Guru Partap Sadh Ki Sangati #4

Anand Maitreya! What the psychologists say is right—and that is precisely the danger. A person does become what he thinks, but only on the surface, in conduct; not in the depths, not in being. The foundation-stone does not change so easily. As when you see a hypnotist’s experiment: if he tells a man in a hypnotic trance, “You are a woman,” the man starts walking like a woman—but he does not become a woman; he remains a man, only a veil of delusion descends.

If someone keeps imposing a certain idea upon himself, that is self-hypnosis, auto-hypnosis. He will feel it has happened; others will also feel it has happened. Naturally others will, because they can only see your exterior; your interior only you can see. But if someone were to look within, he would find that everything has changed only on the surface, all the coloring is superficial; and inside? Inside it is exactly as it was; no real change has occurred there.

Thoughts do not transform the soul, nor can they. What is the power of thought? It is not greater than the soul. Can waves transform the ocean? If the ocean transforms, the waves do transform. Thoughts are mere ripples on the ocean of your infinite consciousness—surface waves. You can dye them, you can alter them, and yet your life-being will remain what it was. Yes, an illusion will certainly be created—a dangerous one—and delusion is costly, a very expensive bargain, because you will live in delusion and life will slip from your hands.

Someone may practice being calm, incessantly practice never letting unrest show under any circumstance—even if abused, he swallows it; if stones come, he endures them; he remains untouched in insult; inside there is a seething, but he won’t let it show; he goes on cultivating this: never allow any occasion for unrest to produce unrest, and wherever there is an opportunity for peace, display peace; at least act it. Slowly—only a matter of time—peace will become a habit. And the greatest danger of that habit is the illusion: “I have become peaceful.”

In a village there was a very restless and very angry man—so angry, so restless that the village had never known such a person. The whole village suffered because of him. He was wicked, powerful, wealthy. In anger there was nothing he would not do—once he even set fire to his own house. Once he pushed his wife into a well. She died. At that time a Digambara Jain monk came to the village. The wife’s death shook him; great dispassion arose. He laid his head at the monk’s feet and said, “Initiate me too; I want to become a monk. Enough has happened. I have seen the world—only sorrow upon sorrow, sin upon sin. Pull me out of this wretched pit!”

To become a Digambara Jain monk there are stages—first one becomes a brahmachari, then a kshullaka, then an ailaka... climbing these steps one reaches the naked Digambara state. But the man said, “No, I am ready to be a monk now, this very moment.”

The monk was amazed—such resolve, such firmness! Though he did not understand that it was neither resolve nor firmness; it was that same old angry nature. The one who, in a moment, could push his wife into a well could, in a moment, push himself into monkhood. The one who, in a flash of rage, could set his house on fire could set his whole life on fire. But the monk was delighted; he initiated him on the spot and said, “Many seekers come, but none like you. And since you have renounced a life of anger, I give you the name Monk Shantinath.”

Shantinath’s fame spread far. If other monks took alms once a day, Shantinath took them once in two days. If other monks walked on straight, even paths, Shantinath chose crooked, stony, thorn-filled paths. If other monks sat in the shade of trees, Shantinath stood under the blazing sun. In winter, others covered themselves with grass or rags and slept; Shantinath lay naked under the open sky. His renown grew and grew. But behind all this was the same angry, egoistic nature. For anger is the shadow of ego; anger is the very culmination of ego—the greater the ego, the greater the anger. Now anger had taken a new form—asceticism, austerity, virtue. Ego had put on new ornaments—Digambara-hood, nakedness, renunciation, vows, rules.

Just yesterday Bhikha said: Do renunciation, do austerity, give charity, take vows, keep rules—nothing will happen. If the ego does not die, nothing happens, because the ego absorbs it all. The ego is so skilled it digests even the finest. And this man was pure ego. His fame spread farther and invitations came from afar.

Years later, Monk Shantinath was residing in Delhi. A young man from his village, who had studied with him and grown up with him, came for his darshan. Shantinath recognized him at once—but what was there to recognize in a two-bit fellow like that! Not recognizing would have been impossible—they had been together for years, loincloth friends, had fought, quarrelled, befriended, lived together for years. The friend saw he had been recognized, yet Shantinath did not want to acknowledge him. For where now was Monk Shantinath and where were you, a worldly man—heaven and earth apart; you hell-bound and he enthroned in liberation! To recognize you would be demeaning; to admit any past connection would betray lowliness. He turned his face away and began speaking with others.

The man had come with great feeling; seeing this, he thought, “Nothing has changed; it is all the same. What will nakedness do? What will austerity do? What will imposed outer conduct do? The soul is the same.” To test him he asked, “Maharaj, may I ask your name?”

Shantinath flared up instantly; the fire did not show outwardly—his practice was solid—but inside a flame shot up. “This man knows very well what my name is! He knows the old name and the new.” But aloud he only said, “You fool! Don’t you read the newspapers? The whole world knows who I am; you don’t? My name is Shantinath!”

The friend was now certain: his guess had been right. “I only asked your name; what need was there to be so furious?” After a little small talk, the man said again, “Maharaj, my memory is a bit weak; I’ve forgotten—what did you say your name was?”

Had there been a well nearby, Shantinath would have pushed him in; but there was no well. And between them stood the high walls of practice, austerity, vows, rules; he could not vault over them in a single leap. His prestige was there; he couldn’t break it. He said, “Fool, I have seen many fools, but you are the arch-fool. Didn’t you hear? Listen carefully: I’ll tell you once more—my name is Monk Shantinath.”

After a while the man said again, “Maharaj, just once more—what is your name?”

That was enough: all vows and rules shattered, all practice forgotten. He picked up a stick lying nearby, cracked it over the fellow’s skull, and said, “Now you’ll remember—my name is Shantinath.”

The man said, “Maharaj, I know your name perfectly well. I only wanted to say: it is only the name. You are exactly the same; nowhere has any real change happened.”

On the surface, a person can manage. The psychologists are right that you become as you think—but you become so only within thought. And thoughts do create a circle around you, but they do not transform your soul. The soul is transformed in no-thought, in emptiness, in meditation, in samadhi. About this the psychologists can say nothing, because they never go beyond the mind. This is the misfortune of modern psychology: it does not admit any existence beyond mind; for it, mind is the end. Therefore, whatever a psychologist says about man is a half-truth. And remember, half-truths are more dangerous than lies, because they carry a glimmer of truth; a lie has no glimmer—recognizing it is not difficult. Half-baked truths are very dangerous because they give the illusion, the aura, the shimmer of truth without being true.

Psychology is stuck halfway—neither materialistic enough to declare, with courage, that only matter is and nothing else, nor spiritual enough to say that the soul is the ultimate truth and the rest are mere steps. Psychology is caught between the two. Psychology is like the washerman’s donkey—neither of the home nor of the riverbank. It neither takes the body as culmination nor lifts its eyes to the soul. Between the two lies the mind, the world of thought, and psychology is entangled there. Hence its attainments are not great attainments.

A psychoanalyst, after three, four, five years of analysis, cannot bring much help to the mentally ill. As much help comes from just a few days of meditation. In Japan there is an old traditional arrangement: whenever someone goes insane or deranged, they take him to a Buddhist monastery. In every Buddhist monastery there are a few huts away from the residents. They put the madmen there and send them food; no one speaks to them, no one talks with them; they are left absolutely alone. And the surprising thing is: in three or four weeks the madman becomes all right. They just leave him alone. They remove him from family and society, meet his needs, but no one converses with him.

After four or five years of conversation and head-banging—his own and the patient’s—the psychologist cannot offer as much help as a Zen monk in Japan can by giving three or four weeks of solitary retreat. Now people from the West are going to Japan to understand this process.

What is the reason? It is resolved so easily! If great truths are accepted, small ailments disappear in a moment. But if you look only at the ailments, they appear very big. The one who has seen only the courtyard and not the sky finds the courtyard very large.

An old story: A fox got up early one morning. Hungry, she went out in search of breakfast. Looking back she saw her shadow—long, because the morning sun was in front. The fox said, “Today only if I can find a camel for prey will breakfast be possible.” She hunted for a camel till noon. Even if she had found one, what would she have done? She didn’t find a camel; hunger grew. Then she looked back at her shadow again. Now it was noon; the sun was overhead; the shadow had shrunk to almost nothing. The fox said, “Now even an ant will do!”

If you make decisions by looking at the shadow, your decisions cannot be worth much. Thoughts are only shadows, and thought itself is your derangement. If you take derangement as ultimate, how will a solution arise out of it? From where will the solution come? Therefore Sigmund Freud, the greatest psychologist of this century, said in his final conclusions: Man can never be happy. At the most we can train him to live with ordinary unhappiness. We can teach him to be content with normal misery—this much we can do; man can never be happy. This conclusion is proof that if you take the courtyard to be the whole, how will a solution be found?

Solutions always come from beyond. Solutions always come from the vast. For resolution, you are not all in all; there is something above you—only then does the path open. Otherwise it does not. Without accepting God, man can never be blissful, and the moment you deny God, man can only live in his derangement. Then Freud is the truth: at best we can teach man the lesson of normal derangement—don’t become too deranged, remain at least less deranged. The difference between a healthy man and a madman, according to Freud, will be only of degree, not of quality. Freud cannot accept Buddha, because Buddhahood means ultimate health. We have a very precious word: health. Health means to be established in oneself. But psychology does not accept the self; it accepts only the crowd of thoughts!

A major Western thinker, David Hume—David Hume is to atheists what Krishna or Christ is to theists. So I call him Saint David Hume. He had read many times that from Socrates to Eckhart all the saints have said one thing: Go within—there is supreme bliss there, the kingdom of the soul, the kingdom of God; just go within, you will find everything—the treasure of treasures, the status of all statuses! … Reading and reading, one day—though he “knew” what could possibly be inside—he too closed his eyes and looked within. He looked for just one day and wrote in his diary: There is nothing—only thoughts upon thoughts: memories, ideas, imaginations, vacillations; there is no soul, no God; no kingdom of heaven, no satchidananda; there is nothing at all.