Repression and Control

 

Photo Credit: Medical News Today

Repression and Control

There is a subtle difference between repression and control. Repression is not having understanding of what one is doing; one simply represses things. Control is a little more intellectual; we feel convinced that this is the right thing to do, so we control.

We are not repressed but we are controlled. Intellectually we understand what is right and what is wrong, so we do what is right. With the passage of time this becomes our way of life. That’s why we are not flowing.

And unless we dance, unless we go wholeheartedly with our energy – even if it takes a wild form, even if it becomes almost maddening – we will not grow. One has to go with it totally, and one day a different kind of discipline arises. There are three different things: one is repression without even intellectual understanding; another is control with intellectual understanding; the third is discipline with spiritual awareness… and that is what is needed. We substitute it by control or many more people substitute it by simply repressing.

We are in the second category, the controlled category. It is better than people who live with repression but one step more is needed: we have to drop control and we have to come to an inner discipline – which is not a kind of control at all. It is simply our awareness: we know and our act follows our knowing. The act is spontaneous like our shadow follows us; it follows your knowing.

Once we start going beyond the boundaries we start expanding. That’s what expansion of consciousness is, and that’s what man is always hankering for. There is no need to be small; we can be the whole! Even the sky is not the limit: we can be as big as the whole of existence, but for that great courage is needed.

We live in an extremely shrunken state with small boundaries which we hide behind. Come out! Those caves will not give us light; in those caves light never enters. Come out in the open! So first, relax control; second, whenever we feel a boundary try to go at least one step beyond it; and third, don’t be afraid of the wild and the mad.

If a person remains afraid of the wild and the mad, he cannot expand. And the fear is unnecessary… in fact the fear is very dangerous. If a person remains afraid of the wild and the animal and the mad, then all madness goes on accumulating. We keep on piling up layer upon layer - one day it will be too much.

One day it will be so much that we will not be able to control it. It will explode and then we will be nowhere. That’s how madness happens. Madness happens because of the control. These people in the madhouses are extremely controlled people: their madness is the conclusion of their whole life’s effort.

A man who allows madness, allows wildness, never accumulates any madness and is out of danger. Rather than having it wholesale it is better to have it retail. It is very good to be angry sometimes rather than not being angry for ten years and then one day just exploding in violence!