(Silence)
Alright, let me explain. You are happily driving your second-hand car on a busy road. At a traffic signal, a brand new car comes and stops next to you. Suddenly, a deep desire arises in your mind to possess that car. Of course, you immediately suppress the desire, because you know you won't be able to afford such a car. But that thought which arises – that is the Unconscious.
But Swamiji, how can I shut out that desire? You can't shut it out! That's why I'm going to tell you how to drop it, not how to force it down. As it is, for too long you have been repressing your desires. Neither expression nor suppression works. You can't give expression to the desire - you can't go and grab the car from the owner. Nor should you suppress it. Then what can you do?
Simply drop the desire.
Swamiji, isn't it possible to keep the desire and achieve the goal?
Yes, but is that your final desire? Believe me, the moment you fulfil one desire, your mind will move to the next one. The moment you sit behind the steering of your Ikon, a desire for a Rolls Royce will arise!
So when the desire arises, expressing it will result in kopa (anger) or jealousy. That means, you will turn hostile towards the other person, simply because he possesses an object that you desire. Some people turn the anger inward, towards themselves, resulting in an inferiority complex. This is known as repression.
Subconscious is nothing but the collective term for all the suppressed desires, suppressed emotions.
At the office, suppose your boss gets mad at you. When he yells at you, a wave of anger arises inside you also. You just can't help it. In fact, medical research has proved that when you get angry, chemicals are produced in your body to help you express that anger! So the energy to attack a man is automatically produced by your body the moment you get angry. But you cannot afford to react, because the other man is your boss!
So what happens to that energy? It gets solidified in your being. When the energy is not allowed to flow, to take its natural course, it stagnates in your system, becomes a swamp of negativity. All these repressions are stored in your subconscious, and ultimately they can destroy the Being.
What do you do when you get back home from the office? You bang the door! You throw your file on the sofa! You yell at your husband or wife! All these are just your repressions of the day. At this time, if you have a sensitive nose, you can actually smell the repressed anger! It will surround you like a faint bad odour.
You want to express the anger in some way, to pass it on to someone else. Behavioural psychologists have termed this syndrome 'Kicking the dog'. The cycle of 'passing on' is always from the strongest to the weakest.
The boss fires the husband – the husband comes home and yells at his wife – the wife slaps their child – and the child, finding no one else around on whom he can express his anger, kicks his dog.
But mind you, when you take your anger out on someone else, it always results in a chain of karma.
The only safe place to express your repressed emotions is to throw them out into the air, into akasha. That way, you are unburdened of these emotions, and no one else is harmed by your actions.
As we know, whatever you suppress in the waking state, appears strongly in your dream state. If a beautiful woman passes by and you don't look at her out of loyalty to your wife,be sure she will appear in your dreams! Or if there is an unhappy event you don't want to recall, you may succeed in forgetting about it during the day, but it will be there to haunt you at night.
A small story:
Once there was a man who wanted to attain siddhis, miraculous powers. So he went to a Himalayan guru and asked him to teach him how to achieve these powers. The guru tried explaining to him, Why do you want to attain these siddhis? They won't help you in life. Try meditation instead, it will help you grow spiritually.
But the man was adamant. So finally the guru gave him a bottle of medicine, telling him, Have this medicine three times a day for a fortnight, and you will attain some rare siddhis. There is only one condition. At the moment when you drink this medicine, be sure not to think of monkeys.
Immediately the man asked, What if I remember?
Imagine! Otherwise who thinks of monkeys? But the moment the master asked him not to, the man became afraid.
If you happen to think of a monkey, you will have to purify yourself by taking a bath, and only then have the medicine, said the guru.
As soon as he got home, the man took out the bottle of medicine. But just as he was going to drink it, the image of a monkey appeared in his mind!
To cleanse himself, the man quickly took a bath and returned to have the medicine. But once again, before he could drink it, he found himself thinking of a monkey.
This time, when he went to take the purifying bath, he could only think of monkeys. The bathroom seemed to be full of monkeys! He could only see monkeys everywhere! He felt he would go crazy.
Finally he ran back to the guru.
What happened? Didn't you drink the medicine? The guru asked quietly.
Oh, no! Please take back your medicine – I don't want it! cried the man. I don't want any siddhis either - just free me from these monkeys!
This is the exact situation which is happening in our lives. We are helpless against the hordes of monkeys chattering in our Subconscious!
So then, what is the Subconscious?
(from audience) Can we say, unfulfilled desires, Swamiji? Yes, that is perfectly right.
(another voice)
But Swamiji, sometimes even after fulfilling the desire, it appears in our dreams. That just shows that you haven't really fulfilled it! When you really get fulfilment, you don't store even the seed of desire inside anymore. You have no need of it. But we never get real fulfilment, because we never enter into anything fully. If we get into anything fully, we will be out of it. Going in totally is the only way to come out fully! But we never get involved completely. We always have some reservations.
All our misery in life is nothing but these frozen unfulfilled desires, the Subconscious.
It is this cerebral layer which disturbs our well-being, destroys our physical health, mental health, spiritual health. It is the reason for all our irritation and anger which we don't even realize we have. Have you noticed how some mothers keep on shouting at their children for no reason? They don't even realize that they are doing it! Or how some people will simply sit and brood – and without even being aware of it, they will keep continuously tearing up papers into bits, or plucking out the petals of flowers? Such destructive behaviour! How many of you do this kind of thing?!
(giggling from the audience)
Under the surface calm, anger is simmering, bubbling all the time. When you get back from work, even the slightest noise that anyone makes, even if your wife puts your coffee cup on the table and it makes a small noise – it's enough to burst open the floodgates of anger.
And not just anger. Lust is also bubbling under the surface, so much so that you are afraid to even look at the picture of a woman! You are afraid it might bring out the desires you have tried so hard to repress. And the same with greed..! These are the three major causes of all our misery – Anger,
Lust, Greed.
Today, we will enter into a meditation technique to kill Dukkha (misery). It is called Dukkha Harana. This meditation technique is designed to throw out the repressions, to subvert the subconscious. I call this only a technique – not a meditation. Because even the word meditation makes many people uneasy. If I give them one hundred rituals to perform, they'll do it happily. But to sit for half an hour and meditate – it makes them uneasy. It is easy to do outward things – but to look in? That is the most frightening thing! Because there is a Pandora's Box inside – who dares open that Pandora's Box?