88. Drop cunning-ness and become spontaneous

When I told the story of Satyakama to a group of people, one person asked me, 'Maybe these techniques are for highly evolved souls. Spirituality when practiced out of innocence keeps you childlike.

In that story, the disciple gets enligh-tened when the master just blesses him. He must have been a highly evolved soul for that to happen.

I told that person, 'No, it is not for highly evolved souls. It is for highly innocent souls!' Understand this. Highly evolved people don't need techniques. It is like how I was telling you the other day. In sage Patanjali's teaching of Ashtanga yoga* , the eight techniques described are to be practiced all at once. It is not that if you finish the first technique you are one step higher and ready for the second one. No! Even the first technique is so strong that if you are able to master it and move to the second, you don't even need the second because you are already done! The first step is yama, which is about codes of behavior. If you are able to master this alone, then you don't need the remaining steps. You don't need any further yoga or breath control! So understand this. All eight techniques are individually fulfilling techniques for the sincere seeker. They are not sequential steps.

Ashtanga yoga - Eight limbs or paths of Patanjali's Yoga: yama (discipline), niyama (rules), asana (body postures), pranayama (breath control), pratyahara (withdrawal of senses), dharana (concentration), dhyana (meditation) and samadhi (bliss).

Similarly, techniques such as those given to Satyakama are given to innocent people who are tired of being cunning. Understand these words, 'tired of being cunning'.

What is cunningness? It is the opposite of intelligence. You can be either cunning or intelligent, never both at the same time. Cunningness is also the opposite of vulnerability. When you are cunning, you cannot be vulnerable. When you are vulnerable, you are pure like a child. A child can be intelligent and innocent at the same time. Over time, his intelligence grows but the innocence invariably takes a turn to become cunningness. Then he is no more pure like a child. Societal conditioning causes the innocence in the intelligence to take the turn into cunningness. Children if left to themselves remain innocent. But we teach them so many things that they become social animals. We hold a great responsibility in bringing up children without making them cunning.

The poet Khalil Gibran* says beautifully about children:

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,

For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,

and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies,

so He loves also the bow that is stable.

The problem is that we know only to divide and look. We never know to look as a whole. If you watch a baby, it will look at each of its toys as a whole. It will just try to push it in as a whole into its mouth! Sometimes it will push the larger part of the toy first into the mouth where it won't even fit. It doesn't know what toy it is or what its parts are or whether it is appropriate to put it into its mouth. Its eyes know only to see as whole, never divided. The moment you teach the child to divide and look, you sow cunningness in him.

Khalil Gibran - Lebanese American poet best known for his 'The Prophet'.

Cunningness is division. It is a constant calculation. It hinders free and innocent expression. It knows to express only through calculation. Calculation is alright for arithmetic, not for the being. We calculate for the wrong reasons. Do we ever calculate our blessings? No, never! They are just taken for granted.

Cunningness starts with division of the whole. Innocence is lost when the mind is taught to divide. Once it picks up the thread, the mind continues and moves far away from its original innocence.

Two babies were in a pram next to each other in a mall.

One of them turn-ed to the other and asked, 'Are you a girl or a boy?'

'I don't know,' the baby replied.

The first one said, 'I can tell.' And he dived beneath the clothes and came out and said, 'You are a girl and I am a boy.'

The baby girl was surprised and asked, 'How did you know?'

Pat came the reply, 'That's easy. You are wearing pink booties and I am wearing blue ones!'

From a very early stage, the child is taught division by people who are themselves struggling with cunningness. The child unconsciously trades his innocence for cunningness.

The danger with cunningness is that it grows roots in many direc-

Cunningness is division. It is a constant calculation.

tions and solidifies as the very nature of the individual. The person will not even know he is cunning. He won't even know that his struggle with himself is because of his cunningness.

One person came to me and started telling me, 'Swamiji, I have extramarital relationships.' I asked, 'Do you feel it is wrong?' He said, 'Yes, I know it is wrong, and I am very clear that I am doing something wrong.' I told him, 'Then stop it.' He said, 'No, only you can stop it.' I told him, 'Hey, I am not the one having the relationship to stop it! You are the one having it, so it is you who is supposed to decide and stop!' He stood silent. I asked him, 'What do you mean by I should stop? Do you mean that I should take your car keys and not allow you to go there? What do you mean by I should stop?'

This is cunningness. He told me, 'No, I have surrendered myself to you, so you should take care of it.' I told him it was a good story! Then I told him, 'You told just now you have surrendered everything to me. Alright then, just sit here and meditate.' He asked, 'What are you saying Swamiji?' I told him, 'You were the one who said just now that you have surrendered

Cunningness is a pure hide and seek game you play with yourself.

everything to me! Then just do whatever I say. Don't

move from here, just sit.' That he was not ready to do!

A small story:

The rivers one day gathered together and made a complaint against the sea. They asked the sea, 'Why is that when we enter your waters fresh and fit to drink, you make us salty and undrinkable?'

The sea hearing itself being blamed replied, 'Don't come. Then you won't turn salty.'

If you are not ready for the simple solution, then be assured that you are playing a cunning game! Unless you are tired of being cunning, you can't be helped. No technique can help you because your cunningness knows how to escape from every single technique. People come and tell me, 'Whatever you are saying is correct, but…' Understand this. The moment you say 'but' to me, you have missed! The moment you say 'but', it is over. You are trying to escape with your cunningness.

Some people tell me, 'Whatever you say is right, but please make me do whatever you say.' What do you mean? Should I have two or three people continuously watch you and make you do things? Drop your cunning game, then automatically you will start doing what I say. Cunningness is a pure hide and seek game that you play with yourself. You can't play it with me. I straightaway know where all you are hiding. I don't need to come to you to find you. So understand that you are just playing with yourself. Just take a strong decision to be completely sincere and authentic to yourself. Only then you can drop your cunningness.

When cunningness dissolves, authenticity and sincerity happen and you will enlighten quickly. Also, with authenticity you will not indulge in any kind of gossip. Gossip is a pure expression of cunningness. When you are so cunning that you can't tell a person anything on his face, you talk behind his back.

When I tell people that they need to become tired of cunningness to come out of it, they ask me, 'How come I know and yet I don't know? How come I can't stop being cunning?' You can't stop because you are secretly nurturing it. It is your creation. You never miss a chance to nurture it. That is why you pretend that you want to stop and you urge me to stop it for you. You can wake up a sleeping person but you can't wake up a person who is pretending to sleep. Until you are only pretending to sleep, you will never find the burning need to wake up. Straightaway stop cooperating with it, that's all. That is the only way and it is so straightforward. When you know fire burns, will you beg me to stop you from touching it? No! Then when you know you are cunning, why can't you just drop it?

When you drop cunningness, spontaneity flowers. Spontaneity is the opposite of calculation. Intelligence plus innocence is spontaneity. Intelligence plus cunningness is calculation. Spontaneity is nothing but a flowing expression of your innocence. It is a non-calculating state of mind. It is called sahaja* , being yourself without any burden. The burden is the burden of constant calculation.

Understand this, with cunningness, you may think you are gaining a lot of things, but the truth is that you are losing your innocence. Losing your innocence is like losing your entire life. You can afford to lose anything but not your innocence.

With cunningness you miss your state of sahaja* , the spontaneity that is your own. In being cunning you are constantly trying to be someone else. When you pretend to be someone else you are not only cheating yourself but you are also in danger of missing your own fragrance. Like all other creations of Existence you have your own beautiful fragrance. It is the fragrance of sahaja* , your natural spontaneous state that is unique to you.

When you are spontaneous, you are without any conclusions. There is no need to function out of conclusion all the time. Intelligence is fluid and creative. It is of the present moment. Conclusion is a foregone thing. It is of the past. With conclusion the juice of spontaneity is lost. Society has taught us to be with conclusions all the time. There are some standard conclusions, which we quickly try to fit with anything that we see. We are afraid to drop our conclusions and be open because the mind is always comfortable in repeating patterns. It finds security in it.

Existence never repeats patterns. Every day is different. Every night is different. Can anyone say it is the same day or same night? No. It is an event that happens everyday and yet it is never the same. That is the sheer beauty of Existence. Then why should we look for patterns? There is no need. The very joy of spontaneous living can be very well experienced. Children are open and spontaneous till the age of seven. Then society starts creating an impression on them.

A woman stopped and asked the little boy who was smoking on the street, 'Son, does your mother know that you smoke on the road?'

The boy looked at her and asked, 'Does your husband know that you stop

Sahaja - Spontaneous divine joy.

The innocent energy of a child is completely behind his action. In an adult, his mind is behind the action.

and talk to strange young men on the road?'

Children are like this! They don't bother.

They are just spontaneous.

A teacher asked in the class, 'What is a comet?'

One boy stood up and said, 'A star with a tail.'

The teacher asked, 'Can you name one?'

The boy replied, 'Mickey mouse.'

Children are not afraid. They just express, that's all! No one can predict what the child is going to say the next moment. That is his specialty! The problem is that we are ready to handle spontaneity with children, but we are not ready to handle it with grownups. With a child, we mentally give him the space because we accept he is from a different plane. But with adults we perceive them as being in the same plane as us and so we cannot tolerate it.

Children get away with so many things like even hitting you. You actually enjoy it! Can you imagine feeling like this if an adult hits you? The innocence of the child makes even the act of hitting beautiful. The innocent energy of a child is completely behind his action. In an adult, his mind is behind the action. That is the difference.

A teacher was speaking at a meeting when a critic shouted, 'Listen to him! And his father used to drive a wagon pulled by a donkey.'

The teacher replied, 'That's right. Today, my father and the wagon are no more, but I can see we still have the donkey with us.'

You can imagine the state of the critic!