You can't get there from here

Question 1:

WHY DO I ALWAYS ASK NEARLY THE SAME QUESTIONS, AGAIN AND AGAIN?

BECAUSE the mind itself is repetition. The mind is never original. It cannot be; by its nature it is such. The mind is a borrowed thing. It is never new; it is always old. Mind means the past -- it is always out of date. And by and by mind becomes a pattern, a habit, a mechanism. Then you become very efficient in it. Then you go on moving in the same rut, in the same routine, again and again and again.

You go on asking the same questions because you go on remaining the same mind.

Unless you are new your questions are not going to be new. Unless you drop the old mind completely, totally, utterly, the new question cannot get into you. The new question cannot get into you because there is no space, you are already filled by the old. And the mind has a persistent habit of repeating itself; it is more efficient. The mind is very stubborn. Even if it pretends to change, the change is not real, just a pretension, a modified form of the old.

Maybe the language changes, the form changes, but the deep question remains the same... and the mind goes on persisting.

You have to see it. This question is good. At least, this question is not old. This is from Saroj. She has been asking questions, and I have been never answering her, but today I decided to answer because this is a new glimpse, that she has understood one thing; that she has been asking again and again the same old thing. This understanding is new. A new morning, a new dawn has come to her mind. Her consciousness has become alert to a certain old pattern.

Help this awareness; cooperate with it. By and by you will start seeing yourself in two dimensions the dimension of the mind -- the old, the past; and the dimension of consciousness -- always fresh and always new, always original. I will tell you one anecdote:

A man excitedly ran up to another man on the street and slapped him heartily on the back.

"Paul Porter," he greeted him, "am I glad to see you! But tell me, Paul, what in the world happened to you? Last time I saw you, you were short and fat. All of a sudden you seem tall and thin."

"Look, sir," the puzzled man answered, "I am not Paul Porter."

"Ah!" boomed the undaunted greeter, contemptuously. "Change your name too, eh?"

The mind has a persistent habit to go on believing in itself -- even against all facts. Even if your old mind goes on giving you nothing but misery and hell, you go on believing in it.

People say that this is an age of unbelief. I don't see it. The same old belief in the mind continues. Somebody is a Hindu; he believes in Hinduism because his mind has been conditioned to be a Hindu. Somebody is a Christian; he believes in Christianity because his mind has been conditioned to be a Christian. Somebody is a communist; he goes on believing in communism because his mind has been conditioned to be a communist. All the three are one. They are not different people. They may have different names and labels, but the same thing is happening to all of them they are all conditioned and clinging to the mind and they all believe in the mind.

I call that man religious who renounces the mind. I call that man religious who renounces all conditionings, who stops clinging to the mind, who starts moving into consciousness, who becomes more and more aware of the conditionings. And in that very awareness one becomes loose of the conditions -- and that is the only freedom there is. All else is just rubbish. All talk of freedom -- political, economic, social -- is just rubbish. There is only one freedom, and that freedom is freedom from conditionings, freedom from the mind, becoming alert, aware, attentive, and moving in a new dimension.

Good, Saroj, that you have become aware that your questions have been repetitively the same. That's why I was not answering them. It is useless because when the mind goes on persisting in its old habit; it doesn't listen.

Try always to find the new, the fresh, the young -- that which is just being born. Catch that before it becomes old dissolve into it before it becomes a pattern. Never make your life a patterned and structured thing. Let it remain a flow, unfrozen, fluid, moving always into the unknown.

Mind means the known. And you are the unknown. If you understand this, you will use the mind and you will never be used by the mind.

Yoga: The Alpha and The Omega Vol. 7
Chapter #6
Chapter title: You can't get there from here
6 January 1976 am in Buddha Hall