Awareness and Sin

 

Photo Credit: Cru

Awareness and Sin

Greek philosopher Heraclitus touches the deepest problem of man, that is – fast asleep even while awake! We sleep when we sleep, but we also sleep while we are awake. What does this mean? This is what Heraclitus says. We look wide awake, but that is only appearance; deep within us the sleep continues.

Even right now we are dreaming within: a thousand and one thoughts continue and we are not conscious of what is happening, we are not aware of what we are doing, we are not aware of who we are. We move as people move in their sleep. We live in a world of illusion within an illusion so far removed from ‘reality’!

Many people have committed crimes; many murderers when in the court say that they don’t know, they don’t remember ever having done such a thing. It is not that they are deceiving the court — no. Now psychoanalysts have come to find that they are not deceiving, they are not being untrue; they are absolutely truthful. They did commit the murder — when they were fast asleep, they did commit it — as if in a dream. This sleep is deeper than ordinary sleep. This sleep is like being drunk: one can move a little, one can do a little, one can be a little aware also — but drunk. We don’t know what is exactly happening. What have we done in our past? Can we exactly recollect it, why we did what we did? What happened? Were we alert when it was happening? We fall in love not knowing why; we become angry not knowing why. We find excuses, of course; we rationalise whatever we do — but rationalisation is not awareness.

Awareness means that whatsoever is happening in the moment is happening with complete consciousness; you 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 unawareness.

The original word sin means to miss. It doesn’t mean to commit something wrong; it simply means to miss, to be absent. The Hebrew root for the word sin means to miss. That exists in a few English words: misconduct, misbehaviour. To miss means not to be there, doing something without being present there — this is the only sin.

And the only virtue: while we are doing something we are fully alert — what is also called self-remembering, being rightly mindful, or being in awareness. To be there! — that’s all that is needed, nothing more. We need not change anything, and even if we try to change, we cannot.