The Obstacles to Meditation

 

THE THIRD OBSTACLE IS DOUBT.

"Doubt" - Sanskrit has many words for doubt, English has only one word. So try to understand, I will explain you. There is a doubt against trust. In Sanskrit it is called shanka - doubt against trust, one pair. Then there is a doubt called sanshaya - Patanjali is talking about sanshaya now - doubt against certainty, against decisiveness. A man of uncertainty, a man who is not decisive, he is in sanshaya - in doubt. This is not against trust because trust is to trust in somebody. This is against self-confidence; you don't trust in yourself. That's a different thing.

So whatsoever you do, you are not certain whether you want to do it or don't want to do it, whether it will be good to go into it or not - an indecisiveness. With an indecisive mind, you cannot enter on the path - not on the path of Patanjali. You have to be decisive. You have to take a decision. Difficult it is because a part of you always goes on saying 'no'. Then how to take the decision? Think about as much as you can; give it as much time as you can. Think all the possibilities, all the alternatives and then decide. And once you decide, then drop all doubting.

Before that, use it: do whatsoever you can do with the doubt. Think all the possibilities and then choose. Of course it is not going to be a total decision; in the beginning it is not possible. It will be a major decision - majority of your mind will say 'yes'. Once you decide, then never doubt. The doubt will raise its head. You simply say, "I have decided - finished. It is not a total decision; all doubts are not discarded. But whatsoever could be done, I have done. I have thought it out as completely as it was possible and I have chosen."

Once you choose then never give doubt again any cooperation, because doubt exists in you through your cooperation. You go on giving energy to it, and again and again you start thinking about it. Then an indecisiveness is created. Indecisiveness is a very bad state of affairs - you are in a very bad shape. If you cannot decide anything, how can you do? How can you act?

How AUM - the sound and the meditation - will help? It helps, because once you become silent, peaceful, decision becomes easier. Then you are no more a crowd, not a chaos: many voices talking together and you don't know which voice is yours. AUM - the chanting - the meditating on it - voices become silent. Many voices - now you can see they are not yours. Your mother is speaking, your father is speaking, your brothers, your teachers, they are not yours. You can discard them easily because they don't need any attention.

When you become silent under the chanting of AUM, you are sheltered, calm, quiet, collected. In that collectedness you can see which is the real voice which is coming from you, which is authentic. It is as if you are standing in a marketplace, and many people are talking and many things are going on, and you cannot decide what is happening. In a share-market, people are shouting - they know their language - you cannot understand what is happening, whether they have gone mad or not.

Then you move to a Himalayan retreat. You sit in a cave, you simply chant. You simply calm down yourself, all nervousness disappears, you become one, collected. In that moment, decisiveness is possible. And then decide, and then don't look back. Then forget - it is decided and decided. Now there is no going back. Then go ahead.

Sometimes the doubt will follow, bark at you just like a dog. But if you don't listen, don't pay attention, by and by it stops. Give it a chance, think all that is possible, and once decided, drop it, and aumkar - AUM - will help you to come to a decisiveness. Here, doubt means indecisiveness, carelessness. The Sanskrit word is pramad. The pramad means as if one is walking in sleep. Carelessness is part of it; exact translation will be, "Don't be a zombie: don't walk in hypnosis."

But you live in hypnosis not knowing it at all. The whole society is trying to hypnotize you for certain things, and that creates pramad: that creates a sleepiness in you. What is happening? You are not aware, otherwise you will be simply surprised what is happening. It is so familiar. That's why you don't become aware. You are being pulled by many manipulators, and their method of manipulating you is creating hypnosis in you.

For example, on every radio, on every TV screen, on every film, on every newspaper, magazine, they go on advertising for a certain thing - "Lux toilet soap". You think you are not affected, but every day you hear, "Lux toilet soap, Lux toilet soap, Lux toilet soap". It is a chanting. In the night, on the streets, neon lights say "lux toilet soap." And now they have found it out that if you flicker the light it is more impressive. If it goes on and off, then it is even more impressive because then you have to read it again: "Lux toilet soap". Then the light goes on, comes again, and you have to read it again: "Lux toilet soap".

You are chanting AUM. It is going deeper in your subconscious. You think you are not bothered, you think you are not befooled by these people - all these beautiful naked women standing near 'Lux toilet soap' and saying, 'Why I am beautiful? Why my face is so beautiful? Because of 'Lux toilet soap'." You know that you are not, but you are affected. Suddenly, one day you go to the market, go to the shop, and you ask for a 'Lux toilet soap'. The shopkeeper asks, 'Which soap?" Then suddenly it bubbles up: "Lux toilet soap".

You are being hypnotized by the businessmen, political leaders, educationists, priests, because everybody has an investment in you if you are hypnotized. Then you can be used. The politicians go on saying that "This is your mother country, and if the mother country is in difficulty, go to the war; become a martyr."

What nonsense. The whole earth is your mother. Is earth divided into India, Pakistan, Germany, England, or is it one? But the politicians are continuously hammering your mind that only this part of the earth is your mother; you have to save it. Even if your life is lost, it is very good. And they go on: devotion to the country, nationalism, patriotism - all nonsense terms, but if they are hammered continuously, you become hypnotized. Then you can sacrifice yourself.

You are sacrificing your life in a hypnosis because of slogans. A flag, an ordinary piece of cloth, becomes so important through hypnosis. This is "our national flag" - millions can die for it. If there are beings on other planets and they look sometimes at the earth, they will think, "These people are simply mad." For a cloth - a piece of cloth - because you have insulted "our flag", and this cannot be tolerated...

Then religions go on preaching: you are a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan, this and that, and they make you feel that you are a Christian, and then you are on a crusade: "Kill others who are not Christians. This is your duty. And they teach you such absurd things, but you still believe because they go on saying it. Adolf Hitler says in his autobiography, "Mein Kampf", that if you repeat a lie continuously it becomes a truth. And he knows. Nobody knows as well as he knows because he repeated himself and created the phenomenon.

Pramad means a state of hypnosis, manipulated, moving sleepily. Then carelessness is bound to come because you are not yourself. Then you do everything without any care. You move and stumble on. In relationship with things, with persons, you continuously are stumbling; you are not going anywhere, you are just like a drunkard. But everybody else is just like you, so you don't have the opportunity to feel that you are a drunkard.

The Fourth Obstacle is Carelessness.

Be careful. How AUM will help you to be careful? It will drop hypnosis. In fact, if you simply chant AUM without meditating, it will also become a hypnosis: that is the difference between the ordinary chanting of a mantra and Patanjali's way. Chant it and remain aware.

If you chant AUM and remain aware, this AUM and its chanting will become a dehypnotizing force. It will destroy all the hypnosis that exists around you, that has been created in you by the society and the manipulators, politicians. It will be a dehypnotization.

Once it was asked in America, somebody asked Vivekananda that "What is the difference between ordinary hypnosis and your chanting of AUM?" He said, "Chanting of AUM is a dehypnosis: it is moving in the reverse gear." The process seems to be the same, but the gear is reverse. And how it becomes reverse? If you are meditating also. Then, by and by, you become so silent and so aware, so careful, that nobody can hypnotize you. Now you are beyond the reach of priests and politicians - the prisoners. Now, for the first time, you are an individual, and then you become careful. Then you move with care, each step with care because millions are the pitfalls all around you.

Fifth is Laziness - alasya.

There is much laziness accumulated in you. It comes for certain reasons - because you don't see the point of doing anything. And even if you do, nothing is achieved. If you don't do, nothing is lost. Then a laziness settles in the heart. Laziness means simply that you have lost the zest for life.

Children are not lazy. They are bubbling with energy. You have to force them to go to sleep; you have to force them to be silent; you have to force them to sit for few minutes in order to relax. They are not tense: this is your idea. They are full of energy - such tiny beings with so much energy. From where this energy comes? They are still unfrustrated. They don't know that in this life, whatsoever you do nothing is achieved. They are unaware - blissfully unaware: that's why so much energy.

And you have been doing many things, and nothing is achieved - laziness settles. It is like dust settling in you - of all failures, frustrations, every dream gone sour. It settles Then you become lazy. In the morning, you think, "For what to get up again? For what" There is no answer. You have to get up because somehow bread is to be earned. And there is a wife, and there are children, and you are caught in the trap. You move to the office somehow; you come back somehow. There is no zest . You drag. You are not happy doing anything.

How the chanting of AUM and meditating on it will help it? It helps - certainly helps, because when for the first time you chant AUM and watch and meditate, the first effort in your life seems to bring a fulfillment. You feel so happy chanting it, you feel so blissful chanting it, that the first effort has succeeded.

Now a new zest arises. The dust is being thrown. A new courage, a new confidence is attained. Now you think you also can do something, you can also achieve something. Everything is not a failure. Maybe the outward journey is a failure, but the inward journey is not a failure. Even the first step brings so many flowers. Now hope arises; confidence settles again. You are again a child - of the inner world... a new birth. You can again laugh, run, play. Again you are born.

This is what Hindus call the twice-born. This is the next birth, a second birth. The first birth was in the outside world. It has proved a failure; that's why you feel so lethargic. And by the time one is forty, one starts thinking of death - how to die, how to be finished.

If people don't commit suicide, it is not that they are happy. It is only simply because they don't see even any hope even in death. Even death seems to be hopeless. It is not because they love life that they are not committing suicide - no. They are so frustrated that they know that even death is not going to give anything. So why commit unnecessarily? Why take the trouble? So go on as things are.

Sixth is Sensuality. Why you feel sensual, sexual? You feel sexual because you accumulate energy, unused energy, and you don't know what to do with it. So, naturally, at the first center of sex, it accumulates. And you don't know any other centers, and you don't know how it can flow upwards.

It is like you have got an airplane, but you don't know what it is so you search into it, and then you think, "It has wheels, so must be a sort of vehicle." So you yoke horses to it and use it as a bullock cart. It can be used. Then someday, by accident, you discover that bullocks are not needed. It has a certain engine in it, so you use it as a motor car. Then you go deeper and deeper in search. Then you wonder why these wings? Then one day you use it as it should be used - as an airplane.

When you move inside you, you discover many things. But if you don't move, then there is only sexuality. You gather energy, then what to do with it? You don't know anything that you can fly upwards. You become a bullock cart: sex is behaving like a bullock cart. You gather energy. You eat food, you drink water, energy is created, energy is there; if you don't use it, you will go mad. Then the energy goes round and round within you. It makes you crazy. You have to do something. If you don't do something, you will go crazy; you will explode. Sex is the easiest safety valve - energy moves back into nature.

This is foolish because the energy comes from the nature. You eat food: it is eating nature. You drink water; it is drinking nature. You take a sunbath; it is eating sun. Continuously, you are eating nature, and then you throw it out back to the nature. The whole thing seems to be baseless, useless, with no meaning. What is the use of it? Then you become lethargic.

The energy must go higher. You must become a transformer: through you nature must become supernature; only then there is meaning, significance. Through you matter must become mind; mind must become supermind. Through you nature must reach to the supernature: the lowest must become the highest. Only then there is a significance - a felt significance.

Then your life has a deep, deep significance. You are not worthless; you are not like dirt. You are a god When you have moved through you the nature to the supernature, you have become a god. Patanjali is a god. You become a Master of Masters.

But, ordinarily, sensuality means that energy gathers, and you have to throw it out. You don't know what to do with it. First you gather it: first you go on seeking for food, doing much effort to earn bread. Then you absorb the bread and create energy, because sex energy is the most refined energy in your body, the most refined And then you throw it out, and then you again go in the circle.

It is a vicious circle. When you throw it out, the body needs energy. You eat, collect, throw: how can you feel that you have some meaning? You seem to be in a rut leading nowhere. How AUM will help? How meditating on it will help? Once you start meditating on Aum, other centers start functioning.

When the energy flows, inside you becomes a circle. Then sex center is not the only center which is functioning. Your whole body becomes a circle. From the sex center it rises to the second, to the third, fourth, fifth, seventh center; then again sixth, fifth, fourth, third, second, first. It becomes an inner circle and it passes other centers.

Just because energy is accumulated, it rises high: the level of energy goes high, just like a dam: the water goes on coming from the river, and the dam is not allowing it to go out. The water rises high, and other centers, other chakras in your body, start opening - because when the energy flows, they become dynamic forces, dynamos. They start functioning.

It is as if a waterfall and a dynamo start functioning; the waterfall is dry and the dynamo cannot start. When the energy flows upwards, your highest chakras start working, functioning. This is how AUM helps. It makes you calm, collected, one. Energy rises high; sensuality disappears. Sex becomes meaningless, childish, not yet gone, but becomes childish. You don't feel sensual; you don't have an urge for it.

It is still there. If you are not careful, it will take your grip again. You can fall, because this is not the ultimate happening. You are not yet crystalized but a glimpse has happened that the energy can give you inner ecstatic states. And sex is the lowest ecstasy. Higher ecstasies are possible. When the higher becomes possible, the lower disappears automatically. You need not renounce it. If you renounce, then your energy is not moving high. If the energy is moving high, there is no need to renounce. It simply becomes useless. It simply drops by itself. Non-functioning it becomes delusion.

The Seventh Obstacle is Delusion.

As you are, psychoanalysts say that if you stop dreaming you will go mad. Dreams are needed because in your state of mind delusions are needed. Delusions, deceptions, illusions, dreams are needed because you are sleepy, and in sleep, dreams are a necessity.

They have been experimenting in America, that if you are not allowed for seven days to dream, immediately you start a delusion trip: with open eyes you start seeing things which are not. You start talking to persons which are not, you start seeing visions. You are mad. Just seven days no dreaming, and you become delusionary. Hallucinations start happening. Your dreams are a catharsis - an inbuilt catharsis, so every night you delude yourself. By the morning you are a little sober, but by the evening again you have gathered much energy. In the night you have to dream and throw it out.

This happens to drivers, and many accidents happen because of this. In the night, accidents happen near about four, four o'clock in the morning, because the driver has been driving the whole night. He has not been dreaming; now the dream energy accumulates. And with open eyes he is driving and he starts seeing illusions. "The road is straight," he says. "There is nobody: no truck is coming." With open eyes he goes into a truck. Or he sees a truck coming, and just to avoid it - and there was no truck - just to avoid it, he crashes against a tree.

Much research has been done why so many accidents happen nearabout four. In fact, nearabout four you dream too much. Four to five, six, you dream too much That is dream time. You have slept well; now there is no need for sleep, you can dream. In the morning you dream, and that time if you don't dream, are not allowed to dream you will create delusions. You will dream with open eyes.

Delusion means dreaming with open eyes, but everybody is dreaming that way. You see a woman and you think she is absolutely beautiful. That may not be the case. You may be projecting an illusion on her. You may be sexually starved. Then energy is there and you delude. After two days, three days, the woman looks ordinary. You think you have been deceived. Nobody is deceiving you; you yourself... But you deluded. Lovers delude each other. They dream with open eyes and then they are frustrated. Nobody is at fault, just your state.

Patanjali says delusion will disappear if you chant AUM with mindfulness. How it will happen? - because delusion means a dreaming state, when you are lost. You are no more there: just the dream is there. If you meditate on AUM, you have created the sound of AUM and you are a witness, you are there. Your presence cannot allow any dream to happen Whenever you are, there is no dream. Whenever there is a dream, you are not. You both cannot be together. If you are there, the dream will disappear. Or, you will have to disappear. Both together cannot be. Dream and awareness never meet. That's why delusion disappears by witnessing the sound of AUM.

The Eight is Impotency.

"Impotency": impotency is also there, continuously felt. You feel yourself helpless: that is impotency. You feel you cannot do anything, you are worthless, of no use. You may pretend that you are somebody, but your pretension also shows that deep down you feel the nobodiness. You may pretend that you are very powerful, but your pretension is nothing but hiding.

Mulla Nasrudin entered a tavern with a sheet of paper in his hand and declared, "Here are the names of the people I can lick," - hundred names. One man stood up: he was a tiny man; Mulla could have licked him. But he had two pistols around his belt. He came near with a pistol in his hand and he said, "Is my name also there?"

Mulla looked at him and said, "Yes." The man said, "You cannot lick me." Mulla said, "Are you sure?" The man said, "absolutely sure. Look" And he showed the pistol. Mulla said, "Then okay. I will cut your name out of the list."

You can pretend that you are very powerful, but whenever you come in an encounter you start feeling the helplessness and the powerlessness. Man is impotent because only the whole can be potent - not man. The part cannot be potent. Only God is potent; man is impotent.

When you chant aumkar, AUM, for the first time you feel that you are no more an island. You become one part of the whole universal sound. For the first time you feel yourself potent, but now this potency need not be violent, need not be aggressive. In fact, a powerful man is never aggressive. Only impotent people become aggressive to prove themselves - that we are powerful.

The Ninth Obstacle is Instability.

You start one thing and then stop - on and off - you start again and then off. Nothing is possible with this instability. One has to persevere, to go on digging the hole at the same spot continuously. If you leave your effort, your mind is such after few days you will have to start from the ABC again; it rewinds itself, it unwinds itself. You do something for few days, then you leave. You will be thrown back to your first day of doing - again ABC. Then you can do much without achieving anything. Aum will give you a taste.

Why you start and stop? People come to me and they say they meditated for one year, then they stopped. And I ask them, "How you were feeling?n They say, "very, very good we were feeling" - but then why you stopped? Nobody stops when somebody is feeling very, very good. And they say "We were very happy and then we stopped." - it is impossible. If you were happy, how can you stop? Then they say, "Not exactly happy."

But they are in trouble. They pretend even that they are happy. If you are happy in a certain thing, you continue. You stop only when it is a boring thing, a boredom, unhappiness. With Aum, Patanjali says, you will feel the first taste of dropping into the universal. That taste will become your happiness and instability will go. That's why he says chanting Aum and witnessing it all obstacles drop.

These are the symptoms of a distracted mind, and against these are the symptoms of a mind who is centered. The chanting of Aum will make you centered. Your breathing will become rhythmic. Your tremors in the body will disappear; you will not be nervous. Sadness will be replaced by a happy feeling, a joy, a subtle blissfulness on your face, for no reason at all. Simply happy you are: just being here you are happy; just breathing you are happy. You don't demand much, and instead of anguish there will be bliss.