Today we start the third step of Patanjali's YOGA SUTRAS, "Vibhuti Pada." It is very significant because the last, the fourth, "Kaivalya Pada," will be just attaining to the fruit.

This third - "Vibhuti Pada" - is the ultimate as far as means are concerned, techniques are concerned, methods are concerned. The fourth will be just the outcome of the whole effort.

Kaivalya means aloneness, absolute freedom of being alone, no dependence on anybody, on anything -- so contented that you are more than enough. This is the goal of yoga. In the fourth part we will be talking only about the fruits, but if you miss the third you will not be able to understand the fourth. The third is the base.

If the fourth chapter of Patanjali's YOGA SUTRAS is destroyed nothing is destroyed, because whosoever will be able to attain to the third will attain to the fourth automatically.

The fourth can be dropped. It is in fact, in a way, unnecessary because it talks about the end, the goal. Anyone who follows the path will reach to the goal, there is no need to talk about it.

Patanjali talks about it to help you, because your mind would like to know, "Where are you going? What is the goal?" Your mind would like to be convinced, and Patanjali does not believe in trust, in faith, in belief. He is a pure scientist. He simply gives a glimpse of the goal, but the whole basis, the whole fundamental basis is in the third.

Up to now we were getting ready for this Vibhuti Pada, the ultimate in means. Up to now in two chapters we have been discussing means which help, but those means were outer. Patanjali calls them "bahirang." -- 'on the periphery'. Now these three -- dharana, dhyan, samadhi -- concentration, meditation, samadhi -- these three he calls "antarang" -- internal.

The first five prepare you, your body, your character -- you on the periphery -- so that you can move inwards. And Patanjali moves step by step: it is a gradual science. It is not a sudden enlightenment; it is a gradual path. Step by step he leads you.

The first sutra:

The object, the subject, and the beyond -- these three have to be remembered. You look at me I am the object; the one who is looking at me is the subject. And if you become a little more perceptive, you can see yourself looking at me that is the beyond. You can see yourself looking at me. Just try. I am the object, you are looking at me. You are the subject who is looking at me. You can stand by the side within yourself. You can see that you are looking at me. That is the beyond.

First, one has to concentrate on the object. Concentration means narrowing of the mind.

Ordinarily, mind is in a constant traffic -- a thousand and one thoughts go on moving, like a crowd, a mob. With so many objects, you are confused, split. With so many objects you are moving in all directions simultaneously. With so many objects you are always, almost, in a state of insanity, as if you are being pulled from every direction and everything is incomplete.

You go to the left, and something pulls you to the right; you go to the south, and something pulls you to the north. You are never going anywhere, just a muddled energy, a whirlpool, constant turmoil, anxiety.

This is the state of ordinary mind -- so many objects that the subjectivity is almost covered by them. You cannot have a feel who you are, because you are so much concerned with so many things you don't have a gap to look into yourself. You don't have that stillness, that aloneness. You are always in the crowd. You cannot find a space, a corner, where you can slip into yourself. And the objects continuously asking for attention, every thought asking for attention, forcing exactly that the attention should be given to it. This is the ordinary state.

This is almost insanity.

In fact to divide mad people from non-mad people is not good. The distinction is only of degrees. It is not of quality: it is only of quantity. Maybe you are ninety-nine percent mad and he has gone beyond -- a hundred and one percent. Just watch yourself. Many times you also cross the boundary in anger you become mad -- you do things you cannot conceive of yourself doing. You do things for which you repent later on. You do things for which you say later on, "I did it in spite of me." You say, "... as if somebody forced me to do it, as if I was possessed. Some evil spirit, some devil forced me to do it. I never wanted to do it." Many times you also cross the boundary, but you come back again and again to your normal state of madness.

Go and watch any madman. People are always afraid of watching a madman because, suddenly, watching a madman you realize your own madness also. Immediately it happens because you can see at the most the difference is of degrees. He has gone a little ahead of you, but you are also following, you are also standing in the same queue.

William James once went to a madhouse, came back, became very sad, covered himself with a blanket. The wife could not understand. She said. "Why are you looking so sad?" He was a happy man.

He said, "I have been to the madhouse. Suddenly the thought occurred that between these people and me there seems to be not much difference. There is a difference, but not much.
And sometimes I have also crossed the boundary. Sometimes in anger, sometimes in lust, sometimes in anxiety, depression. I have also crossed the boundary. The only difference seems to be that they are stuck and they cannot come back and I am still a little flexible and I can come back. But who knows? Someday the flexibility may be lost. Watching those madmen in the madhouse I became aware that they are my future. Hence. I am very much depressed. Because the way I am moving, sooner or later I will overreach them."

Just watch yourself, and go and watch a madman the madman goes on talking alone. You are also talking. You talk invisibly, not so loud, but if somebody watches you rightly he can see the movement of your lips. Even if the lips are not moving, you are talking inside. A madman talks a little louder; you talk a little less loudly. The difference is of quantity. Who knows? Any day you can talk loudly. Just stand by the side of the road and watch people coming from the office or going to the office. Many of them, you will feel, are talking inside, making gestures.

Even people who are trying to help you -- psychoanalysts, therapists -- they are also in the same boat. In fact, more psychoanalysts become mad than do people of any other profession.

No other profession can compete with psychoanalysts in going mad. It may be because living in close quarters with mad people, by and by, they also become unafraid of being mad; by and by the gap is bridged.

I was reading an anecdote:

One man was attending his local doctor for an examination. "Tell me. Do you get spots before the eyes?" asked the doctor.

"Yes, Doctor."

"Frequent headaches?" asked the doctor.

"Yes." said the patient.

"Pains in the back?" Yes, sir.

"So do I," declared the doctor. "I wonder what the heck it can be."

The doctor and the patient, they are all in the same boat. Nobody knows what the heck it can be.

In the East we never created the profession of psychoanalysts, for a certain reason. We created a totally different type of man the yogi. Not the therapist. The yogi is one who is qualitatively different from you. The psychoanalyst is one who is not qualitatively different from you. He is in the same boat; he is just like you. He is not different in any way. The only difference is that he knows about your madness and his madness more than you know. He is more informed about madness, about insanity, neurosis, psychosis. Intellectually he knows much more about the normal state of human mind and humankind, but he is not different.

And the yogi is totally a different man, qualitatively. He is out of the madness you are in: he has dropped that.

And the way in the West you are looking for causes, for ways and means how to help humanity, seems to have from the very beginning gone wrong. You are still looking for causes outside -- and the causes are within. The causes are not outside, not in relationship, not in the world; they are deep in your unconsciousness. They are not in your thinking: they are not in your dreams. The analysis of dreams and the analysis of thoughts is not going to help much. At the most it can make you normally abnormal, not more than that. The basic cause is that you are not aware of the traffic and the traffic noise of the mind, that you are not separate, distant, aloof -- that you cannot stand as a witness, as a watcher on the hill. And once you look for a cause in a wrong direction, you can go on piling up case histories upon case histories, as it is happening in the West.

Psychoanalysis goes on piling up case histories upon case histories... and nothing seems to come out of it. You dig up the mountain and not even a mouse is found. You dig up the whole mountain -- nothing comes out of it. But you become experts in digging, and your life becomes an investment in it, so you go on finding rationalizations for it. Always remember, once you miss to look in the right direction, you can go on infinitely -- you will never come back home.

It happened:

Two Irishmen landed in New York. They had not been around very much, so they decided to take a train trip. As they were riding along, a boy came through selling fruit. They recognized oranges and apples, but there was a strange fruit they had never seen before, so they asked the boy. "What is that?"

He answered, "That is a banana."

"It is good to eat?"

He said, "Sure."

"How do you eat it?" they asked.

The boy showed them how to peel a banana, so each bought one. One fellow took a bite out of it, and just then the train went into a tunnel. He said, "Great heavens! Pat, if you haven't eaten the darn thing, don't do it! I ate mine, and I have gone blind!"

Coincidences are not causes: and the Western psychology is looking into coincidences.

Somebody is sad: you start immediately looking into coincidences why he is sad. There must have been something wrong in his childhood. There must have been something wrong in the way he was brought up. There must have been something wrong in the relationship between the child and the mother or the father. There must have been wrongs, something wrong in the environment. You are looking for coincidences.

Causes are within; coincidences without. That is the basic emphasis of yoga, that you are looking wrongly now and you will not ever find a real help. You are sad because you are not aware. You are unhappy because you are not aware. You are in misery because you don't know who you are. All else is just coincidences.

Look deep down. You are in a misery because you have been missing yourself, you have not yet met yourself. And the first thing to be done is dharana. Too many objects are there in the mind; the mind is much too overcrowded. Drop those objects by and by; narrow down your mind; bring it to a point where only one object remains.

Have you ever concentrated on anything? Concentration means your whole mind is focused on one thing. On a rose flower. You have looked at a rose so many times, but you have never concentrated on a rose. If you concentrate on a rose, the rose becomes the whole world. Your mind becomes narrowed down, focused like a torchlight, and the rose becomes bigger and bigger and bigger. The rose was one in a million objects, then it was a very small thing. Now it is the all, the whole.

If you can concentrate on a rose, the rose will reveal qualities that you have never seen before. It will reveal colors that you have been missing always. It will reveal to you fragrances that were always there but you were not sensitive enough to recognize. If you concentrate totally then your nose is only filled with the fragrance of the rose -- all else is excluded, only the rose is included in your consciousness, is allowed in. Everything excluded, the whole world drops out, only the rose becomes your world.

There is a beautiful story in Buddhist literature. Once Buddha said to his disciple. Sariputra, "Concentrate on laughter." He asked. "For what am I to look into it?" Buddha said. "You are not to look for anything specially. You simply concentrate on laughter, and whatsoever laughter reveals, you report."

Sariputra reported. Never before and never after has anybody looked so deeply in laughter. Sariputra defined and categorized laughter in six categories "They are arranged in hierarchical fashion from the most sublime to the most sensuous and unrefined." The laughter revealed its inner being to Sariputra.

First he called SITA: "a faint, almost imperceptible smile manifest in the subtleties of the facial expression and countenance alone." If you are very, very alert, only then can you see the laughter he called sita. If you watch Buddha's face you will find it there. It is very subtle, very refined. If you are very, very concentrated, only then will you see it, otherwise you will miss it, because it is just in the expression. Not even the lips are moving. In fact, there is no visible thing, it is invisible laughter. That may be the reason Christians think Jesus never laughed: it may have been sita. It is said that Sariputra found sita on Buddha's face. It was rare. It was very rare because it is one of the most refined things. When your soul reaches to the highest point, only then sita. Then it is not something that you do it is simply there for anybody who is sensitive enough, concentrated enough, to see it.

Second, Sariputra said, HASITA: "a smile involving a slight movement of the lips and barely revealing the tips of the teeth." Third he called VIHASITA: "a broad smile accompanied by a modicum of laughter." Fourth he called UPAHASITA: "accentuated laughter, louder in volume, associated with movements of the head, shoulders and arms.” Fifth he called APAHASITA: "loud laughter that brings tears." And sixth he called ATIHASITA: "the most boisterous, uproarious laughter, attended by movements of the whole body, doubling over in raucous guffawing, convulsions, hysterics."

When you concentrate even on a small thing like laughter, it becomes a tremendous, a very big thing -- the whole world.

Concentration reveals to you things which are not ordinarily revealed. Ordinarily, you live in a very indifferent, mood. You simply go on living as if half asleep -- looking, and not looking at all; seeing and not seeing at all; hearing, and not hearing at all. Concentration brings energy to your eyes. If you look at a thing with a concentrated mind, everything excluded, suddenly that small thing reveals much that was always there waiting.

The whole of science is concentration. Watch a scientist working; he is in concentration.

There is an anecdote about Pasteur:

He was working. Looking through his microscope, so silent, so unmoving that a visitor had come and waited for long, and he was afraid to disturb him. Something sacred surrounded the scientist. When Pasteur came out of his concentration, he asked the visitor. "How long have you been waiting? Why didn't you tell me before?"

He said, "I was going to tell you many times -- in fact. I am in a hurry. I have to reach somewhere, and some message has to be delivered to you, but you were in such deep concentration -- almost as if praying -- that I could not disturb. It was sacred."

Pasteur said. "You are right. It is my prayer. Whenever I feel disturbed and whenever I feel too many worries and whenever I feel too many thoughts. I simply take my microscope. I look through it -- immediately, the old world drops I am concentrated."

A scientist's whole work is of concentration, remember this. Science can become the first step towards yoga because concentration is the first inner step of yoga. Each scientist, if he goes on growing and does not get stuck, will become a yogi. He is on the way because he is fulfilling the first condition - dharana - concentration.

Yoga: The Alpha and The Omega Vol. 7
Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
Talks given from 01/001/76 am to 10/01/76 am
Chapter 1
Chapter Title: Ask a Question Close to Home

Question 1:

WHAT CAN I DO WITH A BEGGAR?
WHETHER I GIVE HIM A RUPEE OR NOT, HE WILL REMAIN A BEGGAR ALL THE SAME.

THE beggar is not the problem. If the beggar was the problem then everybody who passes by would feel the same. If the beggar was the problem then beggars would have disappeared long ago. The problem is within you: your heart feels it. Try to understand it.

The mind interferes immediately whenever the heart feels love, the mind immediately interferes. The mind says, "Whether you give him something or not, he will remain the beggar all the same.'' Whether he remains the beggar or not is not your responsibility, but if your heart feels to do something, do it. Don't try to avoid. The mind is trying to avoid the situation. The mind says. "What is going to happen? He will remain the beggar, so there is no need to do anything." You have missed an opportunity where your love could have flown.

If the beggar has decided to be a beggar, you cannot do anything. You may give him: he may throw it. That is for him to decide.

The mind is very clever.

Then the question, it says: WHY ARE THERE BEGGARS AT ALL?

Because there is no love in the human heart. But again, the mind interferes:

HAVE NOT THE RICH TAKEN AWAY FROM THE POOR?
SHOULD NOT THE POOR TAKE BACK WHAT THE RICH HAVE STOLEN FROM HIM?

Now you are forgetting the beggar and the heartache that you felt. Now the whole thing is becoming political, economical. Now the problem is no more of the heart: it is of the mind.

And mind has created the beggar. It is the cunningness, the calculativeness of the mind that has created the beggar. There are cunning people, very calculative: they have become rich. There are innocent people, not so calculative, not so cunning: they have become the poor.

You can change the society -- in Soviet Russia they have changed. That makes no difference. Now the old categories have disappeared -- the poor and the rich -- but the ruler and the ruled, a new category, has come up, Now the cunning are the rulers and the innocent are the ruled. Before, the innocent used to be poor and the cunning used to be rich. What can you do?

Unless the division between mind and heart is dissolved, unless humanity starts living through the heart and not through the mind, the classes are going to remain. The names will change, and the misery is going to continue.

The question is very relevant, very meaningful, significant "What can I do with a beggar?" Beggar is not the question. The question is you and your heart. Do something, whatsoever you can do, and don't try to throw the responsibility on the rich. Don't try to throw the responsibility on history. Don't try to throw the responsibility on the economic structure. Because that is secondary if humanity remains cunning and calculative it is going to be repeated again and again and again.

What can you do for it? You are a small part of the total. Whatsoever you do will not change the situation -- but it will change you. It may not change the beggar if you give something to him, but the very gesture, that you shared whatsoever you could, will change you. And that is important. And if this goes on -- the revolution of the heart -- people who feel, people who look at another human being as an end in itself if this goes on increasing, one day, the poor people will disappear, the poverty will disappear -- and it will not be replaced by a new category of exploitation.

Up to now all the revolutions have failed, because the revolutionaries have not been able to see the basic cause why there is poverty. They are looking only at superficial causes. Immediately they say, "Some people have exploited him, that's why their possibility. This is the cause; that's why there is poverty."

But why were some people able to exploit? Why could they not see? Why could they not see that they are gaining nothing and this man is losing all? They may accumulate wealth, but they are killing life all around. Their wealth is nothing but blood. Why can they not see it?

The cunning mind has created explanations there also.

The cunning mind says. "People are poor because of their karma. In the past lives they have done something wrong, that s why they are suffering. I am rich because I have done good deeds, so I am enjoying the fruit." This is also mind. And Marx sitting in the British Museum is also a mind: and thinking about what is the basic cause of poverty comes to feel that there are people who exploit. But these people will be there always. Unless cunningness disappears completely, it is not a question of changing the structure of the society. It is a question of changing the whole structure of human personality.

What can you do? You can change, you can throw out the rich people -- they will come back from the back door. They were cunning. In fact, those who are throwing, they are also very cunning; otherwise they cannot throw. The rich people may not be able to come from the back door, but the people who call themselves revolutionaries, communists, socialists -- they will sit on the throne and then they will start exploiting. And they will exploit more dangerously because they have proved themselves more cunning than the rich. By throwing out the rich, they have proved one thing absolutely: that they are more cunning than the rich.

The society will be in the hands of more cunning people.

And remember, if someday some other revolutionaries are born -- which are bound to be, because again people will start feeling the exploitation is there, now it has taken a new form -- again there will be a revolution. But who will throw the past revolutionaries? Now more cunning people will be needed.

Whenever you are going to defeat a certain system, and you use the same means as the system has used for itself, just names will change, flags will change, the society will remain the same.

Enough of this befooling. The beggar is not the question: the question is you. Don't be cunning, don't be clever. Don't try to say that this is his karma -- you don't know anything about karma. That is just a hypothesis to explain certain things which are unexplained, to explain certain things which cause heartache. Once you accept the hypothesis, you are relieved of the burden. Then you can remain rich and the poor can remain poor and there is no problem. The hypothesis functions as a buffer.

That's why in India poverty has remained so ingrained and people have become so insensitive towards it. They have a certain theory which helps them. Just as you move in a car and the car has shock absorbers, the roughness of the road is not felt, the shock absorbers go on absorbing this hypothesis of karma is a great shock absorber. You come constantly against poverty, but there is a shock absorber -- the theory of karma. What can you do? It has nothing to do with yourself. You are enjoying your riches because of your virtues -- good deeds done in the past. And this man is suffering from his bad deeds.

There is in India a certain sect of Jainism, Tera-Panth. They are the extremist believers of this theory. They say, "Don't interfere, because he is suffering his past karmas. Don't interfere. Don't give him anything, because that will be an interference, and he could have suffered in a short time -- you will be delaying the process. He will have to suffer."

For example, a poor man you can give him enough to live at ease for a few years, but again the suffering will start. You can give him enough to live at ease in this life, but again in the next life the suffering will start. Where you stopped it, exactly from there the suffering will start again. So those who believe in the Tera-Panth, they go on saying don't interfere. Even if somebody is dying by the side of the road, you simply go on indifferent on your path. They say this is compassion; interfering, you delay the process.

What a great shock absorber.

In India people have become absolutely insensitive. A cunning theory protects them.

In the West they have found a new hypothesis: that it is because the rich have exploited -- so destroy the rich. Just look at it. Looking at a poor man, love starts rising in your heart. You immediately say this poor man is poor because of the rich. You have turned love into hate now hate arises towards the rich man. What game are you playing? Now you say. "Destroy the rich! Take everything back from them. They are the criminals." Now the beggar is forgotten; the heart is full of love no more. On the contrary, it is full of hate... and hate has created the society in which beggars exist. Now again hate is functioning in you. You will create a society in which categories may change, names may change, but there will be the ruled and the rulers, the exploited and the exploiters, the oppressors and the oppressed. It will not make much difference; it will remain the same. There will be masters and there will be slaves.

The only revolution possible is the revolution of the heart. When you see a beggar, remain sensitive. Don't allow any shock absorber to come between you and the beggar.

Remain sensitive. It is difficult because you will start crying. It is difficult because it will be very, very uncomfortable. Share whatsoever you can share. And don't be worried whether he will remain a beggar or not -- you did whatsoever you could. And this will change you. This will give you a new being, closer to the heart and farther away from the mind. This is your inner transformation; and this is the only way.

If individuals go on changing in this way, there may sometime arise a society where people are so sensitive that they cannot exploit, where people have become so alert and aware that they cannot oppress, where people have become so loving that just to think of poverty, of slavery, is impossible.

Do something out of the heart, and don't fall a victim of theories.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 7
Chapter #2
Chapter title: The mind is very clever
2 January 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Question 3

HOW TO SURRENDER IF I AM AFRAID OF MYSELF?
AND MY HEART IS PAINING.
WHERE IS THE DOOR OF LOVE?

There is no "how" to surrender. If you understand the stupidity of the ego, the foolishness of the ego, if you understand the misery of the ego, you drop it. There is no "how." Just the very misery of it you look into it and you find it absolutely miserable, a hell -- you drop it.

You go on clinging to it because, still, you are cherishing a dream through it. You have not understood the misery of it; you are still hoping that there may be some treasure in it.

Watch deep in yourself. Don't ask how to drop it; just see how you are clinging to it. The clinging is the problem. If you don't cling to it, it drops on its own accord. And if you ask me how to drop it and you have not seen that you are clinging to it, I can give you a technique; you will cling to your ego and you will start clinging to the technique also. Because you have not understood the process of clinging.

I have heard an anecdote.

There was a professor of philosophy, a very absentminded man, as philosophers are, almost always tend to be -- absentminded. Not that they have attained to no-mind because their minds are occupied so much that they are absent from everywhere else. They are only in the heads. He mislaid everything. One day he returned home without his umbrella, and his wife tried to get some indication from him of where to look for it: "Tell me," she said, "precisely, when did you first miss it?"

-- Now this is a wrong question to ask to a man who is absentminded "Precisely, where did you miss it?" or "Where did you for this first time become aware that you are missing it?" This is a wrong question, because the person who has forgotten the umbrella, he must have forgotten by now precisely when --

"Tell me." she said. "precisely, when did you first miss it?"
"My dear," he replied, "it was when I put my hand up to let it down after a short shower. Then I realized it is not there."

You are clinging, and you ask how to drop it. And the clinging mind will start clinging to the technique. Please, don't ask the "how"; rather, search with yourself -- why you are clinging. What has it given to you up to now, your ego? Has it given anything except promises? Has it fulfilled any promise ever? Are you going to be deceived by it forever and forever? Have you not been deceived by it enough by now? Are you still not contented? Are you still not aware that it is not leading you anywhere, just in a whirlpool you go round and round and round, hoping the same old dreams? Every time you get frustrated you don't see that from the very beginning the promise was false. The moment you get frustrated, again you start dreaming a new hope and The ego goes on promising you.

The ego is impotent. It can only promise; it can never deliver. Look into it. And on the way, between promise and no delivery, in between the two much suffering, much frustration, much misery.

The hell that you have heard about is not part of geography, it is not underneath earth. It is just underneath your ego. When you become aware of the misery of the ego, you don't cling, that's all. I don't say you drop you don't cling. Immediately surrender happens. Surrender is the absence of the ego.

But you never ask, "Why do I cling to the ego?" You ask. "How to surrender?" You ask a wrong question. And, then, there are a thousand and one things which people go on saying to you. Then you cling to them. You are clinging to so many so-called methods, techniques, philosophies, religions, churches. Just to drop one ego you have created three hundred religions in the world. Just to drop one small ego. And millions of techniques and methods, and thousands and thousands of books are being written continuously how to drop it. And the more you read, the more you become knowledgeable, the less is the possibility to drop it -- because now you have more to cling to. Now your ego is also so much more decorated....

I was reading the autobiography of a very well-known novelist.

Towards the end of his life he used to say to everybody and complain, "I wasted my life. I never wanted to be a novelist -- never." Somebody asked him, "Then why didn't you stop? Because for at least twenty years I have been listening to you, and I know people who say that they have been listening to your complaint even longer. Why didn't you stop?" He said. "How could I? Because by the time I realized that this is not my vocation, I had already become famous. By the time I realized that this is not my vocation, I was already a famous novelist."

You cannot drop the ego if you go on decorating it. Your knowledge decorates it. Your going to the church decorates it -- you become religious. Your reading the Bible every day, or the Geeta, or the Koran decorates it. You can look at others with the look "holier than you." You can look with a condemnation in your eye, that the whole world is going to the hell -- except for you.

You go on trying to become humble, to become simple, but deep down in your simplicity sits the ego, enthroned. And you go on finding rationalizations for it. All rationalizations are decorations.

In India there was one man, he died a few years before - Nizam of Hyderabad. He was the richest man in the whole world. Your Rockefellers and Fords are nothing. He was the richest man in the world. In fact nobody knows how much he had exactly because all his wealth consisted of millions of diamonds. In seven big halls the diamonds were put; the halls were completely full. Even he was not aware of the exact number. But the man was a great miser -- you cannot believe. You will simply say that I am lying. He was such a miser that when guests will come and they will leave their half cigarettes on the ashtray, he will collect them and smoke them. You will not believe me, but this is a truth.

When he became Nizam of Hyderabad, he was enthroned, he used the same cap for forty years. That was the dirtiest cap in the world. It was never washed because he was afraid it may be destroyed. He lived the life of a very poor man, but he used to say to his people. "I am a simple man. Maybe I am the richest man, but I live the life of a poor man." But he was not poor. He was simply a miser! He used to say that because he is not attached to things and worldly exhibitions, that's why he lives such a simple life. He used to think himself a sadhu, a fakir. He was not. He was the most miserly man ever, the richest and the most miserly. But for his miserliness, He will find rationalizations.

He was so afraid, so superstitious.... He used to pray and he used to pretend that he is a great prayer. But he was not; he was simply afraid. In the night he used to sleep with a peculiar thing. He had a big pot which he used to fill with salt, and in the pot he will put one of his feet -- the whole night. Because Mohammedans have an idea that if your feet are touching salt, ghosts cannot trouble you.

How can this man pray? One who is so afraid of ghosts, how can he love God? Because one who loves God, his fear disappears. But he deceived many people. Or, even if he didn't deceive many people, he deceived himself at least.

Remember, always start from the beginning. Look where you are clinging and why you are clinging. Don't ask for the "how" to surrender. Just watch and find out why you are clinging to the ego, why you are being stubborn.

If you still feel that the ego is going to deliver some heaven for you, then wait -- no need to surrender. If you feel that all promises are false and the ego is a deceiver, then what is the need to ask 'how to surrender?' Don't cling. In fact, once you know that this is fire, you drop it. It is not a question of not clinging. You simply drop it. When you come to know that your house is on fire, you don't ask anybody how to get out.

Once it happened:

I was staying in a house, and just in front of the house a house caught fire. It was a three-storied house, and one fat man who used to live on the third story was trying to jump from the window. The whole crowd was saying, "Don't jump! We are bringing a ladder!" But who listens when the house is on fire? He jumped. He could not even wait for the ladder. And there was no danger yet because the fire was just on the first story. To reach to the third it would have taken time, and the ladder was being brought, and the whole crowd was shouting at him, "Wait!!" But he couldn't listen. He jumped and broke his leg.

Later on I went to see him and I asked, "You did a miracle. You didn't ask how to jump. Have you ever jumped from three-story buildings before?"
He said, "Never."
"Have you ever practiced?"
He said, "Never."
"Any rehearsal?"
He said, "What are you talking about! This is for the first time!"
"Did you consult any book? You asked for a teacher? You inquired of somebody?"
He said, "What are you talking about? I could not even wait for my wife to come, my children to come, and I couldn't even understand why the people were shouting so much. Only later on, when I was lying on the ground, then I could understand that they were bringing a ladder."

When the house is on fire you jump out of it. You don't ask the "how?" And I tell you, Your house is on fire. Immediately, you ask how to jump out of it. No, you have not
understood the point. Still you don't feel that your house is on fire I say, so my saying creates in you an idea "how to jump out of it?" If really you understand that your house is on fire, even if I should. "I am bringing a ladder! Wait!", you are not going to wait. You will jump. You may even break your legs.

But at ease, comfortably, conveniently, you ask, "How to surrender?" There is no "how" to it. Just look at the misery that the ego creates. If you can feel it you will come out of it. Period.

"And my heart is paining." It is bound to be so. With the ego there is going to be much pain.

And you ask. "Where is the door of love?" Come out of the ego. There is the door of love. Come out of the ego, and there is the door of the heart. The ego prevents you from love, the ego prevents you from meditation, the ego prevents you from prayer, the ego prevents you from God, but still you go on listening to it. Then it is up to you.

This is your choice, remember. Nobody has forced you to listen to the ego. It is your choice. If you choose, it is okay. Then don't ask the "how." If you don't choose it, there is no need to ask the "how?".

Yoga: The Alpha and The Omega Vol. 7
Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
Talks given from 01/001/76 am to 10/01/76 am
Chapter 2: The mind is very clever
2 January 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 7
Chapter #3
Chapter title: The inside of the inside
3 January 1976 am in Buddha Hall

I HAVE been told that traditionally there are two schools of thought in Germany. The industrial, practical northern part of the country has this philosophy: The situation is serious but not hopeless. In the southern part of Germany, more romantic and perhaps less practical, the philosophy seems to be: The situation is hopeless but not serious. If you ask me, then the situation is neither -- it is neither hopeless nor serious. And I am talking about the human situation.

The human situation looks serious because we have been taught and conditioned to be serious, for centuries. The human situation looks hopeless because we have been doing something with ourselves which is wrong. We have not yet found that to be natural is the goal, and all the goals that we have been taught make us more and more unnatural.

To be natural, to be just in tune with the cosmic law, is what Patanjali means by samyama. To be natural and to be in tune with the cosmic law is samyama. Samyama is not anything forced upon you. Samyama is not anything that comes from the outside. Samyama is a flowering of your innermost nature. Samyama is to become that which you already are.

Samyama is to come back to nature. How to come back to nature? And what is human nature? Unless you dig deep within your own being, you will never come to know what human nature is.

One has to move inwards; and the whole process of yoga is a pilgrimage, an inward journey. Step by step, in eight steps. Patanjali is bringing you home. The first five steps -- yam, niyam, agan, pranayam, pratyahar -- they help you to go deep in you beyond the body.

The body is your first periphery, the first concentric circle of your existence. The second step is to go beyond the mind. The three internal steps of dharana, dhyan, samadhi, lead you beyond the mind. Beyond the body and beyond the mind is your nature, is your center of being. That center of being Patanjali calls 'seedless samadhi' -- kaivalya. That he calls to come face to face to your own grounding, to your own being, to come to know who you are.

So the whole process can be divided in three parts first, how to transcend the body; second, how to transcend the mind; and third, how to fall into your own being.

We have been taught, almost all over the world, in every culture, in every country, in every climate, to seek goals somewhere outside ourselves. The goal may be money, the goal may be power, the goal may be prestige, or the goal may be God, heaven, it makes no difference: all the goals are outside you. And the real goal is to come to the source from where you come. Then the circle is complete.

Drop all the outer goals and move inwards. That's the message of yoga. Outer goals are just forced. You have been just taught somewhere to go. They never become natural; they cannot become natural.

I have heard an anecdote about G.K. Chesterton:

 He was on a train, reading earnestly, when the conductor asked for his ticket. Frantically, Chesterton fumbled for it.
"Never mind, sir," the conductor said reassuringly. "I will come later on to punch it. I am certain you have it."
"I know I have it," Chesterton stammered, "but what I want to know is, where in the world am I going?"

Where are you going? What's your destiny? You have been taught certain things to achieve. You have been made into an achiever. The mind has been manipulated, pushed and pulled. The mind has been controlled by the outside -- by the parents, by the family, by the school, by the society, by the government. Everybody is trying to pull you outside your being, and they are trying to fix a goal for you; and you have fallen in the trap. And the goal is already there inside you.

There is nowhere to go. One has to realize oneself, already -- who one is. And once you realize that, wherever you go you will find your goal, because you carry your goal within yourself. Then wherever you go, you will have a deep contentment, a peace surrounding you, a coolness, a collectedness, a calm as a milieu that you carry around you as an aura. That's what Patanjali calls samyama a cool, collected, calm atmosphere that moves with you.

Wherever you go you bring your own atmosphere with you, and everybody can feel it. Almost it can be touched by others also, whether they become aware or not. Suddenly, if a man of samyama comes close to you, suddenly you become aware of a certain calm breeze blowing near you, a fragrance coming from the unknown. It touches you, it pacifies you. It is like a beautiful lullaby. You were in turmoil if a man of samyama comes near you, suddenly your turmoil subsides. You were angry if a man of samyama comes near you, your anger disappears. Because a man of samyama is a magnetic force. On his wave you start riding; on him, with him, you start moving higher than you can move alone.

So in the East we developed a beautiful tradition of going to people who have attained to samyama and just sitting by their side. That's what we call darshan, that's what we call satsang: just going to a man of samyama and just being near him. To the Western mind sometimes it looks almost absurd because sometimes the man may not even speak, he may be in silence. And people go on coming, they touch his feet, they sit by his side, they close their eyes.... There is no conversation, there is no verbal communication, and they sit for hours; and then fulfilled, in some unknown way, they touch the feet in deep gratitude and they go back. And you can watch from their faces that something has been communicated; they have attained to something. And there has been no verbal communication -- nothing visible has been given or taken. This is satsang just being with a man of truth, with an authentic being, a man of samyama.

Just by being close to him, something starts happening in you, something starts responding in you.

But the concept of the man of samyama has also become very muddled because people started to do it from the outside. People started to still themselves from the outside, to practice a certain calmness, a certain silence, to force themselves into a particular pattern and discipline. They will look almost like a man of samyama. They will look almost, but they will not be: and when you go near them, their appearance may be of silence, but if you sit near them silently, you will not feel any silence. Deep down the turmoil is hidden. They are like volcanoes. On the surface everything is-quiet: deep down the volcano is getting ready to explode any moment.

Remember this: never try to force anything upon youself. That is the way to get divided, that's the way to become hopeless, and that's the way to miss the point. Your innermost being has to flow through you. You are only to remove the hindrances on the path. Nothing new is to be added to you. In fact, something minus, and you will be perfect. Something plus -- no. You are already perfect. Something more is there than the spring, some rocks on the path. Minus those rocks, and you are perfect and the flow is attained. These eight steps, ashtang, of Patanjali are nothing but n methodological way of removing the rocks.

But why does man become so obsessed with an outer discipline? There must be a cause to it, a reason for it. The reason is there. The reason is because to force anything from the outside seems easier, cheap, at no cost. It is as if you are not beautiful, but you can purchase a beautiful mask from the market and you can put it on your face. Cheap, not costly, and you can deceive others a little bit. Not long, because a mask is a dead thing and a dead thing can have an appearance of beauty, but it cannot be really beautiful. In fact you have become more ugly than you were before. Whatsoever your original face was, it was at least alive, radiating life, intelligence. Now you have a dead mask and you are hiding behind it.

People become interested in cultivating samyama from the outside. You are a man of anger: to attain to a state of no anger much effort will be needed, and long is the journey, and you will have to pay for it. But just to force yourself, repress anger, is easier. In fact you can use your energy of anger in repressing anger -- immediately. There is no problem because anybody who is a man of anger can easily conquer anger. The only one thing is he has to turn the anger upon himself. First he was angry with others: now he has to be angry with himself and suppress the anger. But if you look into his eyes, anger will be there lurking like a shadow.

And remember, to be angry sometimes is not bad, but to suppress anger and to remain angry constantly is very dangerous. That is the difference between hatred and hate. When you flare up in anger there is hate, but it is momentary. It comes and it goes. Nothing much to be worried about it. When you suppress anger, then hate disappears and hatred arises, which becomes a permanent style of your life. The repressed anger continuously affects you -- your behavior, your relationship. Now it is not that you sometimes become angry, now you are all the time angry. Your anger is not addressed to anybody now: it has become unaddressed, just a quality of your being. Now it clings to you. You cannot exactly say with whom you are angry, because in the past you have been accumulating anger. Now it has become a reservoir. You are simply angry.

This is bad; this is chronic. First the anger was just a flare-up, something happened. It was situational. It was like as small children become angry: they flare up like a flame and then they subside, and immediately the storm is gone and the silence is there and they are again loving and beautiful. But by and by the more you suppress anger, anger enters into your bones, into your blood. It circulates within you. It moves in your breathing. Then, whatsoever you do you do in anger. Even if you love a person you love in an angry way. Aggression is there: destructiveness is there. You may not bring it up, but it is always there. And it becomes a great rock.

To force anything from the outside seems, in the beginning, very cheap, but in the end it proves very fatal.

And people find it cheap because there are experts who go on telling them how to do it. A child is born and parents become the experts. They are not. They have not solved their own problems yet. If they really love the child they will not force the same pattern on him.

But who loves? Nobody knows what love is.

They start forcing their pattern, the same old pattern in which they are caught. They are not even aware what they are doing. They themselves are caught in the same pattern and their whole life has been a life of misery, and now they are giving the same pattern to their children. Innocent children, not knowing what is right and what is wrong, will become victims.

And these experts who are not experts, because they don't know anything -- they have not solved any problem themselves -- simply take it for granted that because, just because, they have given birth to a child they have become, in a certain way, authoritative: and they start molding the soft child into a fixed pattern. And the child has to follow them; the child is helpless. By the time he becomes aware, he is already caught, trapped. Then there are schools, universities, and a thousand and one ways of conditioning all around, and all sorts of experts, and everybody pretending that he knows. Nobody seems to know.

Beware of the experts. Take your life in your own hands if you want to reach someday to your innermost core. Don't listen to the experts; you have listened long enough.

I have heard a small anecdote:

An efficiency expert was checking a government bureau and came to an office where two young men were seated on opposite sides of a desk, neither occupied with work.
"What are your duties?" the expert asked one.
"I have been here six months, and I have not been given any duties yet," the man replied.
"And your duties?" the efficiency expert asked the other man.
"I too have been here for six months and have not been given any duties yet," he replied.
"Well, one of you must go," snubbed the expert. "This is an obvious instance of duplication."

Two persons doing the same duty -- of not doing anything.

The expert always thinks in terms of knowledge. Go to a wise man. He does not think in terms of knowledge. He looks at you through his knowing eyes. The world is ruled by experts too much, and the world has almost forgotten to go to the wise men. And the difference is the expert is as ordinary as you are. The only difference between you and the expert is that he has accumulated some dead information. He knows more than you know, but his information is not his own realization. He has just accumulated it from the outside, and he goes on giving advice to you.

Seek, search for a wise man. That is the search for the guru. In the East people travel for thousands of miles to seek and search for somebody who has really come to know, and to be with him, to be with the man of samyama -- one who has attained, who has not cultivated, who has grown, who has flowered in his inner being. The flower is not borrowed from the outside. It is an inner flowering.

Remember, Patanjali's samyama is not the concept of ordinary cultivation. It is the concept of flowering, of helping and allowing that which is hidden in you to be manifested.

You are already carrying the seed. The seed only needs a right soil. A little care, a loving care, and it will sprout, and it will come one day to flower. And the fragrance that was carried by the seed will be spread to the winds, and the winds will carry it to all the directions.

A man of samyama cannot hide himself. He tries. He cannot hide himself, because the winds will continuously carry his fragrance. He can go to a cave in the mountains and sit there, and people will start coming to him there. Somehow, in some unknown way, those who are growing, those who are intelligent, they will find him. He need not seek them; they will seek him.

Can you watch something similar in your own being, because then it will be easy to understand the sutras? You love somebody, really; and, you show love to somebody. Have you watched the difference? Somebody comes, a guest. You really welcome. It is a flowering; from your very being you welcome him. It is not only a welcome to your home, it is a welcome to your heart. And then some other guest comes and you welcome him because you have to welcome. Have you watched the difference between the two?

When you really welcome, you are one flow -- the welcome is total. When you don't really welcome and you are simply following etiquette, manners, you are not one flow; and if the guest is perceptive, he will immediately turn back. He will not enter your house. If he is really perceptive, he can immediately see the contradiction in you. Your extended hand for a handshake is not really extended. The energy in it is not moving towards the guest; the energy is being withheld. Only a dead hand has been spread out.

You are a contradiction whenever you are following anything outer, just following a discipline. It is not true; you are not in it.

Remember, whatsoever you do -- if you are doing it at all -- do it totally. If you don't want to do it at all, then don't do it -- then don't do it totally. The total-ness has to be remembered because that total-ness is the most significant thing. If you continuously go on doing things in which you are contradictory, inconsistent, in which a part of you moves and another part doesn't move, you are destroying your inner flowering. By and by you will become a plastic flower -- with no fragrance, with no life.

It happened:

Mulla Nasrudin on leaving a party said to his hostess, "Thank you very much for inviting me. It is the very nicest party I have ever been invited to in all my life." And the party was very ordinary.
Somewhat taken aback the hostess exclaimed. "Oh, don't say that."
To which the Mulla replied, "But I do say that. I always say that."

Then it is meaningless. Then it is absolutely meaningless.

Don't live a life of mere manners, don't live a life of mere etiquette. Live an authentic life. I know the life of etiquette, manner, is comfortable, convenient; but it is poisonous. It kills you slowly, slowly. The life of authenticity is not so convenient and comfortable. It is risky, it is dangerous -- but it is real, and the danger is worth. And you will never repent for it. Once you start enjoying the real life, the real feeling, the real flow of your energy and you are not divided and split, then you will understand that if everything is to be staked for it, it is worth it. For a single moment of real life, your whole unreal life can be staked, and it is worth -- because in that single moment you would have known what life is and its destiny. And your whole long life of a hundred years you will simply live on the surface, always afraid of the depth, and you will miss the whole opportunity.

This is the hopelessness that we have created all around us living and not living at all, doing things we never intended to do, being in relationships we never wanted to be, following a profession which has never been a call to you. Being false in a thousand and one ways, and how do you expect that out of this falsity. Layer upon layer, you can know what life is? It is because of your falsity you are missing it. It is because of your falsity you cannot make the contact with the living stream of life.

And sometimes, when you become aware of it, a second problem arises. Whenever people become aware of the falsity of life, they immediately move to the opposite extreme. That is another trap of the mind because if you move from one falsity to the exact opposite, you will move to another falsity again. Somewhere in between, somewhere between the two opposites is the real.

Samyama means balance. It means absolute balance not moving to the extremes, remaining just in the middle. When you are neither a rightist nor a leftist, when you are neither a socialist nor an individualist, when you are neither this nor that, suddenly, in between, the flowering, the flowering of samyama.

It happened that Mulla Nasrudin was suffering from a very deep-rooted fear. It had almost become an obsession. I advised him to go to a psychiatrist. Then one day, after a few weeks, when I saw him I asked, "I understand that you have been going to the psychiatrist I suggested to you. Do you think it has helped you?"
"Certainly it has. Only a few weeks ago, when the phone rang I was deadly afraid to answer it."

That was his fear always. The ringing of the phone, and he will start trembling. Who knows what is the message? Who knows who is calling him? "Only a few weeks ago, when the phone rang I was deadly afraid to answer it."

"And now?" I asked.
He said, "And now? I go right ahead and answer it -- whether it rings or not."

You can move from one extreme to another, from one falsity to another falsity, from one fear to another fear. You can move from the marketplace to the monastery. Those are the polarities. The people who live in the marketplace are unbalanced, and the people who live in the monasteries are also unbalanced on the other extreme, but both are lopsided.

Samyama means balance. That's what I mean by sannyas to be balanced, to be in the marketplace and yet not be of it, to be in the bazaar but to not allow the bazaar to be in you. If your mind can remain free from the marketplace, you can be in the marketplace and there is no problem, you can move to the monastery and live alone; but if the bazaar follows inside you.... Which is bound to follow because the bazaar is not really outside -- it is in the buzzing thoughts, in the inner traffic noise of the thoughts. It is going to follow you. How can you leave yourself here and escape somewhere else? You will go with yourself, and wherever you go you will be the same.

So don't try to escape from situations. Rather, try to become more and more aware. Change the inner climate and don't be worried about the outer situations. Insist continuously on it, because the cheaper is always alluring. It says, "Because you are worried in the market, escape to the monastery and all worries will disappear: because worries are because of the business, because of the market, because of the relationship." No, worries are not because of the market, worries are not because of the family, worries are not because of the relationship: worries are because of you. These are just excuses. If you go to the monastery, these worries will find some new objects to hang to, but the worries will continue.

Just look at your mind, in what a mess it is. And this mess is not created by the situations. This mess is in you. Situations, at the most, work as excuses.

Sometime, do one experiment. You think people make you angry, then go for a twenty-one-day silence. Remain silent and you will suddenly become aware that many times in the day, for no reason at all -- because now there is nobody to make you angry -- you become angry. You think because you come across a beautiful woman or a man that's why you become sexual? You are wrong. Go for a twenty-one-day silence. Remain alone and you will find many times, suddenly for no reason at all sexuality arises. It is within you.

Two women were talking. I have simply overheard them; excuse my trespass.

Mistress Brown, very annoyed: "Look here, Mistress Green. Mistress Gray told me that you told her the secret I told you not to tell her."
Mistress Green: "Oh! The mean creature. And I told her not to tell you that I told her."
Mistress Brown: "Well. Look here, don't tell her that I told you she told me."

This is the traffic noise that goes on continuously in the mind. This has to be stilled, not by any force but by understanding.

The first sutra:

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 7
Chapter #3
Chapter title: The inside of the inside
3 January 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Yoga: The Alpha and The Omega Vol. 7
Chapter #4
Chapter title: Be a seed
4 January 1976 am in Buddha Hall

Question 1:

OSHO. I HAVE HEARD THAT PATANJALI AND LAO TZU CAME TO A STREAM.  PATANJALI BEGAN TO CROSS THE STREAM BY WALKING ON THE SURFACE OF THE WATER. LAO TZU STOOD ON THE BANK AND CALLED HIM TO COME BACK.  "WHAT'S THE MATTER?" PATANJALI INQUIRED.

"THAT IS NO WAY TO CROSS A STREAM," SAID LAO TZU, AND LED HIM TO A PLACE WHERE THE WATER WAS SHALLOW, AND THEY WADED ACROSS
TOGETHER.

THIS is from Yatri. The story is true, but Yatri, you have missed the most important point in it. Let me tell you the whole story again:

I have heard:

Patanjali and Lao Tzu came to a stream. Patanjali began to cross the stream by walking on the surface of the water. Lao Tzu stood on the bank and called him to come back.
"What's the matter?" Patanjali inquired.
Said Lao Tzu, "There is no need to cross the stream, because this shore is the other shore."

That's the whole emphasis of Lao Tzu: There is no need to go anywhere; the other shore is here. There is no need to do anything. The only need is just to be. Effort is irrelevant because you are already that which you can ever be. Go nowhere. Follow no path. Seek nothing. Because wherever you will go, the very going is missing the point because everything is available here already.

I will tell you another story, one of the most important stories in the world of human consciousness. The story is concerned with Zarathustra, another Lao Tzu, who believed in being natural, who believed in being easy, who believed in being just to be:

Once, when Vishtaspa, king of Persia, was returning from a victorious campaign, he came near to the place where Zarathustra lived. He decided to visit the mystic. The king said to Zarathustra. "I have come that you may explain to me the laws of nature and the universe. I cannot tarry as I am on my way home from a war and important matters of state await me at my palace."

Looking at the king, Zarathustra smiled and took a grain of wheat from the earth and gave it to him. "In this small grain of wheat," he declared, "are contained all the laws of the universe and the forces of nature."

The king was much astonished by this answer, which he didn't understand, and when he saw smiles on the faces of those around him, he was angry and threw the grain upon the ground thinking that he was being mocked. And to Zarathustra he said, "I was foolish to waste my time by coming here to see you."

Years passed. The king was successful as a ruler and a warrior, and led a life of luxury and apparent contentment, but at night when he went to bed, strange thoughts came into his mind and troubled him: "I live in luxury and abundance in this splendid palace, but how long shall I enjoy this -- this abundance, this power, this wealth -- and what will happen to me when I die? Can my power and my riches save me from illness and death? Is everything lost with the coming of death?"

No one in the palace could answer these questions, but meanwhile, the fame of Zarathustra grew. So putting aside his pride, he dispatched a great caravan of treasure to Zarathustra and with it an invitation and a request. "I regret." he wrote, "that when I was impatient and thoughtless in my youth, I asked you to explain the great problems of existence in a few minutes of time. I have changed and do not want the impossible now, but I am still deeply interested to know the laws of the universe and the forces of nature, even more so than when I was a young man. Come to my palace. I pray you. Or if that is not possible, then send to me the best of your disciples that he may teach me all that he can about these questions."

After an interval, the caravan and the messengers returned. These told the king that they had found Zarathustra, who sent him greeting, but returned the proffered treasure. The treasure, Zarathustra had said, was of no use to him because he has attained to the ultimate treasure. Moreover, Zarathustra had sent the king a gift wrapped in a leaf and had asked the messengers to tell him that this was the teacher who could teach him everything.

The king opened it and found the same grain again -- the same grain of wheat that Zarathustra had given him before. He thought there must be something mysterious and magical in it, so he put it in a golden box and hid it among his treasures. Almost every day he looked at it expecting some miracle to happen, such as the turning of the grain of wheat into something or someone that would teach him all he wished to know.

Months went by, and then years, but nothing happened. At last the king lost patience and said. "It seems that Zarathustra has deceived me again. Either he is making a mock of me or else he does not know the answers to my questions, but I will show him that I can find the answers without his help." So the king sent a caravan to a great Indian mystic, Tshengregacha, to whom came disciples from all over the world, and with the caravan went the same messengers and the same treasure that he had once sent to Zarathustra.

After many months, the messengers returned from India with the philosopher, but the philosopher said to him, "I am honored to be your teacher but in frankness must tell you that I come chiefly to your country that I may meet the great Zarathustra."

Then the king took the golden box containing the grain of wheat and answered, "I asked Zarathustra to teach me. See, this is what he sent me. Here is the teacher who shall teach me the Laws of the universe and the forces of nature. Is this not ridiculous?"

The philosopher looked long at the grain of wheat, and silence fell upon the palace while he meditated. At length he said, "I do not regret my many months of journeying, for now I know that Zarathustra is in truth the great teacher that I have long believed him to be. This tiny grain of wheat can indeed teach us the laws of the universe and the forces of nature, for it contains them in itself right now. You must not keep the grain of wheat in its golden box. You are missing the whole point."

"If you plant this little grain in the earth, where it belongs, in contact with the soil, the rain, the air, the sunshine, and the light of the moon and the stars, then like a universe in itself it will begin to grow bigger and bigger. Likewise you, if you would grow in knowledge and understanding, must leave your artificial life and go where you will be close to all the forces of nature and of the universe, to the sum total of things. Just as inexhaustible sources of energy are ever flowing towards the grain planted in the earth, so will innumerable sources of knowledge open and flow towards you till you become one with nature and the organic universe. If you watch the growth of this seed of grain, you will find that there is an indestructible and mysterious power in it -- the power of life. The grain disappears, and in that disappearance there is victory over death."

"All that you say is true," answered the king, "yet in the end the plant will wither and die and will be dissolved into the earth."

"But not," said the philosopher, "until it has done an act of creation and has turned itself into hundreds of grains, each like the first. The tiny grain disappeared as it grew into a plant, and you too as you grow must turn yourself into something and someone else. Life always create more life, truth more abundant truth, the seed more abundant seeds. The only art one needs to know is the art how to die. Then one is reborn. I propose that we journey to Zarathustra himself that he may teach us more of these things."

In a few days, they came to the garden of Zarathustra. His only book was the great book of nature, and he taught his disciples to read in it. The two visitors learned another great truth in Zarathustra's garden that life and work, leisure and study, are one and the same: that the right way to live is a simple, natural life -- a creative life within which individual growth is a single, total dynamism. They spent a year in the garden, learning to read the laws of existence and of life from the vast book of nature. At the end of that time, the king returned to his own city and asked Zarathustra to set out systematically the essence of his great teaching.

Zarathustra did so, and the result was the great book of the Zend-Avesta, the great book of the Parsis.

This long story is the whole story of how a man becomes God, how that which is hiding within yourself can become revealed.

Be a seed. You are, but you may be still in a gold box, imprisoned. Fall into the earth, where you belong, and be ready to die into the earth. Don't be afraid to die, because all those who fear death are preventing themselves from life. Death is nothing but the door to life. The first acquaintance with life is death, so those who are afraid of death are barring themselves against life. Then they will remain secure in a gold box, but then they will not grow. Fearing death, they will not be able to resurrect themselves. In fact, their life in the gold box will be virtually nothing but death.

Death in the soil, in the earth, is just a beginning, not the end, but remaining in a gold box is the very end. There is no beginning in it.

You are a seed. There is no need to go anywhere. All that you need is ready to come to you, but the shell of the seed needs to be broken. The ego needs to dissolve into the earth; the ego needs to die into the earth. Immediately, the whole universe starts converging on you. Suddenly you see that which you are always meant to be. The very destiny starts growing in you.

In fact, this shore is the other shore. There is no need to go anywhere. All that you need is to go within. All that you need is to take a jump into your own being, to be in tune with yourself. Lao Tzu would not show a way how to go to the other shore.

We can manage the story in a different way. Let there be three persons: Patanjali, Buddha, Lao Tzu. Patanjali will try to walk on the surface of the water -- he can. He is a great scientist of the inner world of consciousness. He knows how to defy gravity, Buddha will say what Yatri says in the story. Buddha will say, "This is no way to cross the stream. Come, I will show you a place where there is no need to do such a hard work. Easy is the way -- The stream is shallow: we just have to walk a few hundred yards and you can walk in the shallow stream. There is no need to learn this great art. This Can be done so easily." Buddha will say this. And Lao Tzu? He will laugh, and he will say to Buddha and Patanjali, "What are you doing? If you leave this shore you will go astray because this is the other shore. Here, this very moment, everything is as it should be. There is nowhere to go. Seeker of truth, follow no path, because all paths lead elsewhere, and the truth is here."

Lao Tzu says simply relax into yourself. It is not a journey; it is simply a let-go. No preparation is needed because it is not a journey. As you are, just as you are, relax. Relax into your nature. Drop all nonsense about gold boxes -- prisons of morality, prisons of concepts, philosophies, religions. Drop all that rubbish. Don't be afraid of the earth and don't ask for heaven. Drop into the earth. Don't be afraid that your hands will become soiled. Fall into nature because only there, in fact, you belong, to the sum total of things.

Zarathustra did well. He was not mocking the king. He was a simple man, and because the king had himself said that he cannot waste much time and he has great affairs waiting at the palace and he has to go soon, that's why Zarathustra gave a symbolic sign, the seed. But he missed the whole point. He could not understand what type of message this is. Zarathustra had given him the whole Zend-Avesta in that seed; nothing remains. That is the whole message of the true religion. All else is just commentary.

That day Zarathustra gave the seed, he did the same as Buddha did when he gave the flower to Mahakashyap. With that seed, Zarathustra had given something more than the flower. Try to understand these symbols.

Buddha gives the flower. Flower is the end. It can be given only to a Mahakashyap, who has come to the very end. Zarathustra gave the seed. Seed is the beginning. It can be given to one who is just beginning to seek, who is just inquiring, who is just trying to find the way, who is groping in the dark. Buddha's flower cannot be given to everybody and anybody; a Mahakashyap is needed, In fact it can be given only to someone who does not need it. Mahakashyap is one who does not need it. It can be given only to one who does not need it. Zarathustra's seed can be given to those who need it. And, what he said; he simply said, "Become a seed. You are a seed. Hidden is God within you. But don't go anywhere else."

Zarathustra's religion is one of the most natural religions to accept life as it is, to live life as it is. Don't ask the impossible. Take it easy. Look all around. The truth is present; only you are absent. This shore is the other shore; there is no other shore. This life is the life; there is no other life.

But you can live this life in two ways: at the minimum, or at the optimum. If you live at the minimum, you live like a seed. If you live like a flower, you live at the optimum. Let your seed become the flower. It is the seed itself who will become the flower. It is you who will become the other shore. It is you who will become the truth.

Remember this. If you can remember this, just to be natural, you have understood all that is basic, all that is fundamental, all that is essential to be understood.

Yoga: The Alpha and The Omega Vol. 7
Chapter #4
Chapter title: Be a seed
4 January 1976 am in Buddha Hall

THE story is told of Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist, that he was walking in a forest one day when he came upon a clearing and saw a lizard sitting upon a rock sunning itself. Tolstoy began speaking to the lizard, "Your heart is beating." he said. "The sun is shining; you are happy." And after a pause, he added, "But I am not."

Why are lizards happy and man is not? Why is the whole creation in a celebration and man is not? Why except man is everything beautifully tuned unto itself and tuned with the whole? Why is man an exception? What has happened to man? What misfortune has fallen to him? This has to be understood as deeply as possible because from that very understanding starts the path, from that very understanding you become a seeker, from that very understanding you are no longer part of the human disease. You start transcending it.

A lizard exists in the present. A lizard has no idea of the past, no idea of the future. A lizard is just here-now sunning himself. This moment is enough unto a lizard, but this moment is not enough unto a man and there arises the disease because whenever you will get, you will get only one moment. You will never get two moments together. And wherever you are, you will always be here: and whenever you become aware, you will become aware in the now. The past is no more, the future not yet -- and we go on missing that which is for that future which is not yet, for that past which is no more.

To be a lizard on a rock sunning is to be a meditator. Drop the past, drop the future. What does it mean? It means drop thinking because all thoughts either belong to the past or to the future. There is no thought here-now. Thinking has no present tense about it -- either it is dead or unborn. It is always unreal -- either part of memory or part of imagination. It is never real. The real is never a thought: the real is an experience. The real is an existential experience.

You can dance in the real, you can sun yourself in the real, you can sing in the real, you can love in the real: but you cannot think it -- because thinking is always about it, and in that "about" is hidden the whole misery. In that "about" you go on moving -- about and about -- and you never come to the point that was always and always available.

The whole point of all meditation is to be a lizard, sunning yourself on a rock, to be here-now, to be part of the whole, not trying to jump ahead in the future, not trying to carry That which is no more. Unburdened of the past, unconcerned with the future, how can you be miserable? How can Leo Tolstoy be miserable unburdened by the past, unconcerned with the future? Where can misery exist? Where I an it hide itself? Suddenly, you explode into a totally different dimension you go beyond time and you become part of eternity.

But we go on and on like a stuck gramophone record, repeating ourselves endlessly.

I have heard:

Two girls were talking in the park and one of them looked so glum, so sad, that the other was feeling very sympathetic. She put her arms around the mink coat of the other gorgeous doll and said, "Angeline, what is troubling you?"

Angeline shrugged and said, "Oh, it is nothing I suppose, but a fortnight ago old Mr. Short dropped dead. You remember him? He was always so good to me. Anyway, he dropped dead and left me fifty thousand rupees. Then last week poor old Mr. Pilkinhouse had a seizure and died and left me sixty thousand rupees.... And this week nothing...."

This is the trouble always expecting, always asking for more, for more. And there can be no end for this demand for more. Whatsoever you get you can always imagine more and you can always become miserable.

Poor people are miserable, you can understand, but rich people are also miserable. Those who have are as much miserable as those who have not. Ill people are miserable, but healthy are also miserable. Misery seems to be somewhere else. Misery does not disappear by wealth, health, or anything of that sort. It continues like an undercurrent.

The misery exists in the demand for the more, and the human mind can always imagine for more. Can you imagine a situation in which you cannot imagine for more? Impossible. Even heaven can be improved upon. Nobody can imagine a situation in which imagination can stop and you cannot imagine more and a better situation. That means you will be miserable wherever you are. Even heaven won't be enough, so don't wait for heaven. If you go right now into heaven it won't be enough. You will be as miserable as here. maybe even mole because here, at least, you can hope -- that the heaven is there and one day or other you will enter into it. If you enter into it, even that hope is gone.

As you are, you can only be in hell, because the hell or the heaven are ways of looking at things. They are not physical spaces: they are attitudes how you look at things.

A lizard is in heaven and Leo Tolstoy is in hell. Even a man like Leo Tolstoy. He was world-famous, more fame you cannot imagine. His name is going to be in the history books. His books will be read forever and forever. He was a genius. But you cannot imagine more  miserable a man. He was rich, one of the richest men in Russia. He belonged to the royal family; he was a prince, married to a very beautiful princess; but you cannot imagine more miserable a man, who was continuously thinking of suicide. He started thinking maybe it is because he is so rich, that's why he is miserable, so he started living like a poor man, like a peasant; but still the misery continued.

What was troubling him? He was a man of great imagination -- a novelist has to be. He was a man of tremendous imagination, so whatsoever was available was always less. More he could imagine, better he could imagine. That became his misery.

Remember this, that if you are expecting anything from life, you will not get anything. Don't expect and it is there in all its glory. Don't expect, don't ask, and it showers upon you in all its miraculousness. All its magic is there. Just wait a little while without thoughts... but that seems to be impossible.

Not that there are not moments when you are without thoughts. Patanjali says there are. All those who have entered into the inner space of man, they know there are gaps. But you are missing them somehow, because those gaps are in the present. You jump from one thought to another, and in between was the gap. In between was the heaven -- you jump from one hell to another.

In between is heaven, but in between you are not. From one thought to another thought you jump you are. Each thought feeds your ego, helps you to be, defines you, gives you a boundary, a shape, a form, an identity. You don't look in the gap between the two thoughts because to look into that gap is to look into your original face, which has no identity. To look into that gap is to look into eternity, where you are going to be lost.

You have become so afraid of looking into the gap that you have almost managed to forget them.

Between two thoughts there is a gap, but you don't see it. You see one thought, then you see another thought, then another thought.... Just watch a little. The thoughts are not overlapping. Each thought is separate. In between the two there must be a gap. There is a gap, and that interval is the door. From that door you will enter into existence again. From that door you have been expelled from the garden of Eden. From that door you will enter into the garden of Eden again, you will again become like a lizard sunning on a rock.

I have heard...

Once a family moved from the country to the city, and his mother gave little Bobby careful instructions about traffic. "Never cross the street until the cars have passed." she said as he started off to visit a little friend. About an hour later he returned, his eyes brimming with tears. "What has happened?" his mother asked in alarm.

"I could not go," said Bobby. "I waited and waited, but a car never did come by."

He was told to wait until the cars have passed by, but never a car did come by. The road was empty, and he was looking for the cars.

This is the situation inside you. The road is always empty -- available -- but you are looking for cars - thoughts - and then you become very much worried. So many thoughts. They become multiplied, they echo and re-echo in you, and you go on being attentive towards them. Your gestalt is wrong.

Change the gestalt. If you look into the thoughts, you create a mind in yourself. If you look into the gaps, you create meditation into yourself. The accumulation of the gaps is meditation; the accumulation of thoughts is the mind. These are two gestalts, two possibilities of your being either you be through the mind, or you be through the meditation.

Look for the gaps. They are already there, naturally available. Meditation is not something which has to be produced by effort. It is there as much as the mind. In fact more than the mind because mind is only on the surface, the waves, and the meditation is the depth of the ocean.

Every moment God is seeking you as much as you are seeking him. You may not be seeking him consciously. You may be seeking him under different names. You may be seeking him as bliss. You may be seeking him as happiness, joy. You may be seeking him as forgetfulness, absorption. You may be seeking him as music, as love. You may be seeking him in different ways, under different names. Those names do not matter you are seeking him -- knowingly, unknowingly. And one thing you have to understand he is also seeking you. Because unless the search is from both the sides, the meeting is not possible.

The whole is seeking the part as much as the part is seeking the whole. The flower is seeking the sun as much as the sun is seeking the flower. The lizard is not only sunning, the sun is also lizarding. It is a connected whole. It has to be so, otherwise things will fall apart. It is one piece, it is one harmony, it is one dance. All gestures, all movements, are connected together. They have to be; otherwise they will fall apart and the existence will no longer be existence -- it will disappear.

Let me tell you through a parable. Consider the following parable...

Man, let us say, is climbing a mountain -- because in the valley he has lived and in the valley, he has dreamed, and in the valley he has thought and imagined, but there has been only frustration. In the valley he has remained empty, unfulfilled, so he thinks that at the top of the mountain is God. Valley he has lived. The top remains far away; shining in the sun it remains an attraction. The far away always calls you, invites you. To look at the close is very difficult; not to look at the far away is also very difficult. To be interested in that which is close is very difficult; to be not interested in that which is very far is also very difficult. The far away has a tremendous attraction, and the top of the mountain goes on calling you.

And, when you start feeling empty in the valley, of course, it is logical to think that the one you are seeking does not live in the valley. He must be living at the top. It is natural for the mind to move from one extreme to the other, from the valley to the peak.

At the top of the mountain man thinks is God, down in the valley are the cares and concerns of human life, all the troubles of love and war. In the valley you go on gathering anxiety, in the valley you go on gathering dust, in the valley, by and by, you become dull and dead. The valley looks like a graveyard. One wants to get out of it. One starts thinking of freedom, moksha, of how to get out of the imprisonment the valley has become -- how to get out of attachment, love; how to get out of ambition, violence, war; how to get out of the society, the very society which gives you the opportunity to be worried, in fact forces you towards anxiety and anguish.

One starts thinking, but this is an escape. In fact you are not going to the peak; you are going away from the valley. It is not that the peak has called you. In fact it is the valley which is pushing you. You are still pushed by the valley; and pushed by the valley you can never be free. It is not that you are going on your own. You are being expelled. The valley is creating a situation in which you cannot live there anymore. Life becomes too much. A moment comes to everybody's life when it becomes too much, the world is too much, and one starts escaping.

Man starts escaping towards the peak. And now comes the most important part of the parable: God, on the other hand, is coming down the mountain. Because, let us say, he is fed up with his purity and aloneness.

Man is fed up with the crowd, with the impurity; God is fed up with his aloneness and purity.

Have you ever watched? You can be happy alone very easily. To be happy with somebody else becomes very difficult. One person can be happy very easily, very cheaply there is no cost to it. Two persons together, it becomes very difficult to be happy. It is easy to be unhappy now -- without any cost, very cheaply. And if three persons are together, it is impossible to be happy -- at no cost is happiness possible.

Man is fed up with the crowd, nowhere to move, nowhere where you can find a space of your own, always onlookers and onlookers -- you are always on the stage, always performing -- and the eyes of the crowd watching you. No privacy. By and by, one gets fed up, bored.

But God is also bored. He is alone, pure, but purity itself becomes boring when it remains and remains and remains.

God is coming down towards the valley; his desire is to plunge into the world. Man's desire is to jump out of the world, and God's desire is to plunge into the world. Man's desire is to be God, and God's desire is to be man.

There is a truth of withdrawal and there is a truth of return. Man is always withdrawing and God is always returning. Otherwise the creation would have stopped long ago, if God was not returning continuously. It must be a circle. The Ganges goes on falling into the ocean, and the ocean goes on rising into the clouds and goes on falling on the Himalayas -- back to the Ganges, and the Ganges goes on flowing. The Ganges is always withdrawing, and the ocean is always returning. Man always seeking God. God always seeking man this is the whole complete circle. If only man was going towards God and God was not coming, the world would have stopped long ago. It would have stopped anytime because one day all men will return and God will not be coming back the world will disappear.

But the peak cannot exist without the valley; and God cannot exist without the world: and the day cannot exist without the night; and life is impossible to conceive of without death. It is very difficult to understand this, that God is a constant returning, man a constant withdrawal -- man a constant renunciation, sannyas, and God a constant coming back to the world, a celebration.

There is a truth of withdrawal and there is a truth of return. Separately they are both half and partial: together they become the truth, the whole truth.

Religion is a withdrawal, but then it is half. Religion should also be a return, then it is whole. Religion should teach you how to go into yourself and religion should also teach you how to come back again because somewhere in between the valley and The peak God and man meet. If you bypass God.... And there is every possibility because if you are going up the hill and he is coming down the hill you won't even look at him. There may even be a condemnation in your eyes. How can this be God who is going back to the valley? You may even look at him with the eyes of "holier than you."

Remember this: Whenever God will meet you, you will see him coming back to the world; and you are leaving the world. That's why your so-called mahatmas, your so-called saints, never come to understand what God is. They go on talking about a dead concept of God, but they never know what God is because they will always miss. Somewhere on the path you will meet him, but your sense won't even look at him. He will look like a sinner; he is going back to the world.

But if they reach to the top they will find it empty. The world is too full; the top is too empty. They will not even find God there, because he is always returning. He is always coming, he is always creating. He is never finished. The creation is an endless process. God is not an entity. He is a process, the process of returning.

If you can meet him on the way and you can recognize him, only then is there a possibility. Then you will drop the idea of going to the peak... you will start returning. All great ones who have understood, first have gone into withdrawal, and then they have returned to the world, back in the marketplace with all their meditation in a tremendous flowering. But they have come back to the world. They have understood the point. They have understood the point of wholeness, of holiness. They have understood the point that the outer and the inner are not two and the creation and the creator are not two and matter and mind are not two -- that the sacred and the profane are not two. They are one. All duality has disappeared for them. This is what I call advait, nonduality -- the real message of Vedanta, the real message of yoga.

It is very natural to get fed up with the world. It is very natural to seek freedom, nothing special in it.

It happened...

Mulla Nasrudin was celebrating his twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and he gave a big party for all his friends. He invited me, too. But the host was nowhere to be seen. Finally, I found him in the library drinking brandy and staring into the fire.

"Mulla," I said. "you should be celebrating with your guests. Why are you sad and what are you doing here!"

"Why am I so sad?" he explained. "When I had been married for five years, I had decided to kill my wife. I went to my lawyer and told him what I was going to do. He said if I did it I would get twenty years in prison. Just think," said Mulla to me. "tonight I would have been a free man."

It is very natural. The world is too troublesome. It creates so much anxiety: it creates so many imprisonments. To seek freedom, to inquire about it, is natural -- nothing special in it. It becomes special when you have understood, when you come from the peak back to the valley with a new dance in your step, with a new song on your lips, with a totally new being -- when you come absolutely pure into the world of impurity, unafraid because now you are incorruptible.

When you come back to the prison on your own accord, voluntarily, when you come to the prison as a free man and you accept the prison, back to your cell; now it is a prison no more because a freedom cannot be imprisoned. Only a slave can be imprisoned. A free man cannot be imprisoned -- he can live in the prison, and free. And unless your freedom is that powerful, it is not worth.

Question 1:

WHY DO I ALWAYS ASK NEARLY THE SAME QUESTIONS, AGAIN AND AGAIN?

BECAUSE the mind itself is repetition. The mind is never original. It cannot be; by its nature it is such. The mind is a borrowed thing. It is never new; it is always old. Mind means the past -- it is always out of date. And by and by mind becomes a pattern, a habit, a mechanism. Then you become very efficient in it. Then you go on moving in the same rut, in the same routine, again and again and again.

You go on asking the same questions because you go on remaining the same mind.

Unless you are new your questions are not going to be new. Unless you drop the old mind completely, totally, utterly, the new question cannot get into you. The new question cannot get into you because there is no space, you are already filled by the old. And the mind has a persistent habit of repeating itself; it is more efficient. The mind is very stubborn. Even if it pretends to change, the change is not real, just a pretension, a modified form of the old.

Maybe the language changes, the form changes, but the deep question remains the same... and the mind goes on persisting.

You have to see it. This question is good. At least, this question is not old. This is from Saroj. She has been asking questions, and I have been never answering her, but today I decided to answer because this is a new glimpse, that she has understood one thing; that she has been asking again and again the same old thing. This understanding is new. A new morning, a new dawn has come to her mind. Her consciousness has become alert to a certain old pattern.

Help this awareness; cooperate with it. By and by you will start seeing yourself in two dimensions the dimension of the mind -- the old, the past; and the dimension of consciousness -- always fresh and always new, always original. I will tell you one anecdote:

A man excitedly ran up to another man on the street and slapped him heartily on the back.

"Paul Porter," he greeted him, "am I glad to see you! But tell me, Paul, what in the world happened to you? Last time I saw you, you were short and fat. All of a sudden you seem tall and thin."

"Look, sir," the puzzled man answered, "I am not Paul Porter."

"Ah!" boomed the undaunted greeter, contemptuously. "Change your name too, eh?"

The mind has a persistent habit to go on believing in itself -- even against all facts. Even if your old mind goes on giving you nothing but misery and hell, you go on believing in it.

People say that this is an age of unbelief. I don't see it. The same old belief in the mind continues. Somebody is a Hindu; he believes in Hinduism because his mind has been conditioned to be a Hindu. Somebody is a Christian; he believes in Christianity because his mind has been conditioned to be a Christian. Somebody is a communist; he goes on believing in communism because his mind has been conditioned to be a communist. All the three are one. They are not different people. They may have different names and labels, but the same thing is happening to all of them they are all conditioned and clinging to the mind and they all believe in the mind.

I call that man religious who renounces the mind. I call that man religious who renounces all conditionings, who stops clinging to the mind, who starts moving into consciousness, who becomes more and more aware of the conditionings. And in that very awareness one becomes loose of the conditions -- and that is the only freedom there is. All else is just rubbish. All talk of freedom -- political, economic, social -- is just rubbish. There is only one freedom, and that freedom is freedom from conditionings, freedom from the mind, becoming alert, aware, attentive, and moving in a new dimension.

Good, Saroj, that you have become aware that your questions have been repetitively the same. That's why I was not answering them. It is useless because when the mind goes on persisting in its old habit; it doesn't listen.

Try always to find the new, the fresh, the young -- that which is just being born. Catch that before it becomes old dissolve into it before it becomes a pattern. Never make your life a patterned and structured thing. Let it remain a flow, unfrozen, fluid, moving always into the unknown.

Mind means the known. And you are the unknown. If you understand this, you will use the mind and you will never be used by the mind.

Yoga: The Alpha and The Omega Vol. 7
Chapter #6
Chapter title: You can't get there from here
6 January 1976 am in Buddha Hall