Fast Asleep while being Awake

 

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Fast Asleep while being Awake

We think we are awake as we go through life more or less in a mechanical manner – as Heraclitus says, “fast asleep even while awake”. We actually sleep when we sleep, but we are also asleep while we are awake – what does this mean? We appear to be wide awake, deep within we continue to sleep.

Even now, we are dreaming within – thousands of thoughts continue to run through our minds unconsciously – we are not aware of what we are doing, we are not aware of who we are. We function just like people who are asleep. Somnambulism – people do things while asleep with their eyes wide open – get up and go for a walk, take something from the fridge and eat and so on – next morning, when we ask them why they had got up at night, they don’t remember a thing. At the most, if they try to remember it, they will see that they had a dream that night, that they woke up, they went into the kitchen. But it was a dream, at the most; even that is difficult to remember.

Awareness means that whatever is happening in the moment is happening with complete consciousness; we are present there. If we are present when anger is happening, anger cannot happen. It can happen only when we are fast asleep. When we are present, immediate, transformation starts in our being, because when we are present, aware, many things are simply not possible. All that is called sin is not possible if we are aware. So, in fact, there is only one sin and that is being unaware.

If we are alert, many things simply drop; we need not drop them. In awareness certain things are not possible. We cannot fall in love if we are aware; then falling in love is a sin. We can love but it will not be like a fall, it will be like a rise. It is a falling; we are falling, we are not rising. When we are aware, falling is not possible — not even in love. With awareness, it is impossible; we rise in love. And rising in love is a totally different phenomenon from falling in love. Falling in love is a dream state. We can see from their eyes because their eyes have a sleepiness. People who rise in love are totally different. We can see they are no more in a dream, they are facing the reality and they are growing through it.

Love is beautiful when we rise through it, and love becomes dirty and ugly when we fall through it. And sooner or later we will find that it proves poisonous, it becomes a bondage. We have been caught in it, our freedom has been crushed, our wings have been cut; now we are nor free any more. Falling in love we become a possession: we possess and we allow somebody to possess us. We become a thing, and we try to convert the other person we have fallen in love with into a thing.

When we become aware our love transcends the physical, possessive dimension and we love all beings, both sentient and insentient – it keeps flowing through our being and others sense this selfless love energy.