Awareness II

Attachment and need

We do find that there is no answer. Because if you hate someone, can you find the answer for hating someone? You cannot. You cannot find the answer why you hate someone. You can only find excuses but not the real answer. Oh, because, you know, this one said this to me and I hate him. Or that one robbed me, you know, of five dollars and I hate his guts for when I went to the shop he gave me a rotten hamburger and I won’t go to that shop again. So, what I’m doing is analyzing, not being aware.

But if I had true awareness I would say that rotten hamburger that was given to me, okay, I took a bit of it, I found it to be not good, but that shopkeeper had to make a living and he could not throw it in the dirt box because it has cost him money to make it, the labor and the materials and all that. And you’d stop hating him. You would say it was one of these things. Okay. We accept that. That is still higher form of awareness.

So from these lower levels we progress to a form where everything just becomes one. Where the dry piece of bread would be the same as your roast turkey. Whatever. That is still a higher form of awareness. And then we start to find true awareness, and that lies in love. And the supreme question that anyone can ask is, why can I not love?

Now when you love one person only it is very good. A good start in awareness. But one has to be very careful about that, because the love for one person which you think is love might not be love. It might be just a need. A crutch. It could be a mental crutch, a sexual crutch, any kind of crutch. For example, you’d find a man living with a woman and he says he loves her. He might not love her at all. But she looks after the children, which were born of lust and not of love. She looks after the home, she cooks his meal, she scrubs the floor, she does this and that and everything. So, that’s not love, it’s need. But tomorrow if she, God forbid, gets into an accident and gets shriveled and burnt, will he love her just as much? If she becomes incapacitated and cannot look after the home and the kids and what‑have‑you, will he still love her? Huh? So that is not love. That is a need.

Now when we develop all these various kinds of needs in life, we are diminishing our awareness instead of increasing it. So the goal of life is to increase awareness more and more and more. We will come to the end later, what the total awareness is. Good. So we have to discard need.

Now how does one discard need of anything? It is by non‑ attachment. When you are non‑attached to anything, then you do not have need for anything. You accept it as it is. If I love you, I should be able to love you, not for the sake of yourself, but for the sake of me. It is I that am expressing myself, and not because you are so beautiful or so pretty, and you are so pleasing and you are so good everywhere, including the bed. You see?

So when we become non‑attached, need lessens. As we become more and more non‑attached to things, our need lessens. You have a Volkswagon motor car. Right. And then you think, oh, I would like to have a Cadillac. Yes, why? Why do you want a Cadillac? So now your need has turned. Turned backward. Reversed into desire. There are genuine needs, like for example you need food to sustain your body, like water to quench your thirst, those are real needs. But you have perverted needs that are not necessary. When I talk of non‑attachment, it’s not non‑attachment to the real needs of life, but non‑attachment to our imaginary needs. Because, examine yourselves, 90 percent of the needs, or 95 percent of the needs you have in you starts from your imagination. You imagine to be a Cleopatra, and you want to become one. You imagine to be a Sophia Loren, and you doll yourself up and you have a couple of facelifts and all that even if you are nearly 60 years old. So now this leads to one’s vanity. Now vanity takes you away from your real self. So in awareness there is a fluctuation. Everything is awareness in itself. Because awareness is synonymous with consciousness until we reach pure consciousness.

So we live in a dream world. And all things that are imaginary, creating imaginary needs, are illusions. And all illusions are fleeting. All illusions are fleeting. Never, ever lasting. What we want is something that is forever lasting and never changing, and that comes about by diminishing the needs, the desires and becoming non‑attached.

So when we talk of the nature of awareness we are talking of the path, which is the nature that leads us to pure awareness, although the path that we are following is according to our own personal psychological makeup. And our psychological makeup is none else but patternings all brought together in our subconscious minds. And we try to express all those impressions of the subconscious minds to the conscious minds and try to bring them into practical reality. And when you cannot bring those desires into practical reality you suffer misery. And life becomes tormenting. Life becomes a hell. That is why people suffer. All kinds of sufferings stem from the mind, and, after all, what is the mind? Nothing else but a whole togetherness of the impressions that you’ve had, the samskaras we have spoken about so many times. And the only way to eradicate those samskaras is to become non‑attached to things.

This morning I was speaking to someone and she said to me, to Vidya actually, she said to me, «Oh, why must people have to dress up?» Because it is social conformity. So she says, «I wish I was rather born with a fur coat.» You know, fur. «So I don’t have to bother about thinking shall I put on a brown suit or a green dress, or a sky‑blue pink.» Mind you yesterday she had a sweater on. It was all stripes. I asked her, «What football club do you belong to?» You see?

Now these are the various factors that govern one’s awareness and the limitations of awareness, though, as I said before, everything is aware. Do you know when you walk on the ground the very earth is aware of you walking on it? If you walk on the sand, on the beach, your footprints will be there. How come those footprints were there? Is it only through your bodily weight? Is it through the nature of the sand itself that could be impressed? And your mind is like the sand. Being impressed by surroundings and when your surroundings do not give you that joy and pleasure, then the impression becomes depression. And that, as a doctor will tell you, is the greatest disease in the world.

I get hundreds and hundreds and thousands of letters and the major complaint that I found from people is depression. They feel depressed. Why do they feel depressed? Because they have not developed a certain extent of awareness, of true awareness. They imagine they are aware. When you walk down the road how much do you see? Very little. Very little. Because you are not aware. Your awareness is only limited to find that dress boutique. What about all those beautiful things that you are passing? Lack of awareness. Not total lack. Not total lack. Because without awareness nothing can exist in this world. But there are degrees of awareness and people on the spiritual path are trying to find total awareness.

And this can only come about through meditational and spiritual practices where the brain cells open up more and more and more. And as I’ve told you before perhaps, that there are 12 billion cells in this two and half pound brain. Mine weighs a little less. Twelve billion cells and we are using only one millionth part of it. You see.

So, through spiritual practices, as more and more cells open, more and more of the universal mind flows through. And only when you can capture the totality of the universal mind, then you become fully aware of the entire universe. You become so aware that you just know. So, the nature is the path to awareness, which leads to total knowingness. For example, take me, as stupid as I am, you can ask any question and I’ll be able to answer it. Talk for hours on it. Why? Why? Because I allow the universal mind to flow through this little conscious mind. It is because everyone here has the ability to tap that superconsciousness level and drive away all the dirt, the impressions, the samskaras in the subconscious, so that the conscious mind could capture the power of the superconscious mind. And that constitutes pure awareness. Where you are aware simultaneously of everything. You see. You become aware of someone’s thoughts even without thinking. You just know.

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