"Device Of Fate"

    IF WE ARE ALL ACTORS IN A PLAY THAT IS ALREADY WRITTEN, HOW CAN MEDITATION TRANSFORM US WITHOUT THE PLAY ITSELF CONTAINING A CHAPTER FOR OUR TRANSFORMATION AT A SPECIFIC TIME? AND IF SUCH A CHAPTER IS THERE ALREADY WAITING TO UNFOLD AT ITS DUE TIME, WHY MEDITATE? WHY MAKE ANY EFFORT AT ALL?

    This is the same; it contains the same fallacy. We are not saying that everything is determined. We are not proposing this as a theory to explain the universe. It is a device. 

    India has always been working with this device of fate. It is not meant by this that everything is predetermined. This is not meant at all! The only reason to propose this is that if you take it that everything is determined, everything becomes a dream. If you take things in this way, if you believe this way – that everything is predetermined; that, for example, you are going to die on a particular day – EVERYTHING becomes a dream. It is not determined, it is not fixed! No one is that much interested in you. The universe is completely unaware of you and when you are going to die. It is so useless a thing. Your death is irrelevant to the universe.

    Do not think yourself so important that the whole universe is determining your day of death – the time, the minute, the moment – no! You are NOT the center. It makes no difference to the universe whether you are or you are not. But this fallacy goes on working in the mind. It is created in childhood and it becomes part of the unconscious.

    A child is born. He cannot give anything to the world, but he has to take many things. He cannot repay, he cannot give back anything. He is so impotent – just helpless. He will need food, he will need love, he will need shelter, he will need warmth. Everything is to be supplied.

    A child is born absolutely helpless – particularly man’s child. No animal is so helpless. That is why no animal creates a family – there is no need. But man’s child is so helpless, so absolutely helpless, he cannot exist without there being a mother to protect, a father, a family, a society. He cannot exist alone. He would die immediately.

    He is so much dependent. He will need love, he will need food, he will need everything, and he will demand everything. And the mother will supply, the father will supply, the family will supply. The child begins to think that he is the center of the whole world. Everything is to be supplied to him; he has but to demand. Just to demand is enough, no other effort is needed.

    So the child begins to think of himself as the center, and everything just goes on around him, for him. The whole existence seems to be created for him. The whole existence was waiting for him to come and demand. And everything will be fulfilled. This is a necessity, that his demands should be fulfilled; otherwise he will die. But this necessity becomes very dangerous.

    He grows up with this attitude that ”I am the center.” By and by he will demand more. A child’s demands are very simple; they can be supplied. But as he will grow his demands will become more and more complex. Sometimes it will not be possible to supply them, to fulfill them. Sometimes it may be absolutely impossible. He may demand the moon, or anything.

    The more he will grow, the more the demands will become complex, impossible. Then frustration sets in, and the child begins to think that now he is being deceived. He has taken it for granted that he was the center of the world. Now problems will be there, and by and by he will be dethroned. When he becomes an adult, he will be completely dethroned. Then he will know that he is not the center. But deep down the unconscious mind goes on thinking in terms of him being the center.

    People are asking whether their fate is determined. They are asking whether they are so important, so significant for this universe that their fate must be determined beforehand. ”What is my purpose?” they ask. ”Why was I created?” This childhood nonsense that you are the center creates these questions like, ”For what purpose am I created?”

    You are not created for any purpose. And it is good that you are not created for any purpose; otherwise you would be a machine. A machine is created for some purpose. Man is not created for some purpose, for something – no! Man is just the outflowing, overflowing creation. Everything simply is. Flowers are there and stars are there and you are there. Everything is just an overflowing, a joy, a celebration of existence without any purpose.

    But this theory of fate, of predetermination, is what creates problems, because we take it as a theory. We think that everything is determined, but nothing is determined. However, this technique uses this as a device. When we say everything is determined, this is not said to you as a theory. The purpose is this: that if you take life as a drama, predetermined, then it becomes a dream. For example, if I knew that this day, this night, I was going to talk to you, and it is predetermined what words I should speak on this day, and if it is so fixed that nothing can be changed – that I cannot utter a single new word – then suddenly I am not related at all with this whole process because then I am not the source of action. 

    If everything is determined and if every word is to be spoken by the universe itself or by the divine or by whatsoever name you choose, then I am no more the source of it. Then I can become an observer – a simple observer.

    If you take life as predetermined then you can observe it, then you are not involved. If you are a failure, it was predetermined; if you are a success, it was predetermined. If both are predetermined, both become of equal value – synonymous. Then one is Ravan, one is Ram, and everything is predetermined. Ravan need not feel guilty, Ram need not feel superior. Everything is predetermined, so you are just actors, you are just on a stage playing a role. 

    To give you the feeling that you are playing a role, to give you the feeling that this is only a predetermined pattern that you are fulfilling, to give you this feeling so that you can transcend it, this is the device. It is very difficult because we are so much accustomed to thinking of fate as a theory – not only as a theory, but as a law. We cannot understand this attitude of taking these laws and theories as devices.