The Mind: Prejudice and Identity

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The Mind: Prejudice and Identity

If your mind or your intelligence does not get entangled with any identity including your body, including your own thought process, including your own emotion, spiritual process is very natural. If your intelligence is not entangled with anything, it’s very natural for your intelligence to inquire and open up different dimensions of life. You identify yourself with something, in search of security, in search of safety, in search of self-preservation. Otherwise, it’s not doing anything else pleasing. It gives you some sense of false sense of belonging, which you’ll anyway shed someday. The moment you’re identified with something that you’re not, your intelligence is freaked. It will go in cycles around that. Whatever you’re identified with, your intelligence functions only around that. Yes?

If you identify yourself with your religion, your nationality, your family, it works only around that. It’s a certain type of prejudice, isn’t it? A prejudiced mind can not see. A prejudiced mind can not reveal the reality of life that’s all it is. When I say prejudiced, it’s on many different levels. “No, no. I am very broad-minded. I am not prejudiced.” Well, you have a broad prejudice. Your mind is functioning with a certain identity. Once there is an identity, it is prejudiced.

On a certain day, a man died, and he went to Heaven. There, God himself opened the gates of Heaven, welcomed him, and God said “See, I have a few jobs to finish in first.” If you could just mind the gate for me for a few minutes, I’ll just come back.” He felt really great. You know, substituting for God, that’s nice. Substituting for God, filling in for God is not a small honor, isn’t it? Keeping the gates, but it’s okay. You’re doing God’s job. He was waiting for something to happen and, to his distress and amazement, his wife appeared at the gates. He said “What are you doing here? This is not a local bar or something. How did you follow me?” She said “Well, I was just driving back from the funeral, I crashed the car, and here I am.”

Then, when he entered, God had put a test for him. When he came to the gates, God had asked him, “See, my son, you have come here. That’s fine, but you have to spell a word, if you have to, into the Heaven,” so he had thought “Oh my God, he’s this old man … a school teacher. He’s asking for a spelling. Is there a damn spelling test even here?” The god said “Don’t you worry, it’s a simple word.” “What’s the word, father?” God said “You have to spell the world ‘love,'” so then he thought … you know, he had told many people “I love you,” but he had never written a letter, so he thought “L-U, L-V, L-O-V-E?” God said “You passed, come in.” He said “Okay, somehow I got in.” Now, when his wife came, he said “Okay, you have come here, but unless you spell a word, you can’t get in.” She said, “Oh, come on. If you can spell the damn word and get in, can’t I do it? Tell me, what’s the damn word?” He looked at her and said “Czechoslovakia.”

The mind is a very prejudiced thing. It all depends what you’re identified with, you know? Whatever you are identified with, your mind rotates around that. Right now, you’re identified with many things that you are not. Many. For example, if I say … I’m speaking. As I’m speaking … suddenly, if I pick up this glass and say “This is my glass.” You’d think “Okay, that Guru has a problem, but it’s all right. Everybody says he’s wise. Let’s listen.” After some time, I say “This is me.” Then, you say “Let’s go. Enough. This is too much.” Please see this is what has happened to you.

For example, food appears on your plate. You say “This is my food,” you eat it, and then you say “This I me.” Is it not so? What you call is your body is just a heap of food or no? Yes? It’s the food that you’ve eaten, isn’t it? What you accumulate can be yours. I will not dispute it for now, but it can never be you. Isn’t it so? Yes? Whatever you accumulate, it can be yours, but it can never become you. Isn’t it? Did you accumulate your body of a period of time? Yes or no? Yes or no? Did you accumulate your mind over a period of time? Yes? But both these things, right now, you call as myself, and it doesn’t stop there. It just extends into many things. Your home, your car, your things, your money, your children, your husband, your wife, a million other things. Your religion, your ideas, your ideologies, everything. You’re identified with too many things which you’re not.

Once you’re like this, your intelligence is freaked. It’s a wonky intelligence. It’s lost it’s penetration. It simply repeats all nonsense. Have you heard of [speaks Indian]? It was a gesture in Krishnadevaraya’s cult. Similar things happened also, but we will stick to the story. It so happened when Krishnadevaraya was young, because of some political reasons, his mother had to leave a few month old Krishnadevaraya with another woman for care and go somewhere. For more than eighteen months, the child was separated from the mother, but he was under the care of another woman who also had a child who is a few months older than Krishnadevaraya, so this woman nursed Krishnadevaraya as her own child. She breastfed him, and he grew up. Later on, his mother came back, took him, and then he became a great emperor.

This boy, who was that woman’s son, Krishnadevaraya always treated him as a brother, as an elder brother, because they drank milk from the same mother. “So we are brothers,” that’s how he considered this. As an expression of his gratitude, he gave away a few villages to this boy, and he said “Okay, you make your own kingdom.” This village bumpkin got these few things, and within a few years, he squandered everything and lost everything and, again, back to square one. Krishnadevaraya went on to become a great emperor. Then, one day, this man, who was there at that time thought “My younger brother has become a great emperor and I am but nothing. Let me go there and see if I could get something out of this,” and he went.

Krishnadevaraya welcomed him as you would welcome an elder brother. He gave him all the necessary honors, all the necessary hospitality, and gave him a place in the court. He just looked at this. Krishnadevaraya had gathered a scintillating alley of talent in his court. He looked at all this, all kinds of stuff going on, concerts going on on a daily basis; he was just amazed. Tenali Rama, such a brilliant assistant. Then, he lamented with Krishnadevaraya. “You are so successful. You have become a great emperor because you have such intelligent people around you. If only I had people like you around me, I would also become a great emperor. Particularly this Tenali Rama. If I had someone like him with me, I would also become a great emperor.”

So Krishnadevaraya felt bad about this and he asked “What shall I do my brother?” He said “If you can give this Tenali Rama to me, I will go and build a great empire of my own.” So, immediately, Krishnadevaraya called Tenali Rama and ordered “You must go with my elder brother. He wants you,” so Tenali Rama said “Oh, your elder brother wants me? Why? I can send my elder brother with him.” That looked like a good idea for Krishnadevaraya because he’s not eager to lose Tenali Rama, but at the same time, his elder brother is asking. He doesn’t know what to do. “Oh, you really have an elder brother? I did not know.” “No, I have an elder brother. Let us send my elder brother with your elder brother.”

So ask this man, “So Tenali Rama’s elder brother is willing to come with you. Is that okay?” So this fool thought “If Tenali Rama is so intelligent, his elder brother.” He said fine. The next day, he is to leave, and a huge send-off has been organized, so with the full assembly of the court, everybody is assembled, and Tenali Rama came with a bull on a rope. He walked into the court. Krishnadevaraya saw this and asked “What is this? Why have you brought this bull into the court?” “No, my Lord, this is my elder brother.” He said “What nonsense, what is this you’re trying to do?” “No, we drank milk from the same mother.”

Once you get identified with something that you are not, your intelligence is no good. It just becomes repetitive, so this repetitive intelligence is what we are referring to as karma. When we see somebody going through certain patterns, irrespective of the situations in which they exist … the sun came up wonderfully this morning, but somebody is miserable. Flowers are blossoming, weather is good, everything is great, but somebody is miserable. Then, we say “Oh, this is his karma.” Why we are saying this is “This is his own doing because he has set up patterns which are just repetitive. He’s not able to enjoy the sunrise. He’s not able to enjoy the beautiful breeze. He’s not able to enjoy the fragrance of the flowers. His karma is going on. What is going on in his head is what rules him. This is his karma.”

Karma means action. Your action, or in other words, your experience of life is one hundred percent your doing, nobody else’s doing.