Chapter 3: Instantaneous Cognition

Patanjali's skill in expressing the inexpressible is superb. Nobody has ever been able to surpass him. He has mapped the inner world of consciousness as accurately as it is possible; he has almost done the impossible job.

I have heard one story about Ramkrishna:

One day he said to his disciples, "I will tell you everything today and will not keep anything secret." He described clearly the centers and the corresponding experiences up to the heart and throat, and then pointing to the spot between the eyebrows he said, "The supreme self is directly known and the individual experiences samadhi when the mind comes here. There remains then but a thin transparent screen separating the supreme self and the individual self. The sadhaka then experiences...."

Saying this, the moment he started to describe in detail the realization of supreme self, he was plunged in samadhi and became unconscious. When the samadhi came to an end and he came back, he tried again to describe it and was again in samadhi; again he became unconscious.

After repeated attempts Ramkrishna broke into tears, started crying, and told his disciples that it is impossible to speak about it.

But Ramkrishna has tried, has tried in many ways, from different directions, and this always happened, his whole life. Whenever he will come beyond the third-eye center and will be coming nearer sahasrar, he will be caught hold of by something inner, so deeply that the very remembrance of it, the very effort to describe it, and he is gone. For hours he will remain unconscious. It's natural because the bliss of sahasrar is such, one is almost overpowered by it. The bliss is so oceanic that one is possessed by it and taken over. One is no longer oneself, once you transcend the third eye.

Ramkrishna tried and failed, could not describe it. Many others have not even tried. Lao Tzu resisted, for his whole life, saying anything about the world of tao because of this.

Nothing can be said about it, and the moment you try to say it, you are plunged into an inner whirlwind, whirlpool. You are lost, drowned. You are bathed in such beauty and beatitude that you cannot utter a single word.

But Patanjali has done the impossible. He has described as exactly as possible each step, each integration, each chakra, its functioning, and how to transcend it, up to sahasrar - and he has even indicated beyond. On each chakra, on each wheel of energy, a certain integration happens. Let me tell you.

At the sex center, the first center, the most primitive but the most natural, the one that is available to all, the integration happens between the outer and the inner. Of course it is momentary. A woman meeting a man or a man meeting a woman come for a single moment, split moment, where the outer and inner meet and mingle and merge into each other. That's the beauty of sex, the ogasm, that two energies, the complementary energies, meet and become one whole. But it is going to be momentary because the meeting is through the most gross element, the body. The body can touch the surfaces but it cannot really enter into the other. It is like ice cubes. If you put two ice cubes together, they can touch each other, but if they melt and become water, then they meet and mingle with each other. Then they go to the very center. And if the water evaporates, then the meeting becomes very, very deep. Then there is no I, no thou, no inner, no outer.

The first center, the sex center, gives you a certain integration. That's why there is so much hankering for sex. It is natural, it is in itself beneficial and good, but if you stop there, then you have stopped on the porch of a palace. The porch is good, it leads you into the palace, but it is not a place to make your abode, it is not a place to stop forever... and the bliss that is waiting for you on the higher integrations of other centers will be missed.

And in comparison to that bliss and happiness and joy, the beauty of sex is nothing, the pleasure of sex is nothing. It simply gives you a momentary glimpse.

The second chakra is hara. At the hara, life and death meet. If you reach to the second center, you reach to a higher ogasm of integration. Life meeting death, sun meeting moon. And the meeting is inner now, so the meeting can be more permanent, more stable, because you are not dependent on anybody else. Now you are meeting your own inner woman or your own inner man.

The third center is the navel. There the positive and the negative meet - the positive electricity and the negative electricity. Their meeting is even higher than life and death because the electric energy, the prana, the bioplasma or bioenergy, is deeper than life and death. It exists before life, it exists after death. Life and death exist because of bioenergy.

This meeting of bioenergy at the navel, nabhi, gives you even a higher experience of being one, integrated, a unity.

Then is the heart. At the heart center the lower and the higher meet. At the heart center the prakriti and purusha, the sexual and the spiritual, the worldly and the other-worldly - or you can call it the meeting of heaven and earth. It is still higher because for the first time something of the beyond dawns - you can see the sun rising at the horizon. You are still rooted in the earth, but your branches are spreading into the sky. You have become a meeting. That's why the heart center gives the highest and the most refined experience ordinarily available - the experience of love. The experience of love is the meeting of earth and heaven; so love is in a way earthly and in another way heavenly.

If Jesus defined God as love, this is the reason, because in human consciousness love seems to be the higher glimpse.

Ordinarily people never go beyond the heart center. Even to reach at the heart center seems to be difficult, almost impossible. People remain at the sex center. If they are trained deeply in yoga, karate, aikido, t'ai chi, then they reach to the second center, the hara. If they are trained in the deep mechanism of breathing, prana, then they reach the navel center. And if they are trained how to look beyond earth and how to see beyond the body and how to look so deeply and so sensitively that you are no longer confined to the gross, and the subtle can penetrate its first rays into you, only then, the heart center.

All paths of devotion, bhakti yoga, work on the heart center. Tantra starts from the sex center. Tao starts from the hara center. Yoga starts from the navel center. Bhakti yoga, paths of devotion and love, Sufis and others, they start from the heart center.

Higher than heart is the throat center. Again there happens another integration, even more superior, more subtle. This center is the center of receiving and giving. When the child is born he receives from the throat center. First, life enters into him from the throat center - he sucks air, breathes; and then he sucks milk from his mother. The child functions from the throat center, but it is half functioning and soon the child forgets about it. He just receives. He cannot give yet. His love is passive. And if you are asking for love, then you remain juvenile, you remain childish. Unless you mature, that you can give love, you have not become a grown-up. Everybody asks for love, demands love, and almost nobody gives. That's the misery all over the world. And everybody who demands thinks that he is giving, believes that he is giving.

I have looked into thousands of people - all hungry for love, thirsty for love, but nobody in any way trying to give. And they all believe that they are giving but they are not receiving. Once you give you receive, naturally. It has never happened otherwise. The moment you give, love rushes in you. It has nothing to do with persons and people. It has something to do with the cosmic energy of God.

The throat center is the meeting of receiving and giving. You receive from it and you give from it. That is the meaning of Christ's saying that you must become a child again. If you translate it into the yoga terminology it will mean: you must come to the throat center again. The child forgets by and by.

If you look into Freudian psychology, you will have a parallel. Freud says the first stage of the child is oral, the second stage is anal, and the third stage is genital. The whole Freudian psychology ends with the third. Of course it is a very poor psychology, very rudimentary, fragmentary, and concerned with the very lower functioning of human beings. Oral - yes, the child uses the throat center, just to receive. And once he has started receiving, his being moves to the anal.

Have you watched that a few people cling to the oral, even up to their death? These are the people you will find smoking; these are oral people. They still go on....

The smoke, the cigarette, the cigar, gives them a feeling as if something hot like mother's milk is passing through the throat center; and they remain confined to the oral, and they cannot give. If a person is a chain-smoker, heavy smoker, almost always he is not a giver of love. He demands, but he will not give.

People who are smoking too much are always interested in women's breasts too much.

Bound to be, because a cigarette is a substitute for the nipple. I am not saying that people who are not smokers are not interested in women's breasts. Those who smoke, they are interested. Those who don't smoke, they are also interested; they may be chewing pan or gum or something else, or they may be simply interested in p0rnography - or they may be just obsessed by the breast continuously. In their mind, in their dream, in their imagination, fantasy, the breast - breasts and breasts go on floating all around them.

These are oral people, stuck.

When Jesus says you have to be a child again, he means you have to come back to the throat center, but with a new energy to give. All creative people are givers. They may sing a song for you or dance a dance or write a poem or paint a picture or tell you a story.

For all these the throat center is again used as a center to give. The meeting of receiving and giving happens at the throat. The capacity to receive and to give is one of the greatest integrations.

There are people who are only capable of receiving. They will remain miserable because you never become rich by receiving. You become rich by giving. In fact you possess only that which you can give. If you cannot give it, you simply believe that you possess it. You don't possess it; you are not a master. If you cannot give your money, then you are not the master of it. Then the money is the master. If you can give it, then certainly you are the master. This will look like a paradox, but let me repeat it: you are the possessor only of that which you give. The moment you give, in that very moment you have become a possessor, enriched. Giving enriches you.

Miserly people are the most miserable and poorest people in the world - poorer than the poor. They cannot give; they are stuck. They go on hoarding. Their hoarding becomes a burden on their being; it does not free them. In fact, if you have something, you will become less free. Look at the misers. They have much, but they are burdened; they are not free. Even beggars are more free than they are. What has happened to them? They have used their throat center just to receive. Not only that, they have not used their throat center to give, they have not even moved to the second Freudian center, anal. These people are always constipatory; hoarders, misers, always suffer from constipation.

Remember, I am not saying that all people who have constipation are misers; there may be other reasons. But misers are certainly constipated.

Freud says that there is something in gold and excreta. Both look yellow, and people who are constipatory are too attracted to gold. Otherwise gold has no existential value - some psychological value, but no existential value. You cannot eat it, you cannot drink it. What can you do with it? Even a glass of water is more valuable existentially. But why has gold become so valuable? Why are people so obsessed with gold? They have not moved from the oral to the anal. They are constipated in their inner being. Now their whole life will reflect their constipation; they will become hoarders of gold. Gold is symbolic. The yellowness gives them some idea.

Have you watched small children? It is almost difficult to persuade them to go to the toilet; they have almost to be forced to go to the toilet. And even then they insist, "Nothing is happening. Can I come back?" They are learning the first lessons of miserliness - how to hold. How to hold, how not to give even that which is useless, even that which is harmful if you keep it within you. Even the poison, it is difficult for them to leave it, to renounce it.

I have heard about two Buddhist bhikkhus.

One of them was a miser and a hoarder and he wed to collect money and keep it, and the other used to laugh at this foolish attitude.

Whatsoever will come on his way, he will use it, he will never hoard it. One night they came across a river. It was evening, the sun was setting, and it was dangerous to stay there. They had to go to the other shore; there was a town. This side was simply wilderness.

The hoarder said, "Now you don't have any money, so we cannot pay the ferryman. What do you say now about it? You are against hoarding; now if I don't have any money we both will die. You see the point?" He said, "Money is needed." The man who believed in renunciation laughed, but he didn't say anything. Then the hoarder paid and they crossed the river; they reached the other shore. The hoarder again said, "Now remember, next time don't start arguing with me. You see? Money helps. Without money we would have been dead. The whole night on the other shore, it was dangerous to survive - wild animals."

The other bhikkhu laughed and he said, "But we have come across the river because you could renounce it. It is not because of hoarding that we have survived. If you had insisted on hoarding it and you were not going to pay the ferryman, we would have died. It is because you could renounce - because you could leave it, you could give it - that's why we have survived."

The argument must be continuing still. But remember, I am not against money. I am all for it, but use it. Possess it, own it; but your ownership arises only the moment you have become capable of giving it. At the throat center this new synthesis happens. You can accept and you can give.

There are people who change from one extreme to another. First they were incapable of giving, they could only receive; then they change, they go to the other extreme - now they can give but they cannot receive. That too is lopsidedness. A real man is capable of accepting gifts and giving them. In India you will find many sannyasins, many so-called mahatmas, who will not touch money. If you give them any, they will shrink back, as if you have produced a snake or something poisonous. Their shrinking back shows that now they have moved to the other extreme: now they have become incapable of receiving.

Again their throat center is half-functioning - and a center never functions really unless it functions fully, unless the wheel moves the full way, goes on moving and creates energy fields.

Then is the third-eye center. At the third-eye center the right and left meet, pingala and ida meet, and become sushumna. The two hemispheres of the brain meet at the third eye; that is just between the two eyes. One eye represents the right, another eye represents the left, and it is just in the middle. These left and right brains meeting at the third eye, this is a very high synthesis. People have been capable of describing up to this point. That's why Ramkrishna could describe up to the third eye. And when he started to talk about the final, the ultimate synthesis that happens at sahasrar, he again and again fell into silence, into samadhi. He was drowned in it; it was too much. It was floodlike; he was taken over to the ocean. He could not keep himself conscious, alert.

The ultimate synthesis happens at sahasrar, the crown chakra. Because of this sahasrar, all over the world kings, emperors, monarchs, and queens, use the crown. It has become formal, but basically it was accepted because unless your sahasrar is functioning, how can you be a monarch, how can you be a king? How can you rule people, you have not even become a ruler of yourself? In the symbol of the crown is hidden a secret. The secret is that a person who has reached to the crown center, the ultimate synthesis of his being, only he should be the king or the queen, nobody else. Only he is capable of ruling others, because he has come to rule himself. He has become a master of himself; now he can be helpful to others also.

Really, when you achieve to sahasrar, A crown flowers within you, a one-thousand-petaled lotus opens. No crown can be compared with it, but then it became just A symbol.

And the symbol has existed all over the world. That simply shows that everywhere people became alert and aware in one way or other of the ultimate synthesis in the sahasrar. Jews use the skullcap; it is exactly on the sahasrar. Hindus allow a bunch of hair, they call it choti, the peak, to grow exactly on the spot where the sahasrar is or has to be. There are a few Christian societies which shave just that part of the head. When a Master blesses a disciple, he puts his hand on the sahasrar. And if the disciple is really receptive, surrendered, he will suddenly feel an upsurge of energy, running from the sex center to the sahasrar.

Sometimes when I touch your head and you suddenly become sexual don't be afraid, don't shrink back, because that is how it should be. The energy is at the sex center. It starts uncoiling itself. You become afraid, you shrink, you repress it - What is happening? And becoming sexual at the feet of your Master seems to be a little awkward, embarrassing. It is not. Allow it, let it be, and soon you will see it has passed the first center and the second and, if you are surrendered, within a second the energy is moving at the sahasrar and you will have a feeling of a new opening within you. That's why a disciple is supposed to bow his head down, so the Master can touch the head.

The last synthesis is of object and subject, the outer and inner, again. In a sexual ogasm outer and inner meet, but momentarily. In sahasrar they meet permanently. That's why I say one has to travel from sex to samadhi. In sex ninety-nine percent is sex, one percent is sahasrar; in sahasrar ninety-nine percent is sahasrar, one percent is sex. Both are joined they are bridged, by deep currents of energy. So if you have enjoyed sex, don't make your abode there. Sex is just a glimpse of sahasrar. Sahasrar is going to deliver a thousandfold, a millionfold, a bliss to you, benediction to you.

The outer and the inner meet, I and thou meet, man and woman meet, yin and yang meet; and the meeting is absolute. Then there is no parting, then there is no divorce.

This is called yoga. Yoga means the meeting of the two into one. In Christianity mystics have called it UNIO MYSTICA; that is the exact translation of yoga. UNIO MYSTICA: the mysterious union. At the sahasrar, the alpha and the omega meet, the beginning and the end. The beginning is in the sex center, sex is your alpha; samadhi is your omega.

And unless alpha and omega meet, unless you have attained to this supreme union, you will remain miserable, because your destiny is that. You will remain unfulfilled. You can be fulfilled only at this highest peak of synthesis.

Now the sutras....

 

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