What is the basis of reaction?

For most people, most of their reactions are just helpless reactions. Many times you tell yourself, “Next time I should not react like this.” But the next time, the reaction gets more violent.

Especially when you go about telling yourself, “I don’t want to react, I don’t want to react,” you become a total reaction.

First of all, why are you reacting? What is the basis of reaction? This reaction is coming in you fundamentally, because you are still a “collection of people.” Please see that you are not an individual, you are a “collection of people” operating in your mind.

Please look sincerely at everything that you know as myself. Your beliefs, your opinions, your likes, your dislikes, everything has been gathered from outside. Even your idea of what is beautiful and what is good has been received from outside.

When you are not an individual, you are naturally a reaction because everything that you have within you is something that you have received from outside.

So the first thing to do is to remove yourself with everything that you are not – to see that you are not this or that.

One day, just sit by yourself and strip yourself of everything you are identified with piece by piece- your education, ideology, home, family and body. Something so tremendous will happen if you do it successfully, that then, you are no longer a reaction.

This process may not be possible for everybody. They need to be supported physically, emotionally and energy wise also. So there is a whole integrated practice, something to do with your mind, body, emotion and energy.

This combination works much better, but if you have a razor sharp mind, you can just sit down and say this is not me, take it away.

This is one of the most ancient spiritual processes, and there are many step-by-step methods to get there. In India we call this “nethi, nethi, nethi” – “this is not it, this is not it, this is not it.” Piece by piece, you take yourself apart.

If you have a sharp, discriminative mind, you can do it that way, but it is better to use all the dimensions which are you.