Even sometimes if you are a little bit silent you immediately start worrying, “Why am I silent?” anything will do to create worrying, thinking, because the mind can exist only in one way – in running. Running after something, or running from something, but always running. In the running is the mind. The moment you stop the mind disappears.
Right now you are identified with the mind. You think you are it. From there comes the fear. If you are identified with the mind, naturally if the mind stops you are finished, you are no more. And you don’t know anything about the mind.
The reality is you are not the mind. You are something beyond the mind. Hence it is absolutely necessary that the mind stop, s that for the first time you can know you are not the mind…because you are still there. The mind is gone; you are still there—and with greater joy, greater glory, greater light, greater consciousness and greater being. The mind was pretending. And you had fallen into the trap.
What you have to understand is the process of identification – one can get identified with something that is not.
An Ancient parable in the East is that a lioness was jumping from a hillock to another and just in the middle she gave birth to a kid. The kid fell down into the road where a big crowd of sheep was passing. Naturally he mixed with the sheep lived with the sheep, behaved like a sheep, he had no idea, not even I his dreams, that he was a lion. How could he have? All around him were sheep and only sheep. He had never roared like a lion; a sheep does not roar. He had never been alone like a lion. A sheep is never alone. She is always in a crowd – the crowd is cozy, secure, safe. If you see a sheep walking, they walk so close together that they are almost stumbling on each other. They are so afraid to be alone.
But the lion started growing up. It was a strange phenomenon. He was identified mentally with being a sheep, but biology does not go according to your identification; nature is not going to follow your mind. He became a beautiful lion, but because things happen slowly, the sheep became accustomed to him, just as he became accustomed to the sheep.
The sheep thought he was a little to crazy, naturally. He was not behaving just right – a little cuckoo – and he went on growing It was not suppose to be so. Pretending t be lion! But they knew he was not a lion; they had seen him from his very birth. They had brought him up, they had given their milk to him. He was a no vegetarian by nature – no lion is vegetarian, but this lion was, because sheep are vegetarian. He used to eat grass with great joy. They accepted these small differences, that he was a little big and looked like a lion. A very wise sheep “It is just a freak f nature. Once in a while it happens.”
And the lion itself accepted it was true. His color was different, his body was different – he must be a freak, abnormal. But the idea that he was a lion was impossible! All those sheep surrounded him, and sheep psychoanalyst gave him explanations: “You are just a freak of nature. Don’t be worried. We are here to take care of you.”
But one day an old lion passed by and saw this young lion standing far above the crowd of sheep. He could not believe his eyes! He had never seen such a thing nor had he ever heard that in the history of the whole past a lion had been in the middle of a crowd of sheep but no sheep was afraid. And this lion was walking exactly like a sheep, grazing on grass!
The old lion could not believe his eyes. He forgot he was going to catch a sheep for his breakfast. He completely forgot breakfast. It was something so strange that he determined to catch hold of the young lion and find out what was happening. But he was old, and the young lion was young – he ran away. Although he believed that he was a sheep, when there was danger this much of identification was forgotten. He ran like a lion, and the old lion had great difficulty catching him.
Finally the old lion got hold of him. He was crying and weeping and saying, “Just forgive me, I am a poor sheep. Please let me go.”
The old lion said, “You idiot! You simply stop this nonsense and come with me to the pond.” Just near by there was a pond. He took the young lion there. The young lion was not going willingly, he went reluctantly, but what can you do against the lion if you are only a sheep? He may kill you if you don’t follow him, so he went. The pod was silent, with no ripples, almost like a mirror.
The old lion said to the young, “Just look. Look at my face and look at your face. Look at my body and look at your body in the water.”
In a second came a great roar! All the hills echoed it. The sheep disappeared; he was totally a different being – he recognized himself. The identification with the sheep was not reality, it was just a mental concept. Now he had seen reality. The old was just a mental concept. Now he had seen the reality. The old lion said, “Now I don’t have to say anything anymore. You have understood.”
The young lion could feel a strange energy he had never felt before – as if it had been dormant. He could feel a tremendous power, and he had always been a weak, humble sheep. All that humbleness, all that weakness, simply evaporates.
This is an ancient parable about the mater and the disciple. The function of the master is only to bring the disciple to see who he is, and what he on believing about himself is not true.
Your mind is not created by nature. Always try to keep the distinction: your brain is created by nature. Your brain is a mechanism that belongs to the body, but your mind is created by the society in which you live – by the religion, by the church, by the ideology that your parents followed, by the educational system that you were taught in, by all kinds of things.
That is why there is a Christian mind and a Hindu mind, a Mohammedan mind and a communist mind. Brains are natural, but minds are created phenomenon. It depends on which flock of sheep you belong to. Was the flock of sheep Hindu? Then naturally you will behave like a Hindu.
Meditation is the only method that can make you aware that you are not the mind; and that gives you a tremendous mastery. Then you ca chose what is right with your mind, because you are distant, an observer, a watcher. Then you are not so attached with the mind… and that is your fear. You have completely forgotten yourself; you have become the mind. The identification is complete.
When I say, “Be silent, be still. Be alert and watchful of your thought process,” you can freak out, you can become afraid; it looks like death. In a way you are right, but it is not your death, it is the death of your conditioning. Combined, they are called your mind.
Once you are capable of seeing the distinction clearly – that you are separate from the mind and the mind is separate fro your brain – it immediately happens, simultaneously: As you withdraw from the mind you suddenly see that the mind is in the middle; on either side there is the brain and there is your consciousness.
The brain is simply a mechanism. Whatever you want to do with it, you can do. The mind is the problem because others have created it for you. It is not you. It is not you, it is not even your won; it is all borrowed.
The priests, the politicians – the people who are in power, the people who have vested interests – don’t want you to know that you are above your mind. The whole effort has been to keep you identified with the mind because the mind is managed by them, not by you. You are being deceived in such a subtle way. The managers of your mind are outside.
When the consciousness becomes identified with the mind, then the brain is helpless. The brain is simply mechanical. Whatever the mind wants, the brain does. But if you are separate fro it, then the mind loses its power; otherwise it is sovereign.
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