On Discrimination

We say we are human beings. We say “human beings” the way we say a colt or calf is born. We cannot say anything else but a “colt” or “calf.” If a human child is born, we cannot say anything else but the child is a human being. And we have studied both: animal, colt or calf, and a human child. A human child cannot be compared to animals, though they have life and a child has life. It does not mean that because you have the knowledge of life in a human being and knowledge of life in an animal that both of you became just the same. It was said earlier that there must be some discrimination. Discrimination means that you should know that you have the power of discriminating things. That is where you are a human being. And animals, too, have discrimination. They will not eat iron or wool, they’ll eat grass or other food, which means they have discrimination. But their discrimination cannot be compared with your discrimination.

In the same way, the discrimination of a bird, or of your own mother when you were a child, cannot be compared with your discrimination. Your discrimination as a child is that your mother is harsh. And her discrimination is that, “This child, who is born ignorant, if he does not learn things, how will he become a good man?” Whether by using a gentle method or a slightly harsh method, by soft sounds or by harsh sounds, we have to train the children, and then they will become better human beings. And we all know that a better human being is one who thinks correctly. He doesn’t think to hate people, hate things, to hate his house, to hate his fridge, to hate his kitchen, to hate his bathroom, to hate his bed, his clothes and to hate his body. Those people who are not trained start hating not only these things, but start hating their own body. They say, “This is not correct,” and think you need powders to remove the hairs from your body. [Swamiji laughs] Discrimination. [He laughs again]

I’m just talking about discrimination. Discrimination belongs to a human being. And, in this case, any human being is much greater than any animal or any bird. Now, if his discrimination is greater, then what is the greatest quality of that discrimination? A human being can discriminate that the things and forms and their relations and context are all changing—including the body, which is changing in time and space. In the discrimination of time, there is one hour, but, looking at the clock, you know there is a second, then a minute, then an hour... and that today there is a cricket match. [He laughs] So, we can discriminate the time whether satsang is good or the cricket match is good. [He laughs again] It is India versus Pakistan. Two teams of human beings and they say they are rivals. They play with one another and are angry all the time, but, in the end, they shake hands. Discrimination.

What is the value of discrimination if you do not know what is friendship, what is changing, what is death, what is pain, what is suffering and what is no suffering? That should also be the discrimination of a human being. But this ability is not found to be growing, because a human being has no time to use his discriminative faculty. He is busy with the things and forms and actions and movies. And these movies are all imagination. Is discrimination your imagination? Here, the necessity is to use your awareness to find out how to discriminate between two things: changing and unchanging. But the imagination calls the changing “unchanging” and the unchanging “changing”—that which has never been, the body and death, they say it is there, and that which has always been, from where the body came, they say it is not there.

We have reached a point of understanding that only a human being can have. A human being has the ability to discriminate who is mother and who is wife, who is child and who is a colt, who is human and who is inhuman, who is harsh and who is pleasant, who is good and who is not good, who is born and who is not born. This discriminative faculty is to be separated out from being mixed with the mind, which tells you that the things that were not, they are. Seeing the rope in the darkness, the mind says that it is a snake. The snake is not. However, the human faculty of discrimination is not there, imagination is there, so he imagines that the snake is there when the snake is not. If you shine a torch, snake is not, the rope is there.

If Guru shows you the light, you know that “I” should not be used for the body, because it is not the body. That is what our friend said. He said that I is I. He said that “I” should not be compared to the body. So, he says, “I am not the body.” At the same time, he knows there is a pain in the body—“I have a pain in the body, but I am not the body.” This creates a problem for people to know what he means. He is saying I am I, and the body may be left to the doctors. To the doctor, he said, “I’ll be alright,” and she could not understand. Why? We have described earlier how everyone is fixed in the awareness of the mind and intellect that “I am body, body, body.” They made I the body. Yet you have the discrimination that you cannot make the chair your body, even though you are sitting on it.

There must be someone to approach your understanding that you or I has nothing to do with the body—either with your own body or with your wife, with your children, with your people. Those bodies will remain bodies. And bodies are very useful, bodies are very lively, bodies do things and bodies remain for almost a hundred years. But I is the Space. Only body will be taken away. The sword will remain exactly the same, only the sheath will be taken away. The body is a sheath and inside it is light. The Space is light. The Space is immortal. Why does a human being have discrimination? To recognise that the Space is the reality. Space cannot be compared to the body form that appears, disappears, grows, works, attends this and attends that, becomes happy and becomes unhappy. And that Space eyes do not see. You need Guru to tell you that you do not have to worry, you are Me. Because he has come to know Me. Me is the Space anywhere. Any peacock coming out of its egg says “me.” And in the egg there was no me of your kind—the body of the bird. So the body of a human being is not Me.

It is possible that if you practise Me, the Space, you can say that without body born Space was there. The body came out of the egg, but the Space is the same. The body came out of the Space, but mother does not see it. Even though mothers are the people with the most love and affection and oneness with you, because in their space your body grew. They know “child must be me, my space.” But they, too, have not been trained that Space is the reality from where the clouds arise, the raindrops fall and the sun’s rays fall. As soon as he was born, a human being lost discrimination. If you can build your pure discrimination—which can only be done by a human being—you will not necessarily say I is in the stomach of a human; which happens when he says, “I am human,” and “I am a stomach.” If only one thing can be known, it is I. That’s why I say, “I am I.” That means that I is unborn and undying, so we use the word immortal. Why? Because in English people say, “Man is mortal.” How can you teach an Englishwoman she is immortal? She learnt it from the very beginning. [Swamiji imitates learning by rote] “Man is mortal. To err is human. Man is mortal. To err is human.” So, then they commit errors after errors, like in tennis, they make unforced errors! But they are happy, because errors are good. Unforced errors suit them.

Now, if you have the discrimination that you are born alone and your body, which is born, will die alone, why are you dependent on everyone? You have to make yourself independent: I am born alone with the body, the body is there and the body grows and everybody can become independent. And now independent will be only when you have money to pay for medicine. If you don’t have money and the doctors and nurses are asking, “How will you pay?” how can you be independent? So, you have to learn the ways of the worldly people—that money makes the mare go. So learn about money and learn something that will give you a speedy income. And what gives you a speedy income? Your own brain. And that is a great gift to you. Train your brain in such a way that you should use it any time you need it. And whatever you want to produce, you produce it. And whatever you want to give, you should know how much you can give, how much you can take, how much you can eat... People could try to fill you with a truckload of food, but your stomach is tiny and if you eat it all you will become a glutton.

What do I mean? That each person is using his discrimination, even if he has never gone to school. Girls and boys can come to know that a human being is not a girl and not a boy. Is neither weak nor strong. When a human being dies and is burnt, there is only ashes. If he is buried in the graveyard, he is only mud. Do you cling on to this mud? And the ashes? And still discriminate that I am male or I am female? What do I mean? You are dependent on everything. Dependent on this, dependent on that. And yet you are born independent. Life was independent. So you were independent. And when you lost the knowledge of life, you became dependent because of the body. But I never say kill the body. Or don’t be careful and don’t take the help of someone. Discrimination.

If a human being loses his brain power, he loses the zest of life. I am not saying the zest of the body, I am saying the zest of life, the nature of life. The nature of life is Pure Awareness, immortal, blissful, and it remains ever the same. So, pay attention on life while meditating. Don’t think you are paying attention on your tongue, whether it is stuck to the palate in khechari mudra [a yogic exercise involving putting the tongue against the palate]. You are smiling. Why? Because you are the Self. “You are the Self” does not mean you are not the body. Because of the body you came to know the Self. If you are not born, you will not know your ahankaar [ego]. You will not know you are ignorant. If you are not born, you will not know what is knowledge, what is anger, what is not anger. So the body is essential. The body will not say you are not body. We love the body, we love the world, we love our relations, we love our children, we love our father and mother and we accept whatever they say in old age.

I’ve just talked about discrimination. Discrimination means gyan, knowledge. Discrimination. Not racial discrimination. I’m not talking about white or black, not this country nor that country, because you are the children of the Sky. If the Sky is infinite, the child must have the infinite sense. And that’s what I say. Because I came to know somehow. From the Sky, it has gone inside this head that everybody’s I is infinite. Infinite means don’t compare it to finite things. You should practise this. Although practice is in the relative field, it is the only thing that we can do, because our body exists relatively in time and space. And a human being has got the best brain for it.