The ego can exist only with goals, ambitions, desires.
The future is needed as a space to project your desires. To project, future is needed.
Those otherworldly desires were just as foolish as the worldly desires.
When there is nothing to desire, there is nothing to dream about either, because dreams are reflections of your desires. Dreams are reflections of your frustrations, dreams are reflections of your repressions, dreams reflect your day-life.
A small child has no ambitions, he has no desires. He is so absorbed in the moment — a bird on the wing catches his eye so totally; just a butterfly, its beautiful colors, and he is enchanted; the rainbow in the sky… and he cannot conceive that there can be anything more significant, richer than this rainbow. And the night full of stars, stars beyond stars…. Innocence is rich, it is full, it is pure.
Existence does not listen to your desires, and does not follow your desires, however beautiful and however pious. Existence goes on in its own way.
Mind is nothing but dreams and dreams — dreams of the past, dreams of the future, dreams of how things should be, dreams of great ambitions, achievements. Dreams and desires, that is the stuff mind is made of. But it surrounds you like a China Wall. And because of it the fish remains unaware of the ocean.
When you don’t cling to anything, there is nowhere to go — all boats have been abandoned, you cannot go anywhere; all paths have been dropped, you cannot go anywhere; all dreams and desires have disappeared, there is no way to move. Relaxation happens of its own accord. Just think of the word relax. Be, settle, you have come home.
Mind is a crowd of many desires; it is not a single desire. Mind is multi-psychic, and all the fragments are falling apart in different directions. It is a miracle how we go on keeping ourselves together; it is a hard struggle to keep oneself together. Somehow we manage, but that togetherness remains only on the surface. Deep down there is turmoil.
When you have emptied all content — thoughts, desires, memories, projections, hopes — when all is gone, for the first time you find yourself, because you are nothing but that pure space, that virgin space within you. Unburdened by anything, that contentless consciousness, that’s what you are! Seeing it, realizing it, one is free. One is freedom, one is joy, one is bliss.
People, when they are frustrated with worldly desires, start changing the object: they start making otherworldly objects of desire — heaven, paradise, and all the joys of heaven. But it is the same trick, the mind is again befooling you. This is not the way of the intelligent person, this is the way of the stupid.
The people who stop desiring worldly things start desiring heaven and heavenly pleasures. But what are they? — magnified forms of the same old desires, in fact more dangerous than the worldly desires, because with the worldly desires one thing is absolutely certain: you are bound to get frustrated sooner or later. You will get out of them; you Cannot remain in them forever. The very nature of them is such that they promise you, but they never fulfill their promises — the goods are never delivered. How long can you remain deceived by them? Even the most stupid person has glimpses, once in a while, that he is chasing illusions which cannot be fulfilled by the very nature of existence. The intelligent one comes to the realization sooner.
But with the other-worldly desires there is far greater danger because they are other-worldly, and to see them and to experience them you will have to wait till death. They will happen only after death so you cannot be free of them in life, while you are alive. And a man who has lived unconsciously his whole life, his death is going to be the culmination of unconsciousness; he will die in unconsciousness. In death also he will not be able to disillusion himself. And the person who dies in unconsciousness is born again in unconsciousness. It is a vicious circle; it goes on and on. And the person who is born in unconsciousness will repeat the same stupidities that he has been repeating for millions of lives.
Unless you become alert and aware IN life, unless you change the quality of your living, you will not die consciously. And only a conscious death can bring you to a conscious birth; and then a far more conscious life opens its doors. Changing worldly desires into other-worldly desires is the last strategy of the mind to keep you captive, to keep you a prisoner, to keep you in bondage.
When your desires drop, the world is there, but it is a totally new world. It is so fresh, it is so colorful, it is so beautiful! But a mind attached to things cannot see it because eyes are closed with attachment.
It is good that life never fulfils your dreams — it always goes on disposing, in a way. It gives you a thousand and one opportunities to be frustrated so that you can understand that expectations are not good and dreams are futile and desires are never fulfilled. Then you drop desiring, you drop dreaming, you drop proposing. Suddenly you are back home and the treasure is there.
Understand the very motivation of all ideas, thoughts, desires. It is a seed-like thing. Watch inside — why can’t you be herenow? Why is it always that you are thinking of somewhere else? Why can’t you be happy as you are? Why are you thinking that tomorrow you will be happy? How can you be happy tomorrow if you are not happy today?. — because tomorrow is going to be born out of the moment. Out of this moment the next moment is going to be born. Today is going to become the parent of tomorrow. If you are unhappy today, you will be more unhappy tomorrow. You will have learned, by that time, many more tricks to be unhappy. You are practicing it, and you hope tomorrow to be happy? Then you are in a hopeless rut. You desire for tomorrow? — then you are continuously missing all that is here, and that is the only reality there is. If you can even for a single moment put aside desiring, then the projector stops, and the dreaming stops, and you are able to face reality.
Ordinarily all desires exist in the second state of consciousness, the dreaming state. Desire is a dream and to work for a dream is doomed from the very beginning, because a dream can never become real. Even if sometimes you feel it has become almost real, it never becomes real — a dream by nature is empty. It has no substance in it.
We have investments in our dreams. They don’t exist without our help; we make them exist. Sweet dreams, golden dreams; we have a romance with them, a very long romance of many lives. We go on courting dreams, and of course when we court them they are there, and they bring nothing but frustration. Because they are against reality, they can never bring fulfillment. There is no way to make two plus two equal five; there is no way. Whatsoever you do, two plus two will always be four, and you go on hoping that someday it is going to be five. Then you are simply in a mathematical error. Dreams can never be real; your thoughts can never be real; your hopes can never be realized; your desires can never be fulfilled. The only outcome can be more and more frustration.
When this awareness grows, dreaming stops, by and by. When this awareness grows, the wheel moves slower and slower, because there is no point. You never move, so what is the point of travelling the whole earth? You remain the same; then desires slow down. One day it happens: the wheel is as silent, as unmoving as the hub. That is the point when enlightenment happens.
The same is the case when you enter a womb, enter into a fresh body, and start the journey of desires. But if you die alert, in that alertness not only the body dies, all desires evaporate. Then there is no entering into a womb. Then entering a womb is such a painful process, it is so painful that consciously you cannot do it; only unconsciously you can do it.
The body is there because the mind seeks desires through the body; desires cannot be fulfilled without the body. You can be completely fulfilled without the body, but desires cannot be fulfilled without the body. Desire needs the body; the body is the vehicle of desire. That’s why possession happens. You have heard, you must have heard, many stories about a ghost possessing somebody else. Why is a ghost so interested in possessing somebody else? It is because of desires. Desires cannot be fulfilled without a body, so he enters somebody’s body to fulfill his desires.
Only when all your desires disappear does that energy become compassion, KARUNA. You cannot cultivate compassion. When you are desireless, compassion happens; your whole energy moves into compassion. And this movement is very different. Desire has a motivation in it, a goal; compassion is nonmotivated, there is no goal to it, it is simply overflowing energy.
Quotes on Desires
