Mahaveer Vani #11

After fasting, Mahavira has named the second external austerity Unodari. Unodari means: incomplete food, incomplete intake. It may surprise you that after fasting Mahavira speaks of Unodari! Fasting means no intake at all. If one had to speak of Unodari, one would expect it to come before fasting: a little food. And ordinarily those who practice fasting first practice Unodari—they first try to reduce food. When less food becomes convenient, becomes a habit, only then do they experiment with fasting. That is utterly wrong. Mahavira, deliberately, first said fasting and then Unodari. Unodari is an easier practice. But once Unodari becomes a habit, then fasting loses all meaning and purpose. I told you yesterday: the more sudden, unpracticed, effort-free, unarranged and anarchic a fast is, the greater the inner leap that becomes visible.

Mahavira gave Unodari second place—its reason must be understood. The word Unodari means only this much: do not give as much as the belly demands. But you do not even know how much the belly demands. And often what demands is not the belly at all but your habit. If you do not know the difference between habit and nature, the matter becomes extremely difficult. When you feel hungry every day, do not remain under the illusion that hunger is natural. Natural hunger is very difficult to feel; habit-bound hunger appears every day, right on schedule.

Biologists say there is a biological clock within a man. But within a man there is also a habit-clock. And the biological clock they speak of, which is deep within us—over it we have constructed a habit-clock through practice. On this earth there are tribes that have eaten once a day for thousands of years. When they first learned there are people who eat twice a day, they were astonished. They could not understand what purpose eating twice a day could serve! There are tribes who have been eating twice a day for thousands of years, and there are tribes that eat five times a day. This has no relation to the biological realm. It is a matter of habits. We construct habits; then habits become our second nature. Our first nature is covered under the mesh of habits.

Someone asked the Zen fakir Bokuju, What is your practice? He said: When I feel hungry, I eat. When I feel sleepy, I sleep. And when my sleep breaks, I wake up. The man said: Is this any practice? This is what we all do. Bokuju said: If only you all truly did this, it would be difficult to count the Buddhas on this earth. You do not do this. When you are not hungry, you still eat. And when you are hungry, it is possible you do not eat. When you are not sleepy, you go to bed. And when you are sleepy, you may not sleep. When your sleep does not break you break it; when it should break you keep sleeping. This distortion happens within us through a double process. One is our nature, the way nature has made us. Nature is always balanced. Nature asks only as much as is needed. Habits have no end. Habits are practice, and through practice one can force any demand.

I have heard: in Mulla Nasruddin’s village there was a contest—who can eat the most. Mulla left all contestants far behind. Someone stopped at twenty rotis, someone at twenty-five, someone at thirty. Then people began to get anxious—Mulla had crossed fifty and was still going, and the rest had stopped. People said: Mulla, you have already won. Do not torture yourself unnecessarily; now you must stop. Mulla said: I will stop on only one condition—no one must send news to my home, otherwise my wife will not give me my evening meal. Let this news not reach my house that I have eaten fifty rotis, otherwise the evening meal will be spoiled.

You can fill this belly unnaturally, even insanely. And it is not only the belly; here the belly is symbolic. Every sense has a belly; each sense has its own stomach. And you can stuff each sense beyond need. We see more than needs to be seen. We hear more than needs to be heard. The result is strange: the more we hear, the less the capacity and sensitivity to hear; therefore no satisfaction. When there is no satisfaction a vicious circle is born—you think, Perhaps if I see more I will be satisfied; if I eat more I will be satisfied. The more you eat, the more the natural hunger is suppressed and destroyed—and only it can be satisfied. When it is suppressed, destroyed, forgotten, the hunger of habit remains; it can never be satisfied, it has no end.

We constantly hear that desires are endless. The truth is: whatever desires belong to nature have an end. Those desires we cultivate out of habit have no end. That is why you cannot persuade an animal to eat in illness. The more intelligent animals, the moment they are a little sick, will vomit; they will throw out what is in the stomach. They live by nature; man lives by habit, and living by habit we make ourselves more and more unnatural every day. This unnaturalness becomes so much that we forget what our natural longings are.

So the biological clock the biologists speak of is within us—if only we listen to it! It tells us when hunger has arisen; it tells us when to sleep; it tells us when to wake. But we do not listen; we impose our own arrangement upon it. Therefore Unodari is very difficult—in this sense: first you do not even know how much natural hunger is. First natural hunger must be discovered. For this, fasting has been put first. Fasting will help you discover your natural hunger. When you remain completely without food—hungry, but following your resolve—you will find in a few days the hunger of habit is forgotten, for it was not real. For two or four days it will cry out at the exact hour, but if you do not listen, it will fall silent. Then from within natural hunger will give its call. When you do not listen even to it, only then will the inner mechanism be transformed and you will begin to digest yourself.

First the hunger of habit will break—three or four days, sometimes a day or two more or less. Then the organization of natural hunger will break and you will move to another mechanism. But in fasting you will come to know what the false voice was and what the true voice is. The false voice will be mental. Remember, cerebral. When false hunger arises the mind will say: Hungry! When real hunger arises every fibre of the body will say: Hungry! If false hunger arises—say you eat each day at noon—then exactly at noon it will arise. But if someone set the clock an hour forward or back, then when the clock strikes twelve, hunger will arise. If you do not know it is already one, and the clock shows twelve, you will remain without hunger till one. Because the hunger of habit, of mind, is mental, not bodily. It keeps looking at the outer clock: twelve has struck—hunger. Even if it is only eleven in reality but the clock shows twelve, the sequence of hunger will immediately arise. Mental hunger is mental; false hunger is mental. It arises in the mind, not the body. In three or four days of fasting the organization of mental hunger breaks; bodily hunger begins. For the first time you feel hunger coming from the body. We can see this in another way.

Except for man, the sexual arrangement of all animals and birds is seasonal. In a particular season they are afflicted by sex, are passionate; the rest of the year they are not. Man alone is sexually afflicted all year round. This sexual affliction is mental. If man were natural, he too would be passionate within limits, at a time; the rest of the time there would be no sexual urge. But man has imposed a mental arrangement on top of all natural arrangements. He has managed everything on his own. That separate arrangement is our distortion and our insanity. You cannot even tell whether the sexual urge that rises in you is natural, biological, or psychological, because you have never known biological sexuality. Before it could awaken, mental sexuality awakens. Little children who biologically mature at fourteen, who become sexually capable in biological terms at fourteen, are mentally made capable and competent much earlier.

I have heard: an old woman took her grandchildren to a museum. In Europe there is a tale about the stork—when children are born and the little ones ask the elders, Where did the babies come from? the elders say: The stork brought them. At the museum she went near the stork. The children asked: What bird is this? The old woman said: This is the bird that brings babies. The little ones looked at each other and giggled, and one said to his neighbor: Should we tell this poor old lady the real secret? May we tell her the real secret, this poor old lady? Even now she thinks babies come from the stork!

The air and atmosphere all around awaken mental sexuality in very small children. Then this mental sexuality dominates, follows them their whole life. They never even come to know the biological urge—it never gets a chance to rise, or when it does, they cannot recognize it. Then a strange event happens: they are never satisfied. Because mental sexuality can never be satisfied; bodily sexuality can be. What is real can be satisfied; what is unreal cannot be. Real hunger can be satisfied; false hunger cannot. Desires can be satisfied, but those desires we have cultivated by arrangement—their satisfaction has no end.

Therefore animals and birds, though living with desires, are not stressed as we are—no stress is visible in them. Look into a cow’s eyes—she has not attained desirelessness, she has not become a rishi, a muni, a Tirthankara—but there is the same simplicity as in the eyes of a Tirthankara. Why? She too lives in desire—but her desires are natural. Natural desire does not bring tension. Natural desire cannot take you upward, but it does not pull you downward either. If you are to rise, you must rise above natural desire. If you are to fall, then you must establish unnatural desire upon natural desire.

Thus Mahavira put fasting first—so that false hunger breaks, the real becomes known, when every fibre calls out. You feel thirsty. It is not necessary that the thirst be real. It may have arisen by seeing a Coke advertisement in the newspaper. It is not necessary that the thirst be real. By seeing the ad—Live a little hot…—it may have arisen. Scientists, especially advertising experts, know very well that false thirsts can be planted in you; and they are planting them. Today, of all the things sold on earth, many are not needed at all. Nearly fifty percent of the world’s industry is busy fulfilling needs that do not exist—but can be created. Man can be persuaded that these needs are real. Once the thought arises in his mind that it is a need, it becomes a need.

You do not know thirst at all—imagine yourself lost in a desert. No trace of water. Then the thirst that arises will be thirst in every fibre. Every particle of your body will ask. It will not be mental, not born of reading some advertisement. Fasting will help to reveal the real within you. And when the real is revealed, Mahavira says: Unodari. When the real is revealed, then take less than the real. As for the unreal hunger—do not fulfill it at all; it is dangerous. When the real hunger becomes known, then take a little less than the real; leave a little space empty. What secret can there be in this leaving empty? The laws of the mind must be understood.

The laws of our mind are such that whenever we engage in some act—in the gratification of a desire or of a hunger—there comes a limit we cross. Up to that limit hunger or desire is voluntary. After that limit it becomes non-voluntary. As when we heat water: at one hundred degrees it turns to steam. If you stop at ninety-nine it will cool and return to water. If you want to stop after one hundred, it will not return—the water has become steam. The gap of one degree will not let you return—the point of no return has come. If you stop before one hundred, at ninety-nine, the water will heat and then cool, remaining water. It will not become steam. You can stop—there is still a way to stop. If you stop after one hundred, the water will have become steam; you will not get water back. It has gone beyond your hands.

When you fill yourself with thoughts of anger, there too comes a degree—before it, you could have stopped. After it, you will not be able to stop, because the voluntary mechanism within hands over the tendency to the non-voluntary mechanism. Then the matter goes beyond your stopping. Understand this well. Anything begins within you as a wish. If you go on increasing that wish, at a certain limit the mechanism of wish hands over to that within you which functions beyond your wish. Once handed over, you cannot stop. If you stop anger before that limit, it is stopped; beyond that limit it cannot be stopped—it will manifest. If you stop sexual desire at a limit, good; otherwise beyond a limit it goes out of the voluntary mechanism—you cannot stop it. Then, like a deranged one, you will have to fulfill it; then stopping is difficult.

Unodari means: where any matter shifts from the voluntary mechanism to the non-voluntary—stop at that very boundary. It does not only mean that if you eat three rotis daily, today you will eat two and a half, and that is Unodari. No. Unodari means: stop within the boundary of will, within your capacity. Let no matter go beyond your capacity, because beyond it you become a slave; you are no longer the master. But the mind will make every effort to take things to the climax, to the extreme—because the mind does not feel satisfied until something reaches its peak. The irony is: once the peak is reached, except frustration and melancholy nothing is attained. Satisfaction does not come to hand. If the mind has begun to think in terms of food, it will eat up to the last edge of possibility—then it will be miserable, troubled, tormented.

In his old age Mulla Nasruddin became the magistrate of his village. The first case that came before him was of a man who, nearly naked—wearing only his underwear—stood in court and said, I have been robbed, and near your village.

Mulla said: Near my village? What all was taken? He listed the items. Mulla said: As far as I can see you are wearing your underwear. He said: Yes, I am. Mulla said: My court refuses to take your case. We never do anything half-heartedly or partially. In our village no man does anything halfway or with half a heart. If you had been robbed by our villagers, even your underwear would have been taken. You were robbed by men of some other village. I refuse your case. This has never happened in our village—whenever we do anything, we do it completely.

The village in which we live—the village of desires—we also do everything completely. We never turn back an inch earlier. And after the climax, except despair, nothing comes to hand. But as soon as we begin to move into some desire, the desire pulls; the more we go ahead, the more its pulling power increases and we become weaker.

Mahavira says: Stop before the climax. Meaning: when someone has become so angry he has lifted his hand to strike—then, Mahavira says: when the hand is just near the other’s head, stop. Then you will experience your mastery. That is the most difficult moment. Very difficult. At that moment the mind will say, Now what is the point of stopping!

There is a wondrous incident about the Muslim Khalifa Ali. He was fighting in the battlefield. The war had gone on for years. The moment came when he felled his enemy, sat upon his chest, raised his spear to thrust it into his heart. In a moment more the spear would have gone through the enemy’s chest—the enemy who had troubled him for years; Ali had awaited this moment. Just then the fallen enemy, as Ali lifted the spear to thrust, spat on Ali’s face. Ali wiped off the spit, put the spear back, and said to the man: Now we shall fight again tomorrow. The man said: You are missing your chance, Ali. Had I been in your place, I could not have missed it. You had waited for years; I too had waited. By chance you are above and I below. My waiting was the same. If I were in your place, this raised spear could not have returned. For this I had endured for two years. Why are you leaving now?

Ali said: I have Muhammad’s command—that even if you commit violence, do not do it in anger. First, do not commit violence; yet if you do, do not do it in anger. Until now I was fighting in peace. But when you spat upon me, anger rose within me. Now we will fight tomorrow. Until now I was fighting in peace—there was no flame of anger. It was all right. There was a dispute to settle—I was settling it. But now, you have created a flame of anger. If I kill you now, this killing is personal and private. Now I am killing you. Now this is not a fight of any principle. Therefore, tomorrow we will fight again. That next day there was no fight, because the man caught Ali’s feet. He said: I could never have imagined that a spear raised at such a moment could return for any reason—and least of all when I had spat; then it should have struck harder.

These are the laws of the mind. Unodari means: where the mind exerts its greatest pressure—return from that very boundary. Where the mind says, One more—where it exerts maximal pressure. Now this balance will have to be found. Through daily experiment each person will find within himself when the mind presses the most, and when the matter goes beyond the will. Then it is no longer that you struck; it is that a strike happened through you. It is no longer that you slapped; it is that you could not refrain from slapping. That very point is the place to return—the Un. To turn back from there is what is meant by stopping at the incomplete.

Unodari means: let the belly remain incomplete; do not fill it full. So if you eat four rotis, eating three will not become Unodari. First discover real hunger. Then, having discovered, sit to eat. Whatever the food of a sense—this applies. You have gone to watch a film. You have seen ninety percent of it; only then does the real moment come when it becomes very difficult to leave—because what will be the end! People reading a novel often first read the end—to know what happens! Such is the mind’s curiosity for the end. They read the end first, then begin. But now you are reading a detective story; two pages remain, the whole secret will be revealed in those two pages—and you stop there, that is Unodari. Stop—though the mind will push hard: Now the very moment had come to know! Till now we were only wandering; now the secret was about to open. And you stop, and forget.

You are watching a film; the last moment has come—everything is about to touch the climax. Get up and leave, and do not even go back to ask anyone how it ended. Walk out silently as if the end had happened. I want to plant in your mind the meaning of Unodari. Leave just before the end as if the end has happened. Then a new kind of mastery over your mind will begin to arise. You will experience a new strength. All your loss of strength, your dissipation, the daily waste of your energy, is because of this habit of the mind that tries to take everything to completion. Mahavira says: Do not go to completion. Stop one moment, one degree before. Then the energy which, touching the climax, shatters and is lost—will not shatter, will not be lost. You will return at ninety-nine degrees; you will not turn to steam. Your energy will gather again, remain in your hands, and slowly you will become master of your power.

This can be applied everywhere. Every sense has a belly, every sense has its own stomach, and every sense begs: Fill my hunger. The ear says: Listen to music. The eye says: See beauty. The hand says: Touch something. All the senses demand to be filled. To stop at the Un with every sense is the path to victory over the senses. To stop completely is easy. Remember, not reading a novel at all is easy—do not read, and the matter ends. But to read a novel and stop before the end is far more difficult. Therefore Unodari has been put at number two. Not watching a film is not so difficult; but to watch and get up before the end is far more difficult. Not to love at all has less difficulty; but to turn back before love reaches its climax is extremely difficult. In that moment you will become helpless, obsessed; then it will seem: Let it complete, whatever is happening—let it complete. Restraint upon this tendency is a profoundly scientific arrangement to conserve human powers.

Unodari is a companion experiment to fasting, but a little more difficult. Ordinarily you have heard and understood that Unodari is the simpler practice—one who cannot fast should do Unodari. I say to you: Unodari is more difficult than fasting. Only one who can fast can do Unodari.

Mahavira’s third sutra is: Vritti-sankshep.

Traditionally it is taken to mean the contraction of your tendencies and desires: if ten clothes are enough, do not keep eleven; if one meal suffices, do not eat twice. Such is the ordinary meaning—but that pertains to the circumference, not the center. No—Mahavira’s meaning is deeper and different. It must be understood more inwardly.

Vritti-sankshep is a process. Each tendency in you has a center: sex has a center, hunger has a center, love has a center, intelligence has a center. But ordinarily all our centers are confused, because we keep taking the work of one center from another; of the second from the third. The work does not get done, and the energy of the center is spent and wasted. Gurdjieff used to say—he made Vritti-sankshep very foundational in his path—first make each of your centers clear and assign to each center only its own work; do not take the work of one from another. For example, sex has its own center in nature; but you take that center’s work from the mind—sex becomes cerebral; you just keep thinking about it. Sometimes it becomes so cerebral that real sexuality does not give as much juice as thinking about sex gives. This is very strange. It is as if real food gives less relish than thinking about food. It is as if going to the mountains gives less joy than sitting at home imagining, dreaming about going to the mountains.

We transfer each center’s work to another; dangers arise. Two dangers: first, the center whose work it is not—if you put another work upon it, it cannot do it fully; it is not its work. It can never do it. It will remain unsatisfied, never fulfilled. Can hunger be fulfilled by thinking with the intellect? Can the contemplation of sex fulfill sexuality? How can it—this is not that center’s work. It is as if someone tried to walk on his head. Walking is the feet’s work; to walk on the head produces double ill effects. The center from which you are taking another center’s work cannot do it—one. And what it could have done, it too will not be able to, because you are engaging it where it cannot function; its energy will be spent there; what it could have done will remain undone. And the center from which you have snatched the work will accumulate energy; slowly it becomes deranged, because you are not taking work from it. You become completely confused; your personality becomes an entanglement, not a resolution.

Gurdjieff said: limit each center to its own work. This is Mahavira’s meaning of Vritti-sankshep—contract each tendency to its center; do not let it spread around its center, do not let it wander. Then a shapeliness comes into the personality, a clarity; then you are capable of doing anything. Otherwise, almost all our tendencies have gathered around the intellect. So the intellect cannot do what it can—because you are taking other work from it. And the work you are taking, that the intellect cannot do—it is outside its nature. This widespread stupidity in the world is not because so many stupid people are born. The reason for such stupidity, such dullness, is not that mindless people are being born; the sole cause is this: the intellect is not given the work it can do; you make it do what it cannot. Slowly the intellect becomes dull.

Reflect a little: how many lame, how many blind, how many deaf are there in the world? If there are fools in the world, their proportion should be the same—not more. But fools are many. Intelligence seems almost absent. What can be the reason for such lack? The lack is not that intelligence is less; the lack is only this: you do not take from intelligence what should be taken; you take what should not. Therefore the intellect slowly becomes inert. Psychologists say every person is born with genius; every person dies dull. Children are born brilliant; the old die talentless. It should be the reverse: that the talent with which the child was born was refined, experience added color; the journey deepened him. But this does not happen.

In the last world war about a million soldiers’ intelligence was measured; their mental age was found to be thirteen and a half—mental age thirteen and a half! Their bodily age might be fifty, forty, thirty—and then a startling conclusion emerged: the body goes on growing and the mind seems to stop around thirteen-fourteen. It does not grow beyond.

But this is an average; in this average the intelligent are included. It is like calculating the average income of the common man in India—Birlas and Dalmias and Sahus are also included. The average that emerges is not the common man’s average because the wealthy are included. If you exclude the wealthy and find the common man’s average, it will be far less. Nehru and Lohia had this dispute for years in Parliament—Nehru’s figures were higher; Lohia’s were much lower. Lohia said: Exclude these five-ten people—they are not average men; why count them! Then the rest—then the remaining have income only in new paise; there is no income. But if you divide everyone’s total, fine—then everyone appears to have income; he does not.

This mental age of thirteen and a half includes Einstein and Bertrand Russell. It is an average. Those who touch peaks of intelligence are included. In this average even the mindless get a little share. If you leave out the top hundred people of any era, then the intelligence remaining with the common man is so little it is hardly worth calculation. Nothing comes from it. With it you go from home to office and back. With it you learn the office tricks and manage. At home you learn the tricks of speech and manage. This much a machine can do—and do it better than you. Therefore wherever machine and man compete, man loses. The day your work enters the field of the machine, that day man becomes useless.

Now American scientists say that within twenty years there will remain no work for man, because machines can do all work better. Their biggest question is: what shall we do with man twenty years from now, and what work shall we take from him? If he becomes idle he will create mischief. We will have to give him some work. Perhaps we shall have to give the kind of work we give children at home when they become troublesome—we hand them toys. That’s all: we will have to give you toys with little bells to jingle. The toys will be a bit more glamorous—you would be offended otherwise.

Moreover, psychologists say: the difference between children’s toys and adults’ toys is only of price; there is no other difference. They play with dolls; you play with a woman. The price differs—it is a more expensive toy. The play is the same.

Vritti-sankshep has two reasons for Mahavira’s emphasis. First, when each propensity is concentrated at its own center, you begin to get its real experiences. And to be freed from real experience is easy—because real experience is painful. It is hard to be free of the imagination of woman; it is easy to be free of a woman. Hard to be free of the imagination of wealth; easy to be free of a pile of money. It is hard to be free of imagination because imagination is never frustrated; it runs on, without an end. Reality comes to an end everywhere; everything breaks. When each tendency comes to its own center it becomes so dense that you begin to have its actual experiences. And the more actual the experience, the sooner the release—because there is no juice left in it. You see it was only the mad race of the mind; there was no relish, only your imagining there was.

A unique event has begun to happen in America in the last ten years. Because of the hippies, the Beatle, the beatniks, a unique thing has occurred: for the first time they experimented with enjoying sexuality with total freedom. Those who began ten years ago thought great bliss would be attained—whichever woman, whichever man, as many relations as you wish; no external barrier, no law, no court—only the private freedom of two people. But in ten years the most surprising experience the hippies have had is that sex has become meaningless—meaningless. No meaning remains in it.

For ten thousand years, in a world of husbands and wives, sex remained meaningful; in ten years, give up husband-wife arrangements and sex becomes meaningless. Why? Many experiments—group marriage: eight boys and eight girls marry, group marries group; one person does not marry one person. Whichever is willing with whomever, whichever way—ten husbands, or eight, ten wives, eight—the two groups join and form one family, all husbands, all wives. Group sex gave such bad experiences that I was reading the memoir of an experienced man who passed through it all—he wrote: If sex is to regain its juice, the husband-wife world was better. You think they are immoral. You think all this is unrighteous. But you will be surprised: whenever real experience becomes complete, you go beyond it. In truth, to preserve the juice of sex we created family, marriage, the husband-wife arrangement. Remember: in countries where women wear the burqa, the number of beautiful women is greater than where they do not.

When Nasruddin married and lifted his wife’s burqa for the first time, he was frightened—he had only seen her in the burqa, had imagined great beauty. As with burqas everywhere, when lifted, beauty departed. He was aghast. The custom is that the wife, coming to the husband’s home, asks: Before whom do you permit me to lift the burqa? She asked. Nasruddin said: As long as you do not lift it before me, lift it before anyone you like. Only keep this in mind: do not show me your face again.

Things that are uncovered become meaningless; things that remain veiled become meaningful. Those parts of the body you have covered you have endowed with meaning. By covering you are creating meaning—you are creating meaning. Cover anything, meaning is born in it. Because cover anything and the crowd of fools around will become eager to uncover it. In the attempt to uncover, meaning arises. The more the effort to uncover, the more the effort to cover; then meaning increases. If things were open and clear, they would become meaningless.

America has for the first time created a society that is, in one sense, free of sex—free because no meaning is visible. But a greater difficulty arose; new meanings began to be sought: in LSD, in marijuana, in other drugs. Because no satisfaction comes from sex—there is no meaning left; it has become meaningless. Now they want some other sensations, some other experiences. And America cannot stop drugs—no advertisement for LSD exists, yet it is reaching every home; there is no ad in the papers, Yet LSD you must take—but on the university campuses it reaches every student. America will not succeed; it can make laws, oppose it, conduct trials, give punishments. The chief priest of LSD’s propagation, Timothy Leary, has been given life imprisonment. But it will not stop until you restore meaning to sex in America; until then drugs cannot be stopped, because man cannot live without meaning. Or else, raise the meaning of the soul, of Paramatma—create a new meaning whose search man can undertake; new peaks he can climb.

Man has one peak—intercourse—and he wanders in its search. It is so secured and arranged that he never experiences its futility. If the wife becomes futile, the husband becomes futile, there are still other women who remain meaningful—there are women on the screen who remain meaningful. Somewhere meaning remains, and he searches for it, loses life in the searching.

Mahavira says: Vritti-sankshep—this is very scientific. One meaning is: each tendency will be lived in its total intensity; and any tendency you live in its totality becomes futile. The futility of tendencies is necessary before self-vision. Secondly, all tendencies surround the mind because you do all work with the mind—eating with mind, sex with mind, dressing with mind, car-driving with mind, office with mind—everywhere the intellect is surrounded, so it becomes weak and impotent, overburdened with work. Too much outer work.

Mulla Nasruddin’s wife said to him: Ask your boss to raise your salary. It has been long. Mulla said: I ask, but he puts me off. She said: Tell him your mother is ill and needs treatment; your father is paralyzed and needs care; your mother-in-law lives with you; you have so many children, their education; you have no house, you must build one—she made a great list. Next day Mulla returned from the office very cheerful. His wife asked: Has the salary increased? Mulla said: No—my boss said: You have too much outside activity! He fired me: With so much of yours—mother-in-law at home—when will you do office work? He dismissed me.

So much work has been piled upon the intellect—when will it do its own? Burdened from all sides, when will it do its own work? You do not perform any work of intelligence in life. You take from intellect only the work of means—earning money, marrying, listening to the radio. But what is the intellect’s own work? The intellect’s personal work is meditation. When the intellect settles in itself, when it rests in itself, wisdom arises; only then, for the first time, do you see life differently—with the eyes of an intelligent one. But that chance never comes—too much work. It is crushed and destroyed under it. That highest point in you which could do the highest work—you take from it the lowest. The finest power you have you employ in tasks that could have been done with a needle; you make a sword do the needle’s work. Because of this, what could have been done by a needle does not happen; and what the sword could have done—there is no question of it—the sword is lost in needlework.

Vritti-sankshep means: contract each tendency into its own center. Do not let it spread. If hunger arises, let it arise in the belly; do not let it arise in the intellect. Say to the intellect: Keep quiet. What time is it—leave the worry. The belly will give news when hunger comes; we shall listen then. If sleeping is to be done, do not let the intellect do it. When sleep comes it will give its own news; the body will inform you—then sleep. If sleep is to be broken, do not give the job to the intellect to set an alarm. When sleep breaks, it will break; let it break by itself. Let the mechanism of sleep do its work; let the mechanism of hunger do its work; let the mechanism of sex do its work. The body’s works are specialized—let each run in its own sphere. Do not gather them all together, otherwise they will all become perverted and difficult to manage.

The amusing thing: when work reaches its own center, the intellect has only so much to do—that it sees that each center does its work in its fullness, and that the work of one center does not spread to another. If intellect sees this much, it becomes the ruler, the controller; it sits in the middle as the master, its eye upon all the senses. And each sense does only its own work—that becomes its vision. As soon as a sense does its work and intellect sees whether any juice is received in it—the useless acts begin to drop; the meaningful begin to grow. Very soon the time comes when the useless falls from your life—you do not have to drop it; the meaningful remains—you do not have to save it. Thorns fall from your life; flowers remain. Nothing needs to be done—only the seeing of the intellect is enough; its witnessing is enough. Witnessing is the very nature of intellect; that is its work. Intellect is the means for nothing; it is itself an end. Let all senses hand over their experiences to intellect, but let no sense take its work from the intellect—that is the meaning of Vritti-sankshep.

The result is certain. When each center does its own work, many of your outer works that create spread into the world begin to fall and shrink without effort. You will not have to abandon the chase for money; you will suddenly see what is useless in it falls away. You will not have to abandon the madness for a big house; you will see how much house is needed—beyond that it is useless. You will not become obsessed with piles of clothes, taking delight in counting: three hundred saris complete, now four hundred, now five hundred. Your intellect will say: When will you wear five hundred saris? But man is amazing.

I have heard: two salesmen were talking. One boasted of his sales: A man came to buy one tie; I sold him six. The other said: This is nothing. A woman came to buy a suit for her dead husband; I sold her two suits. She had come to buy clothes for her dead husband; I sold her two sets. I told her: This other set is even more becoming—and sometimes for a change it will be exactly right!

A woman might take two sets—because we live by counting, not by intelligence. That the husband is dead, that he will never get a chance to wear the second, is no question. The second set looks good—two sets! The mind has its own relish. Almost all of us are doing the same. Who will wear them, when—no question. How many—that is important. Who will eat, when—no question. How much—the quantity itself has become value. As if utility is nothing, number itself is utility. How large a number we can announce—that is the use.

I go to homes and see someone has kept a hundred pairs of shoes. Better he become a cobbler—let him enjoy counting. Why be a cobbler for free? If counting is all—be a cobbler, keep counting the pairs. New pairs will arrive daily; he will gain great satisfaction. Now this man is a cobbler by mind. What will you do with a hundred pairs? No—but the prestige of a hundred pairs! Those who have them enjoy it; those who do not are pained: We have no hundred pairs. Even in cobblery there is competition—the other cobbler is out-cobbling us; we are falling behind. Poor us. When will we have a hundred pairs? Often a hundred pairs are amassed—but in amassing them the feet no longer remain capable of walking. And no number stops at a hundred.

There is an old Tibetan tale: two brothers. The father died, leaving a hundred horses. The horses’ work was to carry passengers. On his deathbed he said to the elder: You are wise; the younger is still young. Divide as you wish. The elder divided—he kept ninety-nine and gave one to the younger. Neighbors were shocked; they said: What are you doing? The elder said: The matter is that he is young; his understanding is less. How will he manage ninety-nine? I’ll keep ninety-nine; give him one.

Soon the younger grew up, but he was happy with his one; one was enough. He did not have to keep servants, did not need separate arrangements; like a lord he would go himself, carry people; his food came. But the elder was much troubled—ninety-nine horses, ninety-nine hassles. Servants had to be kept. Stables made. One horse would fall sick; something would happen. One would run away; a servant would not return. Nights, delays, wakefulness—he was harassed.

One day he went to the younger and said: I have a request—give me your one horse too. The younger asked: Why? The elder said: You have only one; even if you do not have it, you will not lose much. I have ninety-nine; if I get one more, they will become a hundred. And nothing much will go wrong for you—one is as if it is or is not. But for me it is a big matter—my prestige and honor are involved. Our father had a hundred; at least for father’s honor, I must reach a hundred. The younger said: Take it. My experience is that with ninety-nine I see you in great pain—so I think with one I also have some pain. You take this too.

From that day the younger was filled with joy—now he did his own work; earlier sometimes the horse fell ill, sometimes medicine was needed; sometimes the horse refused to go; sometimes it sat down—thousand hassles. That too ended. Earlier he had to serve the horse—hold the reins; that too ended. He became his own master. He would take the load on his own shoulders, seat people and carry them. But the elder became very ill—constantly anxious: out of a hundred if even one or two were lost, a horse died, a horse was missing—great difficulty.

Marpa—the Tibetan fakir—often told this story. He would say: I have seen only two kinds of men—those who trust things so much that they are distressed by them, and those who trust themselves so much that things cannot distress them. Only two kinds are on this earth. The second kind are very few—hence joy is scarce on earth. The first kind are many—hence sorrow abounds.

Vritti-sankshep does not directly mean: reduce your possessions. When your inner tendency contracts, outer parigraha decreases on its own.

It does not mean: leave everything and run away—you will be transformed—not necessary. Because if you could change by leaving things, then things become very valuable. If by leaving things I change, then things are precious indeed. And if by leaving things I attain moksha, then good—moksha can be traded. By paying the price of things you get moksha. If by leaving one house, one wife, one son, I get moksha, then what is the price of moksha? Exactly the price of a house, a wife, a son. If by leaving things I become a renunciate, fine—people become renunciates by leaving things; and by having things they become enjoyers. But then the value of things remains intact. Then how shall one who has no things become a renunciate? One who has no palace to leave—how shall he become a great renunciate? Very difficult—first the palace must be there.
Someone asked Nasruddin, “What is the path to liberation?” Nasruddin said: “You must sin first. First commit sin.”
He said, “What madness is this? Are you telling the way to liberation or the way to hell?” Nasruddin replied, “If you don’t sin, how will you repent? And if you don’t repent, how will you reach liberation? And if you don’t sin, how will God have compassion on you—and without his compassion, nothing happens. First sin, then repent, then God will be compassionate, then the gates of heaven will open and you will enter within. So the essential thing,” Nasruddin said, “is sin. Without it nothing is possible.” That, in fact, is our common logic too.

We think the “essential” thing is possessions. First accumulate, then renounce. If you don’t renounce, how will you reach liberation? But how will you renounce if you haven’t accumulated? So first gather, then give up, then be liberated. You will go to liberation riding on things. Then liberation becomes cheaper and things become more valuable—because the value belongs to that which carries you.

Kabir said: “Guru and Govind both stand before me—whose feet should I touch?” And Kabir thought, “Let me touch the Guru’s feet, for through him I came to know Govind.”

So if you are to reach liberation through things, then you must take refuge in things; fall at their feet, because it is through them you will reach. If you do not renounce, you will not be liberated. But what will you renounce? There must be something to renounce, only then can you renounce. Thus the value of things stands firm—for the sensualist and for the renunciate alike.

No—this is not Mahavira’s meaning. Mahavira cannot confer value on things. That is why I say: Mahavira does not mean that “vritti-samkshep” (contraction of tendencies) is the renunciation of possessions. Mahavira cannot grant even so much value to things that their renunciation would carry meaning. No—Mahavira’s experiment is inward. When the wick of your tendencies is steadied at the inner center, the outer spread ceases on its own—just as, when we light a lamp and turn its wick down inside, the circle of light outside grows smaller. Where the wick grows smaller, the halo of light shrinks. But if you think you can make the wick smaller by shrinking the circle of light, you are making a great mistake. It will never happen. You can only deceive yourself. The trick to deceive yourself? Close your eyes. The lamp will go on burning just the same, the light will go on falling just the same. You can sit in utter darkness by closing your eyes—but that is deception. Open your eyes and you will find the circle of light is exactly as it was. Because the circle is not the source; the source is the wick. As the wick is turned down within, the outer circle contracts. When the wick is submerged, when it is reduced to zero, the circle disappears.

In each of us, whatever expansion appears outside—its wick is within. At our inner center, the center of desire, the degree of our inner burning determines the outer expansion. The outside is only a display; the real matter is within. When contraction happens within, everything outside contracts. Remember this well: the one who tries to contract from the outside is on a wrong, utterly wrong path. He will be harassed and arrive nowhere.

Though some people mistake harassment for austerity. There is no joy greater than tapas (austerity), but people take mere trouble to be tapas. Their trouble is this: he wanted ten garments, he keeps nine—and he is terribly troubled. The trouble is in the same proportion as the pleasure he imagined in having ten. If the ten becomes less, trouble begins. Now he mistakes his trouble for austerity. Trouble is not tapas.

I told you about Mulla’s wife. He knowingly married this woman. The whole village knew she was very wicked and quarrelsome. For forty years no one had been willing to marry her. When Nasruddin announced, “I will marry her,” his friends said, “Have you gone mad, Nasruddin? No one has married this woman. She is dangerous; she will press your neck; she will take your life; she will not let you live; you’ll be in great difficulty.”

Nasruddin said, “I too have remained unmarried for forty years. In staying unmarried I have committed many sins. By marrying her I wish to atone. This is going to be a penance. I am doing it knowingly. But I must repent, must I not? I enjoyed so much from women; now I will suffer just as much—then the account will be balanced! And the suffering this woman can give, perhaps no other can. She is remarkable!” Nasruddin married. Friends tried hard to dissuade him, but he did not listen.

But the news reached Nasruddin’s wife that he had married her so that she would torment him and his austerity would be accomplished. And she said, “Don’t live in illusion. You will not climb to heaven on my back. I cannot become anyone’s means. From today I stop quarreling.” And they say that woman did not fight with Nasruddin all her life. He had to go to hell—she would not fight. She said, “You want to make me a means for your heaven? That will not be. It can never be; you will end up in hell.” She could have created hell for him here on this earth—but she did not. She arranged the next one for him!

By what will you make your way to yourself? By things? By non-possession? By holding yourself back from the outside, by managing yourself from the outside? It will not happen. You may be troubled, but that will not be tapas. Trouble is not tapas. Tapas is great joy—and the joy of the tapasvi (the austere one) is beyond measure. Things are suffering. But you will know this suffering only when, at the center of your tendency, you experience—and find only pain, with no trace of happiness. Only darkness, with not a glimmer of light. Only thorns, with not a single flower. Within… within, the center becomes futile; the outer aura vanishes. Suddenly you find that the outside has lost all meaning. People will see that you have left much on the outside. But you may not leave anything outside at all; something breaks within. Some inner lamp goes out. So, at each center, bring the tendency to a halt and, keeping intelligence alert, watch what the experiences of that tendency truly are.

The greatest wonder about man is this: what you tell yourself today—“If I get it tomorrow, I will be happy”—when you do get it tomorrow, you never measure whether the happiness you imagined actually came. Astonishing! More astonishing still: even if you get suffering from it, the next day you desire the same thing again; you never think, “Yesterday I got this and suffered; now I am going again in search of suffering.” We never measure. This measuring is precisely the work of intelligence—and we do not put it to that use. Its very work is to ask: Did happiness come where I thought it would? Where I thought there would be happiness, did suffering come? This comes into experience—but we do not retain the lesson. And then we desire again what has already given suffering.

Thus life becomes like an ox in the oil-press—moving in the same circle. No progress, no arriving anywhere. We go on circling and die circling. We die standing on the very ground where we were born. Not an inch forward. And we cannot move forward, because the possibility of growth lay in your intelligence, your wisdom. But that wisdom never develops.

So Mahavira emphasizes vritti-samkshep—so that each tendency can be experienced in its stark intensity, in its purity, and the experience itself declares: There is suffering here, not happiness. Let intelligence gather this experience; let intelligence live and drink it, and let it soak into every fiber of your being. Then, above the tendencies, your prajna, your wisdom, will begin to rise. As wisdom rises, the tendencies contract. On one side the tendencies shrink; on the other, wisdom ascends. And outwardly, possessions grow fewer. As wisdom rises, the world outside diminishes. The day your total energy is freed from the tendencies and joins intelligence, that very day you are free. The day all your power stands with prajna instead of with the tendencies, that day you are liberated.

The day even the energy of lust joins intelligence; the day the energy of greed joins intelligence; the day the energy of anger joins intelligence; the day the energy of delusion joins intelligence; the day all energies begin to flow toward intelligence—like rivers flowing into the ocean—that day the ocean of intelligence flowers within you. The taste of that ocean, its experience, is not of suffering, not of trouble; it is supreme bliss. It is supreme rejoicing. It is like a flower’s blossoming. It is like a lamp being lit. It is as if life returns to a corpse.

Enough for today.
Tomorrow we will speak on the next rule.
But don’t get up. Yes—those who want to come for kirtan, please come up. We will sing for five minutes, then go.