We need to understand what depression is.
Now, what is a “low”? What is it that happens within you? Fundamentally,
you expected something to happen and it did not happen. You expected
somebody or something to be your way or the world or the destiny to be
your way, and it did not happen. In other words, you are simply against
what is happening; that’s all. Maybe you are against a person, maybe you
are against a whole situation, maybe you are against life itself.
Accordingly, the depression will run deeper and deeper.
Why are you against something? Only
because things did not go your way, isn’t it? Why should the whole world
go your way? Please know, the world does not go your stupid way. Either
you have no faith in the creator or you have no acceptance, or both,
and you have a hyper-sensitive ego. That is why you get depressed.
Depression makes you cynical and is deeply self-damaging. Depressed
people only hurt themselves more. Killing need not necessarily mean
physical killing. A depressed person is always trying to cause more
damage to himself. A man who goes out with the sword and kills somebody,
his ego is not as sensitive and it does not need as much nurturing as a
depressed man’s ego. The violent man can be very easily settled. Have
you seen this on the streets? When people get into a fight, if there is
one man with a little wisdom, if he just handles them right, those
people who are trying to kill each other one moment, the next moment,
they will drop it and become friends and go off. But this is not so with
the depressed person. He will carry this for life. Whether they do it
consciously or not, these people go on sharpening their knife and
cutting their own heart. Why will a person go on hurting himself?
Generally it is to get sympathy. For a very depressed person, normal
sympathy is not sufficient; somebody should bleed with him.
Now what is there in you that can get
hurt? If I beat your body with a stick, the body will get hurt; that’s
different. Otherwise, what is it that gets hurt within you? Just the
ego, isn’t it? The mind and the inner nature cannot get hurt. It is only
the ego that gets hurt. So if you are saying, “I want to grow,” growth means going beyond this, trampling your ego and going ahead.
One can make any emotion into a creative
force in their life. If your sadness reminds you that you are
incomplete, it is good; make use of your sadness to grow. But, when you
get sad, if you are going to get irritable and angry, and that whole
world is wrong, you are a fool. Do you want to make this sadness into
anger or into love and compassion? It is very easy when you are sad, to become compassionate. It is already a dissolving kind of energy; you can use it for further dissolution which leads you to your ultimate well-being.
Let us say, compassion being the highest virtue, and how one can be truly
compassionate only when they have gone beyond all identifications of
thought, opinion and emotion.
When you are not identified with anything
you will be absolutely virtuous. When you are not identified with
anything, only then you are truly capable of compassion. When you are
identified you can only be biased. When you are compassionate you are
always virtuous.
People being sympathetic to certain causes
or certain people is not compassion. When you are passionate about
everything, when your passion has become all encompassing, then you are
compassionate. Compassion is not little pity or sympathy for something.
When your passion encompasses everything, you are compassionate.
Compassion is the highest virtue in a way
and compassion is not possible if you are identified with this or that.
Only when you are able to just look at life as life, only then you can
be compassionate. If you look at it as my life or your life – no
compassion. When life is just life, there is compassion.
Virtue is for all human beings and
compassion is always the highest virtue. Compassion means including
everything in your passion. When the whole existence is involved in your
passion, you are compassionate.
“Ego” is not something that you got
because you did something well or because you became rich or beautiful
or anything else. When you started kicking in your mother’s womb, the
ego was born. The very first mistake of getting identified with your
physical body means the ego was born. It is a defense mechanism. You got
identified with this little body. This little organism has to survive
in this vast existence
of which you have no perception to even know where it begins and where
it ends. Just to survive, you have to project yourself like a big man.
So the ego is born. It is a false reality you created just for the sake
of survival.
So what is ego? It is like your shadow.
The moment you have a physical body, you have a shadow. The shadow
itself is neither good nor bad. If the sun is up there, you have a
little shadow. If the sun is down there, you have a mile-long shadow.
Whichever way the outside situation demands, that is the kind of shadow
you have. That is also the kind of ego you should have.
You may have heard the word “vairagya“.
“Raga,” means color. “Vai” means beyond. “Vairag,” means beyond color,
you have become transparent. If you have become transparent, if what is
behind you is red, you turn red too. If what is behind you is blue, you
turn blue too. If what is behind you is yellow, you turn yellow too. You
are unprejudiced. Wherever you are, you become a part of that, but
nothing sticks to you. Only if you are like this, only if you are in a
state of Vairag, then you will dare to explore all dimensions of life
when you live here.
To handle different kinds of situations in
our lives, we need different kinds of identities. If you are fluid
about it, if you can change from one to another gracefully, then you can
play your role to the hilt and still have no problem with it. But right
now the problem is you get so identified with it, you start believing
you are that. Once you believe “I am the shadow”, what would you do? You
would naturally crawl upon the earth. If you crawl upon the earth, how
will life be? If we carpet the floor, you will crawl in comfort, not in
joy. Suppose stones and rocks and thorns came? Then you will cry.
That is how your life is going on right now. If the outside situation
is carpeted, you will crawl in comfort. If little thorns come, you will
cry because you are crawling upon the earth.
Today, there is too much unnecessary talk going on in the world about destroying the ego. Whenever your personality turns ugly, you call it ego. This is just one
more way of passing the buck. When your personality turns ugly, you
must just see it as you. If you see, “I am ugly,” you will want to do
something about it. You would not want to be that way anymore.
But we have evolved so many strategies
just to avoid this possibility. At a certain moment, whether you are
beautiful or ugly, it is you, isn’t it? Keep it that way. Don’t create
things which are not there – your ego, your atman, or something else.
The moment you create things like “What is beautiful is my atman, what
is ugly is my ego,” no transformation will be possible. If you see:
“Whatever nonsense I am, that which is beautiful and that which is ugly
in me are both me,” then, what is ugly will naturally start changing – you will have to transform, you can’t help it.
Today in the world, we need to bring about
simple sense – life sense. Right now, people only have ego sense, they
have no life sense. They are ego sensitive, not life sensitive. When you
are like this, you only see yourself as life, no one else is life. You
can trample upon anything and anyone. But if you are life sensitive,
everything is life in your experience, so you naturally behave very
sensibly with every other life around you. The ego will no longer be a
problem if you become life sensitive.
The unfortunate reality with people right
now is that their humanity will function only when they are mauled by
life. For most people, maturity will not happen without knowing sadness
and pain. Otherwise they never understand what is happening with them
and with anybody else around them.
In yoga, in spirituality, depression is handled at the
level of the body, mind and the energies. If the necessary balance and
vibrancy is brought about in the physical, mental and energy bodies, to
be blissful is very natural. In a blissful being, depression can never exist.
