Yoga says it is ignorance if you think you are alone

• Yoga says if only we could see that we are not more than a bird on a big aeroplane. In a river, two straws were floating. The river’s flow was rapid and one straw was trying to fight against the river’s current. He was trying to make a dam in the river to stop it. It was not making any difference, he was being carried along. He was only a straw.

• The river had no information that some straw has thought of making a dam. The river had not even the knowledge that some straw was fighting. How could the river know? The river was running towards the ocean. That straw was being carried along and was fighting.

• He had another companion straw who had left himself straight in the river and who was thinking that he was helping the river. He was thinking that the river was flowing rapidly with his help. It made no difference. The river got no help. Both straws could not make any difference to the river, neither the one who was fighting, nor the one who was helping. But it was making a difference to the straws.

• The one who was fighting was dying unnecessarily; the one who was flowing was dancing on the stream. Both were flowing – one fighting, dying, distressed, and one rejoicing with delight.

• But Yoga says, ”Do not become either of the two straws because the illusion of each of them is connected with one side.” Just think, the river is flowing, neither do you have to make it flow, nor do you have to stop it. And become part of the river.

• Do not remain straws, become waves. Then you will become weightless. Then there will be no weight. The whole universe is a family of energy. In that, we are not more than a wave. All is connected. Hence what happens here, spreads all over, and what happens all over, also reaches here. In this universe, whatever is happening, we are all participants in it. Sannyasin and politician, they are not separate.

• If anyone is a thief, I am responsible. It must be that my evil may have helped him to become a thief. And if anyone is a murderer, I am responsible. If anyone is a saint, I am responsible. It means there is no question of any responsibility because whatever is happening anywhere, I am a participant in it. And then there is no evil, then we are not alone.

• In the West there is a new word – ’alienated’. Everyone is feeling that I am alone, with no companion. At one time wives were under the illusion that husbands were companions. Now all illusions are breaking. The wife in not certain that her husband is a companion. The husband is not certain that his wife is a companion.

• When the husband is making love, even then it is not certain that in his mind he is not filling out the form for divorce. Nothing is certain. The son is not certain of the father. The father is not certain that his sons will be in his company for long. Nothing is certain. All is uncertain and everyone has become alone.

• Hence there is so much anxiety and so much boredom in the West. And everyone is escaping to the mountains and everyone is becoming mad. Here also the same is happening. Yoga says it is ignorance if you think you are alone; it is nonsense. Every single individual is connected. The day one understands that I am one with the whole, immediately all the burden of his worries simply disappear. This is the fourth sutra.