Lecture 4/5. Netherlands, 2019.

Interpretation

So you are making an effort, or not any effort at all, and then it happens. After the happening, what happens?

Happiness is part of duality. When you look at duality both pain and pleasure is there, sadness and happiness. When you see this, you are looking from the outside. The outside is the reality, and reality has duality inside.

So, what are you really looking for? What are you not getting? You were looking and therefore trying to achieve. Yet, once you have achieved it, it’s not going to remain permanently with you.

Realise this: that nothing outside is permanent. Yet, you try to achieve again and again and with pleasure, the pain follows. Then, you have the pain, just wait, it will go away, and pleasure will come.

The tree makes no effort for spring or autumn. And then the tree becomes jealous of the human, being because the human being can take a flight and go away. That tree cannot move; it must remain where it is. The seasons coming one after another. It is the same thing: everything is impermanent.

The first thing to realise is nothing is permanent. Through one’s own experience this takes a long time because we are always looking for permanent happiness.

Where is this permanent happiness? Outside, or inside?

That’s why the question comes “Who am I”? If you, that means “I”, itself is happiness, bliss, sat, chit, Ananda. Does that means happiness is outside?

It is like sugar searching for the sweetness outside, or honey asking how can I be sweeter? Because you, by yourself, are not accepting yourself. You look outside, and you have lost yourself inside.

It is easier to search outside, to evaluate and check. Can you see your own eyes? Yet, through them, you can see many other things.

The seer can see many things, but cannot see their own eyes, they see the eyes of others, but not their own. The other eye has the happiness, and they search outside because it is there.

That happiness is related to the happening. And, that happening is because of doing. Before the doing comes the decision “to do”. I will do, I have done. And before the decision to do, to take an action, what is the thinking, and the planning? The analysis.

So, either the doing is wrong, the action is wrong, the decision and is wrong, planning program, thinking is wrong. What is wrong? The thinking is not wrong, the decision was not wrong. The starter itself is wrong. The thinker. The one who thinks is wrong.

From the wrong comes the wrong. So, how can the happening be right? Then it becomes difficult to except that happening as wrong.

And the person says: “How can I improve my doing?”, “my decision?”. The person doesn’t ask, “How can I improve myself?”

So blame going to “the thinking”, rather than doing the correction “in me”. The person continues to ask and search for help: gives the advice how to have better decisions. How can I improve my decision, my thinking?

Yet, that thinking is related to the thinker, the doing is related to the doer, the decision is related to the decision maker, actions to the actor. Finally, outside, they are all separate.

The one who thinks and plans and makes a policy, they are in the office, and the one who execute the plan is in the field. So, the person who sits in the office, and the one who sits in the field they are two people, not the one. But, inside they are one.

In daily life, you can sit in the office and make another in the field do, but when it comes to yourself, then you realise the problem. How to realise this?

The person is happy, because they can say “I have done”. After a long time thinking and deciding, then acting, and doing, and then they achieve the result. It giver happiness. And that satisfaction of completion is just, I have completed.

Like the person who has made the effort to collect the food from the market, to prepare the meal and cook it. Until this time, they are happy. Then it is time to taste of the food. The food does not give any appreciation to the person who has cooked the food. The results come in two ways: the result outside, and the impact of the result inside. The result of the action outside you like, but once you see the results of the result – the impact inside you are not happy.

The person plans, thinks with good intentions to do something. Still, the intention to do is there. The person is happy, then the doing is there. The person is happy, and the outcome of the doing. The person is not happy.

After getting this kind of experience, the person says I will not bother about the result, I will not care about the result: what will come will come. I will detach myself from the result. I will do my job but not care about the result. What has the person done?

They have withdrawn, but why? So that they are not affected by the result. And so they have deprived themself from learning, from analysing. How did this happen? Why did this happen? They don’t want to learn and check themselves. No further development.

That is not my area, they say. But who created this condition? The “I”, and in this way, the I creates its own comfort zone. The comfort zone in the beginning is big, but later on, in a spiralling kind of way, becomes smaller and smaller. That is the withdrawal syndrome, or

It is Pratyahara in the wrong way.

Renunciation of the result is wrong: Renunciation of the action is what the Bhagavad Gita asks.

Because we are not facing reality, not ready to accept and go with reality. We are not willing to adjust. Although you have all the flexibility at the physical level, the physical performance.

But life begins at the physical level but doesn’t remain at the physical. It is merely a starting point. This is duality: gross – the physical, then the mind,  AND, then beyond.

On one side nature within, on the other side nature outside.

The nature within –  it is our own area but now it becomes smaller and smaller because that nature becomes the ground and garden with many trees, because the seeds are different. How many seeds do we have inside? This is the way we cultivate plants inside. When we get the result from the habits we have developed then we are not happy. When the habit is developed perhaps it was good, but as time passed we need to give up these habits and change.

How to recognise the old? Through perception. We all have the possibility to perceive. The old habits we often experience as negative, but even after that experience the person is unable to give up. Why are they not able?

They are not ready to be convinced they are able to do so.