The Lamp of Awareness

 

     CHIDADITYA SWAROOPAM DEEPAH

ONE DAY a lady came to Mulla Nasrudin's school with her small child, her son. The lady asked Mulla to frighten the boy. He had become unruly and he would not listen to anyone. He needed to be frightened by some big authority. Of course, Mulla was a big authority in his village. He assumed a very frightening posture. His eyes were bulging, all fiery, and he began to jump. The lady felt, "Now it is impossible to stop the Mulla - he may even kill the boy."

The lady fainted, the boy escaped, and Mulla became so frightened of himself he had to run out of the school. He waited outside and the lady came back. Then he entered, slowly, silently, seriously.

The lady said, "Mulla, it is strange! I never asked you to frighten ME."

Mulla said, "You do not see the real fact. It was not only you who was frightened; I myself was frightened of myself.

When fear takes over, it destroys all. To start it is easy, but to control it is difficult. So I was the master when I started, but soon fear took over and it was the master and I was the slave; I could not do anything. And, moreover, fear has no favourites. When it strikes, it strikes all."

This is a beautiful parable, one which shows a deep insight into the human mind. You are conscious in everything just in the beginning, and then the unconscious takes over. The unconscious takes charge and the unconscious becomes the master. You can start anger, but you can never end it. Rather, the anger ends you. You can start anything, but sooner or later the unconscious takes charge; you are relieved of your duty. So only the beginning is in your hands, never the end. And you are not the master of the consequences that follow.

This is natural because only a very small fragment of the mind is aware. It works just like a starter in your motor car. It starts, and then it is of no use; then the motor takes it over. It is needed only to start; without it, it is difficult to start. But do not go on thinking that because you start a certain thing you are the master. This is the secret of this parable. Because you started, you begin to feel that you are the master. Because you started, you think you could have stopped.

You may not have started, that is another thing, but once started soon the voluntary becomes the non-voluntary and the conscious becomes unconscious, because the conscious is just the upper layer, just the surface of the mind, and nearly the whole mind is unconscious. You start, and the unconscious begins to move and work.

So Mulla said, "I am not responsible for what has happened, I am not responsible! I am responsible only for starting, and it is you who told me to start. I started to frighten the boy, then the boy was frightened, then you fainted, then I was frightened, and then everything was a mess."

Everything is a mess in our lives also, with the conscious starting and the unconscious taking over every time. If you do not feel it, if you do not realize it, this mechanism, you will always be a slave. And the slavery becomes more convenient if you go on thinking that you are the master. It is difficult to be a slave knowingly, knowing that you are a slave. It is easy to be a slave when you go on deceiving yourself that you are the master - of your love, your anger, your greed, your jealousy, your violence, your cruelty; even your sympathy and your compassion.

I say "your", but it is yours only in the beginning. Just for a moment, just a spark is yours. Then your mechanism has started, and your whole mechanism is unconscious. Why is this so? Why this conflict between the conscious and the unconscious? And there is a conflict. You cannot predict even about yourself. Even you, your acts, are unpredictable to you, because you do not know what is going to happen, you do not know what you are going to do. You are not even aware of what you are going to do the next moment because the doer is deep in darkness. You are not the doer. You are only a starting point. Unless your whole mechanism becomes conscious, you will be a problem to yourself, and a hell also. There will be nothing but a long misery.

As I have been emphasizing daily, one can become whole in only two ways. The first is that you can lose the fragmentary consciousness, throw this fragment of the mind which has become conscious, into the dark unconscious, dissolve it, and you are whole. But then you are just like an animal, and that is impossible. Whatsoever you may do, it is not possible. It is conceivable, but not possible. You will be thrown forward again and again.

That small part which has become conscious cannot become unconscious again. It is like an egg which has become a hen. Now the hen cannot move back to be an egg again. A seed which has sprouted has begun the journey to be a tree. Now it cannot go back; it cannot regress and become a seed. A child which has come out of the womb of his mother cannot now go back, no matter how pleasant the womb may be.

There is no going backward. Life always moves in the future, never in the past. Only man can think of the past. That is why I say it is conceivable, but it cannot be actualized. You can imagine, you can think to go back, you can believe in it, you can try to go back, but you cannot go. That is an impossibility. One has to move forward. That is the second way to become whole.

Knowingly or unknowingly, one is moving every moment. If you move knowingly, then the speed is accelerated. If you move knowingly, then you do not waste energy and time. Then the thing can happen even in one life which will not happen in a million lives of your just moving unknowingly, because if you move unknowingly you move in a circle. Every day you repeat the same, in every life you again repeat the same, and life becomes just a habit, a mechanical habit, a repetition.

You can break the repetitive habit if you move knowingly. Then there is a breakthrough. So the first thing is to be aware that your awareness is of such a small measure that it works only as a starter. Unless you have more awareness than unawareness, more consciousness than unconsciousness, the balance will not change. What are the hindrances? Why is this the situation? Why is this the fact? Why this conflict between conscious and unconscious? This must be considered.

It is natural. Whatsoever is, is natural. Man has evolved through millions of years. This evolution has created you, your body, your mechanism. The evolution has been a long struggle - millions and millions of experiences of failures, of successes. Your body has learned much; your body has been continuously learning things. Your body knows much, and its knowledge is fixed. It goes on repeating its own ways of behaving. Even if the situation has changed, the body remains the same.

For example, when you feel anger, you feel it in the same way as any primitive man, you feel it in the same way as any animal, you feel it in the same way as any child. And this is the mechanism: when you feel anger your body has a fixed routine, a ritual, a routine work to do.

The moment your mind says "anger", you have glands which begin to release chemicals into the blood. Adrenalin is released into the blood. It is a necessity because in anger you will have to strike or else you may be struck by your opponent. You will need more blood circulation, and this chemical will help more circulation to be there. You may need to fight or you may need to escape from a situation, to run away. For both cases, this chemical will help. So when some animal is angry, the body becomes ready to fight or to take flight. And these are the two alternatives: if the animal feels that he is stronger than the opponent, he will fight; if he feels that he is not the stronger one, he will escape. And the mechanism works very smoothly.

But for man the situation has become totally different. When you feel anger, you may not even express it. That is impossible for the animal. It depends on the situation. If it is against your servants, then you may express it. If it is against your master, then you may not express it. Not only that: you may even laugh or smile; you may even persuade your master, your boss, to think that not only are you not angry, but that you are very happy. Now you are confusing the whole mechanism of the body. The body is ready to fight, and you are smiling. You are creating a mess in the body. The body cannot understand what you are doing. Are you mad? It is ready to do one of two things which are natural: to fight or escape.

This smiling is something new. This deception is something new. The body has no mechanism for it, so you have to force the smile without the chemical flowing in which helps you to smile, which helps you to laugh. There are now no chemicals to laugh. You have to force a smile, a false smile, and the body has released chemicals into the blood to fight. Now what will the blood do?

The body has a language that it understands very well, but you are behaving in a very mad, insane way. Now a gap is created between you and your body. This mechanism is unconscious, this mechanism is non-voluntary. Your volition, your will, is not needed because will takes time and there are situations in which no time can be lost.

A tiger has attacked you: now there is no time for meditation. You cannot contemplate about what to do. You have to do something without the mind. If the mind comes in you are lost. You cannot think; you cannot say to the tiger, "Wait! Let me think about it - about what to do." You have to act immediately, without any consciousness.

The body has a mechanism. The tiger is there: the mind just knows that the tiger is there; the body mechanism begins to work. That working is not dependent on the mind because mind is a very slow worker, very inefficient. It cannot be relied upon in emergency situations, so the body begins to work. You are frightened. You will run away; you will escape.

But the same thing happens when you are standing on a platform to address a big audience. There is no tiger, but you are frightened by the great gathering. Fear takes shape; the body is informed. That information that you are in fear is automatic. The body begins to release chemicals - the same chemicals that it will release when a tiger attacks you. There is no tiger, there is really no one who is attacking you, but the audience seems to be making a great attack. Everyone there is really aggressive, it seems. That is why you have become afraid.

Now the body is ready to fight or to take flight, but both the alternatives are closed. You have to stand there and speak. Now your body begins to perspire, even on a cold night. Why? Because the body is ready to run or to fight. The blood is circulating more, heat is created, and you are standing there. So you begin to perspire, and then a subtle trembling takes over. Your whole body begins to tremble.

Foot on Both Gas & Brake

It is just the same as if you start a car and press the accelerator and the brake both simultaneously. The engine will be heated, raced, and you are braking also. The whole body of the car will tremble. The same happens when you are standing on a platform. You feel fear, and the body is ready to run. The accelerator is pushed, but you cannot run. You have to address the gathering. You are a leader or some such thing. You cannot run. You have to face it, and you have to be there standing on the platform. You have to take the floor.

Now you are doing two things simultaneously that are very contradictory. You are stepping on the accelerator and pressing the brake also. You do not run, but the body is ready to run. You begin to tremble and heat is created. Now your body wonders, "How are you behaving?" The body cannot understand you. A gap is created. The unconscious is doing one thing and the conscious goes on doing something else. You are divided. This gap has to be understood deeply.

In your every act this gap is there. You are looking at a film, an erotic film: your sex is aroused. Your body is ready to explode into a sexual experience, but you are only seeing a film. You are just sitting on a chair and your body is ready for the sex act. The film will go on accelerating, it will go on pushing you. You are aroused, but you cannot do anything. The body is ready to do something but the situation is not, so a gap is created. You begin to feel yourself different, and there is a barrier between you and your body.

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Because of that barrier and because of this constant arousal and suppression simultaneously, this acceleration and braking simultaneously, this constant contradiction in your existence, you are diseased.

If you would fall back and be an animal. which is impossible, then you would be whole and healthy. This is a strange fact: animals are not ill in their natural state, but put them in a zoo and they begin to imitate human diseases. No animal is homosexual in its natural surrounding, in its natural state, but put animals in a zoo and they begin to behave absurdly: they begin to behave homosexually. No animal goes insane naturally, but in a zoo animals go mad.

It has never been reported in the whole history of human understanding that any animal has committed suicide, but in a zoo animals can commit suicide. This is strange, but not strange really, because the moment man begins to force animals into a life which is not natural, then they become divided inside. A division is created, a gap is created, the wholeness is lost.

Man is divided. Man is born divided. So what to do? How not to create this gap and how to bring awareness to every cell of the body, to every nook and corner of your being? How to bring awareness? That is the only problem for all religions, for all of yoga and for all systems for Enlightenment: how to bring consciousness to your total being so that nothing is unconscious.

Many methods have been tried, many methods are possible, so I will talk about some methods for how every cell of your body can become aware. And unless you as a total being become aware, you cannot be in bliss, you cannot be in peace. You will continue to be a madhouse.

Each cell of your body affects you. It has its own working, it has its own learning, its own conditioning.

The moment you start, the cell takes over and begins to behave in its own way. Then you are disturbed. "What is happening!" you wonder, "I never intended this; I never thought about it." And you are right. Your desires may have been completely different. But once you give your cells, your body, something to do, it is going to do it in its own way, in its own learned way.