---
section: Library
booktitle: "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 4"
booktype: "Discourses"
bookcode: "YOGA4"
dategiven: "29 April 1975 am"
place: " in Buddha Hall"
chapternum: "Chapter #9"
chaptertitle: "The seer is not the seen"
acode: "7504290"
shorttitle: "YOGA409"
audio: "Yes"
video: "No"
esttime: "88mins"
displaytitle: "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 4: Chapter #9"
---

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.sutra {
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<p class="sutra">15. THE DISCRIMINATING PERSON REALIZES THAT EVERYTHING LEADS TO MISERY BECAUSE OF CHANGE, ANXIETY, PAST EXPERIENCE, AND THE CONFLICTS THAT ARISE BETWEEN THE THREE ATTRIBUTES AND THE FIVE MODIFICATIONS OF THE MIND.
16. FUTURE MISERY IS TO BE AVOIDED.</p>
<p class="sutra">17. THE LINK BETWEEN THE SEER AND THE SEEN THAT CREATES MISERY, IS TO BE BROKEN.</p>


LIFE IS a mystery, and the first mysterious thing about life is that you can be alive and you may not have life at all. Just being born is not enough to have life. To be born is just an opportunity. You can use it to have life, and you can miss it also. Then you will live a dead life. Only apparently will it look like life, but deep down there will be no alive current in you.


Life has to be attained, one has to work for it. It is like a seed in you: it needs much effort, soil, right soil, care, love, awareness. Only then does the seed sprout. Only then is there the possibility that someday the tree will bear fruit, someday it will flower. Unless you reach to the state of flowering you are alive just in name, but you have missed the opportunity. Unless life becomes a celebration, it is not life at all.


Ecstasy, nirvana, enlightenment, whatsoever you want to call it -- that is the flowering. If you remain miserable, you are not alive. The very misery shows that you have missed the step. The very misery is an indication that life is struggling within to explode, but the cocoon is too hard. The shell of the seed is not allowing it to come out; the ego is too much and the doors are closed. Misery is nothing but this struggle of life to explode into millions of colors, into millions of rainbows, into millions of flowers, into millions of songs.


Misery is a negative state. In fact, misery is nothing but the absence of ecstasy. This has to be understood deeply, otherwise you will start fighting with the misery, and nobody can fight with an absence. It is just like darkness: you cannot fight with darkness. If you fight, you are simply being stupid. You can light a candle and the darkness disappears, but you cannot fight with the darkness. With whom will you fight? Darkness is not existential, it is not there. It is not something that you can throw out, kill, or beat out. You cannot do anything to darkness. If you do something, your own energies will be dissipated and darkness will remain there just the same, unaffected. If you want to do something with darkness, you have to do something with light, not with darkness at all. You have to light a candle, and suddenly there is no darkness.


Misery is like darkness; it is nothing existential. And if you start fighting with misery, you can go on fighting with misery but more misery will be created. It is just an indication, a natural indication to your being that life is still struggling to be born. The candle is not yet lighted, hence misery. The absence of ecstasy is misery, and something can be done for ecstasy, but nothing can be done with misery. You are miserable and you go on trying to solve it. Here, on this point, the path of a religious and an irreligious man divide, they separate. The irreligious man starts fighting the misery, trying to create situations in which he will not be miserable, starts pushing the misery somewhere out of his eyes, out of his vision. The religious man starts seeking ecstasy, starts seeking the blissfulness, starts seeking satchitananda -- you may call it God. The irreligious person fights with the absence, the religious person tries to bring the existential: the presence of light, of bliss.


These paths are diametrically opposite; nowhere do they meet. They may run parallel for miles together, but they meet nowhere. The irreligious person has to come back to the point from where these two paths divide and separate. He has to come to an understanding that to fight with darkness, with misery, is absurd. Forget about it and, rather, strive for light. Once light is there you need not do anything else; misery disappears.


Life is there only as a potentiality. You have to work it out, you have to bring it to an actual, existential state. Nobody is born alive, only with the possibility of being alive. Nobody is born with eyes, only with the possibility of seeing. Jesus goes on saying to his disciples, 'If you have ears, listen; if you have eyes, see.' Those disciples were as you are: they had eyes, they had ears. They were not blind or deaf. Why did Jesus go on saying that if they had eyes they would see? He was talking about the capacity to see a Christ; he was talking about the capacity to hear a Christ. How can you hear a Christ if you have not heard your own inner voice? -- impossible. Because Christ is nothing but your inner voice. How can you see a Christ if you have not been able to see yourself? Christ is nothing but your self in its absolute glory, in its final flowering.


You live as a seed. There are a few reasons why one goes on living like a seed, and ninety nine per cent of people live like seeds. There must be something in it. To live like a seed feels comfortable. Life seems to be dangerous. Remaining like a seed, one feels more secure. It has a security around it. A seed is not vulnerable. Once it sprouts, it becomes vulnerable: it can be attacked, it can be killed -- animals are there, children are there, people are there. Once a seed sprouts into a plant, it becomes vulnerable, insecure; hazards start.


Life is a great adventure. In the seed, hidden in the seed you are secure, protected. Nobody is going to kill you. How can you be killed if you are not alive? -- impossible. Only when you are alive can you be killed. The more alive you become, the more vulnerable. The more alive you become, the more dangers are around you. A perfectly alive man lives in the greatest of dangers. Hence, people like to live like seeds -- protected, secure.


Remember, life, the very nature of life is insecurity. You cannot have a secure life, you can only have a secure death. All insurances are for death. There can be no life insurance. All insuring is to protect, to secure, to remain closed. Life is dangerous, millions of dangers are around. That's why ninety nine percent of people decide in favor of remaining seeds. But what are you protecting? -- there is nothing to protect. What are you securing? -- there is nothing yet to secure. A seed is as dead as a pebble on the path. And if it remains like a seed, there is bound to be misery. There is bound to be misery because it was not meant to be like that. It was not its destiny to be a seed, but to come out of it. The bird has to leave the egg-shell for the vast, dangerous sky where everything is possible.


And with all those possibilities, death is also there. Life takes the risk of death. Death is not against life, death is the very background in which life flowers. Death is not the opposite of life. It is just like a blackboard on which you write with white chalk. You can write on a white wall but then the words will not show. On a blackboard, whatsoever you write with white shows. Death is like a blackboard: the white lines of life show upon it. It is not against; it is the very background. Those who want to be alive have to decide one thing: they have to decide to accept death. Not only must they accept death, they have to welcome it. Every moment they have to be ready for it. If you don't accept death, you will remain dead from the very beginning. That is the only way to protect -- you will remain a seed. The bird will die in the egg... many birds die in the egg.


You are here. If you want any help from me, let me break your egg: your securities, your bank balances, your life insurances -- let me make you vulnerable. Invulnerable, you will remain in the egg, and soon you will be a rotten thing. Come out of it. The egg is to protect you, not to kill you. It is not meant that you should always remain in the egg. It is good -- it protects in the beginning, when you are too soft to come out. But when you are ready, then the egg has to be broken. How, soever comfortable and secure you are, a single minute more in the egg and you will lose the possibility, you will lose the opportunity to be alive and fly in the sky. Of course, dangers are there, but dangers are beautiful. A world without dangers would be ugly, and a life without dangers cannot be very alive.


Hence, deep down in every man and in every woman, there is an urge to live dangerously. That is the urge for life. That's why you go to the mountains, that's why you go for an unknown journey, that's why man tries to go to the moon, that's why somebody tries to reach Everest, and somebody starts on a voyage at sea in a small handmade boat. There is a deep urge for danger; that urge is for life. Don't kill that urge, otherwise you will be here and not alive.


If you understand me well, when I make you a sannyasin, when I initiate you into sannyas I initiate you into a life of insecurity, vulnerability. Sannyas is the jump out of the egg, and the egg is the ego. Ego is a protection. Ego is like a subtle wall around you. That's why ego is so very touchy. Somebody says something or somebody just smiles at you, and by the way he smiles you are hurt. You start protecting yourself; you are ready to fight. Ego is a readiness to fight with whatsoever appears to be dangerous. Ego is a constant fight against life, because life is dangerous. From wherever life tries to reach you, the ego is there like a rock protecting you. Step over this rock, break this egg of the ego, come out of it.


The sky is dangerous. I don't say that there is no danger. I cannot say that; there is danger. There are dangers upon dangers. But life thrives on danger, danger is the food. Danger is not against life; danger is the very food, the very blood, the very oxygen for life to be there.


Live in danger: that is the meaning of sannyas. The past protects you -- the known, the familiar. You feel at home with the past. The future is unfamiliar, unknown. With the future you feel alien, strange. The future is always a stranger knocking at the door. You always open the door for the future. In fact, you would like your future to be just like your past, a repetition. This is fear. And remember, you always think that you are afraid of death, but I tell you, you are not afraid of death, you are afraid of life.


The fear of death is basically fear of life, because only life can die. If you are afraid of death, you will be afraid of life. If you are afraid of falling down, you will be afraid of rising up, because only a wave that rises falls back. If you are afraid of being rejected you will become afraid, afraid to approach any body. If you are afraid of being rejected, you will become incapable of love. Afraid of death, you become incapable of life. Then you live just for the name's sake, and only miseries, darkness, and night surround you.


Just being born is not enough; necessary, but not enough. You have to be born twice. Hindus have a word for it: they call it dwij, the twice-born. One birth, the first birth from your parents is just a possibility, a potential phenomenon, not actual yet. A second birth is needed. It is what Jesus calls resurrection: a second birth in which you break all the shells, all the eggs, all the egos, all the past, the familiar, the known, and you move into the unknown, the strange, the existence full of dangers. Every moment there is the possibility of death. And with the possibility of death, every moment you become more and more alive.


In fact, life never dies, but that is an experience of one who knows what life is. You have never gathered courage enough to come out of the egg shell. How can you know what life is, and how can you know that life is deathless? You will die; life never dies. You will live in misery because you are the negation of life ego is the negation of life. Negate the ego and life will happen to you. Hence the insistence of all great ones -- Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Mahavir, Zarathustra, Lao Tzu -- they all insist on only one thing: negate the ego and life will happen to you in abundance. But you cling to the ego. Clinging to the ego is clinging to darkness, to misery. These sutras are very beautiful; try to understand them.
<p class="sutra">THE DISCRIMINATING PERSON REALIZES THAT EVERYTHING LEADS TO MISERY BECAUSE OF CHANGE, ANXIETY, PAST EXPERIENCES, AND THE CONFLICTS THAT ARISE BETWEEN THE THREE ATTRIBUTES AND THE FIVE MODIFICATIONS OF THE MIND.</p>


Life is misery as you know it, life is bliss as I know it. Then we must be talking about different things, because how can life be misery for you and bliss for me? We are not talking about one and the same thing. When you talk about life, you are talking about a life in the seed, a life just in hope, a life of dreams, fantasies; not a real authentic life. You are talking about a life which only desires but doesn't know, which only hankers but never reaches; a life which is constantly feeling suffocated but thinks that suffocation is comfort; a life which is a miserable hell but always thinks that something is going to happen out of this hell -- heaven is to be born out of this hell.


How can a heaven be born out of hell? How can ecstasy be born out of your miseries? No, miseries will be born out of your miserable life more and more. A child is not so miserable as an old man becomes. It should be just the opposite, because the old man has lived life so much. He must be reaching near the peak, the peak of experiences, the flowers. But he is nowhere near that. Just on the contrary, life has not been a rising wave, he has not reached to any heaven. Rather, he has descend ed into a deeper and deeper hell. A child seems to be more heavenly than an old man. This is simply absurd; it goes against nature. A child is just a seed. An old man must become a very ancient oak, a great tree; but he is not. He has reached into darker realms of hell. It is as if life is a falling, not a rising phenomenon, as if you are falling towards more and more dark realms, not rising towards the sun.


What happens to an old man? A child is miserable, an old man is also miserable. They are both on the same path. A child has just started the journey and the old man has accumulated all the miseries of the whole journey.


Out of hell, heaven is not born. If you are miserable today, how do you think tomorrow can be happy and blissful? Tomorrow will come out of you. From where else can it come? Tomorrow doesn't come out of the clock; tomorrow, your tomorrow, comes out of you. All your yesterdays together, plus today, is going to be your tomorrow. It is simple arithmetic: today you are unhappy and miserable; then how, how is it possible that tomorrow is going to be happy and blissful? -- impossible! Until you die, it is impossible. Because with your death, all yesterdays die. Then it will not come out of your miseries; then it will be a fresh phenomenon, something which happens for the first time. Then it will not come out of your mind, it will come out of your being. You become dwij, twice born.


Try to understand the phenomenon of misery. Why are you so miserable? What creates so much misery? I watch you, I look inside you; miseries upon miseries, layers upon layers. It is really a miracle how you continue living. It must be that hope is stronger than experience, dream is stronger than reality. Other, wise, how could you continue living? You have nothing to live for except the hope that tomorrow something, somehow, is going to happen which will change everything. Tomorrow is the miracle -- and this you have been thinking for many, many lives. Millions of tomorrows came, became todays, but the hope survives. Again hope goes on living. You live not because you have life, but because you have hope.


Omar Khayam says somewhere that he asked great doctors, theologicians, priests, philosophers, 'Why does man go on living?' Nobody could answer. They all shrugged their shoulders. Says Omar Khayam, 'I reached many who were known for their knowing, but through the same door I had to come back. Then desperate, not knowing whom to ask, I cried to the sky one night. I asked the sky, I told the sky, 'You must have been here! You must have seen all the miseries that have existed in the past; millions and millions miserable. You must know why people go on living!' A sound came from the sky, 'Because of hope.'


Hope is your only life. With the thread of hope you can tolerate all miseries. With just a dream of heaven, you forget the hell all around you. You live in dreams; dreams sustain you. Reality is ugly. Why does so much misery happen and why can't you see why it is happening? Why can't you find the cause of it?


To find the cause of misery, one has to stop evading it. How can you know a thing if you evade it? How can you know a thing if you escape? If you want to know something, you have to encounter it face to face. Whenever you are miserable, you start hoping; tomorrow immediately becomes more important than today. This is evasion. You have escaped and now hope is functioning as a drug: you are miserable, you take the drug and you forget. Now you are drunk, drunk with hope. There is no drug like hope. No marijuana, no I.SD is comparable. Hope is the ultimate LSD. Because of hope you can tolerate everything, everything! Thousands of hells are nothing.


How does this mechanism of hope function? Whenever you are in misery, sad, depressed, you immediately escape from it, you try to forget it. That's how it continues. The next time you are miserable -- and you will not have to wait long; the moment my talk is finished you will be -- don't try to escape. My talk may also be functioning as an escape -- you listen to me, you forget yourself. You listen to me, you have to be attentive towards me, but towards yourself you turn your back. You forget, you forget what your real situation is. I talk about bliss, I talk about ecstasy. That is real to me, but to you it becomes a dream. Again it becomes the hope that if you meditate, if you work for it, then it is going to happen to you also. Don't use it as a drug. You can use a Master as a drug, and you can be drugged.


My whole effort is to make you more aware, so whenever you are in misery don't try to escape. Hope is the enemy. Don't hope, and don't dream against the reality. If you are sad, then sadness is the reality. Remain with it; remain with it, don't move, concentrate on it. Face it, let it be. Don't move to the opposite of it. It is going to be a very bitter experience in the beginning, be cause when you face sadness, it surrounds you from every, where. You become like a small island and sadness is an ocean all around -- and such great waves of sadness! One feels afraid, one feels a trembling to the very being. Tremble, be afraid. Only don't do one thing -- don't escape. Let it be, penetrate deeply into it. See, watch -- don't judge. You have been doing that for millions of lives. Just watch, penetrate into it. Soon, the bitter experience will not be so bitter. Soon, out of the bitter en, counter arises reality. Soon you will be moving, penetrating deeper and deeper -- and you will find the cause, what the cause of misery is, why you are so miserable.


The cause is not outside, it is within you, hidden in your misery. Misery is just like smoke. Somewhere there is fire inside you; penetrate deep into the smoke so you can find the fire. Nobody can put the smoke out because it is a by-product. But if you put the fire out, the smoke disappears of its own accord. Find the cause, the effect disappears because then some. thing can be done. Remember, only with the cause can some. thing be done, never with the effect. If you go on fighting with the effect, all fight is in vain. That is the meaning of Patanjali's method of prati-prasav: go back to the cause, penetrate the effect and reach to the cause. The cause must be there some where. The effect is just like smoke surrounding you; but once the smoke surrounds you, you escape into hope. You dream about days when there will be no smoke. This is all foolish. Not only is it foolish, but suicidal, because this is how you are missing the cause.


Patanjali says 'the discriminating person'. The Sanskrit word is vivek -- it means awareness, it means consciousness, it means discriminating force. Because through awareness, you can discriminate between what is what: what is real, what is false, what is the effect and what is the cause.


The discriminating person, the man of vivek, the man of awareness, realizes that everything leads to misery.


As you are, everything leads to misery. And if you remain a6 you are, everything will go on leading to misery. It is not a question of changing the situations, it is a question of a very deep-rooted thing within you. Something within you frustrates the very possibility of bliss. Something in you goes against your flowering into a blissful state. The man of awareness comes to know that everything leads to misery, everything.


You have done everything, but have you watched that everything leads to misery? If you hate, it leads to misery; if you love, it leads to misery. There seems to be no logical system in life. A man hates, it leads to misery. Simple logic will say that if hate leads to misery then love must lead to happiness. Then you love, and love also leads to misery. What is this? Is life absolutely absurd, irrational? Is there no logic? Is it a chaos? You do what soever you want, and finally comes misery. It seems that misery is the road and every road leads to it. From wherever you want to start, you can start: right, left, in the middle; Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Jain; man, woman, knowledge, ignorance, love, hate everything leads to misery. If you are angry it leads to misery; if you are not angry, that too leads to misery. It seems that misery is there and whatsoever you do is irrelevant. Finally, you come to it.
I have heard a story, and I have loved it always.


A psychoanalyst was visiting a madhouse. He asked the superintendent about a madman who was crying and weeping and beating his head against the wall. He had a beautiful picture of a woman in his hand. Asked the psychoanalyst, 'What has happened to this man?' The superintendent said, 'This man loved this woman very much. He went mad because the woman did not agree to marry him. That's why he has gone mad.' Logical, simple, but next door to him was another madman and he was also crying and weeping and beating his head. He had a picture of the same woman in his hand, and he was spitting on the picture and using four letter words. Asked the psychoanalyst, 'What has happened to this man? He has the same picture. What is the matter?' The superintendent said, 'This man was also madly in love with that same woman, and she agreed and married him. That's why he is mad.'


Whether a woman rejects or accepts makes no difference; whether you get married or you don't get married makes no difference. I have seen poor people in misery, I have seen rich people in misery. I have seen failures in misery, I have seen those who have succeeded in misery. Whatsoever you do, finally you come to the goal, and it is misery. Does every road lead to hell? What's the matter? Then there seems to be no choice.


Yes, everything leads to misery -- if you remain the same. I will tell you another thing: if you change, everything leads to heaven. If you remain the same, it is you, not what you do. What you do is irrelevant. Deep down, it is you. Whether you hate -- you will hate -- or whether you love -- you will love -- it is you who finally creates the phenomenon of misery or ecstasy, misery or bliss -- unless you change. Just changing from hate to love, from this woman to that woman, this house to that house, won't help. You are wasting time and energy. You have to change yourself. Why does everything lead to misery?


Patanjali says: THE DISCRIMINATING PERSON REALIZES THAT EVERYTHING LEADS TO MISERY BECAUSE OF CHANGE, ANXIETY, PAST EXPERIENCE....


These words have to be understood. In life, everything is a flux. With such a flux of life you cannot expect anything. If you expect you will be in misery, because expectations are possible in a Fixed and permanent world. In a fluctuating, flux-like world, no expectations are possible. You love a woman; she seems to be very, very happy, but next morning she is not. You loved her because of her happiness, you loved her because she was always smiling, you loved her because she had a quality of being cheerful. But next morning, the cheer has disappeared. The quality is there no more and she has just become the opposite of her own self. She is miserable, angry, sad, quarrelsome, bitchy -- what to do? You cannot expect; everything changes, everything changes every moment. All your expectations will lead you into misery. You marry a beautiful woman, but she can fall ill and the beauty can disappear. Measles can appear and the face can become distorted. Then what will you dot


Mulla Nasrudin's wife said to him once, 'You don't seem to love me anymore. Do you remember, or have you forgotten that before the priest you had promised that you would always love me; whether in happiness or in unhappiness, that you would always love me; you would always stand with me in pleasure and in sadness?' Mulla Nasrudin said, 'Yes, I promised. I did promise and I remember it well: whether it be a happy moment or an unhappy moment, I would be with you. But I never said to the priest that I would love you in your old age. That was never a part of the promise.'


But old age comes; things change. A beautiful face becomes ugly, a happy person becomes unhappy, a very soft person becomes very hard. Singing disappears and quarrelsome attitudes appear. Life is a flux and everything changes. How can you expect? You expect, then there is misery.


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.


If things don't change, then you get bored. If the wife goes on smiling and smiling and smiling every day, every day, 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?'


In 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 i6 created, and boredom will lead you to misery.


In heaven everything is permanent, nothing changes; every thing 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 be comes 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 be cause 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; 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 excite ment now. Now she is possessed, a property. The challenge is there no more.


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.
<p class="sutra">... AND THE CONFLICTS THAT ARISE BETWEEN THE THREE ATTRIBUTES AND THE FIVE MODIFICATIONS OF THE MIND.</p>


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?


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 about 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.'


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 homey.


I have heard that Mulla Nasrudin went into a restaurant. The waitress said, 'What you need, I am ready to do.' 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 in a homey way. Bring things.' 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. I am feeling homesick.'


Even if the wife fights every day, it becomes a habit. You cannot afford to lose it, you miss it. I told the man, 'Don't bother again now. It is just a modification of the mind, a habit. You are a lazy man.'


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, so I said, '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.'


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.
<p class="sutra">FUTURE MISERY IS TO BE AVOIDED.</p>


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?
<p class="sutra">THE LINK BETWEEN THE SEER AND THE SEEN THAT CREATES MISERY, IS TO BE BROKEN.</p>


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.
			

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