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Main Index
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| | | Book Name: Yoga - The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 4 | Previous Next | |
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man always has his bank balance in the way.
You see the Queen of England, Elizabeth? She cannot even shake hands without gloves on. She cannot even touch humanity without gloves on. Even the human touch seems to be something impure, something ugly. A queen, a king, live encapsulated; it is not only a question of the hand. That is just a symbol to say that the Queen is entombed; she is no longer alive.
In the Middle Ages in Europe it was thought that kings and queens didn't have two legs, because nobody had ever seen them naked. It was thought that they had only one leg. They were not human; they were living at a distance. Ego always tries to live at a distance, and the distance makes you insensitive. You cannot come and touch a child playing on the road. You cannot come near a tree and embrace the tree. You cannot come nearer to life; you are pretending that you are higher than life, greater than life, bigger than life. The distance has to be created and only then can you pose as being bigger than life. But life is not losing anything by your foolishness; you are only becoming more and more insensitive. You are already dead. Life needs you to be more alive.
When Patanjali says 'austerity', he means, 'Be simple, don't cultivate it.' Because cultivated simplicity is not simplicity. How can a cultivated simplicity be simple? It is very complex; you have been trying, calculating, cultivating.
I know a man; I happened to pass by the village where he was living. My driver said, 'Your friend lives here, just outside the village.' So I said, 'It is good. Just for a few minutes I will go see him, and see what he is doing now.' He was a Jain monk. When I reached near his house, through the window I could see him walking naked inside. Jain monks have five stages; by and by, they cultivate simplicity. At the fifth stage, the last, they become naked. First they will wear three articles of clothing, then two, then one, and then that too is to be dropped. That is the highest ideal of simplicity, when one becomes absolutely nude; nothing to carry -- no burden, no clothes, no things. But I knew that this man was only in the second stage, so why was he
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