The Seer is not the Seen

 

Says Patanjali,

"Because of change, misery happens." If life were absolutely fixed and there were no change -- you love a girl and the girl remains always sixteen years of age, always singing, always happy and always cheerful, and you also remain the same, fixed entities -- of course then you would not be persons, life would not be life. It would be stony, but at least expectations would be fulfilled.

But there is a difficulty: boredom will come out of it, and that will create misery. Change will not be there, but then there will be boredom.

You would get bored if things don't change. If your wife goes on smiling and smiling and smiling every day, everyday, after a few days you will become a little worried -- "What has happened to this woman? Is her smile real or is she simply acting?"

When you are acting, you can go on smiling. You can create such a discipline of the mouth. I have seen people who even in sleep are smiling; politicians and those types of people who have to continuously smile. Then their lips take a permanent shape. If you tell them not to smile, they cannot do anything. They will have to smile, it has become a fixed mode. But then boredom is created, and boredom will lead to misery.

In heaven everything is permanent, nothing changes; everything remains just as it is -- everything beautiful. Bertrand Russell in his autobiography writes, "I would not like to go to paradise or heaven because it would be too boring." Yes, it would be too boring. Just think of a place where all priests, prophets, teerthankaras and Buddhas have gathered, and nothing changes, everything remains static -- no movement. It will look like a painted picture, not really alive. How long can you live in it? Russell is right; one will get bored, bored to death. Russell says, "If this is going to be heaven, then hell is preferable. At least some change will be there."

In hell everything is changing, but then no expectations can be fulfilled. This is the trouble with the mind. If life is flux, expectations cannot be fulfilled. If life were a fixed phenomenon, expectations could be fulfilled so much that one would feel bored. Then there would be no zest, enthusiasm. Everything would become dull, tepid -- no sensation, no excitement, nothing new happens. In this life, where you are living, change creates misery, anxiety. There is always anxiety within you, always I say. If you are poor, there is anxiety: how to attain to riches? If you become rich, there is anxiety: now how to retain that which you have attained? There is always fear of thieves, robbers, and the government -- which is an organized robbery -- taxation, and communists are always coming. If you are poor you are in anxiety: how to attain to riches? If you have attained you are in anxiety: how to retain that which you have attained? But anxiety continues.

Just the other day a couple came to me and the man said, "If I'm with the woman there is anxiety, because it is a continuous fight. I'm not happy. If I'm not with the woman, it is continuous anxiety; I am alone." Without the woman, then loneliness becomes the anxiety. With the woman, the other brings his or her own problems. And problems are not doubled when two persons meet, they are multiplied. Man cannot live alone because loneliness creates anxiety. Man cannot live with a woman, because woman creates anxiety. The same is true for the woman also. Anxiety has become just the style of your life; whatsoever happens, anxiety remains.

Past experiences, samskaras, create misery because whenever you move through an experience, it creates a groove in you. If the experience is repeated many, many times, the groove becomes more and more deep. Then if life moves in different ways, and the energy is not flowing in that groove of your past experiences, you feel unfulfilled. But if life continues the same, and the energy goes on flowing from the same groove, you feel bored. Then you want excitement. If excitement is not there, you feel, "What is the use of going on living?"

You cannot eat the same food every day. I can eat the same food; so leave me out. You cannot eat the same food every day. If you eat the same food you feel frustrated because the same food every day loses taste, excitement. If you change food every day, that too will create anxiety and trouble, because the body gets adjusted to the food. And if every day you change, the body chemistry changes and the body feels uncomfortable. The body feels comfortable if you take the same food, but then the mind doesn't feel comfortable.

If you live through your past habits, the body will always feel comfortable, because body is a mechanism. It doesn't hanker for the new, it simply wants the same. The body needs routine. Mind always needs change, because mind itself is a flux phenomenon. Not even for a single moment does mind remain the same; it goes on changing.

I have heard that Lord Byron was said to have lived with hundreds of women. At least sixty women are absolutely known; there is proof that he loved sixty women. He didn't live very long, so he must have been changing women on alternate days. But one woman caught him and she forced him to marry her. She would not yield until he married her, she would not give her body until he married her. She knew that he had been in affairs with many women. And once he had made love to a woman, he simply forgot that woman completely -- finished. It was the mind of a romantic poet, and poets are never faithful. They cannot be; they live with the mind. Their mind is a flux, like their poetry. It is a vibrating phenomenon. The woman insisted, she was stubborn, so Byron had to yield; he had to marry her. She became very fascinating to him because she would not yield. It became a question of his ego.

As they were coming out of the church, the church bells were still ringing, and the guests were departing. They were on the church steps and Byron held the hand of the woman, the newly wed woman. He had not even made love to her yet, and suddenly he saw another woman passing the road. He forgot the woman whose hand he was holding completely, and he said to the woman, "This is wonderful, but for a single moment when I saw that woman passing, I forgot you completely, my marriage and everything. Your hand was not in my hand; I didn't know about it." The woman had also seen it; you cannot deceive women. Even before you have looked towards another woman, they know. The very flicker of the idea in your mind, and they detect it. They are great detectors, lie detectors.

The woman had also seen it, and she said, "I knew."

This is the mind. He is now finished with that woman, married and finished, attained and finished. There is no excitement now. Now she is possessed, a property. The challenge is no longer there.

The challenge creates anxiety because you have to fight your way. Then when you have attained, possessed, it creates another anxiety: the anxiety that you are finished. The whole affair is there no more. It is already boring, already dead. Anxiety is always there because the way you live creates anxiety. You cannot be satisfied. Through past experiences, samskaras, you become attuned to particular phenomena and the mind says that excitement is needed, change is needed. Then the whole body gets disturbed. Then that too creates anxiety.

Then there is a continuous fight between mind modifications and the three attributes which Hindus say constitute your being. They say that sattwa, rajas, and tamas are the three constituents of the human personality. Sattwa is the purest, the very essential of all goodness, of all purity, of all saintliness, the holiest element in you. Then there is rajas, the element of energy, vigor, strength, power; and tamas, the element of laziness, inertia and entropy. These three constitute your being. And it seems that Hindus have a great insight into it, because these are the three things that physicists say are the constituents of matter, of the very atomic energy. They may call it the electron, proton, and neutron, but those are differences of name only. Hindus call it sattwa, rajas and tamas. Scientists agree that three types of qualities are needed for matter to exist, or for anything to exist. Hindus say that these three qualities are needed for the personality to exist; not only for the personality, but for the whole existence to exist.

Patanjali says that these three are against each other and that creates trouble. And all three are in you. The element of laziness is there, otherwise you would not be able to sleep. People who suffer from insomnia suffer because the tamas element is not in them in enough quantity. That's why tranquillizers help, because a tranquillizer is a tamas creating chemical. It creates tamas in you, laziness. If people are too rajas, too full of vigor and energy, they cannot sleep.

That's why in the West insomnia has now become a universal problem. In the West there is too much of rajas, the energy element. That's why the West has ruled all over the world. A small country like England continued to rule half the world. They must have been very rajas. A country like India with sixty crores of people now remains poor; there are so many people doing nothing. They become more and more burdensome. They are not assets, they are burdens on the country. There is too much tamas, laziness. And then there is sattwa which is against both. These three elements constitute you. And they are all going in three different dimensions.

They are needed, they are all needed in their oppositeness because through their tension you exist. If their tension were lost, if they became harmonious, death would happen. Hindus say that when these three elements are in tension, existence exists, there is creation; when these three elements come to a harmony, existence dissolves, there is pralaya, there is de-creation. Your death is nothing but these three elements coming to a harmony in the body -- then you die. If the very tension is not there, how can you live?

So this is the problem: you cannot live without these three tensions -- you will die. And you cannot live with them because they are opposite and they pull you in different directions. You must have felt many times that you are being pulled in different directions. One part of you says, "Be ambitious," another part says, "Ambition will create anxiety. Rather, meditate, pray, become a sannyasin." One part says that sin is beautiful, sin has an attraction, a magnetic force in it: "Enjoy, because sooner or later death will take over. Dust goes unto dust and nothing remains. Enjoy before death takes over, don't miss." One part of you says this and another part of you says, "Death is coming, everything is futile. What is the point of enjoying?" These are not the same parts of you speaking. You have three parts in you. In fact there are three egos, three individuals in you.

Patanjali says, as Mahavir says, that man is polypsychic. You don't have one psyche, you have three minds; and three minds can become three thousand through permutations, combinations. You have many minds, you are polypsychic; each mind is pulling you somewhere else. You are a crowd. Of course, how can you be at ease, how can you be blissful? You are like a bullock cart which is being pulled in different directions by many bullocks, one yoked to the north, one yoked to the west, and one yoked to the south simultaneously. It cannot go any where. It will create much noise and, finally, a collapse, but it cannot reach anywhere. That's why your life remains a life of emptiness. These three are in conflict, and then modifications of the mind, vrittis, are in conflict with the gunas.

For example:

I know a man who is a very lazy man. And he was telling me, "If I had no wife, I would have rested. I had enough money, but this wife would go on forcing me to work. It was never enough for her." Then the wife died.

So I told the man, "You must be happy. Why are you crying? You be happy! You are finished with the wife, and now you can rest."

But he was crying and weeping like a child. He said, "Now I feel lonely. And it has become a habit." Wives and husbands become habits. He said, "Now it has become a habit. Now I cannot sleep with out a woman."

I told him, "Now don't be foolish! Don't try to get remarried, because your whole life you have suffered, and another woman is going to be again a woman -- she will force you. Again, your money will not be enough."

I have heard...

A very rich man, Rothschild. Somebody asked him, "How have you attained so much wealth? How could you attain? What was the desire? How did you become so ambitious?" He was born a poor man, and then he became the richest man in the world. He said, "It is because of my wife. I was trying to attain as much wealth as possible because I wanted to know whether my wife could be satisfied or not. I failed -- she was always asking for more. There was a competition between us. I was trying to attain more and more, and I wanted to see a day when she would say, 'It is enough.' She never said it. Because of that competition I continued earning, continued earning madly. Now I have attained so much wealth that I don't know what to do, but my wife is still not satisfied. If one day I want to relax and not get up early in the morning, she comes and says, 'What is the matter? Are you not going to the office.'"

I told this man, "Don't get into a trap again. Your whole life you have wanted to rest, and even now she is here. Don't bother again now. It is just a modification of the mind, a habit. You are a lazy man. Now you are perfectly at ease; now you rest. Your whole life you have been thinking of it."

He said, "That's right. But now after forty years of working, it has become a habit, and I cannot remain unoccupied."

A lazy man wants to rest, but when he lives with the wife, a modification happens in the mind. Now a woman becomes part and parcel of his being. He cannot live with her because maybe she fights every day, but that too becomes part of habit. If there is nobody to fight with when he comes home, he will not feel that he is really at home.

I have heard...

Mulla Nasrudin went into a restaurant. The waitress said, "I will be happy to get you anything that you want." He was the first customer that day, and it was in India. The first customer has to be treated and welcomed like a guest, because he starts the day. Mulla Nasrudin said, 'Treat me as if I am at home. Bring me breakfast."

The waitress brought things, whatsoever he ordered: coffee, this and that. Then she asked, "Anything else?" Mulla Nasrudin said, 'Now sit in front of me and nag at me. I am feeling homesick.'

When even the wife fights with you every day, it becomes a habit. You cannot afford to lose it, you will miss it.

For lazy men, brahmacharya is best. They should remain celibate. They can rest, relax and do whatsoever they want to do with themselves. They can do their own thing and nobody is there to nag. He listened to me. It was difficult, but he listened to me. After two years, he retired from the service. Retired people die sooner than they were going to die originally almost ten years sooner. If a man was going to die at eighty, retire him at sixty and he will die at seventy. Unoccupied -- what to do? -- one slowly dies.

Habits are formed and mind takes modifications. You are lazy but you had to work, so mind has become habituated to work. Now you cannot relax. Even if you are retired you cannot sit, you cannot meditate, you cannot rest, you cannot go to sleep. I see that people are more restless on holidays than ordinary days.

Sunday is a difficult day; they don't know what to do. On the six working days, they are waiting for Sunday. For six days they hope that Sunday is coming: "One day more and Sunday is coming, and then we will rest." And from the very morning on Sunday, they are at a loss for what to do.

In the West, people start on their Sunday or weekend trips: they go to the sea or to the mountains. There is a mad rush all over the country; everybody is running somewhere. Nobody thinks that everybody else is going to the sea, so where are they going? -- the whole town will be there. It would have been better if they had remained at home. That would have been more sea-like. You are alone and the whole town is gone. Everybody has gone to the seashore. And more accidents happen on holidays, people are more tired. They drive a hundred miles there and a hundred miles back, and they are tired. I have heard it said that on Sunday, people get so tired that on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, these three days they take to rest and revive the spirit, and for three days they wait and hope again for Sunday. When Sunday comes again, they are again tired.

People cannot rest because rest needs a different attitude. If you are lazy and you work, mind will create something. If you are not lazy, then too mind will create something. Mind and your gunas will always be in conflict. Patanjali says that these are the reasons people are in misery. So what to do? -- how can you change these reasons? They are there, they cannot be changed. Only you can be changed.

Don't think about the past. The past is finished and you cannot undo it. But future misery can be avoided, has to be avoided. How to avoid it?

You have to be a witness to your gunas, attributes, modifications of the mind, tricks of the mind, games, traps of the mind, habits, samskaras, past, changing situations, expectations: you have to be aware of all these things. You have to remember only one thing: the seer is not the seen. Whatsoever you can see, you are not that. If you can see your habit of laziness, you are not that. If you can see your habit of constant occupation, you are not that. If you can see your past conditionings, you are not those conditionings. The seer is not the seen. You are awareness and awareness is transcendental to all that it can see. The observer is beyond the observed.

You are a transcendental consciousness. This is vivek, this is awareness. This is what a Buddha attains to and remains in constantly. It will not be possible for you to attain it constantly, but even if for moments you can rise to the seer and beyond the seen, suddenly, misery will disappear. Suddenly, clouds will not be in the sky and you can have a little glimpse of the blue sky -- the freedom that it gives and the bliss that comes through it. In the beginning, only for moments will it be possible. But by and by, as you grow into it, as you start feeling it, as you imbibe the spirit of it, it will be more and more there. A day will come when suddenly there are no clouds left anymore; the seer has gone beyond. This is how future misery can be avoided.

In the past you suffered; in the future there is no necessity to suffer. If you suffer, you will be responsible. And this is the key, the master key: always remember that you are beyond. If you can see your body, then you are not the body. If you close your eyes and you can see your thoughts, then you are not the thoughts -- because how can the seer be the seen? The seer is always beyond. The seer is the very beyondness, the very transcendence.

Enough for today.