These sutras of Patanjali are very significant. 

Many things are implied. First, in India we have never used the word "love." We always use "nonviolence" -- "ahimsa" pratishthayam. Jesus uses "love"; Mahavir, Patanjali, Buddha, they never use "love" -- they use "nonviolence." Why? "Love" seems to be a better word, more positive , more poetic. "Nonviolence" looks like an ugly word, negative. But there is something to it. When you say "love," you have moved with a subtle aggression. When I say, "I love you," I have moved from my center towards you. The aggression is beautiful, but it is still aggression. Patanjali says "nonviolence." It is a negative state, a passive state: It simply means, "No one will be hurt," that's it.

Love says, "I will make you happy" -- which is impossible. Who can make anybody happy? Love promises. All promises are false. How can you make anybody happy? If everybody is responsible for his own self, how is it possible even to think that you can make somebody else to be happy? When I say, "I love you," I am creating so many promises, I am showing you so many beautiful gardens... I am calling you towards dreams. No, Patanjali will not use the word, because deep down I am saying, "I will make you happy. Come near me; come close to me. I am ready to make you happy" -- which is impossible. Nobody can make anybody happy. At the most I can say, "I will not hurt you." That is in my hands - not to hurt, but how can I say, "I will make you happy"?

That's why all love leads to frustration. Lovers promise each other -- knowingly, unknowingly -- beautiful roses, paradise; and each one thinking about the promise -- and then it is never fulfilled. Nobody ca n make you happy -- except yourself. If you fall in love: the man is thinking the woman is going to give him a beautiful life, enchanted, a magical world; and the woman is also thinking that the man is going to lead her towards the last paradise. Nobody can lead anybody. That's why lovers feel frustrated: the promise was false. Not that they were deceiving each other, they were deceived by themselves. Not that they were deliberately deceiving each other, they didn't know. They were not aware what they were saying.

Mahavir, Buddha, Patanjali, they use an ugly word: nonviolence, ahimsa. Does not look good, is simply negative -- it says "no violence," that's all. "I will not hurt you" -- that much can be fulfilled. Even then, there is no absolute guarantee that you will not feel hurt. "I will not hurt you," that's all; then too there is no absolute necessity that you will not feel hurt. Still you can feel hurt because you create your own wounds, you create your own misery. "I will not be a party to it," that's all Patanjali can say -- "I will not participate in it. I will not hurt you."

"When the yogi is firmly established..." in this attitude of nonviolence, that he will not hurt anybody, "... there is an abandonment of enmity by those who are in his presence." Such a man, who is not in any way thinking, dreaming consciously, unconsciously, has no desire to hurt anybody -- in his presence, abandonment of enmity happens. But before you conclude it, many more problems arise.

Jesus was crucified; enmity was not abandoned. That's why if you ask Jains they will not say that he was enlightened, because people could crucify him. But the same has happened to Mahavir. After his enlightenment he was stoned. To Buddha the same has happened -- not crucified, but stoned, insulted. People tried to kill him. Then how to understand it? Jains, Buddhists, they have explanations. If it is a question of Jesus, they will say he is not enlightened -- simple explanation, finished -- but if it is a question of Mahavir they say that he is closing his accounts of his past lives . Both are wrong. Both are wrong because when one becomes enlightened he has closed all accounts. He has finished all karmas; now nothing is there.

Still, there have been cases: Jesus has been crucified; Socrates poisoned; Al-hillaj Mansoor killed, murdered very brutally; Mahavir stoned many times, insulted, thrown out of villages; Buddha, many times murder was attempted. Then how to explain Patanjali's sutra? If the sutra is true then these things should not happen.

If these things happen then there are only two possibilities: either all these persons -- Al-hillaj Mansoor, Jesus, Mahavir, Buddha -- are not enlightened, are not really established in nonviolence, or there are some exceptions to the rule. There are a few exceptions.

In fact whenever a man is established in nonviolence, life -- except for human beings -- becomes absolutely nonviolent towards him. Man is a perverted being. The mirror is not clear. Life... trees are nonviolent towards a Buddha, animals are nonviolent.

It happened that one of Buddha's cousin-brothers, who was in deep competition with him -- unnecessarily, because a Buddha is nobody's competitor -- was continuously thinking, "Buddha has become so great a man, and I am left behind. I am nobody." He tried in every way to gather disciples and declare himself, that he is a Buddha, but nobody would listen to him. Of course, a few fools gathered.

Then he became very antagonistic towards Buddha; he tried to kill him. It is said Buddha was meditating under a tree near a hill, and Devadutta, Buddha's cousin-brother, rolled a big rock from the hill. There was every possibility that Buddha would have been crushed, but somehow the rock changed its path. Buddha remained untouched. Somebody asked, "What happened?" Buddha said, "A rock feels more than does Devadutta, my brother. She changed the route."

A mad elephant was released against Buddha by Devadutta. The elephant was mad; he rushed. Disciples escaped, they forgot completely, and Buddha remained silent sitting under the tree. The elephant came near... something happened -- he bowed down at Buddha's feet. People asked, "What happened?"

He said, "A mad elephant, also, is not so mad as Devadutta. Even this mad elephant has some sanity left in him."

One of the greatest psychologists working and doing deep research on the human brain is Delgado. He has tried an experiment with electrodes. Something like that must have happened when the elephant stopped and bowed down.

https://youtu.be/23pXqY3X6c8

Delgado placed electrodes in the brain of a bull. Those electrodes could be manipulated from anywhere by radio, wireless. Then, he pushed the button; thousands of people had gathered to see. He pushed the button and pressed the center in the brain from where anger arises: the bull became angry and mad. He came in a rage; he rushed towards Delgado. People stopped breathing, because this was certain death. Just a foot away, Delgado pushed another button, and suddenly something happened inside and the bull stopped -- just a foot away, death just a foot away.

Delgado has done it with electric instruments, but the same is the possibility: Buddha has not done anything, but it happened -- a deep nonviolence, and something triggered in the brain of the elephant. He was no longer mad; he understood. He felt; he bowed down. Humanity is no longer a right mirror. Humanity is not so pure as the echoing hills.

Humanity is perverted, so it is possible. I don't find any explanation in past lives. I don't find any explanation in denying that Jesus was an enlightened man, no. The explanation is this: that life can reflect only when life is alive. Man has become so dead.

Most humans don't feel. Even you, if you come to meet a Buddha -- you don't feel much. You say he is just a man as any other. Of course the bones are the same and the skin the same and the body the same -- the boundary is the same -- but who is within the boundary of that flame?

But you can feel it only if you have felt it already within yourself. Otherwise how can you feel it? You can recognize a Buddha only when you have recognized a certain quality of Buddhahood within yourself; from there, is the bridge. If you have not realized any Buddhahood within you, any divineness in you, it is impossible for you to recognize a Buddha, to recognize his nonviolence, to recognize that he has transcended, that he is no longer part of your own madness.

That's why Mahavir was stoned by humans who had gone completely perverted. A natural law didn't function with them; otherwise the law is absolutely perfect. If you are silent and you come near a Buddha, suddenly you will feel a great change happening within yourself. You cannot feel enmity.

That's why there is a fear of coming near a Buddha. You can feel enmity when you are far away from him. If you come face to face with him it becomes difficult, more and more difficult. If you are in his presence, even if you are mad, the possibility exists that his presence may work as a magnetic force; the possibility exists that even you in all your madness may be changed and transformed into something that you may be unfamiliar with.

That's why people have always been avoiding Buddhas -- Mahavir, Patanjali, Jesus, Lao Tzu. They don't come near them. They gather things about them in the marketplace and they start believing in rumors, but they won't come near. They won't come to see what has happened.

And by the time they come they have gathered so much rubbish, so much rot around them, that they are already deadened. They have so many fixed attitudes that their mirror functions no more. Their mirror is covered with dust. Of course a mirror mirrors, but if it is covered with dust then you can go on looking and your face will not be reflected.

Animals, trees, birds, even they have understood. It is said that when Buddha became enlightened flowers bloomed out of season. And it has not happened only with Buddha; it has happened many times. It is not a myth. The trees became so happy.... That's why Buddhists have been preserving the tree, the Bodhi Tree, under which Buddha became en lightened. It carries something -- it has witnessed one of the greatest happening s in the world. It is the only witness left. It carries the real history, what happened in that night when Buddha became enlightened.

Now scientists say that the bodhi tree is the most intelligent tree in the world. It has some chemicals which are absolutely necessary for intelligence, without which the mind cannot be intelligent. Other trees are there, but nothing like the bodhi tree, the bo tree. It has the greatest quantity of those chemicals which make the mind intelligent. Maybe it is the most intelligent tree in the world. It has witnessed Buddha flowering into a different dimension. It has known one of the greatest peak hours of the whole of existence. But man's mirror is covered with dust -- dust of beliefs, ideologies.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6
Chapter #1
Chapter title: A Life is a Mirror
1 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

 

Hindus have two words - satsang & darshan - which are impossible for Westerners to understand... 

 

Without Delgado's wires & electrode implants, a similar phenomenon occurs, as it did with the calming effect that occurred in the charge of a raging bull. It happens to people who are simply in the presence of a yogi who is firmly established in nonviolence.  Suddenly, mind slows, and love arises... for no visible cause. Just being in his presence functions like this, in just the way he is -- others moving under his energy field, and one is no longer the same -- the mind slows & a soothing love arises from within. 

Hindus have two words. One is satsang, which is impossible for the Westerners to understand because they say some teaching should be given. Hindus say presence is enough, no other teaching is needed. Another word is darshan. That too is difficult to understand: just to see a Master is enough; just to look into his eyes is enough; just to see is enough. Darshan means to see. Westerners come; they come to ask questions. When they remain for a few more days then they understand; then they start feeling that questions are useless. Then they start coming and they say, "I have nothing to say... just to be here." It takes time for them to feel that just to be with one who is firmly established in nonviolence is enough.

 

A Yogi Firmly Established in NonViolence Radiates a Calming Effect That can be Felt by Others in Close Proximity

That's why when such people who have attained, the masses have always felt that they can somehow hypnotize others. Nobody is hypnotizing, but a kind of hypnosis happens. Their very quality of being is soothing. Their very quality of being silences others; one's inner talk stops in their presence. You don't feel to be yourself; you feel somehow changed. When you go back home, again you have fallen back to the same as before - the same old one returns. Then you look back retrospectively and you feel you were hypnotized? Or what? Nobody is hypnotizing, but this has always been the usual case -- people will say that a Buddha hypnotizes, that a Jesus hypnotizes. Nobody is being hypnotized, but their very being is so soothing that you feel sleepy, relaxed. Their very being stills the minds of others, and relaxes those that are in close proximity.

Under their energy field, something which has been hidden comes up, surfaces, and something which has been up on the surface subsides. You are no longer the same; your very structure changes. If you can understand the process then you can understand the word Hindus have been using; the word is satsang: just to be in the presence of the enlightened ones. Nothing else is needed. The West is almost incapable of understanding it, that just the presence is enough. Satsang means just to be in the presence of one who has attained to truth -- to be with him, to be in his energy field, to feed on his energy.

In the last night, when Jesus was departing from his friends, he broke bread and gave it to his disciples and said, "Eat it; this is me." It is possible. When a man like Jesus takes the bread in his hand, the bread is no longer the same; it has become sacred. And when Jesus says, "It is me," he means it literally. To be in the presence of a Master is to eat him, literally. To be with him is to be in him.

In fact, old Hindu scriptures say that to be with a Master is to be in his womb. That energy field is his womb, and when you are in his womb you are being transmuted, transformed, transfigured; a new being is born. Through the Master, one attains to a new birth -- one becomes dwij, twice-born. One birth is attained through the father and the mother, the parents -- that is the birth of the body. Another birth is attained through the Master -- that is the birth of the spirit, the soul.

To be in the presence of a Buddha is to be on the way to becoming a Buddha. Nothing else is needed. If you can imbibe the presence, if you can allow the presence to work, if you can remain passive in the presence, feeding on it, receptive, everything will happen.

To bring a question is to bring a barrier; to come with questions is to come with a barrier. Just to come with no questions -- nothing to ask, just to be -- is to come without barriers. Then energy floats, meets, merges... But if you have a question then the mind is a buffer. When you don't have a question your being is there, open, vulnerable.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6
Chapter #1
Chapter title: A Life is a Mirror
1 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

 

This is even more difficult. When the yogi is established in truth: satya pratishthayam. You have to be alert from the very beginning that when Eastern scriptures say "truth" they don't mean just speaking the true, no. "Established in truth" means to be authentic, to be oneself -- not a single iota of falseness inside.

Of course such a person speaks truth, but that is not the point. Such a person lives in truth -- that is the point. In the West truth means truthfulness, to speak the true, that's all. In the East it means to be the truth. Speaking will follow by itself, that is not the point at all -- it is a shadow -- but to be in the truth means to be absolutely oneself, with no mask, with no personality, just to be the essence.

The word 'personality' is meaningful. It comes from a Greek root, persona: persona means mask. In Greek drama actors used masks; those were called personas. The real is hidden behind and persona is all that is known to the world -- the face.

Without any personality, just the essence.... Zen people say, "Find out your face -- the original face." That is all meditation is all about. They said to their disciples, "Move back, and find out the face that you had before you were born. That is truth." Before you were born: because the moment you are born, falsity starts. The moment you become part of a family, you have become part of a lie. The moment you become part of a society, you have become a part of a greater lie. All societies are lies -- beautifully decorated, but lies. You have to seek the face that you had before you entered into the world, the original virginity.

One has to move back and in. One has to come to feel the center, the essence of your being, beyond which there is no possibility to go. One has to go on eliminating -> the body you are not, the body goes on changing; mind you are not, mind is always in a flux -- thoughts and thoughts and thoughts -- it is a process; emotions you are not, they come and go. You are that which remains and remains and remains. The body comes and goes, the mind comes and goes. That which remains always hidden behind, that is the truth. To be that is the meaning: satya pratishthayam, one who is established in truth.

Here you can understand what Lao Tzu has been saying. If you become attuned to the truth of your being, you need not do anything -- things happen. Not that you just lie down on your bed and sleep, no, but you are not the doer. You do things, but you are not the doer: the whole starts functioning through you . You become a function of the whole, instrumental; what Krishna calls nimitta - just an instrument of the whole -- he flows through you and works. You need not worry about the results; you need not worry about planning. You live moment to moment and the whole takes care, and everything fits well.

Once you are established in your being you are established in the whole, because your being is part of the whole. Your face is part of the society, your personality is part of the world; your being, your essence, is part of the whole. You are deep-hidden gods. On the surface you may be a thief, on the surface you may be a monk, a good man, a bad man, a criminal , a judge -- a thousand and one plays, games -- but deep down you are a god. Once you are established into that godliness, the whole starts functioning through you.

No tree is worried about the flowers, they come. No river is worried about reaching the ocean, never goes neurotic and never goes to consult a psychoanalyst, but simply reaches to the ocean. Stars go on moving. Everything is moving so smoothly, there is no disturbance and the target is never missed. Only man carries so much burden of worries: what to do, what not to do; what is good and what is bad; how to reach the goal, how to compete -- how not to allow others to reach, how to reach first of all. "How to become" - Buddha has called this the disease of tanha, the disease of becoming.

One who is established in truth has become. Now there is no disease of becoming; he has attained to being. Becoming is disease; being is health. And being is available right now if you move within. Only a look is needed.

I have heard about a Zen monk. He was a minor officer in the government service before he became enlightened. He came to his Master and he wanted to become a monk, he wanted to renounce the world. The Master said, "There is no need, because the being can be attained anywhere. There is no necessity to come to the monastery. It can be attained wherever you are. Remain, just allow it to happen."

The man started meditating, and meditation was nothing but just sitting silently, not doing anything. Thoughts come and go. One just witnesses, does not condemn, does not appreciate -- no valuation -- simply looks at them, aloof,
indifferent.

Years passed. One day he was sitting in his office doing some official work. Suddenly -- it was just the beginning of the rains -- a sudden clash of thunder, and he was shocked and thrown into his being: and he started laughing. And it is said then he never stopped laughing. He went laughing to the Master and he said, "A sudden clash of thunder, and I awoke, and I looked within... and the old man was there in all his at-homeness. And I have been seeking and seeking this old man, this ancient one, and he was just sitting there within me completely at home, at ease."

A sudden clash of thunder.... You just have to be in a receptive mood, then anything can trigger it. Just a shout from the Master, a hit from the Master, a look from the Master -- sudden clash of thunder -- and something.... You are that which you are seeking. The only thing needed is a look within. One becomes established, and then one becomes a function of the whole -- and to become the function of the whole is all. Nothing else remains then. Then your river flows towards the ocean, your tree goes on blooming, flowering.

Then there is nothing to be done; everything happens. Not that you don't do -- remember it -- but the whole does it; you are not the doer.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6
Chapter #1
Chapter title: A Life is a Mirror
1 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

 

"From mental purity there arises cheerfulness.... "

If you are sad, if you are always depressed, if you are always miserable, nothing can be done directly to your misery. And whatsoever should be done will prove to be in vain. The East has come to know that if you are sad, miserable, depressed, always moving heavily burdened -- this is not the disease; this is just the symptom of the disease.

The disease is that you must be deep down bodily oriented. So the question is not how to dispel your darkness and how to make you happy; that is not the question. The question is how to help you to become un-engaged with the body; how to help you so that your entanglement with the body is less and less and less.

Directly, nothing can be done; only indirectly can something be done. This is symptomatic; this is not the cause. And if you treat the symptom, the disease will not disappear.

The Western psychology has been treating the symptoms, and yoga is the psychology which treats the cause. Western psychology goes on: whatsoever you say is your symptom, they take it for granted and they start removing it. They have not been successful. Western psychology has proved to be a hoax, a complete failure, but now it is such a great establishment that psychologists cannot say it. Their whole life depends on it -- their big salaries... and they are one of the most highly paid professions. They cannot accept the fact: now they have become aware that they have not been helping anybody. At the most they prolong, at the most they give hope, at the most they help you to adjust with your miseries, but no transformation happens through it. As time passes one becomes attuned to the misery, one becomes accepting of the fact that it is there. One is not much worried about it, but nothing has changed.

Now they know, but now psychology is such a growing profession, and thousands & thousands of people live on it -- and live really luxurious lives; much is invented in it -- that who will say it, that this whole thing is just a hoax, a fraud, nobody is helped? It has to be so, because symptoms cannot be changed. You can paint them, but deep down they remain the same. You can give them new names, new labels; that makes no difference.

The cause has to be changed, and the cause is: you will be sad in the same proportion in which you are rooted in the body. You will be cheerful in the same proportion as you are not rooted in the body. Freer from the body... cheerfulness, more cheerfulness. When you are completely free from the body you become a fragrance floating in the sky. You become blissful -- the blessedness that Jesus talks of, the benediction that Jesus goes on talking about; the nirvana of Buddha.

Mahavir has given it the exactly right word; he calls it kaivalya, aloneness - becoming totally independent and alone. Now nothing is needed; you are enough unto yourself. This is the goal, but the goal can be reached only if you move very cautiously and you don't get entangled with symptoms.

Somebody has a fever, the body is hot, the temperature has gone high -- this is a symptom. The temperature may be a hundred three, a hundred four, five. This is a symptom; don't start curing the body of the temperature. You can cure it: you can put the man under a cold shower, ice cold. In the beginning it may even appear that things are being helped, but remember, you will not be able to cure him of the disease -- you may cure him of life itself. He will die -- because the fever is a symptom. The fever simply shows that inside the body there is a great war, an elemental war. Elements of the body are in conflict, that's why heat is created. That's why there is a fever. The body is not at ease. A civil war has broken out inside the body. Some elements of the body are fighting with other elements, maybe foreign elements. They are in a conflict; because of the conflict the heat has come out.

The heat is just an indication that the war has broken out. The war has to be treated, not the temperature. The temperature is just to give you a message: "Now you should do something; things have gone beyond me." The body is giving you an indication: "Things are now beyond me; I cannot do anything. Do something. Go to the doctor, to the physician. Take help; now it is beyond me. Whatsoever could be done I have done, but now no more can be done. The war has broken out."

Never treat the symptom, and don't waste time in treating the symptom; always go to the cause.

And this is not a hypothesis, and this is not a theory -- yoga does not believe in theories and Patanjali is not a philosopher. He is absolutely a scientist of the inner world, and whatsoever he is saying he is saying because millions of yogis have experienced it. Without any exception this is so. In ordinary life also have you watched? When you feel cheerful: in ordinary life also if you remain watchful you will become aware that whenever you feel cheerful you forget the body. Whenever somebody is cheerful he forgets his body, and whenever somebody is sad he cannot forget the body.

In fact in ayurveda the definition of health is one of the most significant; no other medical science anywhere in the world has given such a definition. In fact Western medicine has no definition of health. At the most they can say: When there are no diseases, then you are healthy. But this is not a definition of health.

What type of definition, when you bring diseases in to define health? You say, "When there are no diseases you are healthy." It is a negative definition, not positive. Ayurveda says that when you are bodiless you are healthy. This is really tremendously beautiful. Videha: when you don't feel the body -- you are almost no body.

You can watch it: the head comes in only when the headache comes. Otherwise who knows about the head? You are never aware of the head. Headache brings awareness; otherwise you are headless. And if you continuously remember your head, there must be something wrong. When breathing is healthy you are not aware at all, but when something goes wrong -- asthma, bronchitis, something goes wrong -- then you are aware. The breathing is there with much sound, noise and everything, and you cannot forget it. When your legs are tired then you know they are. When something goes wrong, only then you become conscious. If everything is functioning perfectly, you forget it.

This is the definition of health: when you forget the body completely you are healthy. And who can forget the body completely? Only a yogi.

We have three words: rogi, bhogi, yogi. The rogi: one who is ill; the bhogi: one who is indulging in the body; and the yogi: one who has gone beyond the body. The bhogi rarely will attain to some moments of yoga, some moments when he will forget the body. Ninety-nine percent of his life he will belong to the world of the rogi, the ill; only one percent of his life will be moments, rare moments, when he will become a yogi. Sometimes everything is functioning well, humming -- just like a beautiful, perfectly functioning car hums, sings; your whole mechanism is humming beautifully, well: rarely with a bhogi, never with a rogi, always with a yogi. The rogi is the ill person; the bhogi is one who is indulging in the body too much and falling towards the rogi, will sooner or later become ill and die; and the yogi: the yogi is one who has transcended the body, lives beyond -- then he is cheerful.

The rogi is never cheerful, the bhogi rarely, the yogi always. Cheerfulness is his nature. For no visible cause he remains happy.

With most Western people the case is just the opposite: for no visible cause you remain unhappy. If somebody asks you, "Why are you so miserable?" you shrug your shoulders. You don't know why. You have taken it for granted as your way of life, to be miserable. In fact if you see a miserable man you never ask, "Why are you miserable?" You accept it. When you see somebody happy, very happy, you ask, "What is the matter? Why are you so happy? What has happened?" Misery has been taken for granted, accepted. Happiness has become so rare, so exceptional, that it is almost too good to be true.

It happens, people come here, when they start meditating, and if they really move in it, things start changing. When they had come they were miserable, sad; then something bursts open -- a cheerfulness starts. They cannot believe it. They come running to me and they say, "What has happened? Suddenly I am feeling very happy. Am I imagining?" They cannot believe that this can be true. The mind says, "You must be imagining. You, such a miserable man, and you can be happy? Impossible." They come to me and they say, "Are we imagining, or have you hypnotized us?"

They never thought when they were miserable that somebody may have hypnotized them. They never thought when they were miserable that maybe they are imagining it, but when they feel happiness, happiness has become so rare a thing, so unbelievably rare that they ask, "Is it true?"

In English you have the phrase "too good to be true"; you don't have the phrase "too bad to be true." The other should be more prevalent, more common, but "good" cannot be believed; that's why the phrase "too good to be true." That phrase should be destroyed, completely forgotten. When somebody says something bad you should say, "Too bad to be true, cannot be believed. You must have imagined." But no , it is not so. Misery seems to be the natural thing; happiness, something unnatural.

"From mental purity there arises cheerfulness,

Power of concentration

People try to concentrate remaining rooted in the body; then concentration is very difficult, almost impossible. You cannot concentrate for a single minute. The mind wavers, a thousand and one thoughts arise, and before you know, you have moved somewhere else: a daydream starts.

Whenever you want to concentrate on something... almost impossible. But the reason is that you are much too rooted in the body. If you look through the body, concentration is not possible. If you look beyond the body, concentration is so easy....

It happened...

Vivekanand was staying with a great scholar. His name was Deussen, one of the great scholars, who translated Sanskrit scriptures into Western languages. Particularly, Deussen was working on the Upanishads, and he was one of the most penetrating translators. A new book had arrived.

Vivekanand asked, "Can I go through it? Can I have it to read?" Deussen said, "Yes, you can have it. I have not read it at all." After half an hour Vivekanand returned the book. Deussen could not believe it; such a big book will need at least one week to read, and if you want to digest it, then even more. If you really want to understand it, it is a difficult book, then even more. He said, "Have you gone through it? Have you really read it, or just looked here and there?"

Vivekanand said, "I have studied it." Deussen said, "Then I cannot believe it. Then you will have to do me a favor. Let me read the book, and I will ask you a few questions about the book."

Deussen had to read the book for seven days, study it; and then he asked a few questions, and Vivekanand replied so exactly, as if he had been reading that book for the whole of his life. Deussen has written in his memoirs: "It was impossible for me, and I asked,'How is it possible?' Vivekanand said, 'When you study through the body, concentration is not possible. When you are not rooted in the body, you hover on the book directly -- -your consciousness directly in touch. No body between the book and you standing like a barrier: then even half an hour is enough. You imbibe the spirit of it.'"

It is just like: a small child reads -- he cannot read a big word; he has to cut words into small pieces. He cannot read the whole sentence. When you read you read the whole sentence. If you are really a good reader you can read the whole paragraph -- just a glimpse, it passes. There is a possibility, if the body is not interfering, you can read the whole book just by passing. And if you read with the body you may forget. If you read without the body there is no need to memorize it; you will not forget it -- because you have understood it.

Power of concentration arises in a man of pure body, of pure consciousness, of purity.

CONTROL OF THE SENSES... These are consequences, remember. They cannot be practiced; if you practice you will never attain to them. They just happen. If the basic cause has been removed, if you are no longer identified with the body, then, "control of the senses." Then it is within your control. Then if you want to think you think; if you don't want to think you just say to the mind, "Stop." It is a mechanism you can put on and off, but mastery is needed; and if you are not a master and you try to become a master, you will create more confusion and trouble for yourself and you will be defeated again and again, and the senses will remain the boss. That's not the way to win over them. The way to win over them is to dis-identify yourself with the body. You have to come to know that you are not the body; and then you have to come to know that you are not the mind.

You have to become the witness to all that is around you. The body is there - the first circle; then the mind is there - the second circle; then the heart is there - the third circle. And then just behind these three circles is the center -- you. If you are centered in yourself, all these three layers will follow you. If you are not centered there then you will have to follow them.

... CONTROL OF THE SENSES, AND A FITNESS FOR SELF-REALIZATION.

And this is how one becomes fit, capable of realizing oneself.

Everybody wants to realize oneself, but nobody wants to pass through the discipline -- nobody wants to mature. Everybody wants it as a magic thing. People come to me and they say, "Can't you bless us so that we can become self-realized?" If it were just that easy, that my blessing will do, then I would have blessed the whole world. Why bother to bless each individual? Bless wholesale, and let the whole world be enlightened. Then Buddha would have done so already, Mahavir would have done so -- finished. All would have become enlightened.

It cannot be done that way. Nobody can bless you; you have to earn that blessing. You have to pass through a deep discipline, you have to change your focus of being, you have to become capable, you have to become a right vehicle; otherwise sometimes it has happened that accidentally someone has stumbled upon the self, but that has been a shock and that has not helped anybody. That has cracked down your whole personality -- you may go mad. It is just like: a
strong current passes through you for which you are not ready -- everything will go wrong. Even, the fuse may blow -- you may die.

You have to attain purity, attain non-identification with the body, with the mind; you have to attain a certain quantity of witnessing. Only then, in that proportion only, self knowledge becomes possible. You cannot get it free. You have to pay for it -- and pay in terms of being. Not that you can pay for it with money, nothing else will be helpful: you have to pay for it in terms of being. "... and a fitness for self-realization."

And this purity, finally, brings contentment. This word is one of the most profound; you have to understand it, feel it, imbibe it. "Contentment" means whatsoever the situation is, you accept it without any complaint. In fact you not only accept it without complaint, you rejoice in it with deep gratefulness. This moment is perfect. When your mind doesn't move from it, when you don't ask for any other time, when you don't ask for any other space, when you don't ask for any other way of being, when you don't ask anything, when the asking has dropped, you are simply here-now, rejoicing, like birds singing in the trees, flowers blooming on the trees, stars moving, everything is taken as "this is the all, the whole, the perfect, no improvement is possible in it" -- when the future is dropped, when the tomorrow disappears... there is contentment. When now is the only time, the eternity, there is contentment, and in that contentment, says Patanjali, "... supreme happiness."

Contentment brings supreme happiness.

So, contentment is the discipline of the yogi; he has to be contented. If nothing can create discontent in you, if nothing can create restlessness in you -- if nothing can push you off your center -- there arises supreme happiness.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6
Chapter #3
Chapter title: The Shadow of Religion
3 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

Purity and Power

Man is like an iceberg. Only a part, a minor part, is visible on the surface; the major part of the whole is hidden beneath. Or, man is like a tree: the real life is in the roots, hidden underground; only branches are visible. If you cut the branches, new branches will come up because branches are not the source; but if you cut the roots the tree is destroyed. Only a part of man is visible on the surface; the major part is hidden behind. And if you think that the visible man is all, then you commit a great mistake. Then you miss the whole mystery of man; and then you miss the doors within yourself which can lead you towards the divine.

If you think that by knowing the name of a person, by knowing from which family he comes, by knowing his profession, that he is a doctor or an engineer or a professor, or by knowing his face, his picture, you have known him; you are in great illusion. These are just the appearance s on the surface. The real man is far, far away from all these. This way you may be acquainted, but you never know the man. It is enough as far as society is concerned; more is not needed. This skin-deep knowledge is enough for the marketplace, but if you really want to know the man then you have to go deep. And the only way to go deep is to go within yourself first.

Unless you know the unknown within you, you will never be able to know anybody else. The only way to know the mystery that man is, is to know the mystery that you are. There are hidden layers behind hidden layers. Man is infinity.

If you go on diving deep in man you will reach to God. Man is just the surface of the ocean, waves. If you dive deep you reach to the very center of existence.  Those who have known God -- they have not known him as an object. They have known him as their innermost subjectivity. Those who have known God have not encountered him. They have not seen him as an object; they have seen him as the very seer, as their own consciousness. You cannot encounter God anywhere except within yourself. He is your depth; you are his surface. You are his periphery; he is your center.

And the deeper you move within yourself, the deeper you are moving in the whole existence, in others also, because the center is one. Peripheries are millions, but the center is one. The whole existence is centered on one point -- that one point is God. God: that is the deepest depth of being. It is a great journey, a great pilgrimage to know man. Patanjali's sutras give you clues how to enter.

Before you can understand this sutra, many more things have to be understood. The body has been very much misused. You have mistreated your own body. You don't know the mystery of the body itself. It is not just the skin; it is not just the bones; it is not just the blood. It is a great organic unity, a great dynamism. For centuries man thought that blood filled the body as water fills a container.

Only just three centuries ago, we came to know that blood does not fill the body, that it is not a stagnant thing -- blood circulates. Only just three centuries ago, we came to know that blood circulates, it is a dynamic force. It does not fill the body, but it circulates -- so silently and so continuously, and the movement is so graceful, without any noise, that we have lived with bodies for millions of lives and we have never come to encounter the reality of the blood, that it circulates.

There are many more mysteries which are hidden. This body is just the first layer of many bodies -- in all, seven bodies. If you move deep in this body you will come across new phenomena. Behind this gross body is hidden the subtle body. Once that subtle body awakes, you become very powerful because you attain to certain new dimensional forces. This body can lie down in your bed, and your subtle body can move. For it there is no barrier. The gravitation of the earth does not affect it; there is no barrier of time and space for it. It can move... it can move anywhere. The whole world is open for it. For the gross body that is not possible.

In some of your dreams the subtle body actually leaves your physical body. In some of your deep meditations your subtle body leaves your physical body. Many of you, deeply meditating, sometimes have become aware that it feels as if you have risen above the earth, a few inches, a few feet. When you open your eyes you are sitting on the earth. You think you have imagined it. It is not so. The subtle body, in deep meditation, can go a little higher than your gross body. Sometimes that, too, happens -- that the gross body also follows the subtle body.

There is a woman in Europe; she has been investigated by all the scientific methods. In deep meditation she rises four feet above the earth; not only in the subtle body, but the gross body also. It has been found to be a fact. This is said in the oldest yoga treatises: that in deep meditation it happens that with the subtle body the gross body can go above the ground -- and, exactly, it says it can go four feet very easily.

And the gross body is just the surface body, the skin of other bodies. Then behind the subtle there are subtler bodies -- in all, seven bodies. They all belong to seven different planes of being. The more you enter in your own being, the more you become aware that this body is not the all. But you will encounter the second body only if this body has become pure.

Yoga does not believe in torturing the body, it is not a masochistic affair -- but it believes in purifying it. And, sometimes, purifying it and torturing it may look alike. A distinction has to be made. A man can fast, and he may be only torturing. He may be just against his own body, suicidal, masochistic. But then another man can fast and he may not be a torturer, and he may not be a masochist, and he may not be trying to destroy the body in any way. Rather, he may be trying to purify it. Because in deep fasting, body attains to certain purities.

You continuously go on eating every day; you never give any holiday to the body. The body goes on accumulating many dead cells -- they become a load. Not only are they a load and a burden, they are toxins, they are poisonous. They make the body impure. When the body is impure you cannot see the hidden body behind it. This body needs to be clean, transparent, pure; then suddenly you become aware of the second layer, the subtle body. When the subtle body is pure then you become aware of the third body, and the fourth, and so on.

Fasting helps tremendously, but one needs to be very much aware that one is not destroying the body. No condemnation should be in the mind; and there is the problem because almost all religions have condemned the body. Their original founders were not condemners; they were not poisoners. They loved their bodies. They loved the body so much that they always tried to purify it. Their fasting was a purification.

Then came blind followers, unaware of the deep science of fasting. They started fasting, blindly. They enjoyed, because mind is violent. It enjoys being violent with others, it enjoys a power, because whenever you are violent with others you feel powerful; but to be violent with others is risky because the other will retaliate. Then there is a simple way: to be violent with your own body. Then there is no risk. The body cannot retaliate. The body cannot harm you. You can go on harming your own body; there is no body to react. This is simple. You can torture and enjoy power -- that now you control your body; the body doesn't control you.

If this fasting is aggressive, violent, if there is anger and destructiveness; then you miss the point. You are not purifying the body; you are in fact destroying it.

And to clean a mirror is one thing and to destroy the mirror is another. To clean the mirror is totally different, because when the mirror is clean of all dust, pure, you will be able to look into it -- it will reflect you. But if you destroy the mirror, then there is no possibility to look into it. If you destroy the gross body you lose all possibility of contact with the second, the subtle body. Purify it, but don't be destructive.

And how does fasting purify? Because whenever you are on a fast the body has no more work of digestion. In that period the body can work in throwing out dead cells, toxins. It is just as one day, Sunday or Saturday, you are on a holiday and you come home and you clean the whole day. The whole week you were so engaged and so busy you couldn't clean the house. When the body has nothing to digest, you have not eaten anything, the body starts a self cleaning. A process starts spontaneously and the body starts throwing out all that is not needed, which is like a load. Fasting is a method of purification. Once in a while, a fast is beautiful -- not doing anything, not eating , just resting. Take as much liquid as possible and just rest, and the body will be cleaned.

Sometimes, if you feel that a longer fast is needed, you can do a longer fast also -- but be deep in love with the body. And if you feel the fast is harming the body in any way, stop it. If the fast is helping the body, you will feel more energetic; you will feel more alive; you will feel rejuvenated, vitalized. This should be the criterion: if you start feeling that you are getting weaker, if you start feeling that a subtle trembling is coming into the body, then be aware -- now the thing is no longer a purification. It has become destructive. Stop it.

But one should learn the whole science of it. In fact one should do fasting near somebody who has been fasting for long and who knows the whole path very well, who knows all the symptoms: if it becomes destructive what will start happening; if it is not destructive then what will happen. After a real, purifying fast you will feel new, younger, cleaner, weightless, happier; and the body will be functioning better because now it is unloaded. But fasting comes only if you have been eating wrongly. If you have no t been eating wrongly there is no need for fasting. Fasting is needed only when you have already done the wrong with the body -- and we all have been eating wrongly.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6
Chapter #5 (In part.)
Chapter title: Purity and Power
3 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

 

Man has lost the path.

Fasting is one such austerity that can destroy impurities that have been accumulated within the body.

One should learn the whole science of fasting. In fact one should do fasting near somebody who has been fasting for long and who knows the whole path very well, who knows all the symptoms: if it becomes destructive what will start happening; if it is not destructive then what will happen. After a real, purifying fast you will feel new, younger, cleaner, weightless, happier; and the body will be functioning better because now it is unloaded. But fasting comes only if you have been eating wrongly. If you have not been eating wrongly there is no need for fasting. Fasting is needed only when you have already done the wrong with the body -- and we all have been eating wrongly.

Man has lost the path. No animal eats like man; every animal has its chosen food. If you bring buffaloes in the garden and leave them, they will eat only a particular grass. They will not go on eating everything and anything -- they are very choosey. They have a certain feeling about their food. Man is completely lost, has no feeling about his food. He goes on eating everything and anything. In fact, you cannot find anything which is not eaten somewhere or other by man. In some places, ants are eaten. In some places, snakes are eaten. In some places, dogs are eaten. Man has eaten everything. Man is simply mad. He does not know what is in resonance with his body and what is not. He is completely confused.

Man, naturally, should be a vegetarian, because the whole body is made for vegetarian food. Even scientists concede to the fact that the whole structure of the human body shows that man should not be a nonvegetarian. Man comes from the monkeys. Monkeys are vegetarians -- absolute vegetarians. If Darwin is true then man should be a vegetarian. Now there are ways to judge whether a certain species of animal is vegetarian or nonvegetarian: it depends on the intestine, the length of the intestine. Nonvegetarian animals have a very small intestine. Tigers, lions -- they have a very small intestine, because meat is already a digested food. It does not need a long intestine to digest it. The work of digestion has been done by the animal. No w you are eating the animal's meat. It is already digested -- no long intestine is needed. Man has one of the longest intestines: that means man is a vegetarian. A long digestion is needed, and much excreta will be there which has to be thrown out.

If man is not a nonvegetarian and he goes on eating meat, the body is burdened.  In the East, all the great meditators -- Buddha, Mahavir -- they have emphasized the fact. Not because of any concept of nonviolence -- that is a secondary thing -- but because if you really want to move in deep meditation your body needs to be weightless, natural, flowing. Your body needs to be unloaded; and a nonvegetarian's body is very much loaded.

Just watch what happens when you eat meat: when you kill an animal what happens to the animal when he is killed? Of course, nobody wants to be killed. Life wants to prolong itself; the animal is not dying willingly. If somebody kills you, you will not die willingly. If a lion jumps on you and kills you, what will happen to your mind? The same happens when you kill a lion. Agony, fear, death, anguish, anxiety, anger, violence, sadness -- all these things happen to the animal. All over his body -- violence, anguish, agony spreads. The whole body becomes full of toxins, poisons. All the body glands release poisons because the animal is dying very unwillingly. And then you eat the meat -- that meat carries all the poisons that the animal has released. The whole energy is poisonous. Then those poisons are carried in your body.

And that meat which you are eating belonged to an animal body. It had a specific purpose there. A specific type of consciousness existed in the animal's body. You are on a higher plane than the animal's consciousness, and when you eat the animal's meat your body goes to the lowest plane, to the lower plane of the animal. Then there exists a gap between your consciousness and your body, and a tension arises, and anxiety arises.

One should eat things which are natural -- natural for you. Fruits, nuts, vegetables -- eat as much as you can. An d the beauty is that you cannot eat these things more than is needed. Whatsoever is natural always gives you a satisfaction, because it satiates your body, saturates you. You feel fulfilled. If some thing is unnatural it never gives you a feeling of fulfillment. Go on eating ice cream: you never feel that you are satiated. In fact the more you eat, the more you feel like eating. It is not a food. Your mind is being tricked. Now you are not eating according to the body need; you are eating just to taste it. The tongue has become the controller.

The tongue should not be the controller. It does not know anything about the stomach. It does not know anything about the body. The tongue has a specific purpose to fulfill: to taste food. Naturally, the tongue has to judge, that is the only thing, which food is for the body -- for my body -- and which food is not for my body. It is just a watchman on the door; it is not the master. And if the watchman on the door becomes the master, then everything will be confused.

Now advertisers know well that the tongue can be tricked, the nose can be tricked. And they are not the masters. You may not be aware: much food research goes on in the world, and they say if your nose is closed completely, and your eyes closed, and then you are given an onion to eat, you cannot tell what you are eating. You cannot tell onion from apple if the nose is closed completely because half of the taste comes from the smell, is decided by the nose, and half is decided by the tongue -- and these two have become the controllers. Now they know: whether ice cream is nutritious or not is not the point. It can carry a flavor  it can carry some chemicals which fulfill the tongue but are not needed for the body.

Man is confused -- more confused than buffaloes. You cannot convince buffaloes to eat ice cream.

A natural food... and when I say "natural" I mean that which your body needs. The need of a tiger is different; he has to be very violent. If you eat the meat of a tiger you will be violent, but where will your violence be expressed? You have to live in human society, not in a jungle. Then you will have to suppress the violence. Then a vicious circle starts. When you suppress violence, what happens? When you feel angry, violent, a certain poisonous energy is released, because that poison creates a situation where you can be really violent and kill somebody. The energy moves towards your hands; the energy moves towards your teeth -- these are the two places from where animals become violent. Man is part of the animal kingdom.

Expressing accumulated anger in the hands. Is it any real wonder why so much anger is spewed across the internet?

When you are angry, energy is released -- it comes to the hands and to the teeth, to the jaw -- but you live in a human society and it is not always profitable to be angry. You live in a civilized world, and you cannot behave like an animal. If you behave like an animal, you will have to pay too much for it -- and you are not ready to pay that much. Then what do you do? You suppress the anger in the hand; you suppress the anger in your teeth -- you go on smiling a false smile, and your hands & teeth go on accumulating anger.

I have rarely come to see people with a natural jaw. It is not natural -- blocked, stiff -- because too much anger is there. If you press the jaw of a person, the anger can be released. Hands become ugly. They lose grace, they lose flexibility, because too much anger is suppressed there. People who have been working on deep massage, they have come to know that when you touch the hands deeply, massage the hands, the person starts becoming angry. There is no reason. You are massaging the man and suddenly he starts feeling angry. If you press the jaw, persons become angry again. They carry accumulated anger within.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6
Chapter #5 (In part.)
Chapter title: Purity and Power
3 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

Patanjali's whole art is of how to attain to the state where you can die willingly, surrender willingly, with no resistance. These sutras are a preparation - a preparation to die and a preparation to a greater life.

Patanjali's yoga has been very much misunderstood, misinterpreted. Patanjali is not a gymnast, but yoga looks like it is a gymnastics of the body. Patanjali is not against the body. He is not a teacher to teach you contortions of the body. He teaches you the grace of the body, because he knows only in a graceful body a graceful mind exists; and only in a graceful mind a graceful self becomes possible; and only in a graceful self, the God.

Step by step, deeper and higher grace has to be attained. Grace of the body is what he calls asan, posture. He's not a masochist. He is not teaching you to torture your body. He is not a bit against the body. How can he be? He knows the body is going to be the very foundation-stone. He knows if you miss the body, if you don't train the body, then higher training will not be possible.

The body is just like a musical instrument. It has to be rightly tuned; only then will the higher music arise out of it. If the very instrument is somehow not in right shape and order, then how can you imagine, hope, that the great harmony will arise out of it? Only discordance will arise. Body is a veena, a musical instrument.

"STHIR SUKHAM ASANAM" -- the posture should be steady and should be very, very blissful, comfortable. So never try to distort your body, and never try to achieve postures which are uncomfortable.

For the Westerners, sitting on the ground, sitting in padmasan, lotus posture, is difficult; their bodies have not been trained for it. There is no need to bother about it. Patanjali will not force that posture on you. In the East people are sitting from their very birth, small children sitting on the ground. In the West, in all cold countries, chairs are needed; the ground is too cold. But there is no need to be worried about it. If you look at Patanjali's definition, what a posture is, you will understand: it should be steady and comfortable.

If you can be steady and comfortable in a chair, it is perfectly okay -- no need to try a lotus posture and force your body unnecessarily. In fact, if a Western person tries to attain to lotus posture it takes six months to force the body; and it is a torture. There is no need. Patanjali is not in any way helping you, in any way persuading you, to torture the body. You can sit in a tortured posture, but then it will not be a posture according to Patanjali.

A posture should be such that you can forget your body. What is comfort? When you forget your body, you are comfortable. When you are reminded continuously of the body, you are uncomfortable. So whether you sit in a chair or you sit on the ground, that's not the point. Be comfortable, because if you are not comfortable in the body you cannot long for other blessings which belong to deeper layers: the first layer missed, all other layers closed. If you really want to be happy, blissful, then start from the very beginning to be blissful. Comfort of the body is a basic need for anybody who is trying to reach inner ecstasies.

"Posture should be steady and comfortable." And whenever a posture is comfortable it is bound to be steady. You fidget if the posture is uncomfortable. You go on changing sides if the posture is uncomfortable. If the posture is really comfortable, what is the need to fidget and feel restless and go on changing again and again?

And remember, the posture that is comfortable to you may not be comfortable to your neighbor; so please, never teach your posture to anybody. Every body is unique. Something that is comfortable to you may be uncomfortable to somebody else.

Everybody has to be unique because every body is carrying a unique soul. Your thumbprints are unique. You cannot find anybody else all over the world whose thumbprints are just like yours. And not only today: you cannot find anybody in the whole past history whose thumbprints will be like yours, and those who know, they say even in the future there will never be a person whose thumbprint will be like yours. A thumbprint is nothing, insignificant, but that too is unique. That shows that every body carries a unique being. If your thumbprint is so different from others', your body, the whole body, has to be different.

So never listen to anybody's advice. You have to find your own posture. There is no need to go to any teacher to learn it; your own feeling of comfort should be the teacher. And if you try -- within a few days try all the postures that you know, all the ways that you can sit -- one day you will fall upon, stumble upon, the right posture. And the moment you feel the right posture, everything will become silent and calm within you. And nobody else can teach you, because nobody can know how your body harmony, in what posture, will exactly be steady, comfortable.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6
Chapter #7
Chapter title: Death to The Limited
7 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

 

Patanjali says the outer posture is of the body, the inner posture is of the mind; both are connected. When the body is in the middle -- restful, steady -- the mind is also in the middle -- restful & steady.

When the body is in rest, body-feeling disappears; when the mind is in rest, mind feeling disappears. Then you are only the soul, the transcendental, which is neither the body nor the mind.

 

Between body and mind, breath is the bridge -- these three things have to be understood. Body posture, mind merging into the infinite, and the bridge that joins them together have to be in a right rhythm. Have you observed? If not, then observe that whenever your mind changes, the breathing changes. The reverse is also true: change your breathing, and mind changes.

When you are deep in sexual passion have you watched how you breathe? -- very nonrhythmic, feverish, excited. If you continue breathing that way you will be tired soon, exhausted. It will not give you life; in fact, in that way you are losing some life. When you are calm and quiet, feeling happy, suddenly one morning or evening looking at the stars, nothing to do, a holiday, just resting -- look, watch the breathing. The breathing is so peaceful. You cannot even feel it, whether it is moving or not. When you are angry, watch. The breathing changes immediately. When you feel love, watch. When you are sad, watch. With every mood the breathing has a different rhythm: it is a bridge.

When your body is healthy, breathing has a different quality. When your body is ill the breathing is ill. When you are perfectly in health you completely forget about breathing. When you are not in perfect health the breathing comes again and again to your notice; something is wrong.

"The next step after the perfection of posture is breath control...." This word "breath control" is not good; it is not a right rendering of the word "pranayam." Pranayam never means breath control. It simply means the expansion of the vital energy. Prana-ayam: prana means the vital energy hidden in breath, and ayam means infinite expansion. It is not "breath control." The very word "control" is a little ugly, because the very word "control" gives you a feeling of the controller -- the will enters. Pranayam is totally different: expansion of vitality breathing in such a way that you become one with the whole's breathing; breathing in such a way that you are not breathing in your own individual way, you are breathing with the whole.

Try this, sometimes it happens: two lovers sitting by each other's side holding hands -- if they are really in love they will suddenly become aware that they are breathing simultaneously, they are breathing together. They are not breathing separately. When the woman inhales, the man inhales. When the man exhales, the woman exhales. Try it. Sometime, suddenly become aware. If you are sitting with a friend, you will be breathing together. If the enemy is sitting there and you want to get rid of him, or some bore is there and you want to get rid of him, you will be breathing separately; you will never breathe in rhythm.

Sit with a tree. If you are silent, enjoying, delighting, suddenly you will become aware that the tree, somehow, is breathing the same way you are breathing. And there comes a moment when one feels that one is breathing together with the whole, one becomes the breath of the whole, one is no longer fighting, struggling, one is surrendered. One is with the whole -- so much so, that there is no need to breathe separately.

In deep love people breathe together; in hatred never. I have a feeling that if you are inimical to somebody, he may be a thousand miles away.... This is just a feeling because no scientific research exists for it, but someday the scientific research is possible. But I have a very deep feeling that if you are inimical to somebody, he may be in America and you may be in India, you will breathe separately, you cannot breathe together. And your lover may be in China, you may be here in Poona -- you may not even have the address with you where your lover is -- but you will breathe together. This is how it should be, and I know it is that way, but no scientific proof exists. That's why I say this is just my feeling. Someday, somebody will prove the scientific thing also.

There are a few proofs which suggest.... For example, in Russia there have been a few experiments about telepathy. Two persons, separate, far away, hundreds of miles away: one person is the broadcaster, another is the receiver in telepathy. At a fixed time, twelve in the afternoon, one starts sending messages. He makes a copy of a triangle, concentrates on it, and sends the message that "I have made a triangle." And the other person tries to receive, just remains open, feeling, groping -- what message is coming. And scientists have observed that if he receives the triangle then they both are breathing in the same way; if he misses the triangle then they are not breathing in the same way.

In deep breathing together, something of deep empathy arises; you become one -- because breath is life. Then feeling can be transferred, thoughts can be transferred.

Pranayam means: to breathe with the whole. That is my translation, not "control of breath": to breathe with the whole. It is absolutely uncontrolled! If you control how can you breathe with the whole? So to translate pranayam as "breath control" is a misnomer. It is not only incorrect, inadequate, it is certainly wrong.

Just the opposite is the case.

To breathe with the whole, to become the breath of the eternal and the whole is pranayam. Then you expand. Then your life energy goes on expanding with trees and mountains and sky and stars. Then a moment comes, the day you become Buddha... you have completely disappeared. Now you no longer breathe, the whole breathes in you. Now your breathing and the whole's breathing are never apart; they are always together. So much so that it is now useless to say that "this is my breath."

"The next step after the perfection of posture is breath control -- PRANAYAM -- WHICH IS ACCOMPLISHED THROUGH HOLDING THE BREATH ON INHALATION AND EXHALATION, OR STOPPING THE BREATH SUDDENLY."

When you breathe in, there comes a moment when the breath has completely gone in -- for a certain second breathing stops. The same happens when you exhale. You breathe out: when the breath is completely released, for a certain second, again, breathing stops. In those moments you face death, and to face death is to face God. To face death is to face God -- I repeat it -- because when you die, God lives in you. Only after the crucifixion is there resurrection. That's why I say Patanjali is teaching the art of dying.

When the breathing stops, when there is no breathing, you are exactly in the same stage as you will be in when you will die. For a second you are in tune with death -- breathing has stopped. The whole of THE BOOK OF THE SECRETS, VIGYAN BHAIRAV TANTRA, is concerned with it -- emphatically concerned with it -- because if you can enter into that stoppage, there is the door.

It is very subtle and narrow. Jesus has said again and again, "Narrow is my way -- straight, but narrow, very narrow." Kabir has said, "Two cannot pass together, only one." So narrow that if you are a crowd inside, you cannot pass. If you are even divided in two -- left and right -- you cannot pass. If you become one, a unison, a harmony, then you can pass.

Narrow is the way. Straight, of course; it is not a crooked thing. It goes directly to the temple of the divine, but very narrow. You cannot take anybody with you. You cannot take your things with you. You cannot take your knowledge. You cannot take your sacrifices. You cannot take your woman, your children. You cannot take anybody. In fact you cannot take even your ego, even your self. You will pass through it, but everything else other than your purest being has to be left at the door. Yes, narrow is the way. Straight, but narrow.

And these are the moments to find the way: when the breath goes in and stops for a second; when the breath goes out and stops for a second. Attune yourself to become more and more aware of these stops, these gaps. Through these gaps, God enters you like death.

Somebody was telling me, "In the West, we don't have any parallel like Yama, the god of death." And he was asking me, "Why do you call death a god? Death is the enemy. Why should death be called a god? If you call death the devil it is okay, but why do you call it a god?" I said we call it a god very consideredly: because death is the door to God. In fact death is deeper than life -- life that you know. Not the life that I know. Your death is deeper than your life, and when you move through that death you will come to a life which doesn't belong to you or me or to anybody. It is the life of the whole. Death is the God.

A whole Upanishad exists, kathopanishad: the whole story, the whole parable is that a small child is sent to Death to learn the secret of life. Absurd, patently absurd. Why go to Death to learn the secret of life? Looks like a paradox, but it is reality. If you want to know life -- real life -- you will have to ask Death, because when your so-called life stops, only then real life functions.

"The next step after the perfection of posture is pranayam, which is accomplished through holding the breath...." So when you inhale, hold it a little longer so that the gate can be felt. When you exhale it, hold it outside a little longer so that you can feel the gap a little more easily; you have a little more time. "... or stopping the breath suddenly." Or, anytime, stop the breath suddenly. Walking on the road: stop it -- just a sudden jerk, and death enters. Anytime you can stop the breath suddenly, anywhere, in that stopping, death can enter.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6
Chapter #7
Chapter title: Death to The Limited
7 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

 

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6
Chapter #8
Chapter title: Beyond The Rhythms of The Mind to Being
8 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

Question 1:

SOMETIMES AT YOUR LECTURES I CAN'T KEEP MY EYES OPEN OR CONCENTRATE, AND KEEP FALLING SOMEWHERE AND COMING BACK WITH A JERK. THERE IS NO MEMORY OF WHERE I HAVE BEEN. AM I GOING DEEP, OR JUST FALLING ASLEEP?

Mind functions through very subtle electric waves. That mechanism has to be understood. Now researchers say that mind functions in four states. The ordinary awake mind functions at eighteen to thirty cycles per second -- this is the "beta" state of mind. Right now you are in that state, while awake, doing your things.

Deeper than that is the "alpha" rhythm. Sometimes, when you are not active, but passive -- just relaxing on the beach, not doing anything, listening to music, or deep in prayer or in meditation -- then the activity of the mind is lowered: from eighteen to thirty cycles per second it becomes nearabout fourteen to eighteen cycles per second. You are aware, but not very alert. You are awake, but passive. A certain kind of deep relaxation surrounds you.

All meditators fall into this second, alpha rhythm, when they meditate or pray. Listening to music also that can happen. Just looking at trees, the expanse of greenery, it can happen. Not doing anything particularly, just sitting silently, it can happen. And once you know the knack of it, you can slow down the activity of the mind; then thoughts are not rushing. They move, they are there, but they move at a very slow pace, as if clouds floating in the sky -- in fact, not going somewhere, just floating. This second state, alpha, is very valuable.

Below the second there is a third state; the activity falls even lower. That state is called "theta": from eight to fourteen cycles per second. This is the state you pass through in the night when you are falling asleep, the drowsiness. When you take alcohol you pass through that drowsiness. Watch a drunkard walking: he is in the third state. He is walking not aware. Where he is going, he does not know. What he is doing.... The body goes on functioning as a robot. The mind activity has slowed down so much that it is almost just on the verge of falling asleep.

In very deep meditation also this will happen -- you will fall from alpha to theta. But it happens only in very deep states. Ordinary meditators don't touch it. When you start touching this third state you will feel very blissful.

And all drunkards are trying to reach this blissfulness, but they miss; because the blissfulness is possible only if you go into this third state fully alert -- passive, but alert. A drunkard reaches into it, but he is unconscious; by the time he reaches he is unconscious. The state is there but he cannot enjoy it, he cannot delight in it, he cannot grow through it. The appeal all over the world of all sorts of intoxicants is because of the appeal of the theta. But you have chosen a wrong means if you are trying to reach it through chemicals. One should reach it just by slowing down the activity of the mind and remaining fully alert.

Then there is the fourth state; it is called "delta." The activity falls lower still: from zero to four cycles per second. The mind is almost nonfunctioning. There are moments when it touches the zero point, absolutely still. This is where you go in deep sleep, when even dreams have stopped; and this is what Hindus, Patanjali, Buddhists, have called samadhi. Patanjali, in fact, defines samadhi as deep sleep with awareness -- with only one condition: that awareness should be there.

In the West, much research has been done lately about these four states. They think it is impossible to be aware in the fourth, because they think it is contradictory -- to be aware and fast asleep. It is not. And one man, a very exceptional yogi, has proved it now scientifically. His name is Swami Ram. In 1970, in an American lab, in Menninger Institute, he told the researchers that he would go into the fourth state of mind willfully. They said, "That is impossible, because the fourth comes only when you are fast asleep and the will cannot function and you are not aware." But the swami said, "I will do it." The researchers were unwilling to believe, they were suspicious, but they tried.

The swami started meditating. By and by, within a few minutes, he was almost asleep. The EEG records which were tracing the waves of his mind showed that he was in the fourth state, the mind activity had almost ceased. Still, the researchers didn't believe because, he may have fallen asleep, that is not the point: the point is whether he is aware. Then the swami came back from his meditation, and he reported all the conversation that was going on around him -- better than those who were fully alert.

For the first time in a scientific lab, Krishna's famous sentence has been proved. Krishna says in the Geeta, "Ya nisha sarva bhutayam tasyam jagrati samyami" -- "That which is a deep sleep to all, even there the yogi is awake."

For the first time it has been proved as a scientific theory. It is possible to be fast asleep and aware, because sleep happens in the body, sleep happens in the mind, but the witnessing soul is never asleep. Once you have become unidentified with the body-mind mechanism, once you have become capable of watching what goes on in the body, in the mind, you cannot fall asleep: the body will go to sleep, you will remain alert. Somewhere deep within you a center will remain perfectly aware.

Swami Rama the Himalayan Master, part 1
Mar 14, 2012
SRCindia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1sZNbRH2N8&list=RDQMecouVJ9Lh-c&start_radio=1

Swami Rama the Himalayan Master, part 2
Mar 14, 2012
SRCindia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s07V08JKO3M&list=RDQMecouVJ9Lh-c&index=2

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6

Chapter #8
Chapter title: Beyond The Rhythms of The Mind to Being
8 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

Question 5

YOU ONCE SAID THAT DRUGS CREATE CHEMICAL DREAMS -- IMAGINARY EXPERIENCES. AND KRISHNAMURTI SAYS THAT ALL YOGA PRACTICES, ALL MEDITATION TECHNIQUES, ARE JUST LIKE DRUGS -- THEY PRODUCE CHEMICAL CHANGE AND, HENCE, THE EXPERIENCES. PLEASE COMMENT.

Krishnamurti is right. Very difficult to understand, but he is right. All experiences are through chemical change -- all, without any exception. Whether you take LSD or you fast, in both the ways body goes through chemical change. Whether you take marijuana or you do a certain pranayam - a breathing exercise - in both the ways body goes through chemical change. Try to understand it.

When you fast what happens? Your body loses a few chemicals because they have to be supplied every day by the food. If you don't supply those chemicals, the body loses those chemicals. Then the ordinary balance of the chemicals is lost; and because fasting creates an imbalance you can start feeling a few things.

If you fast long enough you will have hallucinations. If you fast for twenty-one days or more you will become incapable of judging whether what you are seeing is real or unreal, because for it a particular chemical is needed and that is lost.

Ordinarily, if suddenly Krishna meets you on the road, the first idea to arise will be that you must be seeing some hallucination, some illusion, some dream. You will rub your eyes and you will look around, or you will ask somebody else, "Come here. Please, see. Can you see somebody standing just in front of me, Krishna-like?" But if you fast for twenty-one days, the distinction between reality and dream is lost. Then if Krishna is standing, you believe that he is there.

Have you watched small children? They cannot make a distinction between reality and dream. In the night they dreamed about a toy, and in the morning they are weeping and crying -- "Where has the toy gone?" That particular chemical which helps you to judge has still to be created, only then will the child be able to make the distinction between real and unreal. When you take alcohol that chemical is destroyed.

          Mulla Nasrudin was teaching his son. Sitting in a pub, he was telling him when to stop.

So he said, "Look. Look in that corner. When you start seeing four people instead of two,

know well this is the time to stop drinking and go home."

          The son said, " But Dad, there are not two people -- only one is sitting!"

          The dad is already drunk.

When you take alcohol what happens? Some chemical change. When you take LSD what happens? -- or marijuana or other things? Some chemical change, and you start seeing things which you had never seen. You start feeling things; you become very sensitive.

And that is the trouble: you cannot persuade an alcoholic to drop his drinks, because the real reality seems so flat, boring. Once he has seen the reality through his chemicals, through chemical changes --> The trees were more green and the flowers had more fragrance because he could project, he could create an illusory world: now you tell him, "Stop. Your children are suffering, your wife is suffering, your job is going to the dogs -- stop!" but he cannot stop, because he had a glimpse of an unreal world, but beautiful. Now if he stops, the world seems to be too rough, ordinary. The trees don't look so green and the flowers don't smell so beautiful; even the wife looks very ordinary, dead, a routine affair. When he is under the influence of the drug his own wife becomes a Cleopatra, the most beautiful woman in the world. He lives a dream life.

All experiences are chemical -- without any exception. When you breathe very much you create very much oxygen inside the body; the quantity of nitrogen falls. More oxygen changes inner chemicals. You start feeling things which you never felt. If you whirl around as in dervish dances, fast spin, the body changes; the chemicals change through spinning. You feel dizzy; a new world opens. All experiences are chemical.

When you are hungry the world looks different. When you are satisfied, satiated, the world looks different. A poor man has a different world, and a rich man has a different world. Their chemicals differ. An intelligent man has a different world, and a stupid man has a different world. Their chemicals differ. A woman has a different world; a man has a different world. Their chemicals differ.

When one becomes sexually mature, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, a different world arises because new chemicals are flowing in the bloodstream. For a child of seven, if you talk about sex and sexual ogasm, he will think you are foolish -- "What nonsense are you talking?" -- because those chemicals are not flowing, those hormones are not in the bloodstream. But at the moment of the age of fourteen, fifteen, the eyes are full of new chemicals -- an ordinary woman suddenly is transformed.

          Mulla Nasrudin used to go to the hills on holidays. Sometimes he would go for fifteen days and would be back by the tenth. The boss asked him, "What is the matter? You asked for fifteen days leave, and you are back five days before?" And sometimes he would ask for two weeks leave and he would come after four weeks. "So what is the matter?" the boss asked.
          The Mulla said, "There is a certain mathematics in it. In the hills I have a bungalow, and the bungalow is kept by an old, very ugly woman. So this is my criterion: when I start seeing that ugly woman as a beautiful woman, I run away.

          Sometimes it happens after eight days, sometimes ten days.... She is ugly and horrible. You cannot think that she can be beautiful. But when I start thinking about her and she starts coming into my dreams and I feel that she is beautiful, then I know that now this is the time to go back home; otherwise there is danger.

          So nobody knows. If I am healthy enough then it comes sooner, within seven days. If I am not so healthy then it takes two weeks. If I am very weak it takes three weeks. It depends on chemicals."

All experiences are chemical -- but one distinction has to be made. There are two ways. One is to put the chemicals in -- inject, smoke, or throw into the body. They come from the outside; they are intruders. That's what all drug people are doing around the world. The other way is to change the body by fasting, breathing....

That's what all the yogis have been doing in the East. They belong to the same path; the difference is very little. The difference is that drug people take drugs from the outside, they intrude in the biochemistry of the body, and the yogis try to change the balance of their own body, not to intrude from the outside. But as far as I am concerned, both are the same.

But if you have any urge to experience, I will tell you to choose the path of the yogis, because that way you will not be dependent, you will be more independent. And that way you will never become an addict, and that way your body will retain its purity, its organic unity. And that way, at least, you will not be an offense to the law -- no police raid possible. And that way you can go beyond easily. Hmm?... that is the most important thing.

If you take chemicals from the outside into the body, you will remain with them. It will be difficult, more and more difficult every day to go beyond. In fact you will become more and more dependent, so dependent that you will lose all life, all charm of life, and the drug experience alone will become your whole life, the whole center of it.

If you move through yoga, through the inner changes in the chemistry of the body, you will never be dependent, and you will be able to go beyond. Because the whole point of religion is to go beyond experiences. Whether you experience beautiful colors -- rainbows all around through LSD -- or you experience heaven through yoga exercises, basically there is no difference. In fact until you go beyond all experiences - all objective experiences - until you come to the point where only the witness remains and no experience to be experienced, only the experiencer remains, you have not touched the boundary of religion.

Krishnamurti is right. But the people who are listening to him are misunderstanding him. Thinking that all experiences are futile, they have remained ordinary; they have not made any effort. I know all experiences are futile, finally one has to leave them, but before you can leave them you will have to have them. They are like the staircase: it has to be left behind, but one has to go upwards. One can leave it only when one has crossed it. All experiences are childish, but one has to go through them to become mature.

The real religious experience is not an experience at all. Religious experience is not experience: it is to come to the experiencer where everything known/unknown, knowable/ unknowable, disappears. Only the witnessing self remains, only a pure consciousness, with no experience to contaminate it -- you don't see Jesus, you don't see Buddha, you don't see Krishna standing there.

That's why the Zen Masters say, "If you meet the Buddha on the path, kill him immediately." Followers of Buddha say, "If you meet Buddha on the path, kill him immediately." A great teaching. Hmm?... because Buddha is so beautiful you can be allured to the dream, and then you can go on with closed eyes seeing Buddha or Krishna playing on the flute. You may be seeing a very religious dream, but it is still a dream, not reality.

The reality is your consciousness. Everything else has to be transcended. If you can remember that, then one has to pass through all experiences, but one has to pass through.

If you are after experiences too much -- as everyone is -- that is part of the growth. It is better to choose yoga exercises than drugs. They are more subtle, yoga exercises, more refined. You must be aware of the fact that India has tried with all the drugs. America is just a newcomer in that world. From somarasa in the Rig-vedas to ganja, India has tried everything and came to understand that this is just wasting time. Then India tried yoga exercises. Then, many times, persons like Buddha, Mahavir, reached a stage where they found that even yoga exercises are useless; they have to be dropped.

Krishnamurti is not saying something new. It is the experience of all the Buddhas. But, remember, an experience can become an experience to you only when you attain to it. Nobody can give it to you; it cannot be borrowed. If you are still childish and you feel that you need some experiences, it is better to have them through yoga exercises. Finally, that too has to be dropped.

But if you choose between LSD and pranayam, it is better to choose pranayam. You will be less dependent and you will be more capable of transcending, because the awareness will not be lost in it. In LSD the awareness will be lost completely.

Always choose a higher thing. Whenever there is a possibility, and you want to choose, choose a higher thing. A moment will come when you will not like to choose anything... then choicelessness.

SOURCE LINK: http://www.alaalsayid.com/ebooks/OSHO%20pdf/Yoga,%20The%20Alpha%20and%20the%20Omega%20-%20Vol%206.pdf

Is man a blessing to this world? Or, is man a curse?
Some critical thinkers have expressed their contradictory views:

"Man is being abolished," said C. S. Lewis.
"Good riddance," says B. F. Skinner.
"How like a god," says Shakespeare's Hamlet about man.
"How like a dog," says Pavlov.

The trouble is that man is both -- god-like & dog-like -- both. If man was a unity -- totally dog-like or totally god-like -- there would have been no problem. The problem arises because man is a paradox: on the surface - worse than any dog; at the center - glorious - even more glorious than any god.

If you look at man just from the outside, you cannot say that if man is being abolished there is some harm -- "It is good, good riddance." Skinner is right. The earth will be better; at least, more silent. Nature will be happier. But if you look deeper at man, in his infinite depth, then without man the earth may be silent, but that silence will be a dead thing. It will not have any music in it. It will not have any depth in it. Flowers will be there, but they will not be beautiful anymore. Who will feel their beauty? Who will know their beauty? Birds will go on singing, but who will call that singing poetic, mysterious? Trees will be green, but will not be green will have no meaning, because that greenery has to be recognized by a deep resonance of the human heart.

With man, appreciation will disappear. With man, prayer will disappear. With man, God will disappear. The earth will be there, but ungodly. The silence, but the silence of the cemetery. The silence will not be throbbing with the heart. It may be spread all over the earth, it may have expansion, but it will miss depth -- and a silence without depth is no longer silence. The world will be profane; it won't be sacred anymore.

Man creates the holy, because deep hidden behind man is the holy. Man cannot live without temples, without churches, without mosques, because man himself is a temple. He goes on creating temples -- even atheists create temples. Look at the temple of the Kremlin. Communists passing before the Kremlin or before the mausoleum of Lenin are as worshipful as any theist worshipping any other god.

Man cannot live without a god because deep down he is a god.

The problem, the trouble, arises because man is both: a bridge stretched between two eternities -- between matter and mind, between this world and that, between the profane and the sacred, between life and death. That's the beauty also: with the mystery, with the paradox, man is not only a puzzle, he also becomes a mystery.

What to do? If you settle with Pavlov and his disciple B.F. Skinner, you have settled without knowing man, without understanding man, without even making an effort to know him. If you settle too soon with Buddha, Mahavir, Krishna, Christ, Patanjali, if your acceptance is immature, then "that man is a god" will remain a belief; it can never become a trusted faith. If you are in a hurry to be settled with anything, then you will miss. A deep patience is needed to know man.

And there is no way to know man objectively. If you try to know man objectively, as a scientist is tempted to, you will commit the mistake of Pavlov -- man will look like a dog. The only way to know man is to know the man who is within you. The only way to come face to face with man is to encounter yourself.

You are carrying a tremendous energy within you. Unless you are acquainted with it you will not be able to see and know that it is also within others. Remember this as a criterion: that as much as you know yourself, only that much can you know the other. Not a bit more, no -- impossible. The knower must be known first; only then can the mystery of the known be penetrated. You must know your own depth; only then your eyes become attuned to know the depth of the others.

If you remain on the surface of your being then the whole existence will remain just the surface. If you think that you are only a wave on the ocean, and you have not known the ocean at all, all other waves will remain waves. Once you have a look within your being and you become the ocean -- you have been the ocean, you come to know it -- all other waves have disappeared: now it is only the ocean waving. Now behind every wave -- beautiful, ugly, small, big -- it doesn't matter; the same ocean exists.

Yoga is a method to come to terms with the innermost depth of your own being, the subjectivity of your soul. It is infinite: you enter into it, but you never come to a point where you can say, "I have known all." You go on and on and on.... It is infinite. You can be deeply in it, but still, much always remains. That point never comes when you can say, "Now I have come to the boundary." In fact, boundaries don't exist. They don't exist in the universe. Outside there are no boundaries; existence is infinite. They don't exist within your subjectivity.

Boundaries are always false. Deeper you go, the unbounded opens more and more.

But once you have fallen in it, once you have flown in it... now you know. Now the small disappears, the bounded disappears, the limited disappears. Now you look into anybody's eyes and you know the infinite waiting there. Love, for the first time, becomes possible. Love is possible only when you have known your depth. Only gods love, and only gods can love. Dogs can only fight; even in the name of love they will fight. And if gods fight, even in their fight they love; otherwise is not possible.

When you have come to know your being as divine, the whole existence immediately is transfigured. It is no longer the old existence, the stale, the day-to-day, the ordinary. No, nothing ordinary exists after that; everything takes the color of extraordinariness, of a superb glory. Ordinary pebbles become diamonds -- they are. Every leaf becomes alive with tremendous life hidden behind it, within it, below it, beyond it. The whole existence becomes divine. The moment you know your god, you only know God everywhere. That is the only way to know.

The whole yoga is a methodology: how to uncover it which is so hidden, how to open the doors within yourself, how to enter the temple that you are, how to discover yourself. You are there, you have been there from the very beginning, but you have not discovered it. The treasure is carried by you every moment.

Every breath you take in or out, the treasure is there. You may not be aware, but you have never missed it. You may be completely oblivious, but you have never lost it. You may have forgotten it completely, but there is no way to lose it -- because you are it.

So the only question is: how to discover it. It is covered; many layers of ignorance cover it. Yoga tries step by step, slowly, to penetrate the inner mystery. In eight steps yoga completes the discovery. The beginning steps are called bahirang yoga - the yoga of the outside - yam, niyam, asan, pranayam, pratyahar -- these five steps are known as the yoga of the outside. The following three, the last three -- dharana, dhyan, samadhi -- are known as antarang -- the yoga of the inside.

Now, the sutras: Tatah kshiyate prakashavaranam.

The four steps have been taken. The fifth works as a bridge between the four, the yoga of the outside, and the last three, the yoga of the inside. The fifth, which is part of the yoga of the outside, also functions as a bridge. Pratyahar: the word means "returning to the source" -- not reaching to the source, just returning to the source. The process of return has started: now the energy is no longer moving outwardly, the energy is no longer interested in objects -- the energy has taken a turn, an about turn. It is turning inwards -- this is what Jesus calls conversion, coming back.

Ordinarily, the energy is moving outward. You want to see, you want to smell, you want to touch, you want to feel: the energy is moving out. You have completely forgotten who is hidden within you. You have become eyes, ears, nose, hands, and you have forgotten who is hidden behind these senses, who looks through your eyes. You are not the eyes. You have the eyes, right, but you are not the eyes. Eyes are only windows. Who is standing behind the windows? Who looks through the eyes? I look at you; eyes are not looking at you. Eyes cannot look by themselves. Unless I am standing near the window, looking out, eyes by themselves cannot look.

It happens many times to you also: you go on reading a book, you have read pages, and suddenly you become aware that you have not read a single word. Eyes were there, but you were not there. Eyes went on moving from one word to another, from one sentence to another, from one paragraph to another, from one page to another, but you were not there. Suddenly you become mindful that "Only eyes were moving; I was not there." You are in deep pain, suffering: then eyes are open, but you don't see; they are much too filled with tears. Or you are very happy, so happy that you don't care: suddenly your eyes are filled with so much cheerfulness they don't see.

You are in the market and somebody tells you, "Your house has caught fire" -- you start running. You see many people on the street. A few people say, "Good morning. Where are you going? Why are you in such a hurry? What has happened?" Your eyes go on seeing, your ears go on hearing, but you are not there. Your house has caught fire... your presence is not there, no more. If afterwards you are asked, "Can you remember who had asked you,'Where are you going? Why are you in such a hurry?'" you will not be able to remember.

You had seen the man, you have heard what he said, but you were not there. Ears by themselves cannot hear. Eyes by themselves cannot see. Your presence is needed. You may be on the playground playing football, hockey, or volleyball or something: when the play is at the peak you are hit in your feet, blood starts flowing... but you are so deeply involved in the game, you are not aware. It hurts, but you are not there to feel. After half an hour the game stops; suddenly your attention moves to the feet, blood is flowing -- now it hurts. For half an hour the blood was flowing but it was not hurting -- you were not there.

This has to be deeply understood: that senses by themselves are impotent -- unless you cooperate. That's the whole art of yoga. If you don't cooperate senses close. If you don't cooperate conversion starts. If you don't cooperate pratyahar comes in. That's what people who are sitting silently for hours, for years, are doing -- they are trying to drop the cooperation between themselves and their senses. When the energy is not obsessed to see, to hear, to touch; the energy starts moving inwards. That is pratyahar: movement towards the source, movement towards the place from where you have come, movement to the
center. Now you are no longer moving to the periphery.

This is just the beginning. The end will be in samadhi. Pratyahar is just a beginning of the energy moving towards home. Samadhi is when you have reached home, arrived. The four -- yam, niyam, asan, pranayam -- are the preparation for pratyahar, the fifth. And pratyahar is the beginning, the turning; samadhi is the end.

"Then comes the dispersion of the cover that hides the light." The last sutra was about pranayam. Pranayam is a way of getting in rhythm with the universe, but you remain outside. You start breathing in such a way, in such a rhythm, that you fall in tune with the whole. Then you are not fighting the whole; you have surrendered. You are no longer an enemy of the whole; you have become a lover.

That's what it means to be a religious man: now he is not in conflict; now he has no private goals to achieve; now he is flowing with existence; now he is in tune with the goal of the whole, if there is any; now he has no individual destiny, the whole's destiny is his. He is floating with the river, not fighting up current.

When you really float you disappear, because the ego can exist only when it fights. The ego can exist only when there is resistance. The ego can exist only when you have some private goal against the whole. Try to understand this, how the ego exists. People come to me and they say, "We would like to drop the ego," and I tell them, "If you like to drop the ego you cannot drop it, because who are you to drop? Who is this who is saying, 'I would like to drop?' This is the ego. Now you are fighting with your ego also."

You may pretend to become humble, you may force humility on yourself, but the ego will exist. You may have been a king, now you may become a beggar, but the ego will exist. It existed as a king: now it will exist as a humble beggar. Your very way of walking -- will show it. The way you will move -- the body language -- will announce it. The way you will talk -- you will announce it. You may say, " I am the most humble man in the world," that makes no difference. Before, you were the greatest man in the world, now you are the humblest -- but you are still wanting the extraordinary. You are there.

If you start fighting with the ego you will create a subtler ego which is more dangerous, because that subtler ego will be a pious ego. It will pretend to be religious. In the beginning it was at least this-worldly, now it will be that-worldly -- greater, powerful, subtle -- and the grip will be more dangerous, and it will be difficult to come out of it. You have moved from a smaller danger to a greater one. You are more in the trap. The prison has closed upon you, even in a stronger way.

Pranayam, what has been continuously and wrongly translated as "breath control," is not control at all. Pranayam is a way of being spontaneous with the universe. It is not a control at all. All control belongs to the ego; otherwise who will control? Ego is the controller, the manipulator. If you understand this, ego will disappear -- there is no need to drop it.

You cannot drop an illusion, you can only drop a reality -- and ego is not real. You cannot drop maya. Illusions cannot be dropped because, in the first place, they are not. You have only to understand, and then they disappear. A dream cannot be dropped. You have just to become aware that this is a dream, and the dream disappears. The ego is the subtlest dream: the dream that I am separate from existence, the dream that I have to achieve some goals against the whole, the dream that I am an individual. The moment you become alert, the dream disappears.

You cannot be against the whole, because you are part of the whole. You cannot float against the whole, because how can you float? It is just as foolish as my own hand trying to go against me. There is no way to go against the whole. There is only one way: to be with the whole.

Even when you are fighting you cannot go against -- that is just your imagination. Even when you think that you are moving against the whole or separate from the whole or you have a different dimension of your own, that is just a dream; you cannot do that. It is just like a ripple on the lake thinking to go against the lake: absolutely stupid -- not the least possibility there of it ever happening. How can a ripple on the lake move somewhere on its own? It will remain part of the lake. If it is moving somewhere it must be the will of the lake, that's how it is moving.

When one understands, one knows. One starts laughing that "I was in a great dream -- now the dream has disappeared. I am no more. I was the dream and the dreamer, both. Now the whole exists."

Pranayam creates the situation in which return becomes possible, because now there is nowhere to go. The fight has stopped. The enemy disappears. Now you start floating towards your own being -- and that is not a going, really, that is a floating. If you stop fighting, if you stop going outward, you will start floating inward. That's natural.

After pranayam, Patanjali says, "Then comes the dispersion of the cover that hides the light." This sutra has to be dissected, analyzed, and understood, because many things will depend on this sutra.

Patanjali is not saying that after pranayam the inner light is achieved. Many commentators on Patanjali have taken the wrong attitude. They think that this sutra says that the cover drops and one attains to light. That's not possible. If it happens then what about dharana, dhyan, samadhi? If it happens in pratyahar that you have attained to the goal, reached to your innermost being, known the inner light, then what is the point of dharana, dhyan, samadhi? Then what will you do? No, Patanjali cannot mean it, and the sutra is clear. Patanjali says "dispersion of the cover," not the attainment of light -- these are two different things.

Dispersion of the cover is a negative achievement -- it creates the possibility to attain to the light -- but dispersion of the cover in itself is not the attainment of light. Many more things are still there to be done. For example, you have remained with closed eyes; your eyelids have functioned as a cover on the sunlight. After millions of lives you open your eyes: the cover is no longer there, but you will not be able to see the light -- you have become attuned to darkness.

The sun will be there in front of you and the cover no more hiding it, but you will not be able to see it. The cover has disappeared, but the long habit of darkness has become a part of your eyes. The gross cover of the eyelids is no longer there, but a subtle cover of darkness is still there... and if you have lived so many lives in darkness, the sun will be much too dazzling for your eyes. Your eyes will be so weak that they will not be able to tolerate so much light. And when there is more light than you can tolerate, it becomes darkness again. Try to look at the sun for a few moments: you will see darkness falling on your eyes. If you try too much you can even go blind. Too much light can even become darkness.

And you don't know for how many lives you have lived in darkness. You have not known any light, not even a ray has penetrated into your being. Darkness has been the only experience. The light will be so unknown that it will be impossible to recognize it. Just by the dispersion of the cover, you will not be able to recognize it.

Patanjali knows it well. That's why he formulates the sutra in such a way: "tatah kshiyate prakashavaranam" -- then the dispersion of the cover which hides the light. But not the attainment of light. This is a negative attainment.

Let me try to explain it to you in some other way. You are ill: medicine can help -- the illness can disappear through medicine -- but that doesn't mean that you have attained to health. Illness may disappear, now there is no longer any illness in the body, but health has not appeared yet. You will have to rest to recoup.

Disappearance of illness is not necessarily attainment of health. Health is a positive phenomenon; disease is a negative phenomenon. It may be possible that you go to the doctor and he cannot find any disease -- that does not mean that you are healthy. You may go on saying, "I don't feel healthy. I don't feel a well-being arising in me. I don't feel the zest of life, I don't feel that I am alive."

The doctor can only detect disease, he cannot detect health. There is no way for him to detect whether you are healthy or not. The doctor cannot give you a certificate that you are healthy; he can only give you a certificate that you are not ill. Not to be ill is not necessarily to be healthy. Of course, not to be ill is a basic condition to be healthy -- if you are ill you cannot be healthy -- but if you are not ill it is not necessary that you are healthy. Health is something positive.

It happens in many cases. A person -- old, ill, weary of life -- loses the lust for life, what Buddha calls tanha. He loses interest in life. You can go on treating him -- you may help him to become completely okay as far as medicine can help, he is no longer ill -- but you are worried: he is no longer ill, but he is not healthy. The desire to live has disappeared. Illness is not there, the hospital is ready to discharge him, but he has no desire to live. He will not be healthy; he will die.

Nobody can help him. To be healthy is a positive phenomenon; to be ill is a negative phenomenon.

Patanjali says the cover is no longer there. That does not mean that you have known the light -- three more steps still await. By and by you will have to train your eyes in your being to feel, to know, to imbibe light. Sometimes it can take years.

"Then comes the dispersion of the cover that hides the light." So I disagree with all those commentators who say that the inner light is attained -- that is not the meaning. Now, the hindrance no longer exists, the barrier disappears, but the distance is still there. You will have to walk a little more, now even more carefully than before because you can also fall in the same error: you may think, "Now everything is attained; the barrier has broken, disappeared. Now I am back home." Then you will settle before the goal has been achieved.

There are many yogis who have settled with the fifth. Then they cannot understand what is happening. The barrier is no longer there, but they are not deeply content also. In fact if you are very egoistic you will stop here, with this sutra, because with the barrier, the ego has something to fight. The cover: you go on trying to penetrate it, to disperse it. When it disperses then there is nothing. It is just like you were fighting with something that suddenly disappears -- your whole meaning of life disappears with it. Now you don't know what to do.

There are people in the world who are fighting with others in deep competition -- in business, in politics, this and that. Then they become tired. If they are a little intelligent, they are bound to become tired. Then they start fighting with their own ego, which is the cover. One day that cover also disappears, then there is nothing to fight. Once there is nothing to fight, it becomes impossible for the ego to move even an inch, because the whole training of the ego is to fight with somebody -- either somebody else or your own ego, but fight. When there is nothing to fight, the hindrance no more, one stops. There is nowhere to go now... but three steps are still waiting.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6
Chapter #9
Chapter title: Returning to The Source
9 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall