Pythagoras, The golden verses of Pythagoras, Vol. 2 Philosophia Perennis Chapter 4: The Perfume of Absolute Contentment, Question 5

The fifth question

Question 5

WHY DO I ALWAYS CREATE MISERY AROUND MYSELF? BEGINNING TO SEE THAT I CONSISTENTLY CHOOSE THIS VICIOUS CIRCLE. IS THE CHOOSING IN ITSELF THE MISERY?

Abhiyana

YES, THE CHOOSING IN ITSELF is the fundamental misery. All other miseries arise out of it. The moment you choose, you are no more whole; something has been rejected, something has been chosen. You have taken a side; you are for something, against something. You are no more whole.

You say, "I choose meditation, and I am not going to be angry any more." Misery is bound to happen. Meditation WILL NOT happen! Only misery will happen. In the name of meditation now you will be miserable -- and one can find beautiful names for one's misery.

Choosing itself is misery. To be choiceless is to be blissful. See it! See to it! See AS deeply as possible into it, that choosing itself is misery. Even if you choose bliss, misery will be created. Don't choose at all... and then see what happens.

But it is very difficult not to choose. We have always been choosing; our whole life has been that of a chooser. We have believed that unless WE choose, who is going to choose for us? Unless WE decide, who is going to decide for us? Unless WE fight, who is going to fight for us? We have believed in a very stupid notion: that existence is against us, that we have to fight. that we have to be constantly on guard against existence.

Existence is not against you. You are just a ripple in this ocean -- you are not separate from existence. How can the existence be against you? You are PART of it! It is existence who has given birth to you -- how can the mother be against the child?

This is what I call the religious consciousness. To understand this point is to become religious. Then you need not be a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian -- but you will be religious. In fact, if you are a Hindu or a Christian or a Mohammedan, you cannot be religious; you have not understood at all the depth of the religious consciousness.

What is religious consciousness? Existence is our home; we belong to it, it belongs to us. So there is no need to be worried, and there is no need to fight for private ends and private goals. One can relax with it -- in the sun, in the wind, in the rain. One can relax with it. The sun is part of us as we are part of the sun; and the trees are part of us as we are part of trees. Just see that the whole existence is an interdependence, a tremendously complicated network, but everything is joined with everything else. Nothing is separate. Then what is the point of choosing? Then live whatsoever you are in your totality.

And the problem arises because inside you will find polar opposites, and the logical mind says, "How can you be both?" Somebody else has asked me: "Whenever I am in love, meditation is disturbed. Whenever I meditate, I start losing my interest in love. So what to do? What to choose?"

The idea of choice arises because there are polarities. Yes, it is true: if you go into love you will tend to forget about meditation; and if you go into meditation, you will lose interest in love. But still there is no need to choose! When you feel like moving into love, move into love -- don't choose! And when you feel like moving into meditation, move into meditation -- don't choose! There is no need to choose.

And the desire for both never arises together. That is something tremendously significant to be understood: the desire for both NEVER arises together. It is impossible -- because love means the desire to be with somebody else; love means to be focussed on the other. And meditation means to forget the other and be focussed on oneself. Now both desires cannot arise together.

When you want to be with somebody else, that means you are tired of yourself. And when you want to be with yourself, that means you are tired of the other. It is a beautiful rhythm! Being with the other creates a deep desire in you to be alone. You can ask the lovers -- all the lovers feel that desire arising sometimes tremendously. But they are afraid to be alone, because they think it is going against love, and what will the woman say, or what will the man say? The other may feel offended. They pretend, even though they want to be alone, left alone; they want their own space, but they pretend and they go on being together. That pretension is false, it is destructive of love. And it makes your relationship phony.

When you feel like being alone, with all respect, with ali love, tell the other, "A great desire to be alone is arising in me, and I have to go into it -- there is no question of choice. Please don't feel offended. It says nothing about you; it is simply my own inner rhythm."

And this will help the other also to be authentic and true with you. And, slowly slowly, if you really love a person, the rhythms start falling into a togetherness -- that is the miracle, the magic of love. If love has really happened between two persons, this outcome is absolute, this consequence is going to happen. They will start finding at the same times the desire arising to be together and the desire arising to be separate. They will become a rhythm: sometimes coming together and being together and dissolved into each other, forgetting all about themselves; and then sometimes arising out of each other, moving, withdrawing, separate, into their own spaces, becoming their own selves -- becoming meditators.

Between meditation and love, there is no choice. But both have to be lived. And whatsoever is arising in you, whatsoever is the deepest longing in the moment, move with the longing.

Abhiyana, you say: WHY DO I ALWAYS CREATE MISERY AROUND MYSELF?

THERE MUST BE SOME PAY-OFF IN IT YOU must be getting something out of it; otherwise, why should one create misery? But sometimes misery can give you tremendous benefits. You may not be aware of the benefits, you may be unconscious of the benefits, so you go on thinking, "Why do I go on creating misery?" And you are not aware that your misery is giving you something which you want.

For example, whenever you are miserable, people are sympathetic towards you. If you are miserable, your wife comes and puts her hand on your head, massages your body, is very very loving, does not nag you, does not create any trouble for you, does not ask for more diamonds or a new car. When you are in a misery there are many benefits. Maybe it is just because you are afraid your wife is going to ask for a new car -- the new year has come and the new models are in the market. Now, to be miserable is simply economical. Now you come home with a stomach-ache and with a head-ache and you come with a long face, and the woman cannot gather courage to talk about a new car. Mm? You are in such misery.

You have to look around. Children in the morning immediately start feeling stomach-aches, when the bus arrives and they have to go to school. And you KNOW it! You know why Johnny is having a stomach-ache. But the same is the case with you. It is not much different; it is the same -- maybe a little more sophisticated, more cunning, more rationalized, but it is the same.

When people start failing in their lives, they CREATE heart attacks, blood pressure, and all kinds of things. They are rationalizations -- what can you do? Have you watched it? Heart attacks and blood pressure almost always come nearabout the age of forty-two. Why near the age of forty-two? Suddenly a healthy person becomes a victim of a heart attack.

Forty-two is the age when life comes to a certain conclusion -- whether you have failed or succeeded. Because beyond forty-two there is not much hope: if you have made money, you have made it; by the time forty-two arrives, you have made it -- because the greatest days of energy and power are gone. Thirty-five is the peak. You can give seven more years; in fact, already for seven years you have been going downhill. But you have done everything that you could do. And now the age has come, forty-two, and suddenly you see that you have failed.

Now you need some rationalization... immediately a heart attack comes. That's a great boon, a blessing from God. Now you can fall into the bed and you can say, "What can I do? The heart attack disturbed everything. When everything was going to be okay, when I was just going to succeed, make a name or money, this heart attack has come." Now the heart attack is a beautiful camouflage; now nobody can say that you are at fault, that you didn't work hard, that you are not intelligent enough. Nobody can say anything like that to you. Now people will feel sympathy for you; they will all be good towards you and they will say, "What can you do? It is fate."

Misery is chosen again and again because it gives something to you, and you have to see what it is giving to you -- only then can you drop it. Otherwise you cannot drop it. Unless you are ready to drop the benefits, you cannot drop it.

The warden of the Elite Detention Home was giving a reporter a tour of his new model prison.

"Son," said the warden, "this is the latest in prisons. If this is successful, all prisons will model themselves after this one."

"I notice you have beautiful tennis courts and swimming pools," commented the reporter.

"And wall-to-wall carpeting in each cell" added the warden. "But we don't call them cells any more -- just units."

"Those are nice colour television sets in each unit."

"That isn't all. We have a tremendous auditorium and every week the greatest entertainers perform."

"I certainly like the mess hall with the scenic murals on the walls."

"You mean the dining salon. The prisoners order a la carte and the chef's food is exquisite."

"The most fascinating thing I noticed," remarked the re-porter, "is that there are no bars, fences, and almost no guards."

"That is because no one wants to escape," smiled the warden.

"How do I get into this resort?" inquired the reporter.

If prisons are made so beautifully, then who would like to get out of them? And if you are not getting out of your prison, look again... there must be something -- wall-to-wall carpets, colour television, air-conditioning, beautiful paintings, no bars, nobody guarding. Giving you an absolute sense of freedom! Then why should you try to escape out of it?

The reporter is right, he says, "How do I get into this resort?"

The question is not how to get out of it; the question is how to get into it. Look again into your misery; don't condemn it from the very beginning. If you condemn it from the very beginning, you will not be able to watch, you will not be able to observe. In fact, don't even call it misery, because our words have connotations.

When you call it misery, you have already condemned it; and when you condemn something, you are closed to it, you don't look at it. Don't call it misery either. Call it XYZ -- it makes much difference. Call it X, whatsoever the situation is, be a little mathematical -- call it X, and then go into it and see what it is, what its benefits are, what the main causes are that you go on creating it, why you cling to it. And you will be surprised: what you have been calling misery has many things in it which you love.

And unless you have seen this and those things that you would like to have, you will not be able to change anything. Then there are two possibilities.

One possibility is: you stop thinking of getting out of this misery -- that ,Ss one possibility, because the benefits are so much that you accept it. And accepting misery is a transformation. The second possibility is: seeing that your misery is created by you yourself, by your own unconscious desires, and those unconscious desires are stupid, seeing the WHOLE stupidity of it, you no longer support it. It disappears of its own accord. These are the two possibilities: either your support disappears and the misery is evaporated; or you simply accept it because you like all the things that it brings to you, you welcome it -- and in that very welcome, again misery disappears!

These are the two aspects of the same coin. But understanding is needed, TOTAL understanding of your misery, and you are GOING to be transformed. Either you will drop everything out of that understanding, or you will accept everything. These are the two ways, the negative and the positive, for the transformation to happen.

Barney visited his cousin Delbert in Taxonia, a small town in the midwest.

"I hate this town," Delbert confessed. "I hate it with a passion."

"For what reason?" asked Barney.

"The taxes. We pay more taxes than any other town," complained Delbert. "And I hate taxes."

"Taxes are necessary to run the government," argued Barney.

"There are too many taxes here. Have you noticed mostly one storey buildings in this town? That is because there is a tax on all storeys above one floor."

"That's not so terrible." answered Barney.

"Furthermore, have you seen many houses with front lawns?"

"Very few, I admit."

"That is because there is a tax on lawns."

"What's that patch of green lawn down the block?"

"That is the town cemetery where they put the people who are taxed to death."

"If you hate this town so much, why don't you leave?"

"I don't want to pay the moving and transportation tax."

Just look into your misery: either you will find it worth keeping -- then accept it, then accept it with totality -- or you will not find it at all worth keeping -- in that very finding it drops.

Pythagoras

VOL. 2, PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS

Chapter-4

The Perfume of Absolute Contentment