Illness Lies in Grasping

1 week ago By Yogi Anoop

Illness Lies in Grasping

“I have given up everything”—this sentence sounds simple, yet it is deeply deceptive. For in most cases, the one who says it has not truly given up anything; they have only changed what they are holding onto. Earlier they were holding the world; now they are holding a guru or God. The disease lies in holding itself—changing the object does not change the disease.

When a monkey lets go of one branch and grabs another, we do not call that renunciation. Its intention is not to let go; its intention is to grasp the next branch. Exactly the same happens with human beings. One keeps holding onto some part of the body—pulling at it constantly; or clings to a single thought, a single emotion, a single belief, and then holds onto it for days, months, years.

What is strange is that one does not even realize that one is holding on. On the surface, one keeps acting as if everything has been surrendered to God. This very acting becomes the greatest illusion. And within that illusion, how much suffering is endured—no one keeps account of it.

I say—if you truly wish to let go, then leave your sorrow and pain also with that same God. But even there, the mind does not let go; even there it merely pleads. It says, “O God, take this,” yet inwardly it continues to clutch it. This is why the entire process of letting go happens only in words, not in existence.

You hold onto the words of the guru day and night. You have turned them into a chant. Is this not grasping? In fact, this is the subtlest and the hardest form of grasping. The guru said, “Leave everything to God,” and you ended up holding onto God Himself. Now, day and night, you try to keep that word running continuously, like an automatic chant. You feel that you have set the process on autopilot, but in truth this is even more dangerous—because by making it automatic, you have rendered it immune to awareness.

Now even the repetition of the word “God” will begin to create suffocation at the doors of the mind. Because faith dominates, one does not doubt this repetition; yet the real cause is simply the mind’s habit of repetition itself.

The truth is that you do not even consider this to be grasping, because a veil lies over your eyes. If you had truly let go of everything, then why repeat it day and night? Why rehearse it again and again? The underlying tendency may be that you are trying to pacify your fear through repetition.

One who truly lets go becomes at ease. After letting go, repetition necessarily comes to an end. Nothing moves in such a mind—no thought, no fear, no hope, no grasping—because after releasing the grip, whatever experience happens is exactly what one is experiencing.

The contentment that arises from letting go is itself the sign of liberation. In that contentment there is no desire to gain anything, because nothing remains missing within. Contentment itself means being released, being free of burden.

Look at your illnesses. And if you look deeply, you will find that the greatest illness is not of the body, but of misunderstanding. It is that misunderstanding which fashions disease in the body. Until that misunderstanding is understood, no medicine, no method, no prayer will truly heal anything.

Understanding itself is the treatment. And every renunciation practiced without understanding—becomes nothing but a new form of grasping.

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