Liberation From All That is Old and New

Sadhguru looks at how as one progress on the spiritual path, many new intriguing things may crop up, but we must have the wisdom to stay the course without getting diverted.

Sadhguru: What you call as your body and your mind is a certain accumulation of memory. It is because of memory – or you can call it information – that this body has taken this shape. If it had a different kind of information, for the same food that you eat, it would have turned into a dog or a cow or a goat or something else. Or in other words, your body is a bundle of memory. Because of that memory, everything plays its role that way – it remembers. You may forget whether you are a man or a woman but your body remembers. Similarly with your mind, you may forget many things but your mind remembers and functions accordingly.

 
Being beyond these two things essentially means being beyond memory, because memory means past. You can dabble with the past as much as you want, but nothing new will happen. You can produce permutations and combinations from what you have – the old may get painted – but nothing new will happen. When we talk about creating a space between you and the body, between you and the mind, we are talking about a possibility where you are not enslaved to the past – something new can happen. What is that new thing? Look at it this way: how much of this Creation do you think you have stored in your memory? A negligible amount, isn’t it? So, no one can say what new things may happen. Any number of things can happen. It depends on the direction we approach it from.

The Bugs in the Cosmos

If we go into certain dimensions, certain things happen. This is why a guru is constantly trying to not get people lost into some new things. In any number of ways I have been beating it into people not to seek an experience because the moment you seek an experience, things may happen. They may be new, they may be very interesting and intriguing, but you may get lost forever.

For example, if you look around in your garden, that little bug sitting on a blade of grass, when you were a child, if you paid attention to it, it was the most fantastic thing in the universe. But now, you don’t want to spend a minute on that bug. Bug means phew! The most intriguing thing that is not yet in your experience, if it comes into your experience, it excites you for some time. But after that, it will just be one more thing. Like this, you may find many bugs in the cosmos which excite you, which intrigue you for a period of time, but after that it will be the same thing – one more bug.

The inquisitiveness of the human mind would naturally like to dabble with a few things, but spiritual process means having the wisdom to withdraw from that and just stay the course, not seeking an experience, not seeking excitement, not seeking new worlds, because new worlds are traps. What is wrong with this world that you must seek a new world?

Liberation is not about seeking a new world or going to heaven. Heaven is just a new world where everything is supposed to be better than here. Even if it is a little better than here or much better than here, after some time you will get bored with what’s better. A lot of people living in remote places think America is fantastic. But people in America are pretty bored. Otherwise, why such a big entertainment industry?

What is new will become old within 24 hours if you have a very active intelligence. If you are a little dull, it may take 24 years but it will get old. New is a trap, old is a cesspool. If you jump out of the cesspool into a new trap, that’s not going to help. Spirituality means you are not looking for something new, you are looking for liberation from all that is old and new.

Editor’s Note: Find more of Sadhguru’s insights as he explores the realm of the enlightened in the ebook “Encounter the Enlightened.”

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