Into the fantastic

"I am beginning to lose faith in my ability," said the young salesman to his friend.

"Today has been terrible, and not one sale. I have been thrown out of apartments, had doors slammed in my face, been kicked down staircases, had my samples thrown in the gutter, and been shot at by irate householders."

His friend said. "What is your line?"

"Bibles," said the young salesman.

WHY has religion become a dirty word? Why are people full of hatred the moment you mention the word religion, God, or something like that? Why has the whole of humanity become indifferent? Something must have gone wrong somewhere. It has to be understood because this is not an ordinary matter.

Religion is such a significant phenomenon that man cannot live without it. And to live without religion will be living without any purpose. To live without religion will be living without any poetry. To live without religion will be living a drag of a life, a boredom -- what Sartre is saying when he says that 'man is a useless passion'. Without religion he becomes so. Man is not a useless passion, but without religion he certainly becomes so. If there is nothing higher than you then all purpose disappears. If there is nothing higher to reach, higher to be, then your life cannot have any goal, cannot have any meaning. The higher is needed to attract you, to pull you upwards. The higher is needed so that you don't get stuck in the lower.

Without religion life will be like a tree which never comes to flower, a fruitlessness. Yes, without religion man is a useless passion, but with religion man becomes the very flowering of life, as if God is fulfilled in him. So it has to be understood why religion has become such a dirty word.

There are people who are positively against religion. There are people who may not be positively against but who are positively indifferent towards religion. There are people who may not be indifferent to religion but who are only hypocrites who go on pretending that they interested. And these three categories  are all the categories there are. A genuine religious person has disappeared.

What has happened?

First thing, the discovery of a new attitude towards life, the discovery of science -- a new window opened -- and religion could not absorb it. Religion failed to absorb because ordinary religion is incapable of absorbing it.

There are three attitudes towards life possible one is logical, rational, scientific: another is infralogical -- superstitious, irrational; and the third is suprarational -- transcendental. The ordinary religion tried to cling to the infrarational attitude.

That became the suicide; that became the slow poisoning. Religion has committed suicide because it got stuck in the lowest standpoint towards life -- infrarational. What do I mean when I use the word "infrarational"? Just a blind faith. Religion thrived on it up to this [the last] century because there was no competitor, there was not a higher standpoint.

When science came into being, a higher standpoint, more mature, more valid came into existence, there was a conflict. Religion became apprehensive, afraid, because the new attitude was going to destroy it. It became defensive. It became more and more closed. It tried in the beginning -- because it was powerful, it was the establishment -- it tried to destroy the Galilee's of science, not knowing that those destructive steps were going to become suicidal to itself. Religion started a long battle with science -- of course a losing battle.

No lower standpoint can fight with a higher standpoint. The lower standpoint is bound to fail -- today, or tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. The battle at the most can postpone the defeat, but it cannot avoid it. Whenever a higher standpoint is there, the lower has to disappear. It has to change; it has to become more mature.

Religion died because it could not become more mature. Ordinary religion, the so-called religion, has died because it cannot raise itself to Patanjali's level.

Patanjali is religious and scientific. Only the religion of Patanjali can survive.

Less than that won't do now. Man has tasted a higher consciousness through science, more validity about truth. Now man cannot be forced to remain blind and superstitious; it is impossible. Man has come of age. He cannot be forced to be a child in the old ways, and that's what religion has been doing.

It has become a dirty word, naturally.

The second attitude, the logical attitude, is Patanjali's standpoint. He does not ask to believe in anything. He says be experimental. He says that all that is said is hypothetical -- you have to prove it through your experience and there is no other proof. Don't believe in others and don't remain with borrowed knowledge.

Religion died because it became just a borrowed knowledge. Jesus says. "God is," and Christians go on believing. Krishna says, "God is," and Hindus go on believing. And Mohammed says, "God is, and I have encountered him and I have heard his voice." and Mohammedans go on believing. This is borrowed. Patanjali differs there. He says, "Nobody's experience can be yours. You will have to experience. Only then -- and only then -- is truth revealed to you."

I was reading an anecdote:

Two American soldiers were squatting in a dugout somewhere in the Far East waiting for the attack. One of them drew out paper and pencil and started to write a letter, but he broke the point of the pencil. Turning to the other soldier he said, "Hey, Mac, can you lend me your ball pen?" The man handed him a ball pen. "Hey, Mac," said the letter writer, "do you happen to have an envelope?"

The other man found a crumpled envelope in his pocket and handed it over. The writer scribbled on, then he looked up and said, "Got a stamp?" He was given a stamp. He folded the letter, put it into the envelope, stuck the stamp on the top, then he said, "Hey, Mac, what is your girl's address?"

Everything borrowed -- even the girl's address.

The address that you have got of God is borrowed. That God may have been a girlfriend to Jesus, but he is not to you. That God may have been a beloved to Krishna, but he is not to you. Everything borrowed -- the Bible, the Koran, the Geeta. How can one go on deceiving oneself by borrowed experience? One day or other the whole thing will look absurd, meaningless. One day or other the borrowed is going to become a burden. It will cripple you and crush you. This has happened.

Patanjali does not believe in borrowed experience. He does not believe in belief.

That's his scientific attitude. He believes in experience, he believes in experiment.

Patanjali can be understood by Galileo, by Einstein. Galileo and Einstein can be understood by Patanjali. They are fellow travelers.

The future belongs to Patanjali. It does not belong to the Bible, it does not belong to the Koran, it does not belong to the Geeta: it belongs to the YOGA SUTRAS -- because he talks in the same language. Not only that he talks, he belongs to the same dimension, the same understanding of life and the same logical approach.

There is a third standpoint also: that is suprarational. That is the standpoint of Zen. Far away. Very far away in the future. That far away looks like just imagination. There may come a time when Zen may become the world religion, but it is very, very far away, because Zen is suprarational. Let me explain it to you.

The infrarational, that which is below reason, also has an appearance of the suprarational. It looks like it, but it is not like it: it is a counterfeit coin. Both are illogical, but in a tremendously different way. Profound is the difference, vast is the difference. The infrarational is one who lives below reason in the darkness of a blind faith, lives in borrowed knowledge, has not been daring enough to experiment, has not been courageous enough to move into the unknown on his own. His whole life is a borrowed life, inauthentic -- dull, drab, insensitive. The man who has moved to the suprarational is also illogical, irrational, but in a totally different sense his irrationality has absorbed reason and gone higher than it. He has transcended reason.

The man of infrarationality will always be afraid of reason because reason will always create a defensiveness. It will always create a fear. There is the danger if reason succeeds then the faith, then the belief, will have to die -- one clings to it against reason. The man of suprareason is not afraid of rationality. He can delight in it. The higher plane can always accept the lower -- not only accept: it can absorb it: it can nourish on it. It can stand on its shoulders. It can use it. The lower is always afraid of the higher.

The infrarational is a minus thing -- minus reason. The suprarational is a plus thing -- plus reason. The infrarational is faith. The suprarational is trust -- trust through experience. It is not borrowed: but the man of the suprarational has come to understand that life is more than reason, The reason is accepted: there is no denial of it. The reason is good as far as it goes, it has to be used, but life is not finished there. This is not the boundary of life: life is a bigger thing. Reason is part of it -- beautiful if it remains in the organic unity of the whole: ugly if it becomes a separate phenomenon and starts functioning on its own. If it becomes an island, then ugly. If it remains part of the vast continent of being, then beautiful: it has its uses.

The man of suprareason is not against the rational: he is beyond the rational. He sees that the rational and the irrational both are part of life like day and night, like life and death. To him opposites have disappeared and they have become complementaries.

Zen is a transcendental attitude. Patanjali is a very logical attitude. If you move with Patanjali by and by in the ultimate peaks you will reach to the suprarational. In fact just as ordinary religious people are afraid of science and reason and logic; people who cling to the scientific attitude, they are afraid of Zen. You can read Arthur Koestler's books, a very logical man, but he seems to be in the same plight as are ordinary religious people. Now logic has become religion to him: he is afraid of Zen. Whatsoever he writes about Zen has a trembling in it, a fear, an apprehension -- because Zen destroys all categories.

Ordinary Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, they are below reason.

Extraordinary Christians -- Eckhart, Bohme -- Sufis, Kabir, they are beyond reason.

Patanjali can be a bridge for an ordinary human being, ordinarily religious, to move towards Zen. He is the bridge; there exists no other bridge. Patanjali is the scientist of the inner. Man can live two types of lives, a life which is exterior, a life of exteriority; and man can live another type of life a life which is interior, a life of interiority. Patanjali is the bridge. What he calls samyama is a balance between the exterior and the interior to come to such a balance that you just stand in between; you can move out, you can come in; nothing is blocking your way; you are available to both the worlds.

In that sense Patanjali is a greater scientist than Einstein. Someday or other Einstein will have to learn from Patanjali. Patanjali has nothing to learn from Einstein because whatsoever you know of the outside world remains, at the most, information. It can never become real knowledge, because you remain outside of it. Real knowledge is possible only when you have to come to the very source of knowing -- and there happens the greatest miracle, and many miracles.

The greatest miracle is that the moment you come to the very source of knowing, you disappear. The closer you come to the source, the more you start disappearing. Once centered, you are no more; and yet, for the first time you are.

You are no more as you used to think about yourself. You are no more the ego, that trip is over. For the first time you are a being.

And with this being, the greatest miracle has happened to you: you have come home. That's what Patanjali calls samadhi. Samadhi, means all problems solved, all questions dissolved, all anxieties resolved. One has come home. In total rest, in total tranquillity, nothing disturbs, nothing distracts. Now you are available to enjoy. Now every moment becomes a sheer delight.

First thing: religion got hooked in the infrarational. Second thing: so-called religious people became more and more inauthentic -- all their belief became borrowed. And, third thing: the world became much too impatient. People are in such a hurry -- going nowhere, but in a great hurry. Moving faster and faster and faster and faster. Don't ask them, "Where are you going?" because that becomes an embarrassing thing. Don't ask them. Just ask, "How fast are you going?" To ask, "Where are you going?" is uncivil, unmannerly, because nobody knows where he is going.

People are in a hurry, and religion is such a tree that it needs patience. It needs infinite patience. It needs no-hurry. If you are in a hurry, you will miss what religion is. Why has this so great hurry been created in the modern life? From where has it come? Because in such a hurry you can, at the most, play with things; you can at the most play with objects. Subjectivity needs long patience, a waiting. It grows, but not in a hurry. It is not a seasonal flower. You cannot get it and within a month it is flowering. It takes time. It is the eternal tree of life. You cannot do it in a hurry.

That's why, more and more, people become interested in things, because you can get them immediately, and people become less and less interested in persons.

With their own person also they are not related, and with other persons also they are not related. In fact people use persons like things and people love things like persons.

I know a man who says he loves his car. He cannot be so certain about his wife -- he is not. He cannot so certainly say, "I love my wife," but he loves his car. He uses his wife and loves his car. The whole thing has gone upside down.

Use things: love persons. But to love another person, first you will have to become a person, That takes time: that takes long preparation.

That's why people become afraid when they read Patanjali it seems to be a long process. It is.

I was reading:

It happened that one insomniac was delighted when his doctor gave him such an inexpensive prescription for getting to sleep.

"One apple before bedtime," said the doc.

"Wonderful!" the patient started to leave.

"Wait, that's not all." cautioned the doctor. "It must be eaten in a certain way."

The insomniac paused to listen to the rest of the prescription. "Cut the apple in half," said the doctor. "Eat one half, then put on your coat and hat and go out and walk three miles. When you return home eat the other half."

No shortcuts exist. Don't be befooled by shortcuts: life knows no shortcuts. It is a long way, and the long way has a certain meaning, because only in that long awaiting do you grow, and you grow gracefully.

The modern mind is in too much of a hurry. Why? What is the hurry? Because the modern mind is much too ego-centered. From there comes the hurry. The ego is always afraid of death -- and the fear is natural because the ego is going to die.

Nobody can save it. You can protect it for a time being, but nobody can save it forever. It is going to die. You as separate will have to die, and the more you feel that you are separate from existence, from the totality, the more you become afraid. The fear comes because of the separation. The more you become individualistic, the more anxiety-ridden.

In the East where people are not so much individualistic, where people are still in a primitive state, where people are still part of the collective, where individuality is not insisted upon so much; they are not in a hurry. They move slowly, they take time: they enjoy the journey. In the West where ego is insisted upon too much and everybody starts to be an individual more and more anxiety, more and more mental disease, more and more trembling and fear and anguish, more and more apprehension about death. The more you are individualistic, the more you are going to die. The death is always in proportion to your individuality because only the individual dies.

The universal in you goes on living. It cannot die. It was There before you were born-: it will be there when you are gone.

I have heard a very beautiful anecdote:

"Yes," said the boastful man, "my family can trace its ancestry back to the Mayflower."

"I suppose," remarked his friend, sarcastically, "next you will be telling us that your ancestors were in the ark with Noah."

"Certainly not." said the other. "My people had a boat of their own."

The ego goes on and on and on, separating you. This separation is the cause of death.

Then you are in a hurry because death is coming -- life is short, time is short, many things to do. Who has time to meditate? Who has time to move into the world of yoga? People think these things are only for crazy people. Who is interested in Zen? Because if you meditate you will have to wait years and years in a very intense, passionate, but passive, awareness. You will have to go on waiting. To a Western mind -- or to a modern mind because modern mind is Western -- to a modern mind this seems a sheer wastage of time. That's why the flower of religion has become impossible.

People go on pretending that they are religious, but they avoid real religion. It has become a social formality. People go to the church, to the temple, just to be respectable. Nobody takes religion sincerely -- because who has time? Life is short and many things to do. People are more interested in things -- having a bigger car, having a bigger house, having more money in the bank balance.

People have completely forgotten that the real business is to have more being.

The real business of life is to have more being -- not more bank balance, because the bank balance will remain here. You will be gone. Only your being can go with you.

Yoga is the science of your innermost being, the science of subjectivity, the science of how to grow more, how to be more... how really to become a god so that you are one with the whole.

The sutras...

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