Post Aarathi Talk 04 on 30th Apr 2017

Full Transcript(Not Corrected)

Because, you know, in the village we used to have some buffalos. Once you tie a buffalo to one particular place among three, four, next time when it comes from outside, it will go exactly to the same place and it won't go to the next one, right side or left side. That is the conservative tendency. And that is where organizations and individuals have to be very careful. It is called Maya. Simple example. A revolutionary who thinks that he must change the whole lot. He rebels, he kills, he does a lot of things to get into that chair. Once he starts sitting on the chair, then he becomes the worst conservative in the whole world. Take any example, whether it is Mao Tse Tung or Chiang Kai Shek or Russian emperors, everyone does exactly the same thing. Now there is a positive side to it. The positive side, it is called habit. That means you don't need to think a hundred times what to do, what not to do. This is what I am supposed to do. After a few days, exactly you do that. The negative side of that is, he will not allow himself or others to progress or look at things from a different angle. He will not allow. That creative outlook is not there. That is why one of the greatest contributions of Zen Buddhism is this. The first thing about Zen Buddhism is that, first of all, observe everything. And secondly, never always look for a new angle. So they have invented, to overcome this, this is called mental lethargy, inertia. Because once you know what to do, you think you are spending far less time. You know, you don't need to think. Like, you know, eating cereal. South Indians never like eating cereals. And they like to eat different dishes, at least breakfast, every day. You know, one day idli, one day dosa, one day different upma, one day vada, like that. So if I ask any of these people what breakfast they had the day before yesterday or before that, he is not likely to remember. So one day I was talking like this. People's memory, you know. Subconscious memory means with a little bit of effort you can find out what I ate today, yesterday, the day before yesterday. But after that it is blank. One fellow said, No Swamiji, I remember exactly what I have eaten even ten years back. I said, What? He said, Yes, because I have been eating cereal every day. There is nothing else to remember, you know, only one item. What is there to remember? So the negative side of it is it doesn't allow us to progress further. Conservatism means even when things change, we don't change along with the change. That is why an incarnation has to come, because he alone has that capacity like overturning the whole Ganges flow back. An ordinary person can never do it. He will be swept away by the force of the current. So it is mental inertia. And so the Zen Buddhists have created special exercises. They are called Koans. For example, how do you make a clap with one hand? You know, for a clap we need two hands or something else. Either a chair or a table or a wife at least. Somebody to make a clap. Or the other way also. Husband. Something should be there. How do you make? The mind gets puzzled. The purpose is to get us out of this rut of so-called normal, so-called rational thinking. Think in a different way. There are two types of thinking. Linear thinking and creative thinking. Linear thinking means as we are accustomed to think, one plus one is two, two plus two is four, like that. The other way round to do it is creative thinking. Break these old habits. That's why one of the main ingredients of creativity is to break the old habits and ever constantly seek a new type of way of thinking. Could it not be like that? Could it not be like that? That is the way. So that is a normal, natural tendency of a human being, is to be conservative because it conserves energy. Anything outside the conservative energy, it requires a new thinking, a new habit, a new effort. That means we have to expend a lot of energy. And of all the energies, mental energy is something. That's why people are divided into three categories. People are divided into three categories. The non-thinking people, the people who think that they think, and thinking people. Because in the first category, all animals fall. They don't think. That's why it's called instinct. The second type of people, all of us. So what happens, we say we are thinking, but we are going through the same rut. Our thinking, conclusions, or even reasoning, depends upon what we read, what we hear, the type of newspaper, the type of movies we watch. This is what we think that we are thinking, but really we are not thinking. We are only borrowing other people's ideas and taking credit as though we have thought out and then we have come to the conclusion. That is there. The third type of people, thinking people. Now thinking people means, what is the difference between thinking people and non-thinking people? Really speaking, in this world, there are very, very few thinking people. Really thought and found out something new. Very, very few people. But what is meant by thinking people, we borrow ideas from other people, but we make them our own, instead of swallowing them and just blindly accepting them. We think the pros, the cons, and say, is it reasonable, is it rational, is there any problem, all these things. After that we come to the conclusion, it is acceptable and that becomes ours. Until that time, our ideas can change in a flash of a second. Like lightening meditation. I told you, there is a meditation in one of our Upanishads, Kena Upanishad, Chandogya Upanishad, Taittiriya Upanishad. It is called lightening meditation. Lightening meditation means, how what is called understanding comes. It doesn't come little by little. It comes in an instant. Like Sri Ramakrishna used to say, a room is full of darkness. The moment you strike a match, the darkness, oh, I am here for a thousand years, so let me go out slowly, slowly. It doesn't happen like that. Instantaneous. The moment light comes, darkness automatically disappears. So that is some type of experience. Experience means knowledge. Some type of knowledge. It doesn't come slowly, slowly, slowly. All of a sudden, as if the whole world is in darkness, and one lightening is so powerful, all the area is like daylight. That means everything is known. This is called lightening meditation. Brahman as lightening. Then the Swami joked, you know, don't make your meditation lightening meditation. It means your meditation is just like lightening. A few seconds, and it is gone. Lightening meditation, Upasana, is different. It is called Vidyut Upasana. So it should be a long-term process, and suddenly, this is what we call intuition. Intuition doesn't come slowly. Reasoning comes slowly. As much as you go on reasoning, it comes. Intuition, all of a sudden, which has been a puzzle, a mystery for us for such a long time, all of a sudden, everything becomes clear to us. Okay, Siddharth, speak. You can speak a little and change the subject. One of the remarks you made was the transition from someone who was very violent to someone who became a monk. That seems to be a very... Aurobindo Ghosh was a bit like that. From a revolutionary, he went to become a sadhu. And Arthur Koestler has a lovely thing. He said, in the spectrum of human beings, you have the red-hot revolutionary and the ice-cold yogi in the other end. And he said, strange thing is, there is always a transition from this end to that end. So this was an observation you made. Always, no transition is a lightening transition. The only thing is, it is not on the surface. It is going on underneath. In fact, there is something, a very interesting point here. You know, take the examples of Bilo Mangala or Tulsi Dasa, Saint Augustine, these are what is called sudden conversions. Until this moment, they were one of the worst human beings. All of a sudden, something happens, turns out to be a great saint. But that never happens. All that happens is, in some people, in most people, it is visible. Slowly, slowly, slowly, they become better and better and better. One day it becomes a finished product. But in some cases, the change is going on underneath. Now, there is something very interesting here. When you see some people who are extreme drunkards, or lustful, running after women, etc., actually that is a serious sign of a change about to take place. I am not saying every drunkard is going to be a saint. But I am telling, there is so much of energy, and the man doesn't know how to direct that energy, so that directs that energy.