Constant Inner Practice

 

The Sutras:

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, the pattern of human personality is not totally intellectual, this has to be firmly grasped.

If it was only intellect, then there would be no need for abhyasa - constant, repetitive effort. You can understand immediately anything, if it is rational, through the mind, but just that understanding won't do. You can understand easily 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 - not only in the mind, but in your body also.

The body cannot understand just by verbal communication. Only your head can understand, but 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 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 it is difficult, 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 you change in your head, but the deep sources of your being also change.

How they can 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. Now it is not only 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 this name has reached so deep? Just by constant repetition. Everybody is repeating his name; everybody is calling 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. 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 was using German language. He has completely forgotten his own mother tongue, Marathi. He couldn't read it, he couldn't talk in it. Consciously, the language was completely forgotten because it was not used.

Then he was ill. And in that illness sometimes he would become unconscious. Whenever he will become unconscious, a totally different type of personality will evolve. He will start behaving in a different way. In his unconscious he will utter words from Marathi, not from German. When he was unconscious, then he will utter words which are from Marathi language. And after his unconscious, when he will come back to the conscious, for few minutes he will not be able to understand German.

Constant repetition in the childhood goes deeper because the child has no conscious really. He has more of unconscious just near the surface; everything enters into the unconscious. As he will learn, as he will get educated, the conscious will become a thicker layer - then less and less penetration towards the unconscious.

Psychologists say that almost fifty percent of your learning is finished by the seventh year of your age. The seventh year of your life, you have almost known half of the things that you are ever going to know. Your half education is finished, and this half is going to be the base. Now everything else will be just imposed on it. And the deeper pattern will remain of the childhood.

That's why modern psychology, modern psychoanalysis, psychiatry, they all try to penetrate in your childhood, because if you are mentally ill, somewhere the seed is to be found in your childhood , not in the now. 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 constant, repetitive practice of a certain thing. Why, through repetition, something becomes unconscious? There are 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 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 can 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 engrained. It becomes a part of your brain cells. And the more it becomes a part of your brain cells, less consciousness is needed. Your consciousness can move; now it is not needed.

So whatsoever you learn deeply, for it you need not be conscious. In the beginning, if you learn driving, 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 - the road, the traffic, the mechanism, the wheel, the accelerator, the brakes, and everything, and the rules and regulations of the road. You have to be constantly aware of everything. So 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 the 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. Simply you will 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 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 is going to do 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. And 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, struggle, a constant inner violence, inner war. And if conflict is there, you cannot be at ease, at home.

Now we should enter the sutra. The cessation of mind is yoga, but how can the mind, and its modifications, cease?

Two things - how the mind can cease with all its modifications: one - 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. Try to 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 you do them? You do them because you have certain desires, and those desires cannot be fulfilled without doing them. So these are two things. One, you have to do certain things. For example, anger. Why 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 & your desire will appear to be your enemy. You want to destroy him. This is what anger means: you want to destroy the obstacles. But anger leads into misery; anger becomes an illness. So you want not to be angry.

But how you can 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 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 whosoever comes in your path your mind will think to destroy.

This attitude to destroy the obstacle is anger. But anger creates misery, 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 necessary that anger should 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 it is now 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. It is now chemical and physiological. Just by your 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 what is the reason why I am sad, but I am sad. No visible cause, nothing that I can pinpoint that 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 I should have any investment?" But he had. I knew the person well. I knew the person for many years, but he was not aware that there is 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 loving... If you need love 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. But he is a miser; he cannot give love. Giving is impossible; 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, 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.

Then 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, just 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...

One man entered one car-park. He was in a very ridiculous posture. It looked almost impossible how he was walking, because he was crouching as if he was driving a car. His hands on some invisible wheel, moving, his feet on some invisible accelerator, and he was walking. And it was so difficult, so impossible, how he was walking. A crowd gathered there. He was doing something impossible. And they asked the attendant, "What is the matter? What this man is doing?"

The attendant said, "Don't ask loudly. The man in his past loved cars. He was one of the best drivers. He has even won a national prize in car races. But now, due to some mental deficiency, he has been debarred. He is not allowed to drive a car, but just the old hobby."

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 say so loudly.' I cannot do, because one rupee per day he gives me to wash the car. That I cannot do. I cannot say that 'You have no car.' He is going to park the car, and then I will wash."

That one rupee investment, the vested interest, is there. You have many vested interests 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 see 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, "First thing is non-attachment." Drop all desires; don't be attached. And then, abhyasa.

For example, someone comes to me and he says, "I don't want to collect more fat in 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, why he goes on eating more and more. And even for a few days he stops, then again with more gusto he eats. And he will collect more weight than he has lost through few days fasting or dieting. And this has been continuously, for years. It is not just a question of eating less. Why he is eating more? Body doesn't need, 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 non-eating is equivalent to death and more eating 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 is mother, the food from the mother and the love from the mother. Love and food enter in his consciousness simultaneously. And whenever the mother is loving, she gives more milk. The breast is given happiness. But whenever mother is angry, non-loving, she snatches her breast away.

Food is taken away whenever mother is non-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 will get more love, he will reduce his food, because if love is so much, then food is not so 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 - 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. The love and the world of attaining love is, in a way, finished.

In the countries where divorce has become more prevalent, the women are showing better figures. In the countries where divorce is not prevalent, women don't bother at all about their figures, because if divorce is possible then the women will have to find new lovers; they are figure conscious. The search for love helps the body 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; perhaps he is not in any deep, intimate love with anyone. And these two things 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. And death will finish and there will be no more time and no future after it.

If there is no love, the fear of death will be more. If there is love, less is the fear of death. If total love, death disappears. These are all connected inside. Even very simple things are deeply rooted in greater patterns.

Mulla Nasrudin was standing before his veterinary doctor with his dog and insisting that, "Cut the tail of my dog." The doctor was saying, "But why, Nasrudin? If I cut the tail of your dog, this beautiful dog will be destroyed. He will look ugly. And why you are insisting this?" Nasrudin said, "Between you and me, don't say this to anybody: I want the dog's tail to be cut 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, he can welcome my mother-in-law."

Even a dog's tail has a bigger pattern of so many relationships. If Nasrudin cannot welcome even through his dog his mother-in-law, 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.

Simple things 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 a new life can 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 that 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 persons 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, more happy. But you cannot make him miserable. And a person who lives with attachment - you cannot make him 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 much; if the friend is not there you miss much.

Just a girl came a few days before to me. She had seen me two months before also with her boyfriend. And they were constantly fighting with each other and the fight has 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.

So 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. Even in my dreams he has started to appear. Never before it has happened. When we were together, never I have seen him in my dreams. In my dreams I was making love to other men. But now, constantly, my boyfriend is in my dreams. And 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: that you were living together just two months before 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 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 be thankful.

 

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