Vigyan Bhairav Tantra – Meditation Technique 60
“OBJECTS AND DESIRES EXIST IN ME AS IN OTHERS. SO ACCEPTING, LET THEM BE TRANSFORMED.”
Osho – This technique can be very helpful. When you are angry, you always justify your anger, but when someone else gets angry you always criticize. Your madness is natural, but others’ madness is just “perversion.” Whatsoever you do is good — or even if it was not good, it was “necessary to do.” You always find some rationalization for it.
The same is done by others, but then the same rationalization is not given. If you are angry, you say it was necessary to help the other. If you were not angry, the other would have been destroyed., he would have got a wrong habit, so it was good to give him punishment. It was just for his “good”. But when someone gets angry at you, the same rationalization is not applicable. Then he is “mad,” he is “evil.”
We have double standards — one standard for one oneself and another standard for everyone else. This double-standard mind is going to be in deep misery always. This mind is not just, and unless your mind is just you cannot have a glimpse of the truth. Only a just mind can leave this double standard.
Jesus says, “Don’t do to others what you would not like done to you.” This means a similar standard is needed. This technique is based on the idea of a single standard: “OBJECTS AND DESIRES EXIST IN ME AS IN OTHERS….” You are not exceptional, although everyone thinks he is exceptional. If you think you are exceptional, know well this is how every ordinary mind thinks. To know that one is ordinary is the most extraordinary thing in this world.
Someone asked Suzuki about his teacher: “What was exceptional in your teacher, Suzuki?” Suzuki was a Zen master, so he said, “The only thing I will never forget is this, that I have never seen a man who thought himself so ordinary. He was just ordinary, and that is the most extraordinary thing, because every ordinary mind thinks he is exceptional, extraordinary.”
But no one is extraordinary, and if you know this you become extraordinary. Everyone is just like everyone else. The same desires that hover around you hover around everyone else. But you call your sex love; others’ love you call sex. Whatsoever you do, you protect it. You say it is good. That is why you are doing it, and the same thing done by others is “not the same.” And this happens not only to persons; it happens to races, nations. This is why the whole world has become a mess, because of this.
If India goes on strengthening its army it is “for defense,” and if China goes on strengthening its army it is “for attack.” Every government in the world calls its military organization “defense.” Then who attacks? If everyone is defending, who is the aggressor? If you move into history, you cannot find anyone who is an aggressor. Of course, the defeated ones prove to be aggressors. The defeated ones always prove to be aggressors because they cannot write history. The victorious ones write history.
If Hitler could have won, then the history would have been different. Then he would have been the savior of the world, not the aggressor. Then Churchill and Roosevelt and the other allies would have been the aggressors, and it would have been good if they were destroyed. But because Hitler couldn’t win he was the aggressor, and Churchill and Roosevelt and Stalin and the other allies saved humanity. Not only with persons, but with everything we do — as nations, as races — the same logic moves. We are something different and the other is different.
No one is different! A religious mind knows that everyone is the same, so if you give rationalizations for yourself, please give the same rationalizations to others also. If you criticize others, then apply that same criticism to yourself. Don’t create two standards. One standard will transform your being totally because with one standard you become just and for the first time you can look straight into reality, as it is.
“OBJECTS AND DESIRES EXIST IN ME AS IN OTHERS. SO ACCEPTING, LET THEM BE TRANSFORMED”: ACCEPT THEM AND THEY WILL BE TRANSFORMED.”
What are we doing? We accept that they exist in others. Whatsoever is wrong exists in others; whatsoever is right exists in you. Then how can you be transformed? You are already transformed. You think that you are already good and everyone else is bad; the world needs a transformation, not you. That is why there are always leaders, movements, prophets. They go on crying from the rooftops to change the world, to create a revolution, and we have been making revolutions and revolutions and nothing changes.
Man remains the same and the earth remains in the same misery. Only faces and labels change, but misery continues. It is not a question of how to change the world. The world is not wrong; you are wrong. The question is how to change yourself: “How to change myself?” is the religious quest. “How to change everyone else?” is political. But the politician thinks he is okay; really, he is the model of how the whole world should be. He is the model, he is the ideal, and it is up to him to change the whole.
Whatsoever the religious man sees in everyone else he sees in himself also. If there is violence, he immediately wonders whether the violence exists in him or not. If there is greed, if he sees greed somewhere, his first reflection is over whether the same greed is in him or not. And the more he searches the more he finds that he is the source of all evil. Then it is not a question of how to change the world; it is a question of how to change oneself. And the change starts the moment you accept one standard. Then you are already changing.
Don’t condemn others. I don’t mean condemn yourself — no! Just don’t condemn others. And if you are not condemning others, you will have a deep compassion for them, because the same problems are there. If someone commits a sin, a sin in the eyes of the society, you start condemning him, never thinking that you also have the seed to commit that sin within you. If someone commits a murder you condemn him, but have you not always been thinking to kill someone, to murder? Is not the potential seed there always? The man who has committed murder was not a murderer a moment before, but the seed was there. And the seed is with you also. A moment later, who knows? You may be a murderer. So don’t condemn him. Rather, accept. Then you will feel a deep compassion for him because whatsoever he has done any man is capable of doing; you are capable of doing it.
A non-condemning mind will have compassion; a non-condemning mind will have a deep acceptance. He knows that this is how humanity is and that “this is how I am.” Then the whole world will become just a reflection of your own self. It will become a mirror. Then every face becomes a mirror for you; you look at yourself in every face.
“OBJECTS AND DESIRES EXIST IN ME AS IN OTHERS. SO ACCEPTING, LET THEM BE TRANSFORMED.”
Acceptance becomes transformation. This is difficult to understand because we always reject, and then too we cannot transform anything. You have greed, but you reject it. No one wants to think of himself as greedy. You are sexual, but you reject it. No one wants to feel oneself as sexual. You are angry, you have anger, but you reject it. You create a facade, and you try to justify it. You never feel that you are angry or that you are anger.
But rejection never transforms anything. It simply suppresses, and that which is suppressed becomes more powerful. It moves to your roots, to your unconscious deep down within you, and it begins functioning from there. And from that darkness of the unconscious it becomes more powerful. You cannot accept it now because you are not even conscious of it. Acceptance brings everything up. There is no need to suppress.
You know you are greedy, you know you have anger, you know you are sexual, and you accept them as natural facts without any condemnation. There is no need to suppress them. They come to the surface of the mind, and from the surface of the mind they can be thrown very easily. From the deep center they cannot be thrown. And when they are on the surface you are always aware of them, but when they are in the unconscious you become unaware. And a disease of which you are aware can be cured; a disease of which you are unaware cannot be cured.
Bring everything up to the surface. Accept your humanity, your animality. Whatsoever is there, accept it without any condemnation. It is there, and be aware of it. Greed is there; don’t try to make it non-greed. You cannot. And if you try to make it non-greed, you will simply suppress it. Your non-greed will simply be another form of greed and nothing else. Don’t try to change it into the other; you cannot change it. If you want to try to change greed, what will you do? And a greedy mind can be attracted only towards the ideal of non-greed if some further greed is possible through it.
If someone says that “If you leave all your riches you will be allowed in my Kingdom of God,” then you can even renounce. A further greed becomes possible. This is a bargain. Greed has not to become non-greed; greed is to be transcended. You cannot change it.
How can a violent mind become non-violent? If you force yourself to be non-violent, this will be a violence to yourself. You cannot change one into another, you can simply be aware and accepting. Accept greed as it is. By acceptance is not meant that there is no need to transform it. By acceptance is meant only that you accept the fact, the natural fact, as it is. Then move in life knowing well that greed is there. Do whatsoever you are doing, remembering well that greed is there. This awareness will transform you. It transforms because knowingly you cannot be greedy, knowingly you cannot be angry.
For anger, for greed, for violence, unawareness is a basic requirement, just as you cannot knowingly take poison, just as knowingly you cannot put your hand into a flame. Unknowingly you can put it. If you don’t know what a flame is, what fire is, you can put your hand in it. But if you know that fire burns, you cannot put your hand in it.
The more your “knowingness” grows, the more greed becomes a fire and anger becomes poison. They simply become impossible. Without any suppression, they disappear. And when greed disappears without any ideal of non-greed, it has a beauty of its own. When violence disappears without making you non-violent, it has a beauty of its own.
Otherwise a non-violent man is deeply violent. That violence is there hidden, and you can have a glimpse of it from his non-violence also. He will force his non-violence upon himself and upon others in a very violent way. That violence has become subtle.
This sutra says that acceptance is transformation, because through acceptance awareness becomes possible.
