Intro to the Path of Yoga

Stillness

Discipline means the capacity to be, the capacity to know, the capacity to learn. We must understand these three things.

The capacity to be. All the yoga postures are not really concerned with the body, they are concerned with the capacity to be. Patanjali says if you can sit silently without moving your body for few hours, you are growing in the capacity to be. Why you move? You cannot sit without moving even for few seconds. Your body starts moving. Somewhere you feel itching; the legs go dead; many things start happening. These are just excuses for you to move.

You are not a master. You cannot say to the body, "Now for one hour I will not move." The body will revolt immediately. Immediately it will force you to move, to do something, and it will give reasons: "You have to move because an insect is biting." You may not find the insect when you look. You are not a being, you are a trembling - a continuous hectic activity. Patanjali's asanas, postures, are concerned not really with any kind of physiological training, but an inner training of being, just to be - without doing anything, without any movement, without any activity, just remain. That remaining will help centering.

If you can remain in one posture, the body will become a slave; it will follow you. And the more the body follows you, you will have a greater being within you, a stronger being within you. And, remember, if the body is not moving your mind cannot move, because mind and body are not two things. They are two poles of one phenomenon. You are not body and mind, you are body-mind. Your personality is psychosomatic - body-mind both. The mind is the most subtle part of the body. Or you can say the reverse, that body is the most gross part of the mind.

So whatsoever happens in the body happens in the mind, and the vice versa: whatsoever happens in the mind happens in the body. If the body is non-moving and you can attain a posture, if you can say to the body "Keep quiet," the mind will remain silent. Really, the mind starts moving and tries to move the body, because if the body moves then the mind can move. In a nonmoving body, the mind cannot move; it needs a moving body.

If the body is non-moving, the mind is non-moving, you are centered. This non-moving posture is not a physiological training only. It is just to create a situation in which centering can happen, in which you can become disciplined. When you are, when you have become centered, when you know what it means to be, then you can learn, because then you will be humble. Then you can surrender. Then no false ego will cling to you because once centered you know all egos are false. Then you can bow down. Then a disciple is born.

A disciple is a great achievement. Only through discipline you will become a disciple. Only through being centered you will become humble, you will become receptive, you will become empty, and the guru, the Master, can pour himself into you. In your emptiness, in your silence, he can come and reach to you. Communication becomes possible.

A disciple means one who is centered, humble, receptive, open, ready, alert, waiting, prayerful. In yoga, the Master is very, very important, absolutely important, because only when you are in a close proximity of a being who is centered your own centering will happen.

That is the meaning of satsang. You have heard the word satsang. It is totally wrongly used. Satsang means in close proximity of the truth; it means near the truth, it means near a Master who has become one with the truth - just being near him, open, receptive and waiting. If your waiting has become deep, intense, a deep communion will happen.

The Master is not going to do anything. He is simply there, available. If you are open, he will flow within you. This flowing is called satsang. With a Master you need not learn anything else. If you can learn satsang, that's enough - if you can just be near him without asking, without thinking, without arguing: just present there, available, so the being of the Master can flow in you. And being can flow. It is already flowing. Whenever a person achieves integrity, his being becomes a radiation.

He is flowing. Whether you are there to receive or not, that is not the point. He flows like a river. If you are empty like a vessel, ready, open, he will flow in you.

A disciple means one who is ready to receive, who has become a womb - the Master can penetrate into him. This is the meaning of the word satsang. It is not basically a discourse; satsang is not a discourse. Discourse may be there, but discourse is just an excuse. You are here and I will talk on Patanjali's sutras. That is just an excuse. If you are really here, then the discourse, the talk, becomes just an excuse for your being here, for you to be here. And if you are really here, satsang starts. I can flow, and that flow is deeper than any talk, deeper than any communication through language, deeper than than any intellectual meeting with you.

While your mind is engaged, if you are a disciple, if you are a disciplined being, your mind is engaged in listening to me, your being can be in satsang. Then your head is occupied, your heart is open. Then on a deeper level, a meeting happens. That meeting is satsang, and everything else is just an excuse, just to find ways to be close to the Master.

Closeness is all, but only a disciple can be close. Anybody and everybody cannot be close. Closeness means a loving trust. Why we are not close? Because there is fear. Too close may be dangerous, too open may be dangerous, because you become vulnerable and then it will be difficult to defend. So just as a security measure we keep everybody at a distance, never allow to enter a certain distance.

Everybody has a territory around him. Whenever somebody enters your territory you become afraid. Everybody has a space to protect. You are sitting alone in your room. A stranger enters in the room. Just watch when you become really scared. There is a point. If he enters that point, beyond that point, you will become scared, you will be afraid. A sudden trembling will be felt. Beyond a certain territory he can move.

To be close means now no territory of your own. To be close means to be vulnerable, to be close means whatsoever happens you are not thinking in terms of security.

A disciple can be close for two reasons. One: he is a centered one; he is trying to be centered. A person who is trying even to be centered becomes unafraid; he becomes fearless. He has something which cannot be killed. You don't have anything, hence the fear. You are a crowd. The crowd can disperse any moment. You don't have something like a rock which will be there whatsoever happens. Without a rock, without a foundation you are existing - a house of cards, bound to be always in fear. Any wind, any breeze even, can destroy you, so you have to protect yourself.

Because of this constant protection, you cannot love, you cannot trust, you cannot be friendly. You may have many friends but there is no friendship, because friendship needs closeness. You may have wives and husbands and so-called lovers, but there is no love, because love needs closeness, love needs trust. You may have gurus, Masters, but there is no disciplehood because you cannot allow yourself to be totally given to somebody's being, nearness to his being, closeness to his being, so that he can overpower you, overflood you.

A disciple means a seeker who is not a crowd, who is trying to be centered and crystallized, at least trying, making efforts, sincere efforts to become individual, to feel his being, to become his own master. All discipline of yoga is an effort to make you a master of yourself. As you are, you are just a slave of many, many desires. Many, many masters are there, and you are just a slave - and pulled in many directions.

Yoga is discipline. It is an effort on your part to change yourself. Many other things have to be understood. Yoga is not a therapy. In the West many psychological therapies are prevalent now, and many western psychologists think that yoga is also a therapy. It is not! It is a discipline. And what is the difference? This is the difference: a therapy is needed if you are ill, a therapy is needed if you are diseased, a therapy is needed if you are pathological. A discipline is needed even when you are healthy. Really, when you are healthy only a discipline can help then.

It is not for pathological cases. Yoga is for those who are completely healthy as far as medical science is concerned, normal. They are not schizophrenic; they are not mad they are not neurotic. They are normal people, healthy people with no particular pathology. Still, they become aware that whatsoever is called normality is futile, whatsoever is called health is of no use. Something more is needed, something greater is needed, something holier and whole is needed.

Therapies are for ill people. Therapies can help you to come to yoga, but yoga is not a therapy. Yoga is for a higher order of health, a different order of health - a different type of being and wholeness. Therapy can, at the most, make you adjusted. Freud says we cannot do more. We can make you an adjusted, normal member of the society. But if the society itself is pathological, then what? And it is! The society itself is ill. A therapy can make you normal in the sense that you are adjusted to the society, but the society itself is ill!

So sometimes it happens that in an ill society a healthy person is thought to be ill. A Jesus is thought to be ill, and every effort is done to make him adjusted. And when it is found that he is a hopeless case, then he is crucified. When it is found nothing can be done, this man is incurable, then he is crucified. The society is ill itself because society is nothing but your collective. If all the members are ill, the society is ill, and every member has to be adjusted to it.

Yoga is not therapy; yoga is not trying in any way to make you adjusted to the society. If you want to define yoga in terms of adjustment, then it is not adjustment with the society, but it is adjustment with existence itself. It is adjustment with the divine!

So it may happen that a perfect yogi may appear mad to you. He may look out of his senses, out of his mind, because now he is in touch with the greater, with a higher mind, higher order of things. He is in touch with the universal mind. It has happened always so: a Buddha, a Jesus, a Krishna, they always look somehow eccentric. They don't belong to us; they seem to be outsiders.

That's why we call them avatars, outsiders. They have come as if from some other planet; they don't belong to us. They may be higher, they may be good, they may be divine, but they don't belong to us. They come from somewhere else. They are not part and parcel of our being, mankind. The feeling has persisted that they are outsiders; they are not. They are the real insiders because they have touched the innermost core of existence. But to us they appear.

If your mind has come to realize that whatsoever you have been doing up to now was just senseless, it was a nightmare at the worst or a beautiful dream at the best then the path of discipline opens before you.

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