The goal has to be in your view from the very beginning. The first step of the journey must be absolutely devoted to the goal, directed to the goal, moving towards the goal. It cannot be the absolute thing in the beginning, neither does Patanjali expect it. You cannot be totally non-attached, but you can try. The very effort will help you.

You will fall many times, you will again and again get attached. And your mind is such that you may even get attached with non-attachment. Your pattern is so unconscious, but effort, conscious effort, will by and by make you alert and aware. And once you start feeling the misery of attachment then there will be less need for the effort, because no one wants to be miserable, no one wants to be unhappy.

We are unhappy because we don’t know what we are doing, but the longing in every human being is for happiness. No one longs for misery; everybody creates misery because we don’t know what we are doing. Or we may be moving in desires towards happiness, but the pattern of our mind is such that we actually move towards misery.

From the very beginning, when a child is born, is brought up, wrong mechanisms are fed into his mind, wrong attitudes are fed. No one is trying to make him wrong, but wrong people are all around. They cannot be anything else, they are helpless.

A child is born without any pattern. Just a deep longing for happiness is there but he doesn’t know how to achieve it; the how is unknown. This much is certain: he knows that happiness is to be attained. He will struggle his whole life but he doesn’t know the means, the methods how it is to be achieved, where it is to be achieved, where he should go to find it. The society teaches him how to achieve happiness, and the society is wrong.

A child wants happiness, but we don’t know how to teach him to be happy. And whatsoever we teach him, it becomes the path towards misery. For example, we teach him to be good. We teach him not to do certain things and to do certain things, without ever thinking, “Is it natural or unnatural?” We say, “Do this, don’t do that.” Our “good” may be unnatural – and if whatsoever we teach as good is unnatural, then we are creating a pattern of misery.

For example, a child is angry and we say, “Anger is bad, don’t be angry.” But anger is natural, and just by saying “Don’t be angry” we are not destroying anger, we are just teaching the child to suppress it. Suppression will become misery because whatsoever is suppressed becomes poisonous. It moves into the very chemicals of the body, it is toxic. And continuously teaching “Don’t be angry” we are teaching him to poison his own system.

One thing we are not teaching him: how not to be angry. We are simply teaching him how to suppress the anger. And we can force him because he is dependent on us. He is helpless; he has to follow us. If we say, “Don’t be angry,” then he will smile – that smile will be false. Inside he is bubbling, inside he is in turmoil, inside there is fire and he is smiling outside.