Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #2, Discrimination in all Things Question 5

Question 5

I WOULD HAVE LEFT YOU HAD I NOT TAKEN SANNYAS FROM YOU. MOREOVER, MY PREVIOUS MASTER NOW WOULD NOT ACCEPT ME, PERHAPS, BECAUSE I BETRAYED HIM AND LOST MY FAITH. ANYWAY I DON'T WISH TO LOSE FAITH IN YOU. NOW I DON'T HANKER AFTER ENLIGHTENMENT. IF YOU CAN KEEP ME BOUND TO YOUR FEET, THEN I THINK YOU HAVE DONE YOUR DUTY AS A GURU.

Many things have to be understood; they will be helpful.

The first thing: I have no duty to fulfill towards anybody. Duty is a dirty word, a four-letter word to me, the dirtiest. Love is not a duty. You enjoy, when you love helping people. It is not a duty, not a burden. Nobody is forcing me to do anything. I am not obliged in any way to do it -- just love functioning.

When love dies, duty enters. You say to people, "It is my duty to go and work in the office because I got married and I have children and the duty has to be fulfilled." You don't love your wife, you don't love your children -- hence the word "duty" becomes meaningful. Your old mother is dying and you say, "This is a duty, to go and serve her." You don't love her. If you love, how can you use the word "duty"?

A policeman standing on the road is fulfilling his duty. Right, he does not love the people who are creating chaos in the traffic. When you go to your office, you are doing a duty, a job, but if you say that you are fulfilling your duty towards your children, you are committing a sin by using the word. You don't love the children; you are already burdened.

No, I have no duty to fulfill. I love you, hence many things happen. There is nothing even to be thankful towards me for because I am not doing any duty. When I am doing a duty, you will have to be thankful towards me. This is simply love.

In fact, I am thankful to you that you allowed my love to shower on you. You could have rejected. And this is the secret of love: the more you love, the more it grows. The more you share it, more and vital springs are opening and more is flowing and is ready to be shared. The more you give, the more you have. I am not tired. I am not in any way weighed down by it. It's beautiful.

The first thing: I have no duty to fulfill towards you. If you want a guru who has a duty to fulfill, you have come to a wrong person. Go somewhere else. There are many gurus who are fulfilling great duties. I am simply enjoying myself. Why should I fulfill any duty? I delight in myself, and whatsoever I do is a delight, a celebration.

"I would have left you had I not taken sannyas from you." If the idea has come, you have already left. Physically you may be hanging around here, that is meaningless. If you say, "I would have left you had I not taken sannyas from you," you have already left and the sannyas is worthless. Please return it back -- because that is a bondage. You say, "I would have left" -- now, that sannyas is creating fetters on you. Drop it. I am here to liberate you, not to fetter you. Forget about it.

"Moreover, my previous Master now would not accept me, perhaps, because I betrayed him and lost my faith." That is for you to decide. You can go to a new Master if the old will not accept you, or you can go and try again. If the old was really a Master he will accept a thousand and one times, because when a disciple betrays, it is nothing much to fuss about. It is almost natural. More cannot be expected from ignorant persons. Go and try the old Master. Maybe he is waiting for you. And if he cannot forgive he is not a Master; then find one somewhere else.

And, "anyway I don't wish to lose faith in you." You have already lost it. In fact you never had it, because once you have faith how can you lose it? Difficult to understand, but once you have faith you cannot lose it. It is nothing which can be taken back. Who will take it back? Faith means you surrender the ego. This can be the last act of the ego. Surrendered, how can you take it back? If you can take it back, the surrender was not surrender at all -- you were playing with the word, but you don't know what it means. If you surrender, to be a surrender it has to be total and final -- utterly final. There is no way going back.

"Anyway I don't wish to lose faith in you." Why is this idea arising? You don't have faith; you have already lost it. In fact you never had it. This will look like a paradox, but this is true: Only that faith can be lost which was never there in the first place. If you don't have faith you can lose it; if you have, there is no possibility. It is utterly impossible to lose it, because in faith you have lost yourself -- now nobody is standing behind who can take it back and go home.

"Now I don't hanker after enlightenment." You are hanker ing; otherwise what is the need to cling to my feet? My feet are worthless. Why cling to them? What are they going to give to you? Deep down a hankering... maybe now more subtle, more garbed, not so gross, but it is still there. "If you can keep me bound to your feet...." But why? What have my feet done to you? What wrong? Why should you be so against my feet? What is the need? What is the point?

Just two days before, one very stupid woman came to see me. Stupid because she said, "I am in search of God." I asked her why she is searching for God, what wrong has God done to her. I asked her, "You must be searching for something else -- happiness, bliss, ecstasy...?" She said, "No. I am not interested in happiness, bliss, et cetera. I am searching for God." "But for what?" She got so angry because I asked "for what," she left immediately. Why should one search for God? What is the point? Looks absolutely stupid. One searches for God to be blissful. One searches for self realization to be ecstatic, to not be miserable. One searches for truth to be eternally in bliss.

In fact everybody is a hedonist and cannot be otherwise -- there is no possibility. And people who say that they are not hedonists are stupid some way or other. They don't understand what they are saying. Your hedonism may be this-worldly, your hedonism may be other worldly -- that doesn't matter -- but everybody is a hedonist. Everybody is seeking his happiness, and everybody is selfish deep down. Otherwise is not possible. I am not condemning it -- remember it. It is how it should be.

People come to me and they say they want to serve people. For what? If somebody is drowning in the river and you jump in the river and risk your life and help the man to come out, what do you think? You helped the man? If you think that you helped the man and you served the man and you risked your life and you are a great altruist, you are not going very deep. Helping the man you felt very happy. Not helping him you would have felt guilty. If you had gone, indifferent, your heart would have carried a guilt forever and forever. You would have felt miserable. Again and again in your dreams you would have seen that man drowning and you couldn't save him -- and you could have saved him.

When you save a man from the river you feel happy. Really you should be thankful to the man: "You are really wonderful. You were drowning in the right moment, when I passed by. You gave me such happiness, such deep happiness, such deep satiety that I could help a man. I could be of some use; I am not a useless garbage on the earth. I feel good." Your steps would have a dance after it, your eyes would have more light. You would feel more centered. You would feel more enhanced in your own eyes. It is simply hedonism.

Nobody helps anybody else -- cannot. Everybody is searching for his own happiness. Enlightenment is nothing but absolute happiness which once attained cannot be lost. To attain to that state, how can you drop the hankering? It is there; otherwise why should you cling to my feet?

Be alert. Learn alertness about your own desires because when you are alert, only then can you understand; and through understanding there is mutation.

I know until all hankering drops, enlightenment is not possible. And I have been telling you so -- so now you say you don't hanker. Then what are you doing here? If you understand you will not say, "I don't hanker"; you will not say, "I hanker." If you understand, hankering disappears -- without any trace. It does not leave the opposite behind; you don't say, "I don't hanker." Simply, hankering disappears... you are full of light, full of bliss, uncontaminated by any desire.

But for that you have to be continuously alert because desire will take many shapes and will deceive you in many, many ways, and desire can become so subtle that you can almost forget that it is desire. It can pretend to be something else. Desire can even pretend desirelessness, but you can understand: when somebody is not in any desire, there is nothing to ask. One simply is, and allows existence to take him wherever it wills. When you drop desire, then the whole takes you; you float with the river. Then you don't have a private goal.

Just a few days before, I was telling you the meaning of the word "idiot." It comes from a Greek root; the Greek word is "IDIOTIKI."It means"a private goal."A man who has a private goal, a man who has a private world -- against the whole -- is "idiot."

When you are with the whole -- not even swimming in the river but just floating with the river wherever it leads -- then each moment you live in enlightenment. When the hankering for enlightenment disappears, enlightenment appears. It has not appeared to the questioner yet. Hankering must be there; be watchful.

Chapter-2

THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI

Discrimination in all Things

Fifth Question