Hassidism, The True Sage Chapter 4: The watchman, Question 2

Question 2

THE WORDS 'INTROVERT' AND 'INTROSPECTION' HAVE MORBID CONNOTATIONS. HOW DO THEY DIFFER FROM HEALTHY SELF-AWARENESS AND TURNING WITHIN?

In self-awareness, there is no within and no without. You don't turn within. In self-awareness, the within and the without have disappeared. There exists only one. Within and without is the division of the mind, is the division of the analytical mind. What it within? And what is without? How do you demark?

So when people say: 'turn withinwards,' they are just using your language to help you because if they say: 'turn beyond within and without,' it will be almost impossible for you to understand what they mean. But that is exactly what they mean.

Self-awareness is a total unity of within and without, the higher and the lower, the valley and the peak. All dualities meet and merge into it.

Yes, 'introvert' has a morbid connotation; it is a morbidity. A person who is an introvert is a person who is incapable to move without. He is confined, closed, a flower which cannot open, a song which cannot burst, a river which cannot flow to the open sea. The introvert is morbid. He cannot relate, he cannot love, he cannot move in the world, he cannot spread, he has no expansion. Confined. Closed. Like a seed -- he is not like a tree.

But remember, the extrovert is also morbid. In Western psychology the introvert is morbid, but the extrovert is thought to be healthy. That simply shows that this type of psychological thinking has been developed by extroverts -- nothing else. They think they are healthy and that the opposite is unhealthy.

There is an opposite school also in the East. The Eastern psychology thinks the introvert healthy and the extrovert unhealthy. But to me, both are unhealthy, because both are confined to a certain direction and are incapable to move to the opposite.

To me, health means: the capacity to move in all directions. To be healthy is to be whole. The word 'health' comes from the same root as the word 'whole'. To be healthy is to be whole, to be whole is to be all together. So to be healthy means: where opposites meet and are no more opposites but are transformed into complementaries.

A healthy person is one who when he wants to move in, he moves. There is no hindrance. He has no compulsion to be an extrovert. And vice versa. If you are compulsively an introvert -- whenever you start moving without, there are inner hindrances. You have to fight, you cannot flow, you have to force. Then you are ill.

A healthy person, a healthy being, a healthy energy, is always ready to move anywhere. There is no compulsion to be somewhere in particular. A healthy energy is a flowing energy. When you go to the market, you move out. Nobody inside condemns: 'To move out is worldly, materialistic.' Nobody condemns. When you go to the temple you move withinwards. Nobody condemns: 'To go within is morbid. This is for foolish people, unworldly, simpletons. This way you will lose all, because all the riches are outside. Where are you going by closing your eyes and watching your navel? You are becoming a fool.'

In the West, when they want to condemn the East, they call them 'navel-watchers' or 'lotus-eaters'. One cannot be alive by just eating lotuses. They must be mad people.

And when in the East, people want to condemn the West, they call them 'money-oriented' 'materialistic' 'worldly'.

But both these types of psychologies are ill and morbid. A true psychology is still to be born -- a psychology of the whole person, a psychology of flow, of no compulsion, no obsession.

A man should be as capable of coming in and going out as you are capable of going into and coming out of your house. When the climate is beautiful, you go out. You sit in the garden under the tree. Then the sun rises and it is too hot -- you seek shelter, you come in. In the day you go out, in the night you come in. A deep balance is needed.

And for a deep balance, opposites should not be taken as opposites -- and they are not; they are complementaries, yin and yang, man and woman, day and night, summer and winter, SANSAR and NIRVANA.

Remember -- my whole emphasis is for the meeting of the opposites. Then you are not confined, then you have no limitation, then you are unlimited, then no boundary exists. And this is the emphasis of Hassidism also.

A Hassidic sage is as worldly as anybody, and a Hassidic sage is as unworldly as anybody. He lives IN the world, but he is not OF the world. He moves in the world, but remains untouched by it. He is beyond. This is true religion.

The religion that you call religion is not true religion. It is just in opposition to the world. It iS a choice. That's why if you choose that type of religion, you may change, but fundamentally you will remain the same. The change will be just on the surface. The change will be just as if one goes from one imprisonment to another.

One imprisonment is on this side of the road, another is on that side of the road. You live in one prison and you think of the other. as if THERE is freedom. It is opposite. Things ARE different there, but again it is a confinement.

Between these two imprisonments there is the open road -- the way of the white clouds. Just exactly in the middle, between two opposites, is the way.

To me, an extrovert is morbid; an introvert is also morbid. When you are neither, you are healthy.

Remember the word 'flowing'. The more energy flows, the more healthy it is. You can reach to the highest peak and you can come down to the lowest world -- and there is no problem. You can meditate and you can love.

Meditation is going withinwards, love is going without. Meditation is reaching to one's own being. Love is an effort to reach to the other's being.

There are religions which say that if you meditate, you cannot love. There are religions which say that if you love, how can you meditate?

Christianity is an extrovert religion. The emphasis is on serving people, love, compassion. The emphasis is not on meditation -- because if you meditate, that looks selfish. When the world is in such a misery, people are hungry, ill, dying, and you are meditating -- the whole thing looks to be too cruel. Somebody is dying on the road, a beggar, and you are sitting in your temple and meditating. It looks selfish. 'Throw this meditation away,' says the extrovert religion. 'Go and help people -- that is the only way to reach God.'

One of the greatest Indian poets, Rabindranath, was much impressed by Christianity. He has written a poem in which he says: 'Don't seek me in the temple. I am not there. If you really want to seek me, come to the road where the stone-cutter is cutting the stones or where the farmer is tilling the ground. I am not in the temples. Come to the world where the labourer is working and the beggar is begging. There I am.' This is an extrovert religion -- a reaction against too much introversion.

In India, introvert religions have existed. They say that this world is MAYA, illusion. Beggars have always been dying and they will always die and you cannot change anything. Move withinwards, close your eyes. In your deepest core of being is God. Outside, it is just a dream world. Don't waste your time there. The real is within.

To me, both are morbid. A part is always morbid -- only the whole is healthy.

So I tell you: God is everywhere. In the temple when you close your eyes, there is God. And on the road also, where the stone-cutter is, working hard in the hot sun -- there also is God. Only God is. God is the whole. But mind always tries to choose a part.

I have heard: You must have known a very famous movie dog, Rin Tin Tin. His trainer was asked to describe Rin Tin Tin. He tried to describe, but the dog had such marvellous qualities, such indefinable qualities, that he was at a loss to describe and define the qualities. So at last he stumbled upon a definition. He said: 'Rin Tin Tin is God in the form of a dog.'

'God' and 'dog' -- both words have the same balance. God may be the introversion of energy. Dog may be the extroversion of the energy. But the energy is the same, because only one energy exists. The world is a unity. The mind creates opposites.

One very great Zen monk, Rinzai, was asked once.... The questioner must have been a very sceptical mind. He asked: 'You go on emphasizing that everything is God and everything is Buddha. Do you mean to say that even a dog is a Buddha?' Rimai laughed. Didn't answer. On the contrary, he jumped, and started barking. That's exactly the right answer: a Buddha barking like a dog. He showed the fact rather than talked about it.

You are morbid if you are confined to anything -- whatsoever the name. You are healthy if you are flowing in all directions together. If opposites meet in you, you become perfect. That's why a perfect man can never be consistent; he has to be contradictory, because opposites will be meeting in him. Only ordinary people can be consistent. The true sage is never consistent -- cannotbe -- because he will have to move in all the directions together.

Walt Whitman says: 'I'm vast. I contain contradictions.' Then what to say about God? -- vast! He contains all contradictions. He is in the lowest and He is in the highest. In the lowest He exists as the lowest. In the highest He exists as the highest. He is in sex and He is in samadhi. He is in this world as matter and He is in that world as non-matter. He is the sinner and He is the sage. The true sage is always contradictory. That's the difficulty in understanding him.

It is very easy to understand your mediocre saints; they are plain. No contradictions exist in them; they are always the same. You can rely, you can predict. They are like a simple line, no complexity. They are simple and, in a way, simpletons. They don't have the beauty of complexity.

The true sage is very complex; he contains contradictions. And that's why it has always been very difficult to recognize him. He eludes. You catch hold of him from one direction, and he is moving in another. You cannot see because your eyes are morbid. You can see only a part. You can see a man as a sinner, you can see a man as a saint, but it is difficult to understand a man like Gurdjieff who is both.

In him, the sinner and the sage meet. In him, even the sin is transformed. In him, even the sage is transformed and becomes a worldly being. To understand Gurdjieff you will have to drop all your categories, all your labels of sinners and saints, and this and that. The true sage is godly. God is contradictory.

That's what Krishna says in the Gita. He says: 'Don't be worried, because I am the killer and the killed. Don't be worried, because I am in both. The one who is killed, I am -- and the one who is going to kill also is me. My two hands, right and left, in a game of hide and seek.'

All your conceptions of God are very poor. Theologians go on trying to explain but they can never explain because the contradiction creates the trouble.

If you say: 'God is just,' then you cannot say: 'God i5 compassion.' That's the trouble for the theologian. If God is just, then compassion cannot exist. If God is compassion, then He cannot be just. Both are not possible together. For thousands of years theologians have been thinking how to manage. God seems to be unmanageable, chaotic.

God is both. He is compassionate in His justice and He is just in His compassion. But then it is absurd, because how can a judge be both? If the judge has compassion, then he would like to forgive. If he is just, then the criminal has to be punished -- punished according to the law, with no compassion. Then he has to remain indifferent. Justice has to be neutral. Compassion is love; it cannot be neutral.

God is both. Let me tell you: God is bondage, God is freedom -- both. That's why I say: 'Don't be in a hurry.' Even in the market He exists. Even in this world, so ungodly, He exists -- because otherwise is not possible.

Once you can see it, such deep silence descends in your being. Because when you can see the contradictions meeting in God, then the contradictions within you immediately meet and dissolve. Then freedom becomes your nature. Then you move freely, then you become freedom. Then there is no goal.

The only goal is to delight here-now. Nothing is to be achieved, because all achievement is always against something. You have to leave this and attain that. You have to drop this and do that. All achievements, ambitions, goals, are choosing something against something else. And God is both. That's why Krishnamurti goes on insisting that the only way to attain to truth is to be choiceless. Choose -- and you have become morbid. Don't choose, float choicelessly. Don't be the chooser. Just watch and flow -- and you are freedom. This is what MOKSHA is -- absolute freedom.

Hassidism

THE TRUE SAGE

Chapter-4

The watchman