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Main Index
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miseries. You encounter them every day in life; they are present every day -- not only miseries, you will have to include happiness in the experiment also, because it is more difficult to be aware in happiness than it is to be in misery. It is not so difficult to experience that your head and the pain in it are two separate things, but it is more difficult to experience that, "The body is separate and the joy of being healthy is separate from me too -- I am not even that." It is difficult to maintain this distance when we are happy because in happiness we like to be close to it. While in misery, we obviously want to feel separate, away from it. Should it become certain that the pain is separate from us, we want it to stay that way so we can be free of it.
You will have to experiment on how to remain aware in misery as well as in happiness. One who carries out such experiments often brings misery upon himself, of his own free will, in order to experience it. This is basically the secret of all asceticism: it is an experiment to undergo voluntary pain. For example, a man is on a fast. By remaining hungry he is trying to find out what effect hunger has on his consciousness. Ordinarily, a person who is on a fast hasn't the slightest notion of what he is doing -- he only knows that he is hungry and looks forward to having his meal the next day.
The fundamental purpose of fasting is to experience that, "Hunger is there, but it is far away from me. The body is hungry, 'I' am not." So by inducing hunger voluntarily, one is trying to know, from within, if hunger is there. Ram is hungry -- 'I' am not hungry. I know hunger is there, and this has to become a continuous knowing until I reach a point where a distance occurs between me and the hunger -- where 'I' no longer remain hungry -- even in hunger I no longer remain hungry. Only the body stays hungry and I know it. I simply remain a knower. Then the meaning of fasting becomes very profound; then it does not mean merely remaining hungry.
Normally, one who goes on a fast keeps repeating twenty-four hours a day that he is hungry, that he has not eaten any food that day. His mind continues to fantasize
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