63. I will not come Alive, for I will Die!

When a situation makes you laugh your head off, or cry your heart out, or burn in rage, or sink in fear you will try to walk out of the situation saying "I cannot take this anymore". And if you do not or cannot avoid the situation, you will either faint, or lose mental balance, or perhaps even die. The system will break in some way.

When life intensity, whatever its form, crosses a certain limit, you can no more bear it, even if it is in a desirable form (as in joy and laughter). That means presently, you cannot experience life beyond a certain level of intensity; if you try to go beyond it, if you get too overwhelmed, things get dangerous.

When more aliveness, even through pleasant means, is thus perceived as danger or death, what will the human mind unconsciously do? It will make sure that you will live in low voltage, in the safe zone content with tidbits ("choti choti khushiyaan"). Although we claim to want to 'live life fully', all our attempts will be to somehow manage to live without becoming too alive; to live avoiding life. Until one is truly conscious of this irony, it continues no matter which area of life one is in, including Yoga. Life within will temporarily and apparently settle.

But when you become conscious of this limitation upon you, factually and not just as an idea, can you still accept this and settle for it? Does not your innate nature say "I want more" as it has been doing all along with everything? When they said 'seek God', 'seek Enlightenment' etc. what was it they were referring to? Some esoteric entity other than life? Could it be this very thing we are avoiding all the time — to be blazingly Alive, but still be Stable?; to be blissfully intense just by ourselves without any external stimulus?; to be an explosion within, and still not break physically or mentally? Could it be that when deluged by aliveness, we die not physically, but absolutely, and thus really live life totally?

Robert Ingersoll (an American agnostic): "We have an orange here, and we want to squeeze all the juice out of it" [indicating that a worldly man lives life fully, and there is no need of any spiritual pursuit]

Swami Vivekananda: "I have some fruit, and I too want to squeeze out the juice. Our difference lies in the choice of the fruit. You want an orange, and I prefer a mango [indicating that no pulp is wasted]... Your study is the manifestation of life, mine is the life itself"