Contentment: The Dispersion of Desires

5 August 1972 in the p.m.

SARVA SANTOSHO VISARJANAMITI YA AEVAM VEDA

TOTAL contentment is wisdom. Three things have to be understood.

First, what total contentment is;
Second, what wisdom is, what it means to be wise, to be Enlightened; and
Third, why contentment is wisdom.

Whatsoever we know about contentment is a negative thing. Life is suffering, much suffering, and one has to console oneself. There are moments when one cannot do anything, so one has to cultivate a certain attitude of contentment; otherwise, it would be impossible to live.

So contentment for us is just an instrument – a survival instrument. Life consists of so much suffering that one has to create this attitude. That attitude saves you from much which would become impossible to bear, which would be unbearable if there were no attitude of contentment. But this is not the contentment which is meant by the rishi. That is with all of us, so that contentment is not wisdom: rather, that contentment is part of ignorance. When you cannot do anything, the situation will be unbearable. If you go on feeling that you cannot do anything, if you go on feeling that nothing is possible, the situation will become unbearable, it will be suicidal. So you change the whole thing. You interpret in such a way that, really, you begin to say that you can do much, but you do not want to – that much is possible, that things can be different, but you are not interested. That change of emphasis is really deceptive. But life exists through so many illusions. They are helpful.

Nietzsche has said that without lies it is difficult to survive. If one thinks he will live simply by truth, he cannot live. So we go on believing in so many lies. They are our foundations in a way; they help us to be on this earth. And so many so-called truths are not really truths for you: they are simply lies. For example, you do not know that the soul is immortal, but you go on believing in it. That helps. That is a lie for you; it is not your experience. But to live with death will be almost impossible, so this lie helps. Then you can forget death. You know that life is going to continue. Only the body is going to be dead; you are not going to be dead. You will be there.

This is a lie to you. You do not know anything because you do not know anything more than the body. You are acquainted only with your body, and that too not in its totality. You do not know anything which is immortal. If you know anything immortal in yourself, then this is not a lie. But to know that immortality one has to pass through conscious death.

All meditations are really an effort to die consciously. If you can die consciously, only then do you come upon something which is immortal, which cannot die. But we believe in an immortal soul just  to deceive ourselves. Through this belief life becomes easier. You have solved the problem without solving it. Now there is no death for you, and you can live as if you are going to live forever. Not only those who are theists, but even those who are atheists – who do not believe in soul at all and thus cannot believe in immortal souls – they too live in such a way as if they are going to live forever. They also have to deceive themselves by believing that there is no death and that there are so many lives.

Kant has said that if there were no God, then too we would have to invent him because without God it is difficult to live. Why? Because without God no morality is possible. Without God the whole edifice of morality falls down. All heaven, all hell, the results of your karma, everything falls down. So Kant says that even if there is no God, He is needed. He is required because without him morality becomes impossible, and to live without morality will be very difficult. We can live as immoral beings – we are already living so – we can live in immorality. That is not difficult: we always live in it. But even to live in immorality we need moral concepts. So an immoral person also goes on believing. He may not be good today, but tomorrow he is going to be good. He is not going to be good in this life, but he will be good in the next life.

So even a sinner goes on believing that he is not really a sinner. Any day he can be a saint – that possibility helps. Then he can hope for the possibility and continue to be whatsoever he is. So whatsoever he is, is just in a shadow. His being a sinner is just a changing thing. It is not going to be permanent: he is going to be a saint soon. He can hope for the saint and he can continue to be a sinner. If you want to be a sinner, you need some hope against your being a sinner. If you do not have any hope, it will be difficult to continue. So even those who are immoral need morality, and a God is needed as a central force, as a governing energy, otherwise the whole thing will be a chaos.

Kant then says: ”Do not deny God.” Kant has written two books, very valuable books. First he wrote one of the most valuable books of these two or three hundred years. He wrote ”The Critique of Pure Reason” in which he says that there is no God because reason cannot prove Him, and that book is based on pure reason. So he goes on thinking about it, he goes on, and ultimately he comes to say that there is no God, because for reason it is impossible even to conceive of a God since there is no possibility of proving the hypothesis. Since he is an honest man, he argues and finds that God cannot be proved.

So because this hypothesis is irrational, he concludes there is no God. Then he feels uneasy because he was a very moral, religious man. He was one of the keenest intellects, but a moral man, so he felt uneasy for twenty years continuously. Then he wrote a second book: ”The Critique of Practical Reason.” The first was ”The Critique of Pure Reason.” He followed pure reason wheresoever it led, but then it was not leading to God. For twenty years, concluding that there is no God, he felt an uneasiness, as if he had done something wrong. And the wrong was not that without God there was any inconvenience for Kant, but that he saw that if there is no God, then to the whole world morality disappears, evaporates.

Then he writes in the second book that it is not possible to prove God through pure reason, but practical reason needs Him. So God is not a rational hypothesis, but a practically reasonable hypothesis. Without God the whole thing will become unreasonable, so he says God is – not because God is, but because God is needed. Without God man is not possible, so if He is not, He has to be invented because only then does morality become possible.

For us there are so many hypotheses like this. We go on believing in them not because we know, but because if we do not believe in them, then we will know our ignorance, our deep ignorance. We want to avoid it, we want to escape from it.

Contentment to us is really a deep escape. We cannot fight life. We try, but we cannot succeed in it. No one ever succeeds. Everyone comes upon barriers; there are limitations. Not only those who are weak, but also those who are very strong in our eyes, who are more strong than others and who come a little further ahead, they also come to barriers, and from those barriers there is no escape.

Even a Napoleon has to die; even an Alexander comes to know things which he cannot win. Then what to do? One thing is to remain continuously in discontentment. That will become a cancer. You cannot sleep with it; you cannot forget it at any moment. It will become a continuous worry, an inner cancer in the mind. So create a facade of contentment: ”I am a contented man. It is not that I cannot win these barriers – I do not want to win.” This is a rationalization: ”I do not want to. It is not that I cannot win – I am not interested in winning!” You withdraw yourself and you give a rational flavour to it. This contentment is a rationalization – a shrewd, cunning rationalization. This gives you a certain hope that if you want you can do it.

Look at it in this way...

I have known many people. One man I know is a habituated alcoholic. For thirty years he has been trying to leave alcohol, but he cannot leave it. It has become impossible. But still he will go on saying, he will come to me and say, ”Any day I can leave it if I will it.” And he has tried continuously for thirty years. He has willed so many times, and was defeated, and again he will fall, but he still goes on saying, ”If I will, I can drop this habit in a moment.”

Because of this hope that ”If I will....” he still feels he is not a defeated man. He is already a defeated man, and this hope allows him to live. He goes on thinking that any moment he can drop it: he is not a slave; he can drop it – he is only not dropping it because he does not want to drop it.

So one day I asked him, ”You go on saying ’If I will....’ but have you not tried so many times, have you not willed so many times to drop it?”

Then he said, ”Yes, I have tried many times, but the effort was not really wholehearted.”

So I asked him, ”Have you tried any time when the effort was wholehearted?”

He said, ”No! If I try wholeheartedly I can leave it this very moment.”

I asked him, ”Is it possible for you to do it wholeheartedly? Is it in your capacity to will it wholeheartedly? Is your will your own?”

He became uneasy, because when you feel that your will is not your own you will have to face your imprisonment, your slavery. So he is in an imprisonment, but he goes on believing that he is free.

That helps you to live in a prison as if it is your home.

This is how we go on rationalizing, and this man cannot leave alcohol unless he leaves this rationalization. If he begins to feel that ”Even if I will I cannot leave,” then he is realistic. Then he has come down to the earth. And if he comes to feel that ”I cannot do anything even if I will,” then he can do something because then he will not be living in illusion – he will have stumbled upon reality. And you can do something with reality, but you cannot do anything with illusions.

To escape from reality we create many mental attitudes.