, enjoying, his whole body laughing a belly laugh. The whole body was shaking with laughter. The family asked, ‘What is the matter, what has happened? Why are you so happy? Why are you laughing?’ He said, ‘It happened on the street. A few urchins started throwing stones at Ram’ — Ram was his name — ‘and I said to Ram, “Now see!” And Ram was very, very angry. He wanted to do something, but I didn’t cooperate, I stood aside.’ The family said, ‘We cannot follow what you mean. You are Ram. About whom are you talking?’ Said Ramteerth, ‘I am not Ram, I am the knower. This body is Ram and those urchins cannot throw stones at me. How can a stone be thrown at consciousness? Can you hit the sky with a stone? Can you touch the sky with a stone?’
Consciousness is a vast sky, a space; you cannot hit it. Only body can be hit with a stone because body belongs to matter; matter can hit it. Body belongs to matter. It feels hungry for food. Food can satisfy it, hunger will kill it. Consciousness is not the body.
Lack of awareness is when you take your body as yourself. Ninety percent of your lives’ miseries are because of this: lack of awareness. You take the body as yourself and then you suffer. You are suffering in a dream. The body is not yours. Soon it will not be yours. Where were you when your body was not there? Where were you before your birth, what face had you then? And after the death, where will you be and what will your face be? Will you be a man or a woman? Consciousness is neither. If you think that I am a man, this is lack of awareness. Consciousness? How can consciousness be divided into sex? — it has no sex organs. If you think you are a child or a young man or an old man, you are again lacking in awareness. How can you be old, how can you be young? Consciousness is neither. It is eternal, it is the same: it is not born, it doesn’t die, and it remains — it is life itself.
Or take the mind — that is the second, deeper layer. And it is more subtle and nearer to consciousness. You take your mind to be yourself. You go on saying: ‘I, I, I.’ If somebody contradicts your idea you say, ‘This is my idea,’ and you fight for it. Nobody debates for truth; people discuss and debate and fight for their ‘I’. ‘My idea means me. How dare you contradict? I will prove that I am right!’
Nobody is bothered about truth. Who bothers? — it is a question of who is right, not a question of what is right. But then people are identified, and not only ordinary people, even people who are religious.
A man renounces the family, the children, the marketplace, the world, and goes to the Himalayas. You ask him, ‘Are you a Hindu?’ and he says, ‘Yes.’ What is this Hinduism? Is consciousness Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian? It is the mind. Lack of awareness is if you get identified with the non self and think it is the self.
And then there is the heart, the nearest to consciousness but still far away. There is body, thought and feeling. When you feel, you have to be very, very aware to feel that it is not you who feels. It is again a part of the mechanism. Of course, it is the nearest to consciousness. That’s why heart is the nearest to consciousness, head just in between, and body the farthest away. But still, heart is not you. Even feeling is a phenomenon: it comes and goes; it is a ripple, it arises and dies; it is a mood, it exists and then doesn’t exist. You are that which will always exist, always and always, forever and forever.
Lack of awareness is taking the non-self for the self.
Then what is awareness? Awareness is to be aware that you are not the body, not because the Upanishads say so or Patanjali says so — because you can cram it into your mind that you are not the body. You can go on repeating every morning and evening, ‘I am not the body’ — that will not help. It is not a question of repetition; it is a question of deep understanding. And if you understand, what is the point of repeating?
Once a sannyasin, a Jain monk stayed with me. Every morning, he would sit and chant a Sanskrit mantra: I am not the body; I am not the mind; I am the purest Brahma. He chanted and chanted and chanted for one and a half hours every morning. On the third day I said to him, ‘Have you not known it? Then why do you chant? If you have known it, it is foolish. If you have not known it, it is again foolish because just by repeating how can you know?’
If a man goes on repeating, ‘I am a man of great potential, sexual potential,’ you can be certain that he is impotent. Why repeat, ‘I am a man, and very potent and powerful?’ And if a man repeats this for one and a half hours every morning, what does it mean? It shows that something that is just the opposite is in the mind; deep down he knows that he is impotent. Now he is trying to befool himself with, ‘I am a very powerful man.’ If you are, you are. There is no need to repeat it. I told the Jain monk, ‘This shows that you have not known. This is a perfect indication that you are still identified with the body. And by repeating, how can you get out of it? Understand that repetition is not understanding.’
To understand, watch. When hunger comes, watch whether it is in the body or in you. When illness comes, watch where it is, in the body or in you. An idea comes, watch where it is, in the mind or in you. A feeling arises, watch. By being more and more watchful you will attain to awareness. By repetition nobody has ever attained.
Egoism is the identification of the seer with the seen.
You are there behind your eyes, just standing as if someone is standing behind a window and looking out. The man who is looking out of a window is just like you, looking out of the eyes towards me. But you can get identified with the eyes, you can get identified with the seeing. Seeing is a capacity, a vehicle. Eyes are just windows; they are not you.
Patanjali says, ‘Through the five senses you get identified with the vehicles, and then out of these five arises the ego.’ Ego is the false self. Ego is all that which you are not and you think you are.
A man standing in the window starts thinking that he is the window. What are you doing behind the eyes? — you are looking through the eyes. Eyes are the windows; ears are the windows; you are hearing with the ears. You stretch your hand towards me, and I touch you; hand is just a vehicle. You are not the hand. And this you can watch, and this you can experiment with.
Many times, it happens that something happens just in front of your eyes and you miss. Sometimes you have read the whole page and suddenly you become aware that you have been reading, but you have not read a single word. You don’t remember what you have read, and you have to go back. What happened? If you were the eyes how could this be possible?
You are not the eyes. The window was vacant, looking at the page. The consciousness behind the window was not there, it was engaged somewhere else. The attention was not there. You may have been standing at the window with closed eyes, or your back was to the window, but you were not looking out of the window. It happens every day — suddenly you realize that something has happened, and you have not seen, you have not heard, you have not read. You were not there, you were somewhere else thinking some other thoughts, dreaming some other dreams, moving in some other worlds. This window was empty; only eyes were there.
Do you know the empty eye? Go and see a madman; you can see an empty eye there. He looks at you and doesn’t look. You can see that he looks at you and he is not looking at you at all. His eye is empty. Or you can go to a saint who has achieved; his eye again is also empty. It is not like the madman’s, but something similar to it — he looks through you. He does not stop at you; he goes beyond you. Or he looks not at your body, but at you. He penetrates: he leaves your body, your mind, your heart and he simply jumps on you. And you don’t know who you are.
That is why a saint’s look seems to be going through you. He does not stop at you, because for the saint, the ego that you think you are, is not you. He bypasses the ego; he simply looks into you. A madman looks with an empty eye because his consciousness is not there. A saint also appears to be looking with an empty eye, because his consciousness is absolutely there. And he penetrates you so deeply, to the very depths of your being where you have not reached yet. That’s why he looks as if he is not looking at you, because the you that you are identified with is not the reality for him, but the you that you are not aware of is the reality for him.
Egoism is the identification of the seer with the seen, with the vehicle. If you drop identification with the vehicles, ego drops. And there is no other way to drop the ego. Don’t get identified with the body: eyes, ears, mind, heart, and suddenly there is no ego. You are, in your total purity, but there is no ego there. You are for the first time in your total presence, but no ego is there, no ‘I’ process, nobody saying, ‘I am.’
Attraction, and through it, attachment, is towards anything that brings pleasure.
Repulsion is from anything that causes pain.
These are your two ways of being here in the world: you are attracted towards something which you feel causes pleasure, you feel repelled, repulsed by something which you think causes pain. But if you become more and more alert, you will have a total mutation. You will be able to see that whatsoever causes pleasure also causes pain — pleasure in the beginning, pain in the end. Whatsoever causes pain also causes pleasure — pain in the beginning, pleasure in the end. These are the two ways in the world.
One is the way of the householder. Try to understand it — it is very, very significant. One is the way of the householder, the grahstha. He lives through attachment, attraction. Whatsoever he feels will cause pleasure. he moves towards it. He clings to it and finally he finds pain and nothing else, anguish and nothing else.
Just the opposite is the way of the monk, one who has renounced the world. He does not cling to pleasure. On the contrary, he starts clinging to paid, austerities, torture. He lies down on a bed of thorns, goes on a long fast, stands for years, does not sleep for months. He does just the opposite because he has come to know that whenever there is pleasure in the beginning, in the end there is pain. He has reversed the logic; now he seeks the pain. And he is right — if you seek pain there will be pleasure in the end.
But a man who practices pain becomes incapable of feeling pain. A man who practices pain becomes incapable of pleasure for small things, just small things. You cannot understand. For a man who has been fasting for a month, ordinary bread and butter and salt is such a great feast. A man who has been lying down on thorns, if you allow him to lie down just on the ground, on the plain ground, no emperor could sleep so beautifully.
But both are two aspects of the same coin, and both are wrong. The monk has just reversed the process: he is standing in a shirshasan, a head stand, but he is the same man. Both are attached: one is attached to pleasure; the other is attached to pain.
A man of awareness is unattached. He is neither a grahstha, a householder, neither is he a monk. He does not move to the monastery, and he does not go to the mountains. He remains wherever he is — he simply moves ‘withinwards’. On the outside there is no choice for him. He does not cling to pleasure and he does not cling to pain. He is neither a hedonist nor a self-torturer. He simply moves ‘withinwards’ looking at the game of pleasure and pain, light and shadow, day and night, life and death. He moves beyond both. Because there is duality, he moves beyond both, he transcends both. He simply becomes alert and aware, and in that awareness for the first time something happens which is neither pain nor pleasure, but which is bliss. Bliss is not pleasure; pleasure is always mixed with pain. Bliss is neither pain nor pleasure, bliss is beyond both.
And beyond both you are. That’s your nature, your purity, your crystal purity of being — just a transcendence. You live in the world but the world is not in you. You move in the world but the world doesn’t move in you. You remain untouched wherever you are. You become a lotus flower.
-Osho
From The Alchemy of Yoga, Discourse #3; Yoga: Science of the Soul V.4 (previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, V.4)
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