Remain detached

     You can start it as you are; no other prerequisite is needed. The method is simple: you are surrounded by persons, things, phenomena – every moment something is around you – but because you are not alert, you are not there. Everything is there but you are fast asleep. Things move around you, persons move around you, events move around you, but you are not there. Or, you are asleep.  So whatsoever happens in your surroundings becomes a master, becomes a force over you; you are dragged by it. You are not only impressed, conditioned by it, you are dragged by it. Anything can catch you, and you will follow it. Somebody passes – you look, the face is beautiful –and you are carried away. You are not powerful. Everything else is more powerful than you. Anything changes you. Your moods, your being, your mind, depend on other things. Objects influence you.

     This sutra says that enlightened persons and unenlightened persons live in the same world. He moves among the same objects but he moves in a different way. He is his own master. His subjectivity remains aloof and untouched. That is the secret. Nothing can impress him; nothing from the outside can condition him; nothing can overpower him. He remains detached; he remains himself.

     There are three steps of growth. Firstly, the situation is the master; you are just dragged by it. You believe that ‘you are’, but you are not that of unenlightened. Secondly, ‘you are’, and the situation cannot drag you, the situation cannot influence you because you have become a will, you are integrated and crystallized a person yet unenlightened – he has to be alert, he has to do something to be alert, he is the  seeker, the SADHAK. Thirdly, you start influencing the situation: just by your being there, the situation changes a  state of the SIDDHA, the enlightened one. He has become so alert that your reality also cannot influence him. For an enlightened person, things are there and he is there but there is no bridge between him and the thing. The bridge has broken. He is totally free. He remains in the subjective mood, he remains within himself, he remains centered in consciousness. Remaining in the subjective mood has to be practised. As many opportunities as you can get, try it. And every moment there is an opportunity, every single moment there is an opportunity.