People who are around you are more powerful than you, they can punish you, and they can destroy you. They have all the power to control, to corrupt, to repress. And the child has to become diplomatic.
Psychologists have been searching and they have come to recognize a great factor in human misfortune -- that is, that ordinarily persons live only ten per cent. They live ten per cent, they breathe ten per cent, they love ten per cent, they enjoy ten per cent -- ninety per cent of their life is simply not allowed. This is sheer wastage. One should live at a hundred per cent capacity, only then is flowering possible.
So meditation is not control, it is not repression. If somehow you have got the wrong idea -- you are repressing yourself -- then you will become very controlled, but then you will be cold. Then you will become more and more indifferent, not detached. Indifferent, non-caring, unloving -- you will almost commit suicide. You will be alive at the minimum. You can be called "just so-so" alive. You will not be burning from both sides, your flame will be very dim. Much smoke will be there but almost no light.
It happens to people who are on the path of meditation -- Catholics, Buddhists, Jains -- that they become cold, because to control comes easily. Awareness is very arduous. Control is very easy because control needs only a cultivation of habits. You cultivate habits, then those habits possess you and you need not worry. Then you go on with your habits, they become mechanical and you live a robot life. You may look like a Buddha but you will not be. You will be just a dead stone statue.
If compassion has not arisen in you, then apathy will arise.
Controlled persons are always nervous because deep down turmoil is still hidden. If you are uncontrolled, flowing, alive, then you are not nervous. There is no question of being nervous -- whatsoever happens, happens. You have no expectations for the future, you are not performing. Then why should you be nervous?
If you go to Catholic, Jaina, Buddhist monks, you will find them very nervous -- maybe not so nervous in their monasteries, but if you bring them out to the world, you will find them very, very nervous because on each step there is temptation.
A man of meditation comes to a point where there is no temptation left. Try to understand it. Temptation never comes from without, it is the repressed desire, repressed energy, repressed anger, repressed sex, repressed greed, that creates temptation. Temptation comes from within you, it has nothing to do with the without. It is not that a devil comes and tempts you, it is your own repressed mind that becomes devilish and wants to take revenge.
To control that mind one has to remain so cold and frozen that no life energy is allowed to move into your limbs, into your body. If energy is allowed to move, those repressions will surface. That's why people have learned how to be cold, how to touch others and yet not touch them, how to see people and yet not see them. People live with clichés -- "Hello. How are you?" Nobody means anything. These are just to avoid the real encounter of two persons. People don't look into each other's eyes, they don't hold hands, they don't try to feel each other's energy, they don't allow each other to pour. Very afraid. Somehow just managing. Cold and dead. In a strait-jacket.
A man of meditation has learned how to be full of energy, at the maximum, optimum. He lives at the peak, he makes his abode at the peak. Certainly he has a warmth but it is not feverish, it only shows life. He is not hot, he is cool, because he is not carried away by desires. He is so happy, that he is no longer seeking any happiness. He is so at ease, he is so at home, he is not going anywhere, he is not running and chasing...he is very cool.
In Latin there is a dictum: agere sequitur esse -- to do follows to be; action follows being. It is tremendously beautiful.
Don't try to change your action; try to find out your being, and action will follow. The action is secondary; being is primary.
People who try to control themselves have chosen a very foolish way. Control will not happen, but they will become cold. That is the only way a man can control himself -- to become frozen so that energy does not arise. People who take the vows of celibacy will not eat much; in fact, they will starve their bodies. If more energy is created in the body, then there will be more sex energy, and then they don't know what to do with it. So Buddhist monks eat only once a day -- and then too, not enough. They eat only enough that bodily needs are fulfilled, very minimum needs, so no energy is left. This type of celibacy is not celibacy. When you are flowing with energy and the energy starts transforming itself into love, then a celibacy, a brahmacharya, which is beautiful, happens.
The sweet old lady came into the store and bought a package of mothballs. The next day she was back for another five packets. Another day passed and she came in for a dozen more.
"You must have a lot of moths," said the salesman.
"Yes," replied the old dear, "and I have been throwing these things at them for three days now and I have only managed to hit one!"
Through control you will not even be able to hit one. That is not the way. You are fighting with leaves, branches -- cutting them here and there. That is not the way to destroy the tree of desire; the way is to cut the roots. And roots can be cut only when you have reached to the roots of desire. On the surface there are only branches -- jealousy, anger, envy, hatred, lust. They are just on the surface. The deeper you move, the more you will understand: they are all coming out of one root and that root is unawareness.
Meditation means awareness. It cuts the very root. Then the whole tree disappears on its own accord. Then passion becomes compassion.
A repressed person is carrying the same world as you. Just an opportunity is needed, a provocation, and immediately the real will come out. That's why monks disappear from the world -- because there are too many provocations, too many temptations. It is difficult for them to remain contained, to hold on. So they go to the Himalayas or to the caves, they retire from the world so that even if ideas, temptations, desires arise, there is no way to fulfil them.
But this is not a way of transformation.
The people who become cold are the people who were very hot. The people who take vows of remaining celibate are the people who were extremely sexual. The mind turns from one extreme to another very easily. It is my observation that many people who are too obsessed with food one day or other become obsessed with fasting. It has to happen because you cannot stay in one extreme long. You are doing too much of it, soon you will get fed up with it, tired of it. Then there is no other way, you have to move to the other extreme.
The people who have become monks are very worldly people. The market was too much, they had moved too much in the market, then the pendulum moved to the other extreme. Greedy people renounce the world. This renunciation is not of understanding -- it is just greed upside-down. First they were holding, holding...now suddenly they see the pointlessness of it, the futility of it and they start throwing it. First they were afraid to lose a single pai, now they are afraid to keep a single pai, but the fear continues. First they were too greedy about this world, now they are too greedy about the other world, but the greed is there.
ACTION IS SOMETHING THAT YOU DO; BEING IS SOMETHING THAT YOU ARE.
Action comes out of you, action is just a fragment. Even if all of your actions are collected together they will not be equal to your being because all actions collected together will be your past. What about your future? Your being contains your past, your future, your present; your being contains your eternity. Your actions, even if all collected, will just be of the past. Past is limited. Future is unlimited. That which has happened is limited, it can be defined, it has already happened. That which has not happened is unlimited, indefinable. Your being contains eternity, your actions contain only your past.
So it is possible that a man who has been a sinner up to this moment can become a saint the next. Never judge a man by his actions; judge a man by his being. Sinners have become saints and saints have fallen and become sinners. Each saint has a past and each sinner has a future. Never judge a man by his actions. But there is no other way because you have not known even your own being, how can you see the being of others? Once you know your own being you will learn the language, you will know the clue of how to look into another's being. You can see into others only to the extent that you can see into yourself. If you have seen yourself through and through, you become capable of seeing into others through and through.
If by your meditations you are becoming cold -- beware. If your meditation is making you more warm, more loving, more flowing -- good, you are on the right path. If you are becoming less loving, if your compassion is disappearing and an apathy is settling inside you -- then the sooner you change your direction, the better. Otherwise you will become a wall.
Don't become a wall. Remain alive, throbbing, streaming, flowing, melting.
Of course there are problems. Why have people become walls? Because walls can be defined. They give you a boundary, a definite shape and form -- what Hindus call nam roop, name and form. If you are melting and flowing you don't have boundaries; you don't know where you are and where you end and where the other begins. You go on being together with people so much that all the boundaries by and by become dream-like. And one day they disappear.
That is how reality is. Reality is unbounded. Where do you think you stop? At your skin? Ordinarily we think: "Of course, we are inside our skins and the skin is our wall, the boundary." But your skin could not be alive if the air was not surrounding it. If your skin is not constantly breathing the oxygen that is being supplied, your skin cannot be alive. Take away the atmosphere and you will die immediately. Even if your skin has not been scratched you will die. So that cannot be your boundary. There are two hundred miles of atmosphere all around the earth -- is that your boundary? That too cannot be your boundary. This oxygen and this atmosphere and the warmth and the life cannot exist without the sun. If the sun ceases to exist or drops dead.... One day it is going to happen. Scientists say that at some point the sun will cool down and drop dead. Then suddenly this atmosphere will not be alive. Immediately. you will be dead. So is the sun your boundary?
But now physicists say this sun is connected to some central source of energy which we have not yet been able to find but is suspected -- because nothing is unrelated.
So where do we decide where our boundary is? An apple on the tree is not you. Then you eat it, it becomes you. So it is just waiting to become you. It is you potentially. It is your future you. Then you have defecated and you have dropped much rubbish out of the body. Just a moment before, it was you. So where do you decide?
An ancient proverb says: "Sow a thought, reap an act. Sow an act, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny."
And I say to you: sow nothing, and reap meditation or love.
Sowing nothing -- that's what meditation is all about. And its natural consequence is love. If, at the end of the journey of meditation, love has not flowered, then the whole journey has been futile. Something went wrong somewhere. You started but you never reached.
Love is the test. For the path of meditation, love is the test. They are two sides of one coin, two aspects of the same energy. When one is there, the other has to be there. If the other is not there, then the first is also not there.
Meditation is not concentration. A man of concentration may not reach to love; in fact, he will not. A man of concentration may become more violent because concentration is a training to remain tense, concentration is an effort to narrow down the mind. It is deep violence with your consciousness. And when you are violent with your consciousness you cannot be non-violent with others. Whatsoever you are with yourself, you are going to be with others.
OSHO : Dang Dang Doko Dang, Chapter 5
Replies
i guess that's what experience and wisdom is all about, understanding the 'transformation' ...
People tends to become watchers themselves while meditating. This means the disabling of all feelings, mostly because it's sometimes hard to master one's soul. It's not about control, it's about being true to one's nature. To know one's nature.
I could have done it myself, disabling my feelings by meditating, since there's a very negative being living within me, due to my chaotic experience. But I didn't do so. A Soul has been given to us for a purpose, and that purpose is not related in any way with disabling said light body trough mind. Mind is just the watcher, what you were before this project's beginning.
Within repression there's distortion of thought and desire, due to how much information isn't allowed flow throughout the chakras into the physic plane. This is what some of the major religions have done to human kind, they create such distorted meaning for what is "correct and not" so imposing repression on its subjects, which creates distortion, then blaming on "human nature" what was first originated by their very "religious rules" A clever way of manipulation.
It's the "Control" what is known as the source of all distortion, by fear or self repression. Control means running away from the problem. Instead of reaching deep within you to cultivate your very being with experience and knowledge.
For example. Do you consume animals for food? Have you seen what's done to an animal, a life, to turn it into that piece of flesh you usually eat? Inform yourself about it, open up your heart and feel it, not just watch it. Sometimes one must experience suffering into first place, to learn this information pattern. As within love nature, pain is also an expression from repression, it has its own very pattern which is taught to you here on earth.
In meditation, one opens up every chakra. In my case, I let my energy go away as it flows free within nature. Like a channel between cosmic space and mother Earth. Nurtured by the very creation, there's no need of anything anymore, just joy. You can feel it as your kundalini starts to light up. It's usually a calm and embracing flame running across your spine. You feel peace of mind and heart, both. You become, literally, a different being, which is your true nature.
I usually stand on my balcony, and when I see someone who is sad, just by looking him/her in the eyes, I wrap it around inside a Golden field of Light. People usually notice this energy, they sometimes smile, even they start to pass by near my house more often. It's kind of chaotic when you feel their energy patterns getting closer and closer to you. Especially if you're sensitive towards life.
Breathe deeply, look at the sky, do it so it's quiet and peaceful. Feel your own body, are you relaxed? Near your stomach, do you feel pressure and struggle? That is ego, which handles and store negative experience. Once you start to become one with everything, you'll notice there's nothing to fear anymore. Notice the way you're breathing, how much of your pulmonar capacity is being used? There's life within the air, so breathe deeply. There should be relief on every breathe you take, not struggle. Notice your posture, don't bent over constantly. The Light column works better when is all aligned.
Desire is not something bad, it's from one's very nature. Your soul is telling you something you should pay more attention to. To try to cut it out, is just to silence your very being, and that will create something which is negative and corrupt, as it happens when information overwrites itself over and over again, disabling nervous fibers within your cordial center (heart) In order for your ego to deal with what you haven't been able to reach, usually in a more instinctive way that usually involves losing control, due to the control behavior you have imposed upon yourself. Then, once it has happened, you ask yourself "what have I done?" You feel bad, since your heart re-enables those fibers which had to be shut down in order to free this energy from your repression. Because of fear, which is lack of knowledge, which is Heart closure.
Once you reach oneness, within meditation, you start to find value within all life. It's to find peace within yourself, finding your own reflection on everything that surrounds you. So you change your behaviour, something that was before repressed, now it's just something that you wouldn't do, not because you're afraid of it, but because you don't need it anymore, you've adquired the knowledge about how much value there's in life, which is light, which is information, which is knowledge.
Desire is lack of knowledge, is not meant to make you run away, or close your eyes in control, but to open up your heart to reach the deeper meaning. To make you realize your own nature as a divinity, as part of the very Light Source of all life, where there's no need, no lack of anything, because in oneness you're already a complete being. The answer is already within your heart, all around you.
Understanding the reason behind desire, which in its very source is trying to tell you about something your being haven't acknowledged yet. Within meditation you're able to release blockages, and so by letting the energy flow away, you can finally ask yourself about your troubles and fears. You'll find there will be none.
All because of lack of knowledge, which creates fear towards what is unknown to you. But it's not like you don't know it. The answer is already within your heart, all around you, within you.
... ;)) thanks for sharing your awareness Suiris