< Previous | Contents | Next >
Chapter 7: An Ecstasy Is Born
Their cessation is brought about by persistent inner effort and non-attachment
Of these two, abhyasa, the inner practice,
is the effort to be firmly established in oneself.
It becomes firmly grounded when continued for a long time, without interruption and with reverent devotion.
Man is not only his conscious mind. He has also nine times more than the conscious – the unconscious layer of the mind. Not only that, man has the body, the soma, in which this mind exists. The body is absolutely unconscious. Its working is almost non-voluntary. Only the surface of the body is voluntary; the inner sources are non-voluntary, you cannot do anything about them, your will is not effective.
This pattern of man’s existence has to be understood before one can enter into oneself. And the understanding should not remain only intellectual. It must go deeper, it must penetrate the unconscious layers; it must reach to the very body itself.
Hence, the importance of abhyasa, constant inner practice. These two words are very significant: abhyasa and vairagya. Abhyasa means constant inner practice, and vairagya means non-attachment, desirelessness. The coming sutras of Patanjali are concerned with these two most significant concepts, but before we enter the sutras it has to be firmly grasped that this, the pattern of human personality, is not totally intellectual.
If it were only intellect then there would be no need for abhyasa – constant, repetitive effort. You can understand anything immediately if it is rational, through the mind, but just that understanding won’t do. You can understand easily that anger is bad, poisonous, but this understanding is not enough for the anger to leave you, to disappear. In spite of your understanding the anger will continue, because the anger exists in many layers of your unconscious mind, and not only in the mind, but in your body also.
The body cannot understand just by verbal communication. Only your head can understand; the body remains unaffected. And unless understanding reaches to the very roots of the body you cannot be transformed. You will remain the same. Your ideas may go on changing but your personality will persist. And then a new conflict will arise and you will be in more turmoil than
ever, because now you can see what is wrong and still you persist in doing it, you go on doing it. A self-guilt and condemnation is created. You start hating yourself, you start thinking yourself a sinner. And the more you understand, the more condemnation grows, because you see how difficult it is, almost impossible, to change yourself.
Yoga does not believe in intellectual understanding. It believes in bodily understanding, in a total understanding in which your wholeness is involved. Not only do you change in your head, but the deep sources of your being also change.
How can they change? Constant repetition of a particular practice becomes non-voluntary. If you do a particular practice constantly, just repeating it continuously, by and by it drops from the conscious, reaches to the unconscious and becomes part of it. Once it becomes part of the unconscious it starts functioning from that deep source.
Anything can become unconscious if you go on repeating it continuously. For example, your name has been repeated so constantly from your childhood that now it is not part of the conscious, it has become part of the unconscious. You may be sleeping with one hundred persons in a room, and if somebody comes and calls “Ram? Is Ram there?” ninety-nine persons who are not concerned with the name will go on sleeping. They will not be disturbed. But the person who has the name Ram will suddenly ask, “Who is calling me? Why are you disturbing my sleep?”
Even in sleep, he knows his name is Ram. How has this name reached so deep? – just by constant repetition. Everybody is repeating his name, everybody is calling it; and he himself, introducing himself – continuous use. Now it is not conscious, it has reached to the unconscious.
The language, your mother tongue, becomes a part of the unconscious. Whatsoever else you learn later on will never be so unconscious, it will remain conscious. That’s why your unconscious language will continuously affect your conscious language. If a German speaks English it is different, if a Frenchman speaks English it is different, if an Indian speaks English it is different. The difference is not in English, the difference is in their innermost patterns. The Frenchman has a different pattern, unconscious pattern that affects it. So whatsoever you learn later on will be affected by your mother tongue. And if you fall unconscious, then only your mother tongue can penetrate.
I remember one of my friends who was a Maharashtrian. He was in Germany for twenty years, or even more. For twenty years he used the German language. He had completely forgotten his own mother tongue, Marathi. He couldn’t read it, he couldn’t talk it. Consciously, the language was completely
forgotten because it was not used.
Then he became ill, and in that illness sometimes he would become unconscious. Whenever he would become unconscious, a totally different type of personality would evolve. He would start behaving in a different way. In his unconscious he would utter words from Marathi, not from German. When he was unconscious then he would utter words which are from the Marathi language. And after his unconsciousness, when he would come back to the conscious, for a few minutes he would not be able to understand German.
Constant repetition in childhood goes deeper, because the child really has no conscious. He has more of the unconscious just near the surface; everything enters into the unconscious. As he learns, as he gets educated, the conscious will become a thicker layer, and then there will be less and less penetration towards the unconscious.
Psychologists say that almost fifty percent of your learning is finished by your seventh year of age. By the seventh year of your life you have known almost half of the things that you are ever going to know. Half your education is finished, and this half is going to be the base. Now everything else will just be imposed on it and the deeper pattern of childhood will remain.
That’s why modern psychology, modern psychoanalysis, psychiatry, all try to penetrate into your childhood, because if you are mentally ill, somewhere the seed is to be found in your childhood. The pattern must be located there in your childhood. Once that deep pattern is located, then something can be done and you can be transformed.
But how to penetrate it? Yoga has a method. That method is called abhyasa. Abhyasa means the constant, repetitive practice of a certain thing. Why, through repetition, does something become unconscious? There are a few reasons for it.
If you want to learn something you will have to repeat it. Why? If you read a poem just once, you may remember a few words here and there. But if you read it twice, thrice, many more times, then you can remember lines, paragraphs. If you repeat it a hundred times then you will remember it as a whole pattern. If you repeat it even more then it may continue, persist in your memory for years. You may not be able to forget it.
What is happening? When you repeat a certain thing, the more you repeat, the more it is engraved on the brain cells. A constant repetition is a constant hammering. Then it is ingrained, it becomes a part of your brain cells. And the more it becomes a part of your brain cells, the less consciousness is needed. Your consciousness can move; now it is not needed.
So whatsoever you learn deeply, you need not be conscious for it. In the
beginning if you learn how to drive a car, then it is a conscious effort. That’s why it is so much trouble, because you have to be alert continuously and there are so many things to be aware of – the road, the traffic, the mechanism, the wheel, the accelerator, the brakes and the rules and regulations of the road. You have to be constantly alert about everything. As you are so much involved in it, it becomes arduous, it becomes a deep effort.
But by and by you will be able to completely forget everything. You will drive, driving will become unconscious. You need not bring your mind to it – you can go on thinking anything you like, you can be anywhere you like and the car will move unconsciously. Now your body has learned it. Now the whole mechanism knows it. It has become an unconscious learning.
Whenever something becomes so deep that you need not be conscious about it, it falls into the unconscious. And once a thing has fallen into the unconscious it will start changing your being, your life, your character. And the change will be effortless now, you need not be concerned with it. You will simply move in the directions where the unconscious is leading you.
Yoga has worked very much on abhyasa, constant repetition. This constant repetition is just to bring your unconscious into work. And when the unconscious starts functioning you are at ease. No effort is needed, things become natural. It is said in old scriptures that a sage is not one who has a good character, because even that consciousness shows that the “anti” still exists, the opposite still exists. A sage is one who cannot do bad, cannot think about it. The goodness has become unconscious, it has become like breathing. Whatsoever he does will be good. It has become so deep in his being that no effort is needed, it has become his life. So you cannot say a sage is a good man. He doesn’t know what is good, what is bad. Now there is no conflict. The good has penetrated so deeply that there is no need to be aware about it.
If you are aware about your goodness, the badness still exists side by side. There is a constant struggle. And every time you have to move into action you have to choose: “I have to do good, I have not to do bad.” And this choice is going to be a deep turmoil, a struggle, a constant inner violence, inner war. And if there is conflict you cannot be at ease, at home.
Now we should enter the sutra. The cessation of mind is Yoga, but how can the mind cease?
Their cessation is brought about by persistent inner practice and non-attachment.
Two things: how can the mind cease with all its modifications? – first,
abhyasa, persistent inner practice, and second, non-attachment. Non-
attachment will create the situation, and persistent practice is the technique to be used in that situation. Understand both.
Whatsoever you do, you do because you have certain desires. And those desires can be fulfilled only by doing certain things. Unless those desires are dropped your activities cannot be dropped. You have some investment in those activities, in those actions. This is one of the dilemmas of human character and mind – that you may want to stop certain actions because they lead you into misery.
But why do you do them? You do them because you have certain desires, and those desires cannot be fulfilled without doing them. So there are two things. One, you have to do certain things. For example, anger. Why do you get angry? You get angry only when somewhere, somehow, someone creates a hindrance. You are going to achieve something and someone creates a hindrance. Your desire is obstructed; you get angry.
You can get angry even with things. If you are moving and you are trying to reach somewhere immediately and a chair comes in the way, you get angry with the chair. You try to unlock the door and the key is not working, you become angry with the door. It is absurd, because to be angry with a thing is nonsense. Anything that creates any type of obstruction creates anger.
You have a desire to reach, to do, to achieve something. Whosoever comes in between you and your desire appears to be your enemy, and you want to destroy him. This is what anger means: you want to destroy the obstacles. But anger leads to misery, anger becomes an illness so you want not to be angry.
But how can you drop anger if you have desires, goals? If you have desires and goals, then anger is bound to be there because life is complex; you are not alone here on this earth. Millions of people are striving for their own desires; they criss-cross each other, they come into each other’s path. If you have desires then anger is bound to be there, frustration is bound to be there, violence is bound to be there. And your mind will think to destroy whosoever comes in your path.
This attitude to destroy the obstacle is anger. But anger creates misery, because you have been angry for millions of years. It has become a deep-rooted so you want not to be angry. But just wanting not to be angry will not be of much help, because anger is part of a greater pattern – of a mind which desires, a mind which has goals, a mind which wants to reach somewhere. You cannot drop anger.
So the first thing is not to desire. Then half of the possibility of anger is dropped; the base is dropped. But then too, it is not that anger will necessarily disappear because you have been angry for millions of years. It has become a
deep-rooted habit. You may drop desires but anger will still persist. It will not be so forceful, but it will persist because now it is a habit. It has become an unconscious habit. For many, many lives you have been carrying it. It has become your heredity. It is in your cells, the body has taken it, and it is now chemical and physiological. Just by dropping your desires your body is not going to change its pattern. The pattern is very old; you will have to change this pattern also.
For that change, repetitive practice will be needed. Just to change the inner mechanism, repetitive practice will be needed – a reconditioning of the whole body-mind pattern. But this is possible only if you have dropped desiring.
Look at it from another point of view. One man came to me and he said, “I don’t want to be sad, but I am always sad and depressed. Sometimes I cannot even feel why I am sad, but I am sad. No visible cause, nothing that I can pinpoint:”This is the reason.” It seems that it has just become my style to be sad. I don’t remember,” he said, “that I was ever happy. And I don’t want to be sad. It is a dead burden. I am the unhappiest person. So how I can drop it?”
So I asked him, “Have you got any investment in your sadness?”
He said, “Why should I have any investment?” But he had. I knew the person well. I had known the person for many years, but he was not aware that there was some vested interest in it. So he wants to drop sadness, but he is not aware why the sadness is there. He has been maintaining it for some other reasons which he cannot connect.
He needs love, but to be loved you need to be loving. If you ask for love you have to give love, and you have to give more than you can ask for. But he is a miser, he cannot give love. Giving is impossible to him; he cannot give anything. Just the word giving, and he will shrink within himself. He can only take, he cannot give. He is closed as far as giving is concerned.
But without love you cannot flower. Without love you cannot attain any joy, you cannot be happy. And he cannot love because love looks like giving something. It is a giving, a wholehearted giving of all that you have – your being also. He cannot give love, he cannot receive love. Then what to do? But he hankers, as everybody hankers, for love. It is a basic need, just like food. Without food your body will die, and without love your soul will shrink. It is a must.
He has created a substitute, and that substitute is sympathy. He cannot get love because he cannot give love, but he can get sympathy. Sympathy is a poor substitute for love. So he is sad: when he is sad people give him sympathy. Whosoever comes to him feels sympathetic because he is always crying and weeping. His mood is always that of a very miserable man. But he enjoys!
Whenever you give him sympathy he enjoys it. He becomes more miserable, because the more he is miserable, the more he can get this sympathy.
So I told him, “You have a certain investment in your sadness. This whole pattern of sadness cannot be dropped, it is rooted somewhere else. Don’t ask for sympathy. But you can stop asking for sympathy only when you start giving love, because it is a substitute. And once you start giving love, love will happen to you. Then you will be happy. Then a different pattern is created.”
I have heard…
A man entered a car park. He was in a very ridiculous posture. It looked almost impossible to walk as he was walking, because he was crouching as if he was driving a car, his hands moving on some invisible wheel, his feet on some invisible accelerator, and he was walking. And it was so difficult, so impossible, how he was walking. A crowd gathered. He was doing something impossible and they asked the attendant, “What is the matter? What is this man doing?”
The attendant said, “Don’t ask so loudly! This man loved cars in his past. He was one of the best drivers. He has even won a national prize in car racing. But now, due to some mental deficiency, he has been debarred. He is not allowed to drive a car, but the old hobby remains.”
The crowd said, “If you know that then why don’t you say to him, ‘You don’t have a car. What are you doing here?’”
The man said, “That’s why I said don’t speak so loudly! That I cannot do, because he gives me one rupee per day to wash the car. That I cannot do; I cannot say, ‘You have no car.’ He is going to park the car and then I will wash it.”
That one-rupee investment is there. You have many investments in your misery also, in your anguish also, in your illness also. And then you go on saying, “We don’t want – we don’t want to be angry, we don’t want to be this and that.” But unless you come to know how all these things have happened to you, unless you see the whole pattern, nothing can be changed.
The deepest pattern of the mind is desire. You are whatsoever you are because you have certain desires, a group of desires. Patanjali says the first thing is non-attachment. Drop all desire, don’t be attached and then, abhyasa.
For example, someone comes to me and he says, “I don’t want to collect more fat on my body, but I go on eating. I want to stop it but I go on eating.”
The wanting is superficial; there is a pattern inside, the reason he goes on eating more and more. And if he stops even for a few days, then again, with
more gusto, he eats. And he will collect more weight than he has lost through a few days fasting or dieting. And this has been continuous, for years. It is not just a question of eating less. Why is he eating more? The body doesn’t need it, then somewhere in the mind food has become a substitute for something. He may be afraid of death. People who are afraid of death eat more because eating seems to be the base of life. The more you eat, the more alive – this is the arithmetic in their mind – because if you don’t eat you die. So not eating is equivalent to death and more eating is equivalent to more life. So if you are afraid of death you will eat more, or if nobody loves you, you will eat more.
Food can become a substitute for love because the child, in the beginning, comes to associate food and love. The first thing the child is going to be aware of is the mother, the food from the mother and the love from the mother. Love and food enter his consciousness simultaneously. And whenever the mother is loving she gives more milk. The breast is given happily. But whenever mother is angry, non-loving, she snatches the breast away.
Food is taken away whenever mother is not loving, food is given whenever she is loving: love and food become one. In the mind, in the child’s mind, they become associated. So whenever the child gets more love he will reduce his food, because the love is so much that the food is not needed. Whenever love is not there he will eat more, because a balance has to be kept. If there is no love at all then he will fill his belly.
You may be surprised to know that whenever two persons are in love they lose fat. That’s why girls start gathering fat the moment they are married. When love is settled, they start getting fat because now there is no need. Love and the world of love are, in a way, finished.
In the countries where divorce has become more prevalent, the women have better figures. In the countries where divorce is not prevalent, women don’t bother at all about their figures because when divorce is possible then the women will have to find new lovers; they are figure conscious. The search for love helps the figure. When love is settled, it is finished in a way. You need not worry about the body, you need not take any care.
So this person may be afraid of death. Maybe he is not in any deep, intimate love with anyone. And these two are again connected: if you are in deep love you are not afraid of death. Love is so fulfilling that you don’t care what is going to happen in the future. Love itself is the fulfillment. Even if death comes it can be welcomed. But if you are not in love then death creates a fear because you have not even loved yet and death is approaching near. Death will finish it, and there will be no time and no future after it.
If there is no love the fear of death will be more. If there is love there will be
less fear of death. If there is total love, death disappears. These are all connected inside. Even very simple things are deeply rooted in greater patterns.
Mulla Nasruddin was standing before his veterinary doctor with his dog and insisting, “Cut off the tail of my dog!”
The doctor was saying, “But why, Nasruddin? If I cut off the tail of your dog, this beautiful dog will be destroyed. He will look ugly. And why are you insisting?”
Nasruddin said, “Between you and me – don’t say this to anybody – I want the dog’s tail to be cut off because my mother-in-law is going to come soon and I don’t want any sign of welcome in my house. I have removed everything. Only this dog with his wagging tail can welcome my mother-in-law.”
Even a dog’s tail has a pattern of many relationships. If Nasruddin cannot welcome his mother-in-law even through his dog then he cannot be in love with his wife, it is impossible. If you are in love with your wife you will welcome the mother-in-law, you will be loving towards her.
Things that are simple on the surface are deeply rooted in complex things, and everything is interrelated. So just by changing a thought nothing is changed. Unless you go to the complex pattern, uncondition it, recondition it, create a new pattern, only then can a new life arise out of it. So these two things have to be done.
Non-attachment, non-attachment about everything – that doesn’t mean that you stop enjoying. That misunderstanding has been there, and Yoga has been misinterpreted in many ways. One is this: it seems as if Yoga is saying that you die to life because non-attachment means then you don’t desire anything. If you don’t desire anything, if you are not attached to anything, if you don’t love anything, then you will be just a dead corpse. No, that is not the meaning.
Non-attachment means don’t be dependent on anything, and don’t make your life and happiness dependent on anything. Preference is okay, attachment is not okay. When I say preference is okay I mean you can prefer – you have to prefer. If many people are there, you have to love someone, you have to choose someone, you have to be friendly with someone. Prefer someone, but don’t get attached.
What is the difference? If you get attached then it becomes an obsession: if the person is not there you are unhappy. If you miss the person, you are in misery. And attachment is such a disease that if the person is not there you are in misery and if the person is there you are indifferent. Then it is okay, it is taken for granted. If the person is there it is okay, no more than that; if the
person is not there then you are in misery – this is attachment.
Preference is just the reverse: if the person is not there you are okay, if the person is there you feel happy, thankful. If the person is there you don’t take it for granted. You are happy, you enjoy it, you celebrate it. But if the person is not there, you are okay. You don’t demand, you are not obsessed, you can also be alone and happy. You would have preferred that the person was there, but this is not an obsession.
Preference is good, attachment is disease. And a man who lives with preference lives life in deep happiness, you cannot make him miserable. You can only make him happy; you cannot make him miserable. A person who lives with attachment cannot be made happy, you can only make him more miserable. And you know this, you know this well. If your friend is there you don’t enjoy him much, if the friend is not there you miss him.
A girl came to me a few days ago. She had seen me two months ago, with her boyfriend. And they were constantly fighting with each other, and the fight had become just an illness, so I told them to be separate for a few weeks. They said it was impossible to live together so I sent them away separately.
The girl was here on Christmas Eve and she said, “These two months, I have missed my boyfriend so much. I am thinking of him constantly. He has started to appear even in my dreams. This has never happened before. When we were together I never saw him in my dreams; in my dreams I was making love to other men. But now my boyfriend is constantly in my dreams. Now allow us to live together again.”
So I told her, “It is okay with me, you can live together again. But just remember this: you were living together just two months ago and you were never happy.”
Attachment is a disease. When you are together you are not happy. If you have riches you are not happy, you will be miserable if you are poor. If you are healthy you never feel thankfulness. If you are healthy you never feel grateful to existence, but if you are ill you are condemning the whole life and existence; everything is meaningless and there is no God.
Even an ordinary headache is enough to cancel all Gods. But when you are happy and healthy you never feel like going to a church or a temple, just to give thanks: “I am happy and I am healthy, and I have not earned these. These are simply gifts from you.”
Mulla Nasruddin once fell in a river, and he was about to drown. He was not a religious man, but suddenly, at the verge of death, he cried loudly, “Allah, God, please save me, help me, and from today I will now pray and I will do
whatsoever is written in the scripture.”
While he was saying this “God help me,” he caught hold of a branch overhanging the river. And when he grabbed and came towards safety he felt relaxed, and he said, “Now it is okay. Now you need not worry.”
Again he said to God, “Now you need not worry. Now I am safe.”
Suddenly the branch broke and he fell again. So he said, “Can’t you take a simple joke?”
But this is how our minds are moving.
Attachment will make you more and more miserable; preference will make you more and more happy. Patanjali is against attachment, not against preference. Everybody has to prefer. You may like one food, you may not like another, but this is just a preference. If the food of your liking is not available then you will take your second choice. And you will be happy because you know the first was not available, and whatsoever is available had to be enjoyed. You will not cry and weep. You will accept life as it happens to you.
But a person who is constantly attached with everything never enjoys anything and always misses. The whole life becomes a continuous misery. If you are not attached you are free, you have much energy, you are not dependent on anything. You are independent, and this energy can be moved into inner effort. It can become a practice; it can become abhyasa. What is abhyasa? Abhyasa is fighting the old habitual pattern. Every religion has developed many practices, but the base is this sutra of Patanjali.
For example, whenever you get angry, make it a constant practice that before entering into anger you will take five deep breaths. A simple practice, apparently not related to anger at all. And somebody can even laugh: “How is it going to help?” But it is going to help. Whenever you feel anger arising, before you express it take five deep exhalations and inhalations.
What will it do? It will do many things. Anger can be there only if you are unconscious – and this is a conscious effort. Just before anger arises, consciously breathe in and out five times: this will make your mind alert, and with alertness anger cannot enter. This will not only make your mind alert, it will also make your body alert, because the more oxygen there is in the body, the more alert the body becomes. In this alert moment suddenly you will feel that the anger has disappeared.
Secondly, your mind can only be one-pointed. Mind cannot think of two things simultaneously, it is impossible for the mind. It can change from one to another very swiftly but it cannot have two points together in the mind simultaneously. One thing at a time – mind has a very narrow window, only
one thing at a time. So if anger is there, anger is there. If you breathe in and out five times suddenly the mind is with the breathing. It has diverted, now it is moving in a different direction. And even if you again move to anger, you cannot be the same again because the moment has been lost.
Gurdjieff says, “When my father was dying he told me to remember only one thing: ‘Whenever you are angry, wait for twenty-four hours and then do whatsoever you like. Even if you want to murder, go and murder – but wait for twenty-four hours.’”
Twenty-four hours is too long; twenty-four seconds will do. Just the waiting changes you. The energy that was flowing towards anger has taken a new route. It is the same energy – it can become anger, it can become compassion. Just give it a chance.
So the old scriptures say, “If a good thought comes to your mind don’t postpone it, do it immediately. And if a bad thought comes to your mind postpone it, never do it immediately.” But we think we are very cunning or very clever – whenever a good thought comes we postpone it.
Mark Twain has written in his memoirs that he was listening to a priest in a church for ten minutes. The lecture was just wonderful and he thought in his mind, “Today I am going to donate ten dollars. This priest is wonderful. This church must be helped!” He decided he was going to donate ten dollars after the lecture. Ten minutes more and he started thinking that ten dollars would be too much, five would do. Ten minutes more and he thought, “This man is not even worth five dollars.”
Now he was not listening, now he was worried about those ten dollars. He had not told anybody, but now he was convincing himself that this was too much. He says, “By the time the lecture finished, I decided not to give anything. And when the man came before me to take the donations, the man who was moving around, I even thought to take a few dollars and escape from the church!”
Mind is continuously changing. It is never static, it is a flow. If something bad is there, wait a little. You cannot fix the mind, mind is a flow. You just wait! Just wait a little and you will not be able to do wrong. If some good is there and you want to do it, do it immediately, because mind is changing and after a few minutes you will not be able to do it. So if it is a loving and kind act, don’t postpone it. If it is something violent or destructive, postpone it a little.
If anger comes, postpone it even for five breaths and you will not be able to act on it. This will become a practice. Every time anger comes first breathe five times in and out then you are free to act. Go on continuously and it becomes a
habit, you need not even think: the moment anger enters, immediately your mechanism will start breathing fast, deep. Within years it will become absolutely impossible for you to be angry. You will not be able to be angry.
Any practice, any conscious effort, can change your old patterns. And this is not a work which can be done immediately, it will take time. Because you have created your pattern of habits in many, many lives, if even in one life you can change it, it is too soon.
My sannyasins come to me and they say, “When will it happen?” and I say, “Soon.” And they say, “What do you mean by your ‘soon’? – because for years you have been telling us ‘soon.’”
If even in one life it happens, it is soon. Whenever it happens it has happened before its time, because you have created this pattern in so many lives. They have to be destroyed and recreated. So any amount of time – even lives – is not too late.
Their cessation is brought about by persistent inner practice and non-attachment.
Of these two, abhyasa, the inner practice,
is the effort to be firmly established in oneself.
The essence of abhyasa is to be centered in oneself. Whatsoever happens, you should not move immediately. First you should be centered in yourself, and from that centering you should look around and then decide.
Someone insults you and you are pulled by his insult. You have moved without consulting your center. You have moved without even for a single moment going back to the center, and then moving.
Abhyasa means inner practice. Conscious effort means, “Before I move out, I must move within. First, movement must be toward my center. First, I must be in contact with my center. Centered there, I will look at the situation and then decide.” And this is such a tremendous, transforming phenomenon. Once you are centered within everything appears different, the perspective is changed: it may not look like an insult, the man may just look stupid. Or if you are really centered, you will come to know that he is right: “This is not an insult. He has not said anything wrong.”
I have heard – I don’t know whether it is true or not, but I have heard this anecdote:
One newspaper was continuously writing against Richard Nixon, continuously defaming him, condemning him. So Richard Nixon went to the editor and said, “What are you doing? You are telling lies about me and you
know it well!”
The editor said, “Yes, we know that we are telling lies about you. But if we start telling truths about you, you will be in more trouble!”
So if someone is saying something about you he may be lying, but just look again: if he were really true, it might be worse. Or, whatsoever he is saying may apply to you. But when you are centered, you can also look dispassionately about yourself.
Patanjali says that of these two, abhyasa, the inner practice, is the effort to become firmly established in oneself. Before moving into an act, any sort of act, move within yourself. First be established there, even if for only a single moment, and your action will be totally different. It cannot be the same unconscious pattern of old. It will be something new, it will be an alive response. Just try it. Whenever you feel that you are going to act or to do something first move within – because whatsoever you have been doing up until now has become robot-like, mechanical. You go on doing it continuously, in a repetitive circle.
For thirty days just note down in a diary, from the morning to the evening, for thirty days, and you will be able to see the pattern. You are moving like a machine, you are not a man. Your responses are dead. Whatsoever you do is predictable. And if you study your diary penetratingly, you may be able to decipher the pattern: that Monday, every Monday, you are angry, every Sunday you feel sexual, every Saturday you are fighting. Or in the morning you are good, in the afternoon you feel bitter, by the evening you are against the whole world – you may see the pattern. Once you see the pattern then you can just observe that you are working like a robot. And being a robot is what misery is. You have to be conscious, not a mechanical thing.
Gurdjieff used to say, “As he is, man is a machine.” You become man only when you become conscious. And this constant effort to be established in oneself will make you conscious, will make you non-mechanical, will make you unpredictable, will make you free. Then someone can insult you and you can still laugh; you have never laughed before. Someone can insult you and you can feel love for the man; you have not felt that before. Someone can insult you and you can be thankful towards him. Something new is being born; now you are creating a conscious being within yourself.
But the first thing to do before moving into an act is to first be established, because to act means moving outward, moving without, moving toward others, going away from the self. Every act is a going away from the self. Before you go away have a look, have a contact, have a dip into your inner being. First be
established.
Before every movement, let there be a moment of meditation: this is what abhyasa is. Whatsoever you do, before doing it close your eyes, remain silent, move within. Just become dispassionate, non-attached, so you can look as an observer, unprejudiced, as if you are not involved, you are just a witness. And then move!
One day, just in the morning, Mulla Nasruddin’s wife said to Mulla, “In the night, while you were asleep, you were insulting me. You were saying things against me, swearing against me. What do you mean? You will have to explain.”
Mulla Nasruddin said, “But who says that I was asleep? I was not asleep. Just that the things I want to say, I cannot say in the day. I cannot gather so much courage.”
In your dreams, in your waking, you are constantly doing things, and those things are not done consciously. It is as if you are being forced to do them. Even in your dreams you are not free. This constant mechanical behavior is the bondage. So how to be established in oneself? – through abhyasa.
Sufis use it continuously whatsoever they say or do; they sit, they stand, whatsoever they do. Before a Sufi disciple stands he will take Allah’s name, first he will take God’s name. He will sit, he will take God’s name. An action is to be done – even sitting is an action – sitting he will say, “Allah,” standing, he will say, “Allah.” If it is not possible to say it loudly he will say it inside. Every action is done through remembrance, and by and by, this remembrance becomes a constant barrier between him and the action. A division is created, a gap.
And the more this gap grows, the more he can look at his own action as if he is not the doer. With continuous repetition of “Allah,” by and by he starts seeing that only Allah is the doer: “I am not the doer. I am just a vehicle or an instrument.” And the moment this gap grows, all that is evil falls away. You cannot do evil. You can do evil only when there is no gap between the actor and the action. Then the good flows automatically.
The greater the gap between the actor and the action, the more good happens. Life becomes a sacred thing. Your body becomes a temple. Anything that makes you alert, established within yourself, is abhyasa.
Of these two, abhyasa, the inner practice,
is the effort to be firmly established in oneself.
It becomes firmly grounded when continued for a long time, without interruption and with reverent devotion.
…when continued for a long time… How long? It will depend. It will depend on you, on each person, how long. The length of time will depend on the intensity. If the intensity is total then it can happen very soon, even immediately. If the intensity is not so deep then it will take a longer period.
I have heard…
A Sufi mystic, Junnaid, was taking a walk outside his village one morning. A man came running and asked Junnaid, “The capital of this kingdom is where? I want to reach the capital. How long will I still have to travel? How much time will it take?”
Junnaid looked at the man and, without answering him, again started walking. And the man was also going in the same direction, so the man followed. The man thought, “This old man seems to be deaf,” so a second time he asked more loudly, “I want to know how much time it will take for me to reach the capital!”
But Junnaid still continued walking. After walking two miles with that man, Junnaid said, “You will have to walk at least ten hours.”
The man said, “But you could have said that before.”
Junnaid said, “How can I say it? First I must know your speed. It depends on your speed. So for these two miles I was watching what your speed is. Only now can I answer.”
It depends on your intensity, your speed.
There are two things to be remembered. The first thing is: …when continued for a long time, without interruption… This has to be remembered. If you interrupt, if you do it for some days and then leave it for some days, the whole effort is lost. And when you start again it is again a beginning.
If you are meditating and then you say, “For a few days there is no problem…” You feel lazy, you feel like sleeping in the morning and you say, “I can postpone, I can do it tomorrow.” Even one day missed, you have undone the work of many days. Because you are not doing meditation today but you will be doing many other things, and those many other things belong to your old pattern, so a layer is created. Your yesterday and your tomorrow are cut off. Today has become a layer, a different layer. The continuity is lost, and when you start again tomorrow it is again a beginning. I see many persons starting, stopping, again starting. The work that can be done within months then takes
years.
So this is to be remembered: …without interruption… Whatsoever practice you choose, then choose it for your whole life, and just go on hammering on it, don’t listen to the mind. Mind will try to persuade you, and mind is a great seducer. It can give all kinds of reasons: that today it is a must not to do it because you are feeling ill, there is headache, you couldn’t sleep in the night, you have been so very tired so you can just rest today. These are tricks of the mind.
Mind wants to follow its old pattern. Why does the mind want to follow its old pattern? – because there is least resistance, it is easier. And everybody wants to follow the easier path, the easier course. It is easy for the mind just to follow the old, the new is difficult.
So mind resists everything that is new. If you are in practice, in abhyasa, don’t listen to the mind, just go on doing. By and by this new practice will go deep in the mind, and mind will stop resisting it because then it will become easier. Then for mind it will be an easy flow. Unless it becomes an easy flow, don’t interrupt. You can undo a long effort by a little laziness, so it must be uninterrupted.
And the second thing to be remembered: …with reverent devotion. You can do a practice mechanically, with no love, no devotion, no feeling of holiness about it, then it will take very long. Through love things penetrate easily in you. Through devotion you are open, more open, seeds fall deeper.
With no devotion you can do the same thing. For instance, in a temple you can have a hired priest. He will say prayers continuously for years with no result, with no fulfillment through it. He is doing as it is prescribed, but it is a work with no devotion. He may show devotion, but he is just a servant. He is interested in his salary, not in the prayer, not in the puja, not in the ritual. It is to be done, it is a duty, it is not a love. So he will do it for years. Even for his whole life he will be just a hired priest, a salaried man. In the end he will die as if he has never prayed. He may die in the temple, praying, but he will die as if he has never prayed because there was no devotion.
So don’t do abhyasa, a practice, without devotion, because then you are unnecessarily wasting energy. Much can come out of it if devotion is there. What is the difference? The difference is between duty and love. Duty is something you have to do, you don’t enjoy doing it. You have to carry it on somehow, you have to finish it soon. It is just an outward work. If this is the attitude then how can it penetrate in you?
A love is not a duty – you enjoy it. There is no limit to its enjoyment, there is no hurry to finish it. The longer it lasts, the better. It is never enough; you
always feel something more, something more can be done. It is always unfinished. If this is the attitude then things go deep in you. The seeds reach to the deeper soil. Devotion means you are in love with a particular abhyasa, a particular practice.
I observe that with many of the people I work with this division is very clear. Those who practice meditation as if they are doing just a technique can do it for years with no change happening. It may help a little, bodily. They may be healthier, their physiques will get some benefits out of it, but it is just an exercise. And then they come to me and they say, “Nothing is happening.”
Nothing will happen, because the way they are doing it is something outside, just like work – as if they go to the office at eleven and leave the office at five. They can go to the meditation hall with no involvement. They can meditate for one hour and come back, with no involvement. It is not in their heart.
The other category is of those people who do it with love. It is not a question of doing something. It is not quantitative, it is qualitative: how much you are involved, how deeply you love it, how much you enjoy it – not the goal, not the end, not the result, but the very practice.
Sufis say, “Repetition of the name of God, repetition of the name of Allah, is in itself the bliss.” They go on repeating and they enjoy. This becomes their whole life, just the repetition of the name.
Nanak says, “Nam smaran” – remembering the name is enough. You are eating, you are going to sleep, you are taking your bath, and continuously your heart is filled with the remembrance. Just go on repeating “Ram” or “Allah” or whatsoever, not as a word, but as a devotion, as a love. Your whole being feels filled, vibrates with it, it becomes your deeper breath. You cannot live without it. And by and by it creates an inner harmony, a music. Your whole being starts falling into harmony; an ecstasy is born.
You are filled with a humming sensation, a sweetness surrounds you, and by and by this sweetness becomes your nature. Then whatsoever you say, it becomes the name of Allah. Whatsoever you say, it becomes the remembrance of the divine.
Any practice …without interruption and with reverent devotion, is very difficult for the Western mind. They can understand practice, they cannot understand “reverent devotion.” They have completely forgotten that language, and without that language practice is just dead. Western seekers come to me and they say, “Whatsoever you say we will do,” and they follow it exactly as it is said. But they work on it just as if they were working on any other know- how, a technique. They are not in love with it, they have not become mad, they
are not lost in it. They remain manipulating.
They are the master and they go on manipulating the technique just as they would manipulate any mechanical device. Just as you can push a button and the fan starts – there is no need for any reverent devotion for the button or for the fan. And you do everything in life like that, but abhyasa cannot be done that way. You have to be so deeply related with your abhyasa, your practice, that you become secondary and the practice becomes primary, that you become the shadow and the practice becomes the soul – as if it is not you who is doing the practice, but the practice is going on by itself and you are just a part of it, vibrating with it. Then it may be that no time is needed.
With deep devotion, results can follow immediately. In a single moment of devotion you can undo many lives of the past. In a deep moment of devotion you can become completely free from the past.
But it is difficult to explain that reverent devotion. There is friendship, there is love – and there is a different quality of friendship plus love which is called reverent devotion. Friendship and love exist between equals. Love is between opposite sexes, friendship is with the same sex but on the same level; you are equals.
Compassion is just the opposite of reverent devotion. Compassion exists from a higher source towards a lower source. Compassion is like a river flowing from the Himalayas to the ocean. A buddha is compassion. Whosoever comes to him, his compassion is flowing downwards. Reverence is just the opposite – as if the Ganges is flowing from the ocean towards the Himalayas, from the lower to the higher.
Love is between equals, compassion is from the higher to the lower, devotion is from the lower to the higher. Compassion and devotion have both disappeared and only friendship remains. And without compassion and devotion, friendship is just hanging in between, dead, because the two poles are missing. And it can exist, living, only between those two poles.
If you are in devotion then sooner or later compassion will start flowing towards you. If you are in devotion then some higher peak will start flowing towards you. But if you are not in devotion compassion cannot flow towards you, you are not open to it.
All abhyasa, all practice, is to become the lowest so the highest can flow in you. Become the lowest. As Jesus says, “Only those who stand last will become the first in my kingdom of God.”
Become the lowest, the last. Suddenly, when you are the lowest, you are capable of receiving the highest. And only to the lowest depth is the highest attracted, pulled. It becomes the magnet.
“With devotion” means you are the lowest. That is why Buddhists choose to be beggars. Sufis have chosen to be beggars – just the lowest, the beggars – and we have seen that in those beggars the highest has happened. But this is their choice. They have put themselves in the last. They are the last ones, not in competition with anybody, just valley-like, low, lowest.
That’s why in the old Sufi sayings it is said, “Become a slave of God” – just a slave, repeating his name, constantly thanking him, constantly feeling gratitude, constantly filled with so many blessings that he has poured upon you. And with this reverence, devotion; uninterrupted abhyasa, practice: Patanjali says these two, vairagya and abhyasa, help the mind to cease. And when mind ceases, for the first time you are really that which you are meant to
be, that which is your destiny.
Enough for today.
< Previous | Contents | Next >