her Mother Nature, she’s a very severe mother, not an ordinary one, and will not
exempt us from any of our wrong deeds.
Duḥkha ajñāna anantaphalāḥ (II.34). What follows in the end? Great sorrow follows.
Sorrow follows because a wrongdoing produces a samskara in the mind, and we
become susceptible to doing it, and then repeating it. Once we have done it, the mind
develops an inclination towards the repetition of that action. This is a peculiarity of
the mind. Any habit that is repeated becomes second nature, and we become that.
Then we need not contemplate doing it; we will be forced to do it. Just as a river
inclines towards a depth, we will be inclined towards this action because once we
have done it, a second time we have done it, a third time we have done it, and now
also we will do it.
Intellectual inhibition of these vrittis may not succeed always when there is an
emotional pressure from behind on account of the samskaras already ingrained in
the mind due to the action that has been perpetrated. Hence, sorrow will follow
sorrow, one after the other. Ananta duhkha will follow; endless pain will be the result
if a proper check is not imposed upon the vrittis at the proper time, in the proper
measure.
Ajñāna anantaphalāḥ (II.34). Ignorance will also get thickened by the repetition of
these deeds because the knowledge of right, or rectitude of righteousness, will get
obscured by a continuous perpetration of these actions. The conscience will become
blunt after some time. A cannibal has no conscience, we may say. He cannot feel that
he is doing something wrong, because there is no conscience at all. It is absent. He is
doing action like an automaton. What conscience has a tiger when it pounces upon a
cow? It is acting upon its instinct, which is its own nature. Likewise, this impulse will
become one’s own nature, like the animals, and there is no question of checking it
afterwards.
The impossibility of checking the instinct arises on account of a total ignorance of the
law of nature that is behind it. It is a total ignorance, completely obliterated. It is not
there at all, even in the least degree. We cannot know what is happening and why we
have done it. This is how the instincts work. Instincts are the vehemence with which
the personality acts or reacts on the basis of a total ignorance of the ultimate law of
things. And, the sutra says that the sorrow must continue endlessly. We cannot say
when it will end, because later on it will become a kind of vicious circle that cannot be
broken. A habit is the seed that we sow for a vicious circle. However much we may try
to escape from it, we will not succeed, because habit is nothing but a natural
inclination of our whole personality. How can we change an inclination which is our
own nature?
Therefore, the advice here is that this pratipaksa bhavana method should be
practised every day with a positivity of background behind it rather than making it
merely a negative check that is imposed upon the instinct. Though in the beginning it
looks like a negative check, later on it should become a positivity of approach. In the
beginning it is a law—thou shalt not. But, that is not the whole of religion. Religion
does not consist merely in ‘thou shalt nots’. It is only a beginning stage which has to
lead later on to a positive approach—to an understanding of the unitary nature of
things. Love is positive, while non-hatred may be regarded as its negative aspect. It is
not enough if we merely not hate, or if there is only an absence of hatred; there