Meditation Chapter No.30, Mysticism, reading, forums, Numerology, Sun Signs, Divination

Posts: 5114 · Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 7:52 am

You hear praise and joy all around you. The news that you are very religious spreads everywhere. Even a little pain to the body greatly fulfills the ego, so people with big egos agree to do this.

I am telling you clearly that these are the concerns of the ego. These are not religious interests and concerns. Religious people definitely fast, but they don't go without food. Fasting means that one is totally involved in the effort to come close to the soul. And when one starts coming closer to the soul, it happens that food is completely forgotten. And I tell you this emphatically that it is true in everything, not only in this but in every aspect of life.

Yesterday I was talking to you about sex and love ... or it might be something else. A person who is busy suppressing sex will seem very religious to you, but in fact he is not religious at all. A religious person is someone who is involved in the development of love, because by being more loving sex will disappear by itself. As you come closer to the divine there will be many changes within the body. The way you see the body will be different, it will change.

Austerity is the science through which a person forgets that "I am the body" and comes to know that. "I am the soul." Austerity is a matter of technique. Austerity is a technique. A bridge, a way through which a person forgets that he is the body, and the relization dawns in him that he is the soul.

But false austerities are going on all over the world and they have created many dangers. They satisfy the egos of a few egoists but do great harm to the understanding of the masses, because the masses then believe that this is real austerity, that this is real meditation, that this is real yoga. But they are neither meditations nor yoga.

And I will tell you something more: people who are interested in the suprression of the body in this way are simply neorotic. Also, the people who enjoy hurting their bodies are the same people who enjoy inflicting pain on someone else's body. The only difference is that the joy they would exprience by inflicting pain on other people's bodies is experienced instead by hurting their own bodies. These are violent people. This is masochism, it is violence towards oneself.

And I also remind you that there are two kinds of instincts in man: one instinct is to live, the survival instinct: and you may not be aware that there is another instinct in him to die, the death instinct. If there were no death instinct in man, there could not be so many suicides all over the world. A latent death instinct is present within everyone -- so both of these are present within you.

The death instinct can provoke a person to kill himself. He starts enjoying it, getting juice out of it. Some people commit suicide in one go and some do it very slowly, in installments. Those who do it very slowly, you say they are practising austerity, and the ones who do it in one go are said to have committed suicide. But those who do it slowly seem to be practicing austerity.

Austerity is not suicide. Austerity has nothing to do with death, it is related to infinite life. Austerity is not interested in death but in attaining to a more total life.

So many vision of austerity is contained in the three keys that I have just told you about, and we will discuss three more keys later on. These six keys explain what austerity is according to my vision. A person who enters into these six sutras is practicing austerity. Do you ever wonder whether it is really austerity when a person runs away and leaves his wife behind? People call this austerity .... they will even call him a sannyasin. And yet it is possible that he has run away and left his wife behind but is still thinking about her. Austerity is when the wife is sitting next to you and you are not distracted by her. It is not austerity to run away and to still keep thinking about her.

And remember, the people who run away and leave things behind still go on thinking about those things. It is impossible for them not to, because if they were the kind of people who didn't they would be able to not think about them even as they remain with them.

Let me also tell you this: when things are present you don't think about them, but when they are not present anymore you start thinking about them. Have you not experienced this yourself? You don't think about what is in front of you, you think about what is absent. If the people you love are close to you, you forget about them; when they are far away you start remembering them. The farther away they are, the more intensely you remember them. You have no idea how much these so-called sannyasins suffer.

If all these religious people in the world were honest, then this illusion of their being religious would disappear. And if they were to truthfully expose their inner turmoil, what is happening in them and the agony they are going through, the longings they are suffering from, the desires which are giving them pain and the devil who seems to be tormenting them -- if they were to tell you all this, you would realize that hell is right here on earth. I am saying this to you with authority: hell cannot be anywhere else in the world. A person's life is hell if he has not transformed his desires but has run away from them.

Austerity does not mean running away from anything, it is a transformation. Austerity is not renunciation but transformation. Austerity is not sacrifice, it is right - transformation -- and whatsoever happens in that transformation is right. And whatsoever happens by running, by renunciation, is not right. It will be very helpful if you can understand this.

Thousands of people are suffering. They have only one joy: of satisfying the ego. This also only a few people are able to satisfy, not all. The egos of people who are very intelligent, for some reason, are satisfied more easily. The rest only suffer and go on hoping that one day they will go to heaven, that they will be saved from going to hell and perhaps experience nirvana. The greed that is clinging to you is also clinging to them. And greed gives you the capacity to tolerate more pain. An ordinary man who is greedy for money goes through so much pain to accumulate money, and people who are greedy to go to heaven also tolerate much pain.

When the people were taking Christ to crucify him, one of his followers asked, "We have given up everything for you: tell us, how will we be treated in the kingdom of God?" He asked, "We gave everything for you, what will be our place in the kingdom of God?"

Christ must have looked at him with great pity and perhaps out of pity or jokingly, I don't know why he said it, he replied, "For you too there will be a place next to God."

The man became happy. He said, "Then it is okay."

Now would you say that this man has renounced? It is difficult to find a more greedy person than one who asks, "I gave up everything, now what will I get up there in return?" Someone who is thinking about getting something in return has not renounced at all. That is why all this talk of austerity -- everyone talking about austerity -- also gives you the enticement to practice a particular austerity, so that you will get a particular reward.

Austerity done with the desire to get something in return is false, because that is not austerity at all, it is a form of greed. This is the reason why all the existing forms of austerity promise you something in return. They tell you that all the people who practised this or that austerity in the past attained to something or other. These are all forms of greed.

The only austerity is to try to know oneself . It is not that you will get a place in heaven through this or that -- but you will experience great joy. Not to know one's own self is not to know life itself, and not to know your own self ..... It is impossible that the longing to know oneself does not arise in someone who has even a little intelligence. He will insist on knowing who he is and on becoming acquainted with the life-energy within him.

Austerity is the way to know the truth of life. Austerity is not a repression of the body. Yes, it is possile that many things which are happening to the meditator may seem to you to be a repression of the body, although he is not doing any such thing.

Have you ever seen a statue of Mahavira? When you look at his statue, do you feel that this man has repressed his body? Where else have you every seen a body like this? And then have you looked at the saints who follow Mahavira? The moment you look at them you know that they have repressed their bodies. Their vital sources are all dried up. Their bodies are sad an dull, and their state of consciousness is also dull. They are only moving under the spell of green. "Where is the bliss, where is the pace that we can see in Mahavira's statue?"

There is something to think about. Mahavira droped his clothes. You think he dropped his clothes because he thought that clothes should be renounced. No, he simply came to know the joy of being naked. I want to tell you very clearly that Mahavira did not drop his clothes because there was some joy in renouncing them, he dropped them because of the joy of being naked. Being naked was so blissful for him that wearing clothes became a disturbance. He found so much bliss by being naked that the presence of clothes became disturbing, so he threw away his clothes.

When a monk who is following him drops his clothes, he does not feel any joy in it. In fact, it is difficult for him to drop his clothes. And by going through that difficulty he thiks that he is practicing austerity. As he drops his clothes he thinks, "I am practicing austerity."

This was not austerity for Mahavira,it was an act of joy. And if somebody is following Mahavira withoutunderstanding him, without unerstanding his soul, he will only drop his clothes, and because dropping his clothes will be difficult for him, he will call this an austerity.

Austerity is not painful. There can be no greater joy than austerity. Yet those who practice it only superficially will feel that it is difficult and painful. And in exchange for going through so much pain they will satisfy their egos on the earth and will satisfy their greed for the other world. I don't call this austerity. Austerity is the process of entering within yourself with the help of the mind and body. And to enter into oneself is difficult and arduous -- it takes great determination.

Think about this. If I am continuously standing in the rain and the hot sun: is there more austerity in this than in the fact that when somebody abuses me, I don't become angry? Is there more austerity in lying on a bed of nails than in the fact that when somebody hits me with a stone, even the thought of hitting him back with a stone does not arise in my heart? Which one contains more austerity?

Anybody in the circus can lie on a bed of nails, standing in the hot sun is only a matter of practice, and after practicing it for a few days it no longer has any significance. It is very simple, it is absolutely simple. Remaining naked is a matter of practice. In fact, all the primitive people in the world live naked. But we don't call that austerity, and we don't go to them and fall at their feet as though they were doing something great. We know that it is their custom. It is very natural for them, it is not difficult for them.

Austerity does not mean that you just go on practicing something. But ninety-nine out of a hundred people are doing this. You will rarerly come across someone whose austerity is the fruit of his joy -- and austerity is true only when it is the fruit of his joy. But when it is in the service of suffering it is nothing more than a form of masochism -- it is not religious, it is neurotic.

And if understanding grows in the world, we will send this so-called religious person to a mental hospital, not to a temple. The time is not far away when someone who gets pleasure out of hurting his own body will need to be treated. And if someone is only enjoying the pleasures of his body he is also sick, just as someone who is getting joy out of hurting his body is sick on the other extreme. If someone is getting joy of only using his body for pleasure, it is a sickness. It is the sickness of a person who is always looking for bodily pleasure. And if someone enjoys hurting his body, this too is a sickness -- it is the sickness of the ascetic who has repressed all his bodily desires.

Someone who uses the body rightly becomes free of sickness. He is not identified with his body, either through indulgence or repression. The body is simply a vehicle. Only a person who is neither repressing the body nor indulging in it, whose pleasure or suffering is not dependent on the body, whose joy is not dependent on the body but rather on the soul -- only such a person is moving towards religion.

There are two types of people whose joy is dependent on the body: one type who experiences joy by overeating, and the other type who experiences joy by not eating. But both are getting joy out of torturing the body -- if they experience any joy, it is confined to the body. This is why I call both the person who indulges and this kind of religious person, materialistic: they are only concerning themselves with the bogy. For religion to be something that is only concerned with the body is very damaging. The spiritual qualities of religion need to be re-established.

One more question on this subject: What is the difference between rag, desire: virag, renunciation of esire: and veetraj, beyond desire. beyond desire.

Rag means attachment to something, virag means going against that attachment, and veetraj means beyond attachment.

If you try to understand what I was saying just now, then rag is the attachment to something and virag is the denial of that attachment. If a person accumulates money it is rag, and if someone renounces money and runs away, this is virag, But the focus in both cases is money. The person who is accumulating is thinking about money, and th eperson who is leaving it behind is also thinking about money. One is getting joy from having accumulated so much -- he has so much and his ego is satisfied by thinking about it -- while the other is satisfying his ego by thinking about the fact that he has renounced so much.

You will be surprised ...thepeople who have money keep an account of how much they have, but the people who have renounced money also keep an account of what they have renounced. These monks and religious people have lists of how many fasts they have done. They keep track of the different kinds of fasts they have done. Just as there is a record of renunciation, there is also a record of indulgence. Rag keeps a record, and virag also keeps a record, because their focal point is the same; they are holding onto the same thing.

Veetrag, to be beyond attachment, is not the same as virag, the denial of attachment. Veetraj is to be free of both attachment and the denial of attachment. Veetrag is the state of consciousness where there is neither attachment nor non attachment. He is neutral. He has money but he is unconcerned.