05 February, 2009

What is duality?


What is duality? When you are asking this question, it is duality because there is you and there is me. Only because there is duality, a question and an answer are possible. Because you see you and me, if I don't answer the way you like it, you will suffer the answer. This is so in every relationship. If the other does not do what you expect her to do, you suffer the other. French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre said, "The other is hell." Unless you are in yoga, yoga means everything has become one in you. Suffering is inevitable. Suffering is less or more depending on your ability to manage life, but it is inevitable because 'the other is hell'. This is the reason why people are trying to build their own safety cocoons. Why family is such an important establishment in the world is because it is a safe cocoon. The more insecure you feel, the more valuable your family situation becomes.
We have established and enshrined family with so much value in our minds and hearts, simply to escape the other in some way. But within the family also, if you look deep enough, they are all others. When there is an outside problem, they are all one. When we are within the family, we are all others. For most people, it is the problems which unite them. They value the problems and because of that they have endless problems. Once you value the problems, unknowingly you go on creating problems. The world is full of problems because people value them.
Your problem has come because of your identification with your limited body. Anyone with a little sense can know, this body is something that you picked up from this planet and it is just a recycle. Whatever you think is mine is just coming in and going out all the time. You cannot hold on to it. Not just at the final moment when you die; every day, you cannot hold on to this body.
If you knew this, not in a sense of intellectually knowing it, if you were aware of this, then naturally you would not be identified with it. Once you are not identified with your body, then the next thing that is left is your thought process. It is very easy to see that it is always on recycle.If you can identify with these recycles, why can't you identify with the planet itself? Why can't you identify with the whole cosmos because everything is recycle? Life is on recycle all the time. It is an ongoing process. If it becomes experiential for you that this is all just a recycle, the life energy that you think is 'me', the body that you think is 'me', the mind that you think is 'me' are all on a recycle process, so what will you identify with? Either you simply sit here without any identity, or you get identified with everything. Either you become a zero or you become infinite. Everything in between is a big lie. That is the maya of duality. In zero, there is no duality. In the infinite, there is no duality. Zero is not made by you - zero was discovered. The infinite was not made by you, it was discovered. So duality is a big lie.If you want to get out of this, you must understand the nature of it. You can get out any way you want. If you want to experiment, just don't eat for the next nine days. You will see, what is in your body is getting out; slowly, you will shrink. But you don't have to break it. You don't have to destroy it. Understanding it intellectually is not good enough; if you experientially come to know that this is just another vehicle that you have gotten into, then you have no issue to play the game in the middle, knowing fully well it is just a game. If you think that is the real thing, then it is a danger. Then you are lost.

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