The first sutra:

Many things. First, why be worried about the exact time of death? How is it going to help? What is the point of it? If you ask Western psychologists, they will almost call it abnormal morbidity. Why be concerned with death? Avoid. Go on believing that death is not going to happen - at least not to you. It always happens to somebody else. You have seen people die, you have never seen yourself die, so why be afraid? You may be the exception. But nobody is an exception; and death has already happened in your birth, so you cannot avoid it.

Now the birth is beyond your power. You cannot do anything about it; it has already happened. It is already past; it is already done. You cannot undo it. Death is yet to happen: something is possible to be done about it.

The whole of Eastern religion depends on the vision of death, because that is the possibility which is going to happen. If you know it beforehand, tremendous is the possibility. Many doors open. Then you can die in your own way, then you can die with a signature of your own on your death. Then you can manage not to be born again - that is the whole meaning. It is not morbid. It is very, very scientific. When everybody is going to die, this is absolutely foolish not to think about death, not to meditate upon death, not to focus upon it, not to come to a deep understanding about it.

It is going to happen. If you know, much is possible.

Patanjali says even the exact date, the hour, the minute, the second of death can be known beforehand. If you know exactly when death is coming, you can prepare. Death has to be received like a great guest. It is not the enemy. In fact it is a god given gift. It is a great opportunity to pass through. It can become a breakthrough: if you can die alert, conscious, aware, you will never be born again - and there will be no death anymore. If you miss, you will be born again. If you go on missing, you will be continuously born again and again, unless you learn the lesson of death.

Let me say it in this way: the whole of life is nothing but a learning about death, a preparation for death. That's why death comes in the end. It is the pinnacle, the crescendo, the very c1imax, the peak.

In the West particularly, contemporary psychologists have become aware that in a deep sex act a certain peak can be attained, a c1imax, a great ogasm, which is tremendously fulfilling, exhilarating, ecstatic. You are cleansed; you come out of it rejuvenated, fresh, again young, again alive - all the dust gone, as if you have taken a great shower, an energy shower. But they have not yet come to know that the sex act is a very minor death; and one who can achieve deep ogasm is one who allows himself to die in love. It is a minor death, nothing to be compared with death. Death is the greatest ogasm there is.

The intensity of death is such that almost always people become unconscious. They cannot face it. The moment death comes, you are so afraid, so full of anxiety, to avoid you become unconscious.

Almost ninety-nine percent of people die unconsciously. They miss the opportunity.

To know death beforehand is just a method to help you prepare so when death comes you are perfectly alert and aware, waiting, ready to go with death, ready to surrender, ready to embrace death. Once you have accepted death in awareness, there is no longer any birth for you - you have learned the lesson. Now there is no coming back to the school again. This life is just a school, a discipline - a discipline to learn death. It is not morbid.

The whole of religion is concerned with death, and if some religion is not concerned with death, then it is not religion at all. It may be a sociology, an ethics, a morality, a politics, but it cannot be religion.

Religion is the search of the deathless; but that deathless is possible only through the door of death.

The first sutra says, "By performing samyama on the two types of karma, active and dormant, or upon omens and portents, the exact time of death can be predicted."   The Eastern analysis of karma says that there are three types of karma. Let us understand them.

First is called sanchita. Sanchita means the total, the total of all your past lives. Whatsoever you have done, howsoever you have reacted to situations, whatsoever you have thought and desired, achieved, missed - the total - the total of your doings, thinkings, feelings of all the lives is called sanchita. Sanchita -- the word means the all, the accumulated all.

The second type of karma is known as prarabdha. The second type of karma is that part of sanchita which you have to fulfill in this life, which has to be worked out in this life. You have lived many lives; you have accumulated much. Now a part of it will have the opportunity to be acted out, realized, suffered, passed through in this life. Only a part of it, because this life has a limitation - seventy, eighty, or a hundred years. In a hundred years you cannot live all the past karmas - the sanchita, the accumulated - only a part of it. That part is called prarabdha.

Then there is a third type of karma which is known as kriyaman. That is day-to-day karma. First the accumulated whole, then a small portion of it for this life, then even a smaller portion of it for today or for this moment. Each moment there is an opportunity to do something or not to do something.

Somebody insults you: you become angry. You react, you do something; or, if you are aware, you simply watch, you don't become angry. You simply remain a witness. You don't do anything; you don't react. You remain cool and collected; you remain centered. The other has not been able to disturb you.

If you are disturbed by the other and you react, then the kriyaman karma falls into the deep reservoir of the sanchita. Then you are accumulating again; then for future lives you are accumulating. If you don't react, then a past karma is fulfilled - you must have insulted this man in some past life, now he has insulted you; the account is closed. Finished. A man who is aware will feel happy that at least this part is finished. He has become a little more free.

Somebody came and insulted Buddha. Buddha remained quiet, he listened attentively, and then he said, "Thank you." The man was very much puzzled; he said, "Have you gone mad? I am insulting you, hurting you, and you simply say 'thank you?'"

Buddha said, "Yes, because I was waiting for you. I had insulted you in the past, and I was waiting - unless you come I will not be totally free. Now you are the last man; my accounts are closed. Thank you for coming. You might have waited, you might not have come in this life, then I would have had to wait for you. And I don't say anything anymore, because enough is enough. I don't want to create another chain."

Then the kriyaman karma, the day-to-day karma, does not fall into the reservoir, does not add to it; in fact, the reservoir is a little less than it was. The same is true about prarabdha - the whole life, this life. If in this life you go on reacting, you are creating the reservoir more and more. You will have to come again and again. You are creating too many chains; you will be in bondage.

Try to understand the Eastern concept of freedom. In the West freedom has a connotation of political freedom. In India we don't bother much about political freedom, because we say unless one is spiritually free, it makes not much difference whether you are politically free or not. The fundamental thing is to be spiritually free.

The bondage is created by the karmas. Whatsoever you do in unawareness becomes a karma.

Any action done in unawareness becomes a karma because any action done in unawareness is not action at all; it is a reaction. When you do something in full awareness it is not a reaction; it is an action, spontaneous, total. It leaves no trace. It is complete in itself; it is not incomplete. If it is incomplete then some day or other it will have to be completed. So if in this life you remain alert, then the prarabdha disappears and your reservoir becomes more and more empty. In a few lives the reservoir becomes absolutely empty.

This sutra says, "By performing samyama on the two types of karma...." Patanjali means sanchita and prarabdha because the kriyaman is nothing but a part of prarabdha, so he divides in two.

What is samyama? That has to be understood. Samyama is the greatest synthesis of human consciousness, the synthesis of three: dharana, dhyan, samadhi.

Ordinarily, your mind is continuously jumping from one object to another. Not for a single moment are you in tune with one object. You go on jumping. Your mind goes on constantly moving; it is like a flux. This moment something is in the focus of the mind, next moment something else, next moment still something else. This is the ordinary state of mind.

The first step out of it is dharana. Dharana means concentration - fixing your whole consciousness on one object, not allowing the object to disappear, bringing again and again your consciousness on the object so that the unconscious habit of the mind of continuous flux can be dropped; because once the habit of continuous change can be dropped, you attain to an integrity, to a crystallization.

When there are so many objects moving continuously, you remain so many. Understand it. You remain divided because your attention to objects is divided.

For example, you love one woman today, another woman tomorrow, another woman the third day. That will create a division in you. You cannot be one; you will become many. You will become a crowd. Hence, the Eastern insistence to create a love in which you can remain for a longer period, as long as possible. There have been experiments in the East in which a couple has remained a couple for many lives together. Again and again the same woman, the same man: that gives an integrity. Too much change erodes your being, splits you. So if in the West the schizophrenia is becoming almost a normal thing, it is not something to be wondered at. It is not strange; it is natural.

Everything is changing.

I have heard that one film actress in Hollywood got married to her eleventh husband. She came home, introduced the new dad to the children. The children brought a register, and they said to the dad, "Please sign it, because today you are here, tomorrow you may be gone; and we are accumulating the signatures, autographs, of all our dads."

You go on changing houses; you go on changing everything. In America the average limit of a person's job is three years. The job is also continuously changing. The house - the average limit of a person staying in one town is also three years. And the average limit of marriage is also three years. Somehow three years seems to be very important. It seems if you remain the fourth year with the same woman there is fear that you may get settled. If you remain in the same job more than three years there is fear that you may get settled. So people go on; they have become almost vagabonds. That creates divisions inside you.

In the East we tried to give a job to a person as part of his life. A man was born in a Brahmin house: he remained a Brahmin. That was a great experiment to give stability. A man was born in a shoemaker's house: he remained a shoemaker. The marriage, the family, the job, the town - people were born in the same town and they would die in the same town. Lao Tzu remembers, "I have heard that in the ancient days people had not gone beyond the river." They had heard dogs barking on the other side, the other shore. They had inferred that there must be a town because in the evening they had seen smoke rising - people must be cooking. They had heard dogs barking, but they had not bothered to go and see. People were so harmoniously settled.

This constant change simply says that your mind is feverish. You cannot stay longer at anything; then your whole life becomes a life of continuous change - as if a tree is being uprooted again and again and again and never gets the right time to send its roots deep down into the earth. The tree will be alive only for the name's sake. It will not be able to bloom, not possible, because before flowers come, the roots have to settle.

So, concentration means bringing your consciousness to one object and becoming capable of retaining it there - any object. If you are looking at a rose flower, you continuously look at it. Again and again the mind wanders, goes here and there; you bring it back. You tame the mind - you tame the bull. You bring it back to the rose. The mind goes again; you bring it back. By and by, the mind starts being with the rose for longer periods. Once your mind remains with the rose for a long period, you will be able for the first time to know what a rose is. It is not just a rose: God has flowered in it.

The fragrance is not only of the rose; the fragrance is divine. But you never were en rapport with it for long.

Sit with a tree and be with it. Sit with your boyfriend or girlfriend and be with him or her, and bring yourself again and again. Otherwise, what is happening? Even if you are making love to a woman, you are thinking of something else - maybe moving in a totally different world. Even in love you are not focused. You miss much. A door opens, but you are not there to see it. You come back when the door is closed again.

Each moment there are millions of opportunities to see God, but you are not there. He comes and knocks at your doors, but you are not there. You are never found there. You go on roaming around the world. This roaming has to be stopped; that's what is the meaning of dharana. Dharana is the first step of the great synthesis of samyama.

The second step is dhyan. In dharana, in concentration, you bring your mind to a focus: the object is important. You have to bring again and again the object in your consciousness; you are not to lose track of it. The object is important in dharana. The second step is dhyan, meditation. In meditation the object is not important anymore; it becomes secondary. Now, the flow of consciousness becomes important - the very consciousness which is being poured on the object. Any object will do, but your consciousness should be poured in a continuity; there should not be gaps.

Have you watched? If you pour water from one pot to another, there are gaps. If you pour oil from one pot to another, there are not gaps. Oil has a continuity; water falls discontinuously. Dhyan means, meditation means, your consciousness should be falling on any object of concentration in a continuity. Otherwise it is flickering. It is constantly flickering; it is not a continuous torch. Sometimes it is there, then disappears; then again is there, then disappears; then again is there. In dhyan you have to make it a continuity, an absolute continuity.

When consciousness becomes continuous, you become tremendously strong. For the first time you feel what life is. For the first time, holes in your life disappear. For the first time you are together.

Your togetherness means the togetherness of consciousness. If your consciousness is like drops of water and not a continuity, you cannot be really there. Those gaps will be a disturbance. Your life will be very dim and faint; it will not have strength, force, energy. When consciousness flows in a continuous, riverlike phenomenon, you have become a waterfall of energy.

This is the second step of samyama, the second ingredient; and then is the third ingredient, the ultimate, that is samadhi. In dharana, concentration, the object is important because you have to choose one object amidst millions. In dhyan, meditation, consciousness is important; you have to make consciousness a continuous flow. In samadhi the subject is important: the subject has to be dropped.

You dropped many objects. When there were many objects, you were many subjects, a crowd, a polypsychic existence - not one mind, many minds. People come to me and they say, "I would like to take sannyas, but...." That "but" brings the second mind. They think they are the same, but the "but" brings another mind. They are not one. They would like to do something and, at the same time, they would not like to do it - two minds. If you watch you will find many minds in you - almost a marketplace.

When there are too many objects, there are too many minds corresponding to them. When there is one object, one mind arises - focused, centered, rooted, grounded. Now this one mind has to be dropped; otherwise you will remain in the ego. The many has been dropped; now drop the one also.

In samadhi this one mind has to be dropped. When one mind drops, the one object also disappears because it cannot be there. They always are together.

In samadhi only consciousness remains, as pure space. These three together are called samyama. Samyama is the greatest synthesis of human consciousness.

Now you will be able to understand the sutra: "By performing samyama on the two types of karma, active and dormant, or upon omens and portents, the exact time of death can be predicted."   Now if you concentrate, meditate, and get in tune in samadhi, you can be capable of knowing the exact time of death. If you move your samyama, this great synthesis of consciousness, this great power that has arisen in you; if you move it towards death, you will be able to know immediately when you are going to die.

How it happens? When you go in a dark room, you cannot see what is there. When you go with a light, you can see what is there, or what is not there. You move almost in darkness your whole life, so you don't know how much prarabdha is still there - prarabdha, the karma that you have to fulfill in this life. When you go with samyama, with light burning bright, you bring the flame in; you know how much prarabdha is left. You see the whole house is empty, just in the corner a few things are left, soon they will disappear. Now you can see when you are going to die.

It is said about Ramkrishna that he was much too interested in food; in fact obsessed. That is very unlikely. Even his wife, Sharada, used to feel very embarrassed; because he was such a great saint, only with one flaw - and the flaw was that he was much too interested in food. He was interested so much that while he was giving satsang to his disciples, just in the middle he will say, "Wait, I am coming," and he will go to look into the kitchen, what is being cooked. He will just go there and ask, "What is being prepared today?" and then will come back and start his satsang again.

His closest disciples became worried. They said, "This doesn't look good, Paramhansa. And everything is so perfectly beautiful - never has there walked such a beautiful and perfect man - but this small thing, why can't you drop it?" He will laugh and will not say anything.

One day his wife Sharada insisted too much. He said, "Okay, if you insist, I will tell. My prarabdha is finished; and I am just clinging with this food. If I drop that I am gone."

The wife could not believe this. It is very difficult for wives to believe in their own husbands - even if the husband is a Paramhansa it makes no difference. The wife must have thought that he is befooling, or he is trying to rationalize. Seeing that, Ramkrishna said, "Look, I can see that you are not trusting me, but you will know. The day I am going to die, just three days before that day, three days before my death, I will not look at the food. You will bring my thali in, and I will start looking in another direction; then you can know that only three days more am I to be here."

That too was not believed; they forgot about it. Then, just three days before Ramkrishna died, he was resting, Sharada brought his thali, his food: he turned over, started looking at the other side. Suddenly the wife realized, remembered. The thali fell from her hands, she started crying.

Ramkrishna said, "Don't cry now. Now my work is finished; I need not cling." And exactly after three days he died.

He was clinging in compassion, just trying to create a bondage with one chain. The imprisonment is gone; the prison has disappeared. Out of compassion he was trying to cling, to linger a little longer on this shore, to help those who had gathered around him. But it is difficult to understand a Paramhansa. It is difficult to understand a man who has become a siddha, a Buddha, one who has emptied all his sanchita, all accumulated karmas. It is very difficult. He has no gravitation, so Ramkrishna was clinging to a rock. The rock has gravitation. He was clinging to a rock so that he could linger on this earth a little longer.

When you have samyama, a consciousness fully alert, you can see how much karma is left. It is exactly like when a physician comes and he sees and touches the pulse of a dying man, and he says, "Not more than two, three hours." What is he saying? By long experience he has come to know how the pulse beats when a person is going to die. Exactly that way, a man who is alert knows how much prarabdha is left - how much pulse - and he knows when he has to go.

This can be done in two ways. The sutra says either to focus on death, that is prarabdha karma....

"By performing samyama on the two types of karma, active and dormant, or upon omens and portents, the exact time of death can be predicted."   This can be done in two ways: either you look at the prarabdha or there are a few omens and portents which can be watched.

For example, before one person dies, almost exactly near about nine months before, something happens. Ordinarily we are not aware, because we are not aware at all, and the phenomenon is very subtle. I say almost nine months because it differs. It depends: the time between the conception and the birth will be the time. If you were born after nine months being in the womb, then nine months. If you were born after being ten months in the womb, then ten months. If you were born after seven months in the womb, then seven months. It depends on the amount of time between the time of conception and birth. Exactly the same time before death, something clicks in the hara, in the navel center. It has to click because between the conception and birth there was a gap of nine months: nine months you took for birth; exactly the same time will be taken for death. As you prepared nine months in the mother's womb for birth, you will have to prepare nine months to die.

Then the circle will be complete. Something in the navel center happens. Those who are aware, they will immediately know that something has broken in the navel center; now death is coming closer. Approximately nine months.

Or, for example, there are other omens and other portents. A man, before he dies, exactly six months before he dies, becomes by and by incapable of seeing the tip of his own nose because eyes start turning upwards, very slowly. In death they turn completely upwards, but they start the turning, the returning journey, before death. That happens: when a child is born, the child takes almost six months, that is usually - there may be exceptions - the child takes six months to have fixed eyes.

Otherwise the eyes are loose. That's why children can bring both their eyes together near the nose, can take them far away to the corners very easily. Their eyes are still loose. The day a child's eyes become fixed: if that day comes after six months or nine months or ten or twelve months, then exactly the same will be the time; again the eyes will start becoming loose and moving upwards.

That's why in India villagers say - they must have come to know from yogis - that before a man dies he becomes incapable of seeing the tip of his own nose.

And there are many methods in which yogis continuously watch the tip of their nose. They concentrate on it. People who have been concentrating on it, suddenly one day realize they cannot see their own nose. Now they know the death is approaching near.

According to yoga physiology there are seven centers in man. The first, the genital organs; and the last is sahasrar, in the head; between these two there are five others. Whenever you die, you die from a particular center. That shows your growth that you have been doing in this life. Ordinarily, people die through the genital organ, because the whole life people live around the sex center, continuously thinking of sex, fantasizing about sex, doing everything about sex - as if the whole of life seems to be centered around the sex center. These people die through the sex center. If you have evolved a little and you have attained to love, gone beyond sex, then you will die from the heart center. If you have evolved completely, if you have become a siddha, you will die from the sahasrar.

The center you will die from will have an opening because the whole life energy will be released from there....

Just a few days before, Vipassana died. Her brother Viyogi was asked to hit her head; that has become symbolic in India. When a person dies and is put on the funeral pyre, the head has to be hit. Just symbolic, because if the person has attained to the ultimate, then the head will break on its own; but the person has not attained. But we hope and pray, and break the skull.

The point of release becomes open. This point can be seen. Some day or other, when Western medical science will become aware of yoga physiology, this also will become part of all postmortems - how the person died. Just now they see only whether he died naturally or was poisoned or killed or committed suicide - all ordinary things. The most basic thing they miss, which has to be there on the report - how the person died: from the sex center, from the heart center, or from sahasrar - from where he died. And there is a possibility - and yogis have done much work on it - it can be seen in the body because that particular center breaks, as if an egg has broken and something has gone out of it.

When somebody who has attained to samyama becomes, just three days before he dies, aware from what center he is going to move, almost always he moves from sahasrar. A certain activity, a movement, just at the top of the head starts working three days before one dies.

These indications can prepare you how to receive death, and if you know how to receive death in a great celebration, in great joy, in delight - almost dancing and in ecstasy - you will not be born again. Your lesson is complete. You have learned whatsoever was to be learned here on this earth; now you are ready to move beyond for a greater mission, for a greater life, for more unlimited life.

Now you are ready to be absorbed by the cosmos, by the whole. You have earned it.

One thing more about this sutra. The kriyaman karma, the day-to-day karma, is just a very small fragment; in modern psychological terms we can call it the "conscious." Below it is prarabdha; in modern psychological terms we can call it the "subconscious." Even below that is sanchita; in modern psychological terms we can call it the "unconscious."

Ordinarily, you are not aware of your day-to-day activities, so how can you be aware of prarabdha or sanchita? Impossible. So start by becoming aware of day-to-day activities. Walking on the road, be alert. Eating your food, be alert. Remain watchful of what you are doing. Remain with the activity.

Don't go here and there. Don't do things like a zombie. Don't move as if you are in deep hypnosis.  Whatsoever you are saying, say everything fully alert, so that you are not going to repent ever.

When you say, "I am sorry. I said something which I never wanted to say," that simply shows you were asleep, not aware. When you say, "I did something, I don't know why and how. I don't know how it happened. I have done it in spite of myself," then remember, you worked asleep. You are a somnambulist walking in sleep.

Make yourself more and more alert. That is the meaning of being here-now. Right now you are listening to me: you can be just the ears. Right now you are seeing me: you can be just the eyes, fully alert, not even a thought passing through your mind, no disturbance, no cloudiness inside. Just focused on me - totally listening, totally seeing - being with me herenow: that is the first step.

If you attain to that, the second step becomes available; then you can move into the subconscious.

Then when somebody insults you, you will not become aware only when you become angry. You will become aware immediately somebody has insulted - there, a certain anger has moved into the subconscious depth of your being, just a small wave, very subtle. If you are not very sensitive and aware, you will not know it - unless it erupts into the conscious you will not know it. By and by you will become aware of subtle nuances, subtle shades of emotions - that is prarabdha, the subconscious.

When you become aware of the subconscious, another step will become available to you. The more you grow, the more growth becomes possible to you. You will be able to see, now, the third step, the final step, of becoming aware of sanchita, the accumulated past. Once you move into the unconscious - that means you are taking the light of consciousness into the deepest core of your being - you will become enlightened. That is the meaning of becoming a Buddha - nothing is in the dark now. Every nook and corner is lighted. Then you live, you act, but you don't accumulate any karma.

 

 

Let me tell you one story:

It happened, a great Buddhist monk, Tamino was his name, persevered, worked hard, and entered the state of satori - the state of samyama. And there he was aware of nothing....

When you are really aware, you are not aware of anything. You are only aware of awareness. That too is not good to say, because then awareness looks like an object. No, you are simply aware of nothing - just simply aware.

... And there he was aware of nothing, and his soul was like nothing. And this state was beyond even peace, and he would have been glad to remain in it forever....

Remember it, when one attains to samyama, one would like to remain forever in it, one would not like to go out of it - but this is not the end of the journey. This is only half the journey. Unless your samadhi becomes love, unless you bring whatsoever you have found within you to the greater world, unless you share your samadhi with others, you are proving yourself a miser. Samadhi is not the goal; love is the goal. So whenever it will happen to you, any of you, you will also come to a point when one wants not to move out. It is so beautiful, it is so tremendously blissful, who bothers?

... And this stage was beyond even peace, and he would have been glad to remain in it forever.

But as it happened, on that day he had gone out to meditate in the little wood that surrounded his monastery. And as he sat there by the way, lost in meditation, there passed a traveler, and thieves leapt upon him and wounded and robbed him and left him for dead. He cried for aid to Tamino, but Tamino sat there unconscious, seeing and hearing nothing....

Tamino was sitting there, and the man was dying there, and the man was calling for help; but Tamino was so deep within himself that nothing reached him. He could not hear. He could not see - the eyes were open, but he was not there in the eyes. He has gone to the very rock bottom of his being. Just the body was breathing, but he was not there on the periphery.

And so the man lay bleeding on the ground, and there he was when Tamino returned to earth - came back to his body, came back to his senses. Tamino was dazed and for a long time did not understand what he saw nor knew what he had to do....

It takes a little time to put yourself together again on the periphery. The center is so totally different.

You move almost in an absolutely unknown territory. And when you come back it is difficult to again get in tune with the periphery, with the outer world. It is almost like people who have been to the moon: when they come back, for three weeks they have to be put in a special house prepared for them - to get ready again to move on the earth. If immediately after coming back from the moon they go to their home, they will get crazy or mad; because the moon is so different. The gravitation is not much there - one eighth of the earth. One can just jump sixty feet, seventy feet, easily. One can jump on anybody's terrace, no problem. The gravitation is almost nil. And the moon is so empty, one is dazed. And the silence is so tremendous, uninterrupted for millions of years - so heavy - that when one comes back from the moon, one is coming as if after one has died and is again coming back to the earth.

When the first man walked on the moon, he was not a theist, but suddenly he fell on his knees and started praying. The first thing that has been done on the moon is prayer. What happened to him?

The silence was such, it was so deep, and he was so alone, suddenly he remembered God. In that loneliness, in that aloneness, in that solitude, he forgot all about that he didn't believe in God, that he is a skeptical mind, that he is a doubter. He forgot all. He immediately fell down and started praying.

When one comes from the moon, he has to be reacclimatized to the earth; but this is nothing compared to when you go to the center of your being and come back.

... Tamino was dazed and for a long time did not understand what he saw nor knew what he had to do. But presently, as the current of his life in the flesh set in again, he went up to the man and bound up his wounds as best he could. But the man's blood had flowed too long. He looked at Tamino and died - and those eyes Tamino could not forget; and those eyes haunted him; and he was so much disturbed - the whole satori lost - he forgot all about the center. He was puzzled.

And in his eyes, before he died, Tamino saw the look he had seen once on the battlefield; and all his peace, so painfully won, fled from him. He went back to the monastery and passed over onto the island and mounted to the topmost terrace, and there sat down beside one of the images of Gautam Buddha. It was evening, and the setting sun alone shone on the stone face, till it seemed to flush into life.

Tamino looked into the eyes of the face and said, "Lord Buddha, was your gospel true?" And the image answered back, "True and false."

"What was true in it?" asked Tamino.

"Compassion and love."

"And what was false in it?"

"Flight from life, escape."

"Must I go back to life?"

But the light had faded from the face and it turned to stone again.

It is a beautiful story. Yes, Tamino had to come back to life. One has to come back to love from samadhi; hence, Patanjali's sutra immediately after the samadhi, in which death is experienced: "By performing samyama on friendliness, or any other attribute," compassion, love, "great strength in that quality is obtained."

Contemporary psychologists will also agree - up to a certain limit. If you constantly think about something, it starts materializing. You must have heard the name of Emile Coue, or if you have not heard the name you must have heard his slogan:

"Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better."

He treated thousands of patients - in great trouble, people in great trouble - and he helped them tremendously. And this was his only medicine. He will just say to them, "Repeat: every day, in every way, I am getting better and better. Just repeat it, just feel it, just surround yourself with this idea 'I am getting better, healthier, happier.'" And thousands of people were helped; they came out of their illnesses. They came out of their mental diseases. They came out of their troubles and anxieties. They thrived again, they became alive again, and there was nothing in it - just a small mantra.

But what happens: you create the world you live in. You create the body also you live in; you create the mind also you live in. You create with your ideas. Whatsoever you think sooner or later becomes a reality. Every thought becomes a thing finally, eventually.

And this is so with such an ordinary mind, which goes on changing the object every moment, goes on jumping from here and there; what to think about samyama? When there is no mind and just the idea of friendliness arises, one becomes so en rapport with it, one becomes it.

Buddha has said, "The next time I come into the world, my name will be Maitreya, 'the friend.'" It is very symbolic - whether he is coming or not, that is not the point. But it is very symbolic. He is saying that after becoming a Buddha, one has to become the friend.

After one has attained to samadhi, one has to attain to compassion. Compassion is the criterion whether your samadhi is true or not.

Remember, don't be a miser; because habits persist. If in the outside world you are a miser and you cling to things, to money and this and that; when samadhi arises in you, you will cling to samadhi.

The clinging will continue - and the clinging has to be dropped. Hence, immediately, after death, when you start feeling the deathless, Patanjali says bring friendliness in, now think of sharing.


There are two seas in Palestine. One is filled with fresh and sparkling water. Trees and flowers grow around it. Fish live in it, and its banks are green. The pure waters of this sea, which possess a healing quality, are brought down by the River Jordan from the hills around Mount Hermon...

Jesus loved this river; Jesus loved this sea. Many miracles happened around this place with him.

... The Master loved this sea, and many of the happier moments of his ministry were spent beside it. It is a place filled to this day with serenity and power.

The River Jordan flows on south into another sea. Here there is no life, no song of birds, no children's laughter. The air hangs sinister and heavy above its water, and neither man nor beast nor bird will drink. This sea is dead.

What makes so mighty a difference between these two seas of Palestine - one so alive, so tremendously alive; and another so dead, so deadly dead?

This is the difference: the Sea of Galilee receives but does not keep the waters of River Jordan.

For every drop that flows into it, another drop flows out. The more it gives joyfully away, the more it receives in return. This is the sea of life - the Sea of Galilee.

The other sea hoards every drop of water reaching it and gives nothing in return. The Sea of Galilee gives and lives. The other sea gives nothing and does not live. It is truly named "The Dead" - the Dead Sea.

And the same is true about human life. You can become the Sea of Galilee or you can become the Dead Sea. If you become the Sea of Galilee, sooner or later you will attract the consciousness of Jesus to you. The Master will walk around you again. Again he will be seen with his disciples near you; again you will be in a totally different world. You will have the touch of the divine. Or you can become the Dead Sea; then go on receiving and don't give; then go on hoarding and don't give.

How did it become dead? A miser is a dead person; a miser dies every day. Share, whatsoever you have share, and you will receive more. That is the meaning of friendliness.

And Patanjali says bring your samyama to compassion, love, and friendliness; and they will grow.

Not that you will become friendly: you will become the friend. Not that you will become friendly: you will become friendship, friendliness. Not that you will love: you will become love, you will be the very quality of love.


http://oshofragrance.org/db/books/files/Yoga%20-%20The%20Alpha%20and%20the%20Omega,%20Vol%208.pdf

The third sutra:

Whatsoever you want, you bring your samyama to it and it will happen - because you are infinite.

Whatsoever form you want to take you can take after samyama. All miracles are possible; it depends on you. If you want to become so powerful like an elephant, you can become. Just by keeping the idea as a seed inside you and showering it with samyama, you will become that. Because of this sutra, many people have done many wrong things. This is a key, but if you want to become something devilish, you can become. You can misuse yoga as much as you can misuse science.

Science has released the atomic energy. Now you can use it by dropping it on cities and killing people. You can create more Hiroshimas and Nagasakis - you can make the whole earth a dead, burned place, a cemetery.

The same atomic energy can be used creatively. All the poverty that exists on earth can disappear within minutes. All the food that is needed can be created, and all the luxuries that are available only to a very few can become part of the normal life of everybody. Nobody is barring the path, but somehow man does not have that creative understanding.

Yoga has been misused in the same way.

All knowledge brings power, and power can be used positively or negatively.

I have heard an anecdote:

A drunk shuffled up to a rich banker and asked for sixpence for a cup of coffee. Being an extremely generous man, the banker handed him a ten-shilling note.

"Here," he said, "you can buy yourself twenty cups of coffee with that." Next evening the banker saw the drunken tramp again.

"How are you today?" he asked cheerfully.

The tramp glared at him. "Why don't you get lost," he said rudely. "You and your twenty cups of coffee. They kept me awake all last night."

It depends. A blessing can become a curse. What Patanjali is saying is pure white magic; it is a magical formula. You can make it into a devilish black magic. Then you will be destructive to others - and destructive to yourself. Remember that. That's why first he says become friendly; then he talks about power.

People like Patanjali are so cautious. They have to be cautious because of you. They watch their every step. First he tells how to attain to samyama; immediately he talks about compassion and friendliness; then he talks about power. Because when you have compassion then power cannot be misused.

 

 

The fourth sutra...

Every dimension becomes available - "of the subtle, the hidden, the distant" - once you know how not to be. Once you know how to be without any ego, once you know how to be a pure consciousness with no subject and no object, everything becomes possible. You can know all. By knowing one all is known.

The 5th sutra...

This sutra is a little complicated - not in itself, but because of the commentators. All the commentators of Patanjali talk about this sutra as if Patanjali is talking about the sun out there.

He is not talking about that sun; he cannot talk about that. He is not an astrologer, and he is not interested in astrology. He is interested in man. He is interested in mapping man's consciousness.

And the sun is not of the outer.

In yoga terminology man is a microcosm. Man is in a subtle way a small universe, condensed into a small existence. The existence, the whole existence, is nothing but man expanded. This is yoga terminology: microcosm and macrocosm. Whatsoever exists outside also exists exactly inside man.

Just like the sun, man has a sun inside; and just like the moon, man has a moon inside. And Patanjali is interested in giving you the whole geography of the inner world, of inner man. So when he says, "Bhuwan gyanam surya samyamat" - "By performing samyama on the sun, knowledge of the solar system is gained," he does not mean the sun that is without. He means the sun that is within.

Where is your inner sun? Where is your center of the inner solar system? It is exactly hidden deep in the reproductive system. That's why sex is hot; it is a sort of heat. We have the expression for animals: whenever a female is ready to be impregnated, we say she is in heat. That phrase is exactly accurate. The sex center is the sun. That's why sex makes you hot and feverish. When you move in a sex act, you become hotter and hotter and hotter. You touch an almost feverish peak; you perspire; your breathing is disturbed. And after it you feel exhausted. Then you fall into sleep.

When sex is exhausted, immediately the moon starts functioning. When the sun sets the moon comes up. That's why after the sex act you immediately fall into sleep. The function of the sun is gone; the function of the moon starts.

Sun is the sex center. By performing samyama on it, you will be able to know the whole solar system inside. By performing samyama on the sex center you will become capable of going beyond it. You will know all the secrets of it; but it has nothing to do with the outer sun.

But if you know the inner sun, by reflection you can understand the outer sun also. This sun is the sex center of the solar system. That's why everything alive needs sun. Trees go higher and higher.

In Africa they go higher than anywhere else because the forests are so dense and there is much competition; because if you don't go high you will die. You will not be able to reach to the sun. You will not be available to the sun and the sun will not be available to you. You will not be showered by the energy of life.

Sun is life; sex is life. All life arises out of sun; all life arises out of sex. All life.

Trees try to reach higher so that they can become available to the sun and the sun becomes available to them. Just watch. The same trees are on this side. These pine-type trees, the same trees are on this side - they have remained small. This side they are throbbing high. Sun is more available on this side; on that side sun is not available.

Sex is the inside sun; the sun is the sex organ of the solar system. By reflection you will be able to understand the outer solar system also, but the basic thing is to understand the inner solar system.

So I will insist on this, remember, that Patanjali is mapping the inner ground. And of course it can be started only from the sun because sun is the center. Not the goal, but the center. Not the ultimate, but the center. One has to rise above it, one has to move above it, but it is the beginning. It is not the omega, but it is the alpha.

Once Patanjali has said how to attain to samyama, how to transform into compassion, love, and friendship, how to become powerful for compassion, for love; he comes to the inner territory, the inner topography: "By performing samyama on the sun, knowledge of the solar system is gained." The whole world can be divided between two types of people: the sun people and the moon people, or you can call them yang and yin. The sun is the male; the moon is the female. The sun is aggression, the positive; the moon is receptive, the passive. You can divide the whole existence between sun and moon. And you can divide your body also between sun and moon; yoga has divided.

It has divided so minutely that it has divided even your breath, your breathing. One nostril is sun breath, another is moon breath. If you become angry you will breathe from the sun side. If you want to become silent, you will breathe from the moon side. The whole body is divided: one of your sides is male, another side is female. The mind is divided: one part of the mind is male, another part of the mind is female.

And one has to move from the sun towards the moon, and then beyond both. 

 

OSHO,

 ATTAIN BY SUDDEN ENLIGHTENMENT, OR BY A SLOW, STEP-BY STEP GROWTH?
IS YOUR PATHLESS PATH FOR ANYBODY, OR ONLY FOR RARE EXCEPTIONS?

THE first thing to be understood is that the very word "attainment" is nonspiritual. It is part of everyone's greed - it is a part of your greed. The idea to attain is very worldly. Whether you want to attain prestige, power, wealth, or God or nirvana does not make any difference. The desire to attain is worldly; it is materialistic.

The spiritual revolution happens only when you drop this greed, when you drop the very idea of becoming. You are that. You are already that, so then don't hanker for attainment. You have never been anything else other than that which you are trying to attain.

God is within you this very moment - healthy and kicking. Because God is not something separate from you, or from life. But your greed has been a problem; and because of your greed, exploiters have existed who go on showing you ways how to attain.

My whole effort here, my whole work here is to help you to see that you already have it. There is no question of any attainment. There is no question of any future. The moment you think in terms of attainment, the tomorrow comes in, time comes in, future comes in. It is a desire. You would like to be somebody else other than you are - which is impossible. You can only be that which you are.

Becoming is dreaming; being is truth. But because of your greed, people have given you many ideas how to attain -- and you accept it. Not because what they say is truth, but because it enhances your greed.

To be close to me all that you have to learn is: unlearn your greed. Drop it. Right now. Don't postpone it. Don't say, "Yes, we will drop it somewhere in the future, tomorrow." Just try to understand the very misery of greed, the very hell of it. If you see that greed brings hell, then why tomorrow? In that very vision, understanding, it drops. In fact you don't drop it; it drops on its own accord.

And, if the very idea of attainment is stupid, then what is the point of asking whether you are going to attain in a sudden way or in a gradual way? They become irrelevant.

You are already that. Let this be your constant remembrance. Not for a single moment forget that you are gods and goddesses. Don't think in terms of ladies and gentlemen - forget all that nonsense.

Remember you are gods and goddesses. Never settle for less.

So, I have to annihilate your wrong ideas. They have been oversold to you - centuries and centuries of satesmanship in the name of spirituality.

Let me tell you one anecdote:

A Catholic girl and a Jewish boy fell madly in love. But their religion and their beliefs interfered. The Irish Catholic mother advised her daughter, "Sell him a bill of goods. Teach him the beauty and joys of Catholicism. Make him a Catholic first." The girl did. She sold him and sold him and the wedding date was set. One day before the marriage the girl came home, sobbed, cried, and said to the mother, "The marriage is off."

"Why?" the mother asked. "Didn't you sell him?"

"I think I oversold him. Now he wants to be a priest."

These salesmen of spirituality, from one century to another, for millennia, have oversold you the idea of attainment. They have exploited you. Just see the point. You can be only that which you already are - nothing else is possible. It is a given fact; it is a gift. So spirituality is not an attainment; rather, it is a recognition - a remembrance. You have forgotten, that's all. You have misplaced it somewhere, that's all, but it is there all the same.

And the second part of the question is: "Is your pathless path for anybody, or only for rare exceptions?"

Only for rare exceptions - but everybody is a rare exception. Because I have never come across any person who is not a rare exception. I have never come across a common man or a common woman. I have been searching hard, looking into everybody who comes to me; I always come across something unique, something incomparably unique, something absolutely unique.

God never repeats. His creativity is original - he does not believe in carbons. He never creates anybody again. He does not believe in the common and the ordinary. He creates only the extraordinary and the unique.

Try to understand it, because the society has again forced on you an idea that you are just a common man. A few people want to prove themselves uncommon. They can prove that only if they prove the whole lot common. Politicians - they cannot believe that everybody is unique. If everybody is unique, then what are they doing by being presidents and prime ministers? Then they will look just foolish. They are unique, the chosen, and the whole lot is common - the mass. Their egos, just to prove themselves extraordinary, have proved another thing also, simultaneously, that everybody is ordinary.

And they say you have to prove your extraordinariness - become rich, become a Rockefeller; or become powerful in terms of power politics, become a Nixon or a Ford; or at least become a great poet, an Ezra Pound or Cummings; become a painter, a Picasso, a van Gogh; an actor. Prove yourself! Become somebody in some direction; prove your talent and genius and your mettle. And, then, those who have not proved in any way are the common mass. You are exceptional.

But I want to tell you that everybody is born exceptional. There is no need to prove it. And those who prove, they simply prove that they are uncertain about their uniqueness. Try to understand it.

Only inferior people, who have an idea of deep inferiority, try to prove themselves to be superior.

Inferiority complex helps you to compete and prove so that you can prove you are superior. But, basically, you are born unique - and there is no need to prove it.

Enjoy if you enjoy creating poetry, but don't make it an ego trip. Enjoy if you enjoy painting, but don't make it an ego trip. Look at your painters, poets; they are so egoistic, almost crazy. What has happened? They are not enjoying their painting, their poetry. They are using their poetry and painting as steps to come to the top so that they can declare, "I am unique, and you are not." Because of these ill people.... They are pathological; they need psychological treatment. All politicians need, all power oriented, egotripped-out people need treatment. They need to be hospitalized.

Because of their madness, their feverish competition, their tremendous effort to prove that they are somebody, you start feeling that you are nobody, that you are not special, that you are there just to vegetate - live an ignoble life and die an ignoble death.

This is a very dangerous, poisonous idea, deeply implanted in you. Throw it out.

But remember, when I say you are unique, I don't mean in any relative way. I don't say that you are more unique than somebody else. When I say you are unique, I say it in an absolute way - not in a relative, comparative way. I am not saying that you are more unique than anybody else. You are simply unique, as unique as the other -- as unique as your neighbor. Uniqueness is your nature.

You ask: "Is your pathless path for anybody, or only for rare exceptions?" It is only for rare exceptions, but everybody is a rare exception.

I would like to tell you one anecdote:

It happened, there was once a wicked king who could not bear to think that anyone was his superior....

Must have been a pure politician - a pure poison.

... So he summoned all the pundits of the realm as was the practice on momentous occasions and put to them this question: "Which of us two is the greater, I or God?"...

Because when you start on an ego trip, the ultimate fight is against God - the final. The final has to be with God because one day or other the problem is going to arise: who is superior, God or you? Friedrich Nietzsche has said, "I cannot believe in God, because if I believe in God I will always remain inferior - always." Then there is no possibility to become superior. So Nietzsche says, "Better to drop the very idea of God." Nietzsche says, "How can there be two superior beings, I and God?" This wicked king must have been a Nietzschean.

... The pundits shook with fear - because they knew if they say God is superior they will be killed immediately, murdered, butchered. Being wise by profession they asked for time, and then through old habit they clung to their position and their lives. But they were worthy men who would not displease God. They were therefore deep in grief, when the oldest pundit reassured them, "Leave it to me, tomorrow I shall speak with the Prince."

The next day when the court was gathered, the old man quietly arrived, his hands humbly joined together, his forehead smeared with white ashes. He bowed down low and pronounced these words: "O Lord, undoubtedly you are the greater" - the Prince twirled his mustaches which he wore long and tossed high his head - -"You are the greater, King, for you can banish us from your kingdom while God cannot; for truly all is his kingdom and there is nowhere to go outside him."

There is no way to go outside God. That's your uniqueness - that is everybody's uniqueness. There is no way to be something else other than part of God. That's your uniqueness and that is everybody else's uniqueness. Respect yourself and respect others also. The moment you start proving yourself superior, you are disrespectful to yourself because the very effort shows that you have accepted the idea that you are not unique - hence the effort to prove - and you are disrespectful to others also.Respect yourself, respect others also, because deep down we are not separate. We are one whole.We are members of each other. We are not like islands; we are the vast continent of God. 

Vol 8 Chapter 3

PATANJALI is not a speculator. He is not an airy, fairy philosopher; he is very down to earth. He means business, as I mean business. His approach is scientific. The very approach makes him totally different from others. Others have been thinking about the truth. He is not thinking about the truth; he simply prepares you how to receive the truth.

The truth cannot be thought; it can only be received. It is already there and there is no way to think about it. The more you think, the farther away you will wander from it. Thinking is a wandering, a rambling in the clouds; the moment you think, you are already going away.

The truth has to be seen, not thought. Patanjali’s basic approach is how to create the clarity, the eyes, which can see it. Of course it is going to be hard work; it is not just poetry and dreaming. A man has to become a lab, a man has to transform his whole life into an experiment – only then, the truth can be realized.

So while listening to Patanjali’s sutras never forget it, that he is not handing you some theories: he is giving you a methodology which can transform you. But then it depends on you.

There are four types of people who become interested in religion. The first, the majority, is only ’curious,’ is in search of something amusing, something outlandish, something interesting, something fascinating. Patanjali is not for those, because a curious person is never interested so deeply that he can be convinced to transform his life. He is looking for a sensation. Patanjali is not for those people.

Then there is a second type, we will call the ”student.” He is interested intellectually; he would like to know what this man Patanjali is thinking, saying – but he is interested in knowledge. Not in knowing, but knowledge. He is interested in gathering more information. He is not ready to change himself; he would like to remain himself and gather more knowledge. He is on an ego trip. Patanjali is not for that type either.

Then there is the third type, the ”disciple.” A disciple is one who is ready to discipline his life, who is ready to transform his whole being in an experiment, who is courageous enough to go on this inner adventure – which is the greatest, which is the most daring, because nobody knows where one is moving. One is moving into the unknowable. One is moving into the abyss. One is moving into the uncharted. Yoga is for the disciple; the disciple will be able to get in tune with Patanjali.

Then there is the fourth state, or the fourth type, 1 will call it the ”devotee.” The disciple is ready to change himself, but still not ready to sacrifice himself. The devotee is ready to sacrifice himself. The disciple will go a long enough way with Patanjali, but not to the very end, unless he becomes a devotee also, unless he comes to recognize that the transformation religion is concerned about is not a modification. It is not just modifying you, making you better and better; it is a death, and one has to sacrifice oneself totally. It is a discontinuity with your past.

When the disciple is ready – not only to transform himself, but to die – he becomes a devotee. But a disciple can go far enough, and if he goes, one day or other he will become a devotee. If he becomes a devotee, only then will he understand the whole of Patanjali, the whole beauty of it, the whole grandeur of it, the tremendous door that Patanjali opens into the unknown.

But, many people who were just curious, they have written many books about Patanjali. Many people who were just students, they have created great tomes of learning, scholarship, and they have done much harm. They have interpreted and reinterpreted Patanjali these five thousand years. Not only that, there are interpretations of interpretations of interpretations. The whole thing has become almost like a jungle and it is very difficult to find where Patanjali is.

This calamity has happened in India to everybody who has brought any truth to human consciousness. People have been continuously interpreting, and they create more clouds than clarity, because in the first place they are not disciples. And even if they are disciples, they are not in that state of mind where they can rightly interpret. Only a devotee... but devotees ordinarily don’t bother.

Hence, I have taken Patanjali to talk about. The man needs great attention because there are very, very rare people who can be compared to the height of Patanjali, to his scientific attitude. He has made religion almost a science. He has brought religion out of all mystifications; but the interpretations have been trying to force all his sutras again back into the world of mystifications. That is a vested interest. If Patanjali comes back and looks at the interpretations that have been done on his sutras, he will not be able to believe it.

And words are very dangerous things. You can play with them very easily. And words are like whores; you can use them but you can never trust them. And they change meaning with every new interpreter – just a slight change, just a comma from here to there. And Sanskrit is a very poetic language – each word has many meanings – so it is very easy to mystify a thing, very easy.

I have heard:

Once two friends stayed in a hotel. They were travelling in the mountains and they wanted to go early in the morning – very early, near about three o’clock – to the nearest peak to see the sunrise, so they had fixed the alarm. When the alarm rang, one, who was an optimist, said, "Good morning, God.” The other, who was a pessimist, said, ”Good God, morning?”

They both use the same words, but with a tremendous difference.

I have heard a Sufi story...

Two disciples of a Master were sitting in the garden of the monastery, meditating.

One said, ”It would be good if we were allowed smoking.”

The other said, ”It will not be possible; the Master will never allow it.”

They said, ”Why not try? There is nothing to lose. We should ask him.”

The next day they asked the Master. To the first he said, ”No, absolutely no.” To the other he said, ”Yes, certainly yes.”

When they met they could not believe what type of man this is. Then the one asked, ”Please, tell me how you had asked?”

The first, to whom was said no, absolutely no, said, "I asked him, 'Sir, can I smoke while meditating?’

He said, ’No, absolutely no!’” Then he asked, ”And how had you asked?”

He said, ”Now I know. I had asked, ’Sir, can I meditate while smoking?’ He said, ’Yes, certainly yes!’”

It makes a lot of difference. Words are whores; and one can go on playing infinitely with words.

I am not an interpreter. Whatsoever I am saying is on my own authority – I am not saying on the authority of Patanjali. Because my experiences and his experience correspond, that’s why I am speaking on him. But I am not trying to prove the authority of Patanjali. How can I prove that? I am not trying to prove that Patanjali is true. How can I prove that? I can only say something about myself. What am I saying then? I am saying this: that I have also experienced the same. And Patanjali has given it beautiful language and expression. It is difficult to improve upon Patanjali as far as scientific explanation, scientific expression, is concerned. Remember this.

If he comes back, he will be almost in a state.... I was reading one story and I remembered him. It happened on a road:

On a road three thieves saw a man on a donkey entering the town. Following the donkey was a goat with a tinkling bell around its neck.

One of the thieves said proudly, ”I am going to steal his goat.”

The second thief said, ”That’s not such a big thing. I am going to steal the donkey he is sitting on.”

The third thief said, ”I will steal the clothes he is wearing.”

The first thief followed the man and on a street corner fastened the bell onto the tail of the donkey and stole the goat. The bell kept tinkling, and the villager thought the goat was still following.

The second thief, who was waiting by another corner faced the man and said, ”A new custom, huh? hanging the bell on the donkey’s tail?”

The man looked behind and exclaimed, ”My goat is gone!”

The thief said, ”I just saw someone with a goat going by that road.”

”Keep an eye on my donkey,” the man said and ran to get the goat.

The thief then rode away on the donkey.

The man searched the road in vain for the thief who stole his goat. Then he came back for his donkey and saw what had happened. He walked a while in distress until he came across someone who was sitting by a well, crying.

”What is the matter with you? They have stolen my goat and donkey; why are you wailing like this?”

”I had a treasure chest that fell into the well. I am too afraid to go in. If you get the chest, I will go fifty-fifty with you.”

Anxious to compensate for his losses, the villager quickly undressed and went into the well. When he came out, empty-handed, he saw his clothes gone. He began to wield a big stick, whirling and whirling around. People gathered to watch.

”They stole everything I had. Now I am afraid they might try to steal me, too!”

That will be the situation if Patanjali comes back: interpretations have taken everything away. They have stolen all; they have not even left his clothes on. And they have done it so beautifully that you will never even suspect. In fact, after five thousand years, things that I am saying will look very strange to people who have been reading Patanjali’s interpreters, commentators. My things will look very strange. They will think I am giving new meanings. I am not giving new meanings, but Patanjali has been misinterpreted so long that if I exactly say what he meant, my sayings will look very strange, outlandish, almost unbelievable.

The last sutra was about the ”sun.” It looks natural to think about the sun in the solar system; that’s how all the commentators have interpreted it. It is not so. The ”sun” is concerned with your sex mechanism – the source of all vitality, energy, heat within you.

In English you have the expression and the name for a certain combination of nerves: you call it ”solar plexus.” But people think that the solar plexus exists inside the navel. That is wrong. The solar energy exists in the sex center, not in the navel, because it is from there that your whole body gets the heat, the warmth. But the explanation may look farfetched; so let me explain it to you more. And then there are others – the moon, the stars, and the polestar.

The words simply indicate as if Patanjali is talking in astrological or astronomical terms about the solar system. He is talking about your inner cosmos, and man is a whole system; and corresponding to everything outside, there exists something within man. Man is almost a miniature universe.

Man can be divided into two types: the sun type and the moon type. The sun type is aggressive; the sun type is violent, outgoing, extrovert. The moon type is introvert, ingoing, nonaggressive, passive, receptive. Or you can call them yang and yin; or you can call them the male and the female. The male is outgoing; the female is ingoing. The male is positive; the female is negative.

Their functioning is different because they function from different centers. The man functions from the sun center; the woman functions from the moon center.

So, in fact, when a man becomes mad he should not be called ”lunatic”; only when a woman becomes mad, she should be called a lunatic. ”Lunar”: the word ”lunatic” comes from ”lunar” – moonstruck. When a man becomes mad he is sunstruck; he is not moonstruck. And when a man becomes mad he becomes aggressive, violent. When a woman becomes mad she simply goes crazy, eccentric.

When I use the word ”man” and ”woman,” I don’t mean exactly all men and all women, because there are men who are more feminine than male and there are women who are more male than feminine. So don’t get confused. A man can be moon-oriented and a woman can be sun-oriented; it depends from where their energy is getting its supply, from what source. The moon has no energy source of its own; it simply reflects the sun. It is a reflective mechanism, that’s why it is so cool. It transforms the energy from hot to cool. The woman also gets the energy from the sex center, but it passes through the moon.

The moon is the hara. Just below the navel, two inches below the navel, there is a center; Japanese call it hara. Their word is perfect. That’s why they call suicide ”hara-kiri”; because the center of moon is the center of death – just as the center of sun is the center of life. All life comes from sun; all death from moon.

Gurdjieff used to say that man is food for the moon. In fact he was saying something very close to Patanjali – and he was one of the men who was very close, but in the West people could not understand what he meant. He used to say that everything is food for something else. Everything has to be food for something else in the ecology of existence. You eat something: you have to be eaten by something else, otherwise the continuity will be broken and the circle will be broken. Man eats fruit; fruits are eating the solar energy, the earth, the water. Man must be eaten in his own turn by something. Who eats man? Gurdjieff used to say that the moon eats man. He was a very eccentric man. His expressions are not scientific; his expressions are apparently very absurd. But if one goes deep in them, one would find pure diamonds there.

 

 

Question 2:

The intellect is the lowest functioning of your being, but because it is the lowest, it is the most efficient. Because it is the lowest, it is the most developed. Because it is the lowest, it can be educated, disciplined. Because it is the lowest, all the universities, colleges, schools, exist for it.

And every man has it more or less.

It is tremendously useful in the outer world. Without intellect it will be difficult for you to be of any utility. That's why Lao Tzu says to his disciples, "Become useless."

Unless you are ready to become useless you will not be ready to leave intellect behind, because intellect gives you utility. You become a doctor - you become useful to the society. You become an engineer, you become a professor - this and that. It is through intellect that you become somebody and the society can use you - and the society can use you as a means. The more utility you fulfill, the more the society values you; hence, the hierarchy - the brahmin, the kshatriya, the vaishya, the sudra.

Sudras

Highest is the scholar, who is pure intellect - the brahmin. Lower than him is the warrior, the kshatriya, because he has to protect the country. Lower than him is the businessman, because he is the whole blood-circulating system of the society - he is the economics, the belly. And lowest is the sudra, the untouchable, the proletariat, because his work is manual, menial, and not much intellect is needed. The sudra needs the least development of intellect and the brahmin needs the highest development of intellect, but the whole division is because of intellect.

Intellect has its utility, but you are bigger than the intellect, vaster than the intellect. If you become identified with the intellect too much, you will become a doctor or an engineer or a professor, a businessman, a warrior, but you will lose your being. You will not be yourself. You can become identified with your function so much that you can forget your being. You can forget that you are man. You can become so much of an engineer or a judge or a politician that you can forget that you are man. You are losing much; then you are just a mechanism. The society will use you - while you can be used - then you will be retired from the society. Then the society waits for you - when you are going to die.

Retired people die sooner than they would have died if they were not retired; they become old sooner. Their life becomes less by almost ten years. What happens? They become useless. They can feel that everywhere wherever they go they are, at the most, tolerated; they are not needed.

And there is a great need in man to be needed - the greatest need is to be needed. Once you feel you are superfluous, once you feel you can be discarded in the dustbin, once you feel that you don't function as a utility in the society; you start dying. The retirement becomes the date of dying also - you start dying fast. You yourself know that you will be a burden now. People will tolerate you, people may even sympathize with you, but nobody is going to take you seriously, nobody is going to love you and respect you. You are discarded.

If you get identified with the intellect too much, you are becoming a thing - like a mechanism. A good car, but when its utility is finished it is thrown to the rubbish heap. Then you are going to be used and thrown, and your innermost core will remain unfulfilled because you were not meant just to be used. You were meant to flower as a being; that was your destiny.

Higher than intellect is intuition. Intuition gives a little romance to your life, a little poetry. It gives you a few glimpses of the nonutilitarian, of your being a person and not being a thing. When somebody loves you, that love hits your intuition, your moon center. When somebody looks at you with charmed eyes, magnetized, that exhilarates the moon energy within you. When somebody says that you are beautiful, your being feels enhanced. When somebody says you are useful, you feel hurt. Useful?

That doesn't seem to be appreciation. Because if you are useful then you are replaceable. Then you can be thrown, somebody else can replace you. But if you are beautiful then you are irreplaceable, then you are unique. Then when you will be gone from the world, something will always remain empty, something will always lack.

That's why you hanker for love. Love is food for intuition. If you are not loved your intuition will not develop. The only way to develop intuition is to shower love upon you. So if a mother loves the child, the child becomes intuitive. If the mother does not love the child, the child becomes intellectual. If the child lives in an atmosphere of love and care and compassion - if the child is accepted for his own self, not for any utility that he can fulfill - then he grows tremendously inside and his energy starts moving through the moon center.

The moon center is almost nonfunctioning because you have not been loved.

Watch. If you tell a woman, "I love you because you have beautiful eyes," she will not be happy, because tomorrow she can lose her eyes. Eyes are just accidental. Or some disease may happen and she may become blind, or the eyes may not remain beautiful. When you say, "I love you because you have a beautiful face," the woman is not happy, because the face will not remain beautiful forever.

The old age is coming every day, every moment. But if you say, "I love you," then she feels happy because this "you" is something permanent, not accidental, nothing can happen to it. When you say to a woman, "I love because..." then she never feels happy, because the "because" brings intellect in. You simply say, you shrug your shoulders and you say, "I don't know why, but I love you." The moon center starts functioning - the woman flowers.

Watch a woman when nobody loves her and watch her the next moment when somebody has said to her, "I love you." A tremendous difference, of grace, dignity. A tremendous change - her whole face becomes enlightened with something new, a glow comes to her. What has happened? The moon center has released its energy.

You must have heard the name of one great Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. He was ugly, very ugly, and no woman could ever manage to say to him, "I love you." Of course, he remained retarded - the moon center never functioned. He was repulsive. People will look at him and escape. He used to work in an art dealer's shop, and the man, the owner, watched him day in, day out. He looked so dull, as if much dust has gathered on his being, and he will not take interest in anything. Customers will come, he will show the paintings, but he will not take any interest. Continuously burdened, not interested in anything, indifferent. He will walk like a zombie - has to walk, so he will walk, but no zest, no life, no intensity, no passion.

One day suddenly the owner could not believe his eyes. He had come, and it seemed he had taken a bath after many months, or many years maybe. He has taken a bath, he has combed his hair, and his step has a dance in it and he is humming a tune. Impossible. And he has good clothes on him and he is wearing a perfume. Impossible.

The owner called him, "Van Gogh, what has happened?" Van Gogh said, "It has happened - a woman has said she loves me. Though the woman was only a prostitute, but still. She has said so only for money, but still, a woman has said she loves me."

Van Gogh asked the woman, the prostitute, "Why do you love me?" Because that was always a haunting thing in him. Nobody loves him; he knew his ugliness. "Why do you love me?" It was impossible for him to accept that somebody can love him just for himself - "WHY?" And the prostitute was at a loss because there was nothing to say, because whatsoever she will say will look ridiculous.

She cannot say, "Because of your eyes," she cannot say, "Because of your face," she cannot say, "Because of your body" - everything is some. how wrong. She said, "Because of your ears. They are so beautiful." Ears? Have you ever heard? And he was so enchanted that he came back home, cut off one ear, wrapped it in a parcel, went back, and presented the ear to the woman. He said, "Nobody has ever liked anything in me. This is a poor man's present, but keep it." The woman was aghast. She could not believe, what type of madman is this?

But he felt very good - he felt tremendously good. He writes in one of his letters, "That was the peak of my life. Somebody had liked something in me, and I could share my being."

Watch, observe. Whenever somebody loves you, and simply loves you, unconditionally loves you, simply says, "I love you because you are you; I love you because you are," what happens within your energies? The sun has moved towards the moon. Now the sun is not so hot; the moon is cooling it.

And the grace of moonlight spreads all over your being.

If the world exists more in tune with love, people will have more intuition and less intellect, and they will become more beautiful. They will not be like things; they will each be more of a person - alive with zest, with passion, intensity. They will have a flame and a celebration.

Intuition is totally different. It functions without any process - it simply jumps to the conclusion. In fact intuition is an opening towards the reality - a vision comes to it. Logic has to grope in darkness; intuition never gropes, just a vision. It simply sees it.

People who are intuitive become religious naturally. People who are intellectual cannot become religious naturally. At the most, they can be intellectually involved in some sort of a religious philosophy, but not in religion as such. They can be involved in theology, but not in religion. They can talk about the proofs of God, but to talk about God is not to talk about God. To talk about is to miss the target - about and about, they move in a circle. They always go on beating around and around the bush; they never hit the target.

Intellectuals have no natural tendency to become religious. That's the reason you see temples, churches, so full of women. The moon feels naturally in tune with religion. Buddha had three times more women than men as his disciples. The same proportion was with Mahavir: he had ten thousand monks and thirty thousand nuns. You will find the same around Jesus - and when he was crucified, all men followers fled.

When Jesus' body was brought down from the cross, only three women were there. Because those men were watching from the crowd for some miracle. They were trying to convince their sun center that, "Yes, this is God's only son," but nothing happened. They were asking for a proof. They were praying to God and to Jesus, "Show a miracle so that we can be convinced." Once they saw that Jesus died like an ordinary man, absolutely ordinary - there were two other men who were dying on crosses just by the side of Jesus, two thieves, and Jesus died just like them, with no difference at all - the men became skeptical. Then this man was bogus - he was not really a son of God. So he was not a god; they escaped.

But this idea never arose to the women. They were not looking for a miracle; they were just looking at Jesus. They were not looking for a miracle, they were just looking at Jesus - and they saw the miracle. They saw the miracle: that Jesus died so ordinarily. That was the miracle. He didn't try to prove anything, because people who try to prove are defensive. He was not defensive. He simply said to God, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." That was his miracle. And he said to God, "Forgive these poor people because they don't know what they are doing." That was the miracle - he could pray for those who were murdering him, pray for compassion. He told God, "Put your judgement aside, put your judging attitude aside. Listen to me. These people are innocent; they don't know what they are doing. They are ignorant. Please don't be angry with them, don't be annoyed. Forgive them." That was the miracle.

The women could see it because they were not looking for the miracle. The intellect is always looking for something; the intuition is simply open. Not looking for something in particular, just looking - it is a vision. That is the meaning of the word "intuition."

When Jesus appeared after three days, first he approached the men disciples. He walked with them, he talked with them, but they couldn't recognize him. They had accepted the idea that he is dead - finished. In fact they must be feeling sorry - "We wasted so many of our years with this man."

Now they must be looking for some other miracle monger, some juggler; they must be looking for somebody else. And Jesus walked with them, talked to them, and they did not recognize him. Then he had to approach the women. And when he came close and Mary Magdalen saw him, she ran - she wanted to embrace him. She immediately recognized him. And she did not even ask, "How has it happened?. - three days before, you were crucified." The intuition never asks how and why. It simply accepts. It is a deep acceptability, total acceptability.

If you live in a loving atmosphere.... And you have to create the atmosphere around you - nobody is going to create it for you. Love people, so that they will love you. Love people, so love is reflected back, resounded back. Love people, so you are showered by love. Your intuition will start functioning.

You will start seeing things which you had never seen before. And the world remains the same, but some new meaning appears in it. The flowers remain the same, but some new mystery is revealed to you. The birds go on singing the same way, but now you can understand their language. Suddenly there is communication, suddenly there is communion.

Intuition is closer to truth than intellect is because it makes you a person - more of a person - than does intellect.

And then there is pratibha, that which is beyond both - the supra intuition. Nothing can be said about it because all that can be said can be said either in sun language or in moon language. Either it can be described in a scientific way or it can be sung in a poetic way, but there is no way to describe pratibha. It is beyond. One has to feel it, one has to live it to know it.

People will come to Gautam Buddha and they will say, "Tell us something about God." And he will say, "Keep quiet, be silent. Remain with me - and it will happen to you." It is not a question that can be asked and answered, and it is not a problem that can be solved. It is a mystery to be lived. It's an ecstasy. It's a tremendous experience.

The way of the intellect:

One day Mulla was in the village mill, filling his bag with a little bit of every other person's wheat.

"Why are you doing that, Nasruddin?" someone asked.

"Because I am a fool," Mulla replied.

"Why don't you then fill other people's bags with your own wheat, if you are a fool?"

"Then," Mulla answered, "I would be more of a fool."

Intellect is cunning; intellect is calculating. Intellect is always trying to exploit others. Intuition is just the opposite; it is not exploitative.

Now let me tell you one thing. People think that someday or other the world will come to a point where there will be no classes, no economic hierarchy - no poor, no rich. And the people who have given much thought to this dream, this utopia - Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Mao - they are all intellectuals, and intellect can never bring this state of affairs. Only in an intuitive world is it possible that classes may disappear. But they are against intuition - Marxians think intellect is all in all, there is nothing beyond it. If that is so then their utopia is never going to be fulfilled - because intellect as such is exploitative; it is cunning. Intellect is violent, aggressive, destructive.

The sun energy is very violent and hot. It burns, it kills.

If really there is ever going to be a world without classes, a really communist world - where communes exist and there are no classes - then that world has to be completely anti-Marxist. It has to be intuitive. And the builders of that world cannot be politicians - only poets, imaginative people, dreamers.

I would like to say man cannot be the creator of that world, only woman. The moon can create a world of equality, not the sun.

A Buddha, a Jesus, maybe can be helpful towards that utopia and the fulfillment of it, but Marx? No, absolutely no. He is too calculative, too clever, too intellectual. But the world has been ruled by the sun up to now. That was also natural because the sun is aggressive.

Now the possibility opens that the sun is tired, exhausted, frustrated, and humanity may start looking for another center to work with. That will be the real rise of women in the world: if the moon rises.

But, as I see, in the West there is great excitement amongst women, great movement, revolutionary thinking, radical thought - the lib movement - but they are all falling and becoming intellectuals.

They are becoming more like men.

If women react to men they will become more like men themselves. That is the danger.

The woman should remain woman, only then is there a possibility of a different world and a different society - the moon oriented society. But if the woman herself becomes aggressive, as she is becoming, then she is learning the nonsense of man and the aggression of man and the violence of man. She may succeed, but the sun will succeed in her again.

One has to be very, very alert in radical times. When changes are going to happen in human consciousness, one has to be very alert. Just a single wrong step, and the whole thing can go wrong. Now the possibility is there that the moon can function and the moon can become dominant, but the woman, if she becomes aggressive, will miss and again man will win through her and the sun will remain in power.

From intellect to intuition and from intuition to beyond. This is the right direction of evolution: from man to woman and from woman to beyond.

Now one question has been asked, that this is understandable as far as man is concerned - what about women? They are on the moon center. What do they have to do?

They will have to absorb the sun center. As man has to absorb the moon center, woman has to absorb the sun center. Otherwise something remains denied in them; then they will not be whole women. So a man has to move from the sun center to the moon, from intellect to intuition. The woman has to learn intellect also, has to learn the logic of life also. She knows the love of life, man knows the logic of life; man has to learn the love of life and woman has to learn the logic of life. Then a balance arises.

Woman will have to absorb the sun center - and she can absorb very easily because her moon is functioning. The moon just has to open in the direction of the sun. The path is going to be just a little different: for man the sun energy has to be brought to the moon; for women, they have just to open their moon towards the sun and the energy will start flowing.

But both have to become total. The conscious has to absorb the unconscious and the division has to drop.

Jesus says, "A man becomes a woman and a woman becomes a man." When you accept your totality and you don't deny any part of your being, everything becomes balanced. And when woman and man are balanced within you, they negate each other. Suddenly you are free. Those two forces negate each other, and suddenly you are no longer in bondage.

You can remain in bondage only if one is more powerful than the other. If the sun is more powerful than the moon, then you will be in bondage with your man - the male mind. If the moon is stronger than the sun, then you will remain in the bondage of woman - the female. When both are equal, balancing, they negate each other; suddenly, your energy is free. You are not in any form now, you become formless. That formlessness is pratibha. Then you start rising higher and higher and higher - and there is no end to this growth.

That is the meaning when we say God is infinite. You go on growing and growing - you go on becoming more perfect, more perfect, more perfect.... Each moment is perfect and each next coming moment is more perfect than that. 

 

 

One of the most important sutras of Patanjali - the very key. This last part of Patanjali's YOGA SUTRAS is called Kaivalya Pada. Kaivalya means the summum bonum - the ultimate liberation, the total freedom of consciousness, which knows no limitation, which knows no impurity. The word kaivalya is very beautiful; it means innocent aloneness; it means pure aloneness.

The word 'aloneness' has to be understood. It is not loneliness. Loneliness is negative: loneliness is when you are hankering for the other. Loneliness is the feeling of the absence of the other; aloneness is the realization of oneself. Loneliness is ugly; aloneness is tremendously beautiful.

Aloneness is when you are so content that you don't need the other, that the other has completely disappeared from your consciousness - the other makes no shadow on you, the other creates no dream in you, the other does not pull you out.

 

The other is continuously pulling you off the center. Sartre's famous saying, Patanjali would have understood it well, is, "The other is hell". The other may not be hell, but the hell is created by your desire for the other. The desire for the other is hell.

And to be desireless of the other is to attain to your pristine clarity of being. Then you are, and you are the whole - and there exists nobody except you. This Patanjali calls kaivalya.

And the way towards kaivalya, the path, is first, the most essential step, viveka, discrimination; the second important step is vairagya, Renunciation; and the third is the realization of kaivalya, aloneness.

Why are you hankering so much for the other? Why this desire - this constant madness for the other? Where have you taken a wrong step? Why are you not satisfied with yourself? Why don't you feel fulfilled? Why do you think that somehow you lack something? From where arises this misconception that you are incomplete? It arises out of the identity with the body. The body is the other. Once you have taken the first wrong step, then you will go on and on, and then there is no end to it.

By viveka Patanjali means: to discriminate yourself as separate from the body - to realize that you are in the body but you are not the body, to realize that you are in the mind but you are not the mind.

To realize that you are always the pure witness - sakshi, drashta - the seer. You are never the seen; you are never the object. You are pure subjectivity.

Soren Kierkegaard, one of the most influential existential thinkers in the West, has said, "God is subjectivity." He comes very close to Patanjali. What does he mean when he says God is subjectivity? When all objects are known as separate from you, they start disappearing. They exist through your cooperation. If you think you are the body, then the body continues. It needs your help, your energy. If you think you are the mind, the mind functions. It needs your help, your cooperation, your energy.

This is one of the inner mechanisms: that just by your presence nature becomes alive. Just by your presence the body functions as alive; just by your presence the mind starts functioning.

In yoga they say it is as if the master had gone out; then he comes back home. The servants were chitchatting and sitting on the steps of the house and smoking, and nobody was worried about the house. The moment the master enters, their chitchat stops, they are no longer smoking, they have hidden their cigarettes and they have started working, and they are trying to show that they are so much involved in their work that you cannot even conceive that just a moment before they were gossiping, sitting on the steps idling, lazy, resting. Just the presence of the master, and everything settles - as if the teacher had gone out of the class and there was much turmoil, almost a chaos, and the teacher comes back and all the children are in their seats and they have started writing, doing their work, and there is complete silence. The very presence.

Now scientists have something parallel to it. They call it the presence of the catalytic agent. There are a few scientific phenomena in which a certain substance is needed just to be present. It does not act in any way, it does not enter into any activity, but just the presence of it helps some activity to happen - if it is not present that activity will not happen. If it is present it remains in itself; it does not go out. Just the very presence is catalytic - it creates some activity in somebody else, somewhere else.

Patanjali says that your innermost being is not active; it is inactive. The innermost being is called in yoga the purusha. Your pure consciousness is a catalytic agent. It is just there doing nothing - seeing everything, but doing nothing; watching everything, but getting involved in nothing. By the sheer presence of the purusha; the prakriti, nature - the mind, the body, everything - starts functioning.

But we get identified with the body, we get identified with the mind: we slip out of the witnesser and become a doer. That's the whole disease of man. Viveka is the medicine - how to go back home, how to drop this false idea that you are a doer, and how to attain to the clarity of just being a witness.

The methodology is called viveka.

Once you have understood that you are not the doer and you are the watcher, the second thing happens spontaneously - renunciation, sannyas, vairagya. The second is: now whatsoever you were doing before, you cannot do. You were getting involved too much in many things because you were thinking you are the body, because you were thinking you are the mind. Now you know that you are neither the body nor the mind, so many activities that you were following and chasing and getting mad about simply drop. That dropping is vairagya; that is sannyas, renunciation.

Your vision, your viveka, your understanding, brings a transformation: that is vairagya. And when vairagya is complete another peak arises, which is kaivalya - you for the first time know who you are. But the first step of identification leads you astray; then once you have taken the first step, once you have ignored your separation and you have got caught in the identity, then it goes on and on and on; and one step leads to another, then to another, and you are more and more in the mire and in the mess.

Let me tell you one anecdote:

Two young friends were breaking into society and young Cohen had high hopes of marrying an heiress. To give him moral support he took young Levy along with him to meet the girl's parents.

The parents smiled at young Cohen and said, "I understand you are in the clothing business." Cohen nodded nervously and said, "Yes, in a small way."

Levy slapped him on the back and said, "He is so modest, so modest. He has twenty-seven shops and is negotiating for more."

The parents said, "I understand you have an apartment." Cohen smiled, "Yes, a modest couple of rooms."

Young Levy started laughing, "Modesty, modesty! He has a penthouse in Park Lane."

The parents continued, "And you have a car?"

"Yes," said Cohen. "Quite a nice one."

"Quite nice nothing!" interjected Levy. "He has three Rolls-Royces, and that is only for the town use."

Cohen sneezed. "Do you have a cold?" asked the anxious parents. "Yes, just a slight one," replied Cohen.

"Slight, nothing!" yelled Levy. "Tuberculosis!"

One step leads to another, and once you have taken a wrong step, your life becomes an exaggeration of that wrong. It is mirrored and reflected in millions of ways. And if you don't correct it there - you can go on correcting all over the world - you will not be able to correct it.

Gurdjieff used to tell his disciples, "The first thing is to become nonidentified and to remember continuously that you are a witness, just a consciousness - neither an act nor a thought."

If this remembrance becomes a crystallized phenomenon in you, you have attained to viveka, discrimination; then spontaneously follows vairagya. If you don't become discriminate, spontaneously follows samsar, the world. If you be come identified with the body and the mind, you move out - you go into the world. You are expelled from the garden of Eden. If you discriminate and you remember that you are in the body and the body is an abode and you are the owner and the mind is just a biocomputer, you are the master and the mind is just a slave; then, a turning in.

Then you are not moving into the world, because the first step has been removed. Now you are no longer bridged with the world, suddenly you start falling in. This is what vairagya is, renunciation.

And when you go on falling in and in and in and there comes the last point beyond which there is no go, the summum bonum, it is called kaivalya: you have become alone. You don't need anybody. You don't need the constant effort of filling yourself with something or other. Now you are in tune with your emptiness, and because of your tuning in with the emptiness, the very emptiness has become a fullness, an infinity, a fulfillment, a fruition of being.

This purusha is there in the beginning, this PURUSHA is there in the end, and between the two is just a big dream.

The first sutra:

 

 

 

A hundred years before, one of the greatest thinkers of the world, Friedrich Nietzsche, declared that God is dead. He was declaring something which was becoming clearer to everybody. He simply declared the feeling of all the thinkers of the world, particularly the science oriented people. Science was winning every day against religion, superstition; and science was conquering so much that it was almost certain that in the future God cannot exist, religion cannot exist. It was felt all over the world that God has become part of history and God will exist in the museums, in the libraries, in the books, but not in human consciousness. It was felt as if matter has won the last, final war with God.

When Nietzsche declared God is dead, he meant that now life will not in any way be a destiny. It has become accidental, because God is nothing but the coordinating principle of life. God is the organic unity of life. God is that energy which has glued everything together. God is that law which has made a cosmos out of a chaos. Once God is not there, the coordinating principle is not there, the world again becomes a chaos, just an accident. With God disappears all order. With God disappears all principle. With God disappears all possibility to understand life. And with God man also disappears.

Nietzsche himself declared that God is dead and man is free now, but in fact once God is dead, man is not there. Then man is just matter, nothing more - explainable - is a mystery no more, has depth no more, has infinity no more, and has meaning no more, significance no more, is just an accident - has appeared accidentally, will disappear accidentally.

But Nietzsche proved wrong. It appears that it was something like the age of scientific youth; the nineteenth century was the age of science's coming of age. And as every youth is too full of confidence, too optimistic, in fact foolishly optimistic, the same was the case with science also.

In Tibet they have a saying that every young man thinks old people to be fools, but every old man knows that all young people are fools. Young people only think, but old people know. Science was the youngest growth in human consciousness, and science was much too confident. It even declared God is dead and religion is no longer relevant, it is "out of context." Religion was part of humanity's childhood, they declared. Freud wrote a book, THE FUTURE OF AN ILLUSION - about religion, that it is just an illusion and there is no future really.

But God survived, and a miracle has happened within these hundred years. If Nietzsche comes back he will not be able to believe what has happened. The more the scientific mind penetrated into matter, the more it came to know that matter does not exist. God survived, matter died. Matter has almost disappeared from scientific vocabulary. It exists in ordinary language, but it is just because of old habit; otherwise there is no matter now. The deeper the scientific penetration became, the deeper they came to understand that it is energy not matter. Matter was a misunderstanding. Energy is moving so fast, with such tremendous speed, that it gives an illusion of something solid. The solidity is just an illusion.

God is not illusory. The solidity of the world is illusory. The solidity of these walls is illusory; they appear solid because the energy particles, electrons, are moving at such a speed that you cannot see the movement.

Have you watched sometimes the electric fan going very fast? Then you cannot see the blades. And if the electric fan is really moving with such speed, as electrons, you can sit upon it and you will not fall down, and you will not feel the movement. You can hit it with a bullet and the bullet will not pass between the gaps, because the speed of the bullet will not be so much as the speed of the blades.

This is what is happening. Matter has disappeared, has no more validity.

But what science has discovered is not really a discovery; it is a rediscovery. Yoga has been talking about it for five thousand years - at least. Yoga calls that energy prana. This word prana is very significant, very meaningful, pregnant with meaning. It is made out of two Sanskrit roots. One is pra; pra means the basic unit of energy, the most fundamental unit of energy. And na means energy.

Prana means: the most fundamental unit is energy. Matter is just the surface. Prana is the real thing there is - and it is not a thing at all. It is more like a no-thing, or you can call it almost nothing. Nothing means no-thing. Nothing does not mean nothing; nothing simply means that it is not a thing.

It is not solid, it is not static, it is not visible, it is not tangible. It is there, but you cannot touch it. It is there, but you cannot see it. It is there, beyond and beneath every phenomenon. But it is the most fundamental unit; you cannot go beyond it.

Prana is the basic unit of the whole of life. Rocks, trees, birds, man, God, everything is a manifestation of prana, on different levels, on different understandings, on different integrations. The same prana moves and manifests as millions, as many, but the basic unit is one. Unless you come to know prana within yourself, you will not be able to know what God is. And if you cannot know it within yourself, you cannot know it without, because within you it is so close.

That's why Patanjali could know it five thousand years before Albert Einstein and company. Five thousand years is a long time for science to come to understand it, but they were trying from the outside. Patanjali dived deep into his own being; it was a subjective experience. And science has been trying to know it objectively. If you want to know something objectively, you have taken a very long route. That's why so much delay. If you go within, you have found the shortest route to know what it is.

Ordinarily you don't know who you are, where you are. What are you doing here? People come to me and they say, "What are we doing here? Why are we? For what?" I can understand their confusion, but wherever you are and whatsoever you are doing the problem will remain the same - unless you understand the source from where you come, unless you understand the basic structure of your being, unless you come to know your prana, your energy.

I have heard, it happened:

Mulla Nasruddin visited a field and filled his bag full of melons. He was about to leave when the owner showed up.

"I was passing by," Mulla began to explain, "when suddenly a strong wind blew me over to the fence and into the field."

"What about the melons?" the owner asked.

"The wind was so strong, sir, that I clutched at anything I could get my hands on. And that's how the melons came loose."

"But who put them into your bag?"

"To tell the truth," Mulla replied, "I was wondering about that myself."

This is the situation. How are you here? Why are you here? Who has put you into the bag?

Everybody is wondering.

Philosophy, they say, comes out of wonder; but don't go on continuously simply wondering and wondering. Otherwise wondering becomes a sort of wandering. Then you never reach. Rather than simply wondering, try to do something. You are here, that much is certain. You are alert that you are here, that much is also certain. Now these two ingredients are enough for yoga experimentation.

You are: the being is there. You are aware that you are: the consciousness is there. These two are enough to make a lab out of your being for yoga experimentation.

Yoga does not need sophisticated, complicated things for its work. It is the simplest. Two things: you and your awareness that you are. Enough. These two you have; everybody has them. Nobody is lacking in these two things. You have a certain feel that you are, and of course you are aware of that certain feel. These two things are enough. That's why yogis had no laboratories, no sophisticated instrumentation - and they never needed any grant from Rockefeller or Ford. They needed only just a little bread, water, and they will come and beg in the town and will disappear for days. After a week or two they will come again and beg again and they will disappear again.

They did the greatest experiment: the experiment in human reality. And only with two small things, but those small things are not small. Once you know them they are the biggest phenomenon ever.

So the first thing about today's sutras is the discovery of prana. That became the very foundation of the temple of yoga. You are breathing. Yoga says you are not only breathing air; you are also breathing prana. In fact air is just a vehicle for prana, just a medium. You are not alive by breath.

Breath is just like a horse, and you have not looked at the rider yet. The rider is prana.

Now many psychoanalysts have come across this mysterious thing - the rider who is coming on the breath, going on the breath, continuously moving in and out. But yet in the West it is not a recognized scientific fact. It should be because now science says matter is no longer there and everything is energy. The stone, the rock, is energy; you are energy. So there must be happening many energy games within you, tides and ebbs of energy.

Freud stumbled upon this fact. I say "stumbled upon it" because his eyes were not open; he was very blindfolded. He was not a yogi. He was again caught in the scientific attitude of making everything objective. He called it "libido." If you ask the yogis they will say libido is prana ill. When prana is not vital, when somehow the energy of prana has become dammed up, blocked; that's what Freud has come to know. And that's explainable because he was working only with ill people, neurotics, mad people, mentals. And working on ill, mentally disturbed people he came to know that their bodies are carrying some blocked energy and unless that energy is released, they will not be healthy again.

Yogis say libido is prana gone wrong. It is just a diseased prana. But still Freud stumbled upon something which later on can become very, very significant.

And one of his disciples, Wilhelm Reich, went deeper into it, but he was caught by the American government because he could not prove very scientifically, that is very objectively, what he was saying. He died in jail as a madman, certified as mad. He was one of the greatest men ever born in the West. But again he was working blindfolded. He was not yet working as a yogi has to work. The scientific attitude was his undoing.

Reich tried to make contact with this energy the yogis called prana, and he called it "orgone." "Orgone" is better than "libido" because "libido" gives a feeling as if all is sexual energy. "Orgone" is a better word, more inclusive, more comprehensive, bigger than "libido," and gives a possibility for the energy to move beyond sex or to touch higher realms of being which are not sexual. But he got into trouble because he felt it so much and he observed so much that he started to accumulate the prana energy, the orgone, in boxes. He made orgone boxes. Nothing is wrong in them; yogis have been working on that for centuries. That's why yogis try to live in almost boxlike caves, with only one small door.

Now those caves look very unhygienic, and how did they live there for years? No air goes in because there is no cross ventilation. So dark, dingy, and yogis have lived so perfectly and so healthily that it is almost a miracle. What were they doing there and how were they living there? According to the modern Scientific ideology they should have died, or at the most they should have lived as very ill people, depressed; but yogis have never been depressed. They are one of the most vital people to come across, very alive. What were they doing? What was happening? They were creating orgone, and for orgone to stay in a particular place, cross ventilation is not needed; in fact cross ventilation wi]l not allow the orgone to accumulate because once the air comes there the orgone energy is a rider - it jumps on the air and moves out. No air passage is needed; then layers upon layers of orgone go on accumulating, and one can thrive on it and live on it.

Wilhelm Reich created small orgone boxes, and he he]ped many ill people. He will tell them just to lie down in the orgone box, and he will close the box and tell them to rest; and within an hour the person is out, feeling very vital, alive, tingling all over with energy. And many people have reported that their diseases disappeared after a few experimentations with the orgone.

Orgone Accumulator Box

The orgone box was so effective that without knowing the laws of the country and without bothering about them, Wilhelm Reich started to produce them on a mass basis and he started selling them.

Then he was caught by the Food and Drug Administration and he was asked to prove it. Now it is difficult to prove because the energy is not tangible. You cannot show it to anybody. It is an experience; and a very inner experience. You don't ask Albert Einstein to show electrons, but you can believe in him because you can go and see Nagasaki and Hiroshima. You can see the effect; you cannot see the cause, Nobody has yet seen the atom, but the atom is, because it can produce effects.

Buddha has defined truth as that which can produce effects. Buddha's very definition of truth is very beautiful. Never again and never before has there been such a beautiful definition of truth: that which can produce effects. If it can produce effects it is true.

Nobody has seen the atom, but we have to believe it because of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. But nobody listened to Wilhelm Reich and his patients. There were many who were ready to certify, "We have been cured," but this is how - once some attitude becomes generally accepted - people become blind. They said, "All these people are hypnotized. In the first place they must not have been ill - or they have imagined themselves cured - or it is nothing but suggestibility." Now you cannot go and tell people who have died in Hiroshima, "You have imagined that you are dead"; they have simply disappeared.

Just see the thing: death is more believable than life.

And the whole modern world is more death-oriented than life-oriented. If you kill a person you will be reported by all the newspapers; you will become a headline. But if you revive a person, nobody will ever come to know about it. If you murder, your name becomes a famous name, but if you give life to people, nobody is going to believe in you. They will say you are a charlatan or a deceiver.

That has always been so. Nobody believed Jesus; they killed him. Nobody believed Socrates; they killed him. They have killed even a very innocent man like Aesop, the famous story teller. He never did anything, he never created a religion or a philosophy, and he was not saying anything against anybody. He was just creating a few beautiful parables. But those parables offended people because he was saying such great truths in those parables and in such a simple way that he was murdered.

You go on killing people who have been affirmative, life enhancing. You ask for proofs.

If somebody comes to me and asks what I am doing here, it will be difficult. If you certify, they will say you have gone mad. This is something. If somebody is against me, they will believe him; if somebody is for me, they will not believe him. If somebody is against - howsoever foolish - they will not argue with him; they will say, "Right." And if somebody is with me and for me - howsoever intelligent - they will laugh; knowingly they will say, "I know, you are hypnotized." Ask Dr. Phadnis; people say that he is hypnotized.

This is a vicious circle of argumentation. If I convince you, you are hypnotized; if I cannot convince you, I am wrong. So either way I am wrong. If somebody is convinced....

It happened. Swabhav is here. A few years before, he came with his two brothers; all the three had come to argue with me. And Swabhav was the most argumentative of all the three; but he is a sincere man, and simple. He became by and by convinced. He had come as a leader with the other two brothers; then he became convinced. Then the other two became against him. Now they say he is hypnotized. They have stopped coming; they won't listen to me. Now they are afraid: if Swabhav can be hypnotized, they can also be hypnotized. They avoid, and they have created a protective defense mechanism around them. If I can convince another brother - because I know one can be convinced still - then the remaining one will become more defensive; and then he will say, "Two brothers gone." And the remaining one is also very good-hearted; there is a possibility for him also. Then the whole family will think all the three have gone mad.

This is how things go. If you cannot convince, you are wrong; if you can convince, then too you are wrong.

Many people, very intelligent people, PhD's, professors, psychoanalysts - certified - but the court wouldn't listen. They said they are all conspirators in the same game. "Show us where orgone energy is! Open the box and let us see where it is. It is an ordinary box, there is nothing. And you are selling it, deceiving people, cheating."

Wilhelm Reich died in a prison. It seems humanity is not going to learn anything from history; it goes on repeating the same, again and again.

Why are you so much against love, because orgone energy is love energy? Why are you so much against life and why are you so much in favor of death? Something has not evolved in you. You are so unalive that you cannot believe that life has more and higher possibilities. And if somebody reaches to a higher peak, you cannot believe that that is possible. You have to deny. It becomes almost an offense to you.

If I say I am God, it becomes an offense. I am simply saying that you can also become gods, never settle for less. But you feel offended. And you are living only two percent of your possibilities; ninety eight percent of your possibilities are being wasted. As if you were given a hundred days to live and you lived only two days and died. Even your great thinkers, painters, musicians, geniuses, they live only fifteen percent of their potentiality.

If you can blaze to your utmost, you become a god.

The situation is such that I would like to tell you one anecdote to explain it.

Cohen bumped into Levy Isaacs who was looking terribly dejected.

"What is the matter?" he asked.

"I am bankrupt," said a quiet Isaacs. "My business failed."

"Oh, well," said Cohen, "what about the property in your wife's name?"

"There is no property in my wife's name."

"Well, then, what about the property in your children's names?"

"There is no property in my children's names?"

Cohen put his hand on Levy's shoulder, "Levy, you are very mistaken. You are not bankrupt - you are ruined."

This is the situation where you are: not only bankrupt, ruined. If you don't become alive, if you don't revitalize your prana and energy, you are ruined - and you will live with the false idea that you lived. And you are supported by the whole mass of people around you because they are almost as dead as you are, so you think this is the rule. This is not the rule.

The effort towards religion starts only when you catch hold of this --this sutra, this thread - that whatsoever you are doing is almost nothing. You are wasting a great opportunity. Unless you start feeling God within you, never settle for anything. It is okay if you stop for a night's rest, okay, but by the morning start going. Remember it as a criterion that your fulfillment is your godhood.

When your prana flowers you are God. Right now your prana is just crawling on the earth - not even standing and walking.

I have heard about one beggar who knocked at a big house. The lady of the house opened the door. The man immediately did a shashtang, he bowed down with his whole body on the earth. He crawled at her feet. A very strong man, healthy, perfectly healthy and young. The lady said, "What are you doing? Why are you wasting your energy and crawling at people's feet? Why don't you work! Why do you go on asking, begging, crawling!"

The man looked up and said, "Lady, I am a very scientific man. I am moving alphabetically." The lady said, "What do you mean, alphabetically?"

He said, "A. - Asking;  B. - Begging; C. - Crawling.  Work is W. - which is very, very far away...." Alphabetically!

Don't be so alphabetical.

If you are using your prana only for sex purposes, you are crawling. Unless the energy moves to the sahasrar, unless the prana comes to your crown of the head, to your very peak, you will not be able to fly in the sky. You will remain imprisoned and you will remain miserable. Happiness is when you are flying. Happiness is when the sky is vast, unlimited. Happiness is when you have learned the pinnacle, the crescendo of your being, when you have touched the highest peak.

Now the sutras.

 

 

 

Question 1

There is none. The way is just an illusion of the mind. The mind goes on dreaming about the way to reach its goals, its desires. The way is a shadow of the desiring mind.

First you desire something. Of course desire can only be in the future and the future is not there yet. How to bridge that which is not with that which is? Then you create a way. It is imagination. It is illusion. But with the way, you become joined with that which is not, and then you start travelling. You are playing a game with yourself.

There is nowhere to go, so the way is not needed. You are already there. It is not something to be achieved; it has already been delivered to you. And deep down, religion is not a path but just a realization, a revelation - the realization that you are already there. Your hankering, your desire does not allow you to see the facticity of your own being.

So good, old bridges are broken and there seems to be no path, no way ahead. That's what I want to do to you. I want to take all the paths away. Pathless, not knowing where to go you will go in - go within yourself. If all your paths - all the possibilities to escape from yourself - are taken away, what will you do? You will be yourself.

Just think. Just meditate upon it a little. It is desire, it is competition with others, that creates the whole thing, the whole illusion. You are always competing. Somebody else is ahead of you. You would like to put him back; you would like to overtake him. You run fast. You do everything that you can do - just/unjust, right/wrong. You forget everything; you simply want to undo him, to prove him a failure. This way you are not going to achieve your innermost reality. This way you will achieve a little more decoration of the ego. You have defeated one, you have defeated thousands, you have defeated millions - and you are moving and moving and moving. More and more ego will be accumulated. You will become more burdened. You will be more lost, you will be lost in a forest.

Competition is one of the most irreligious things in the world, but that's what everybody is doing.

Somebody has a big house. You immediately start desiring a bigger one. Somebody has a beautiful car. Immediately you desire to have another, a bigger one. Somebody has a beautiful wife, or somebody has a beautiful face or a beautiful voice. Immediately the desire arises.

The desire arises with the idea that you have to compete with others and that you have to prove something against others, that you have to struggle, that you have to achieve something. Not knowing what it is, but you go on moving in a dark valley thinking that somewhere there must be a goal.

You can go on and on for lives together. That's what you have been doing up to now. You will never reach anywhere. You will be always running and never reaching because the goal is within you. But to see that, you have to drop all competition, all ambition.

And remember, it is very easy to change your competitiveness into a new competitiveness, to drop the old and to have something new again in the same way, the same ambition. You are ambitious in the world. Then you drop it. Then you become ambitious in the name of religion, spirituality; then again you compete. Then again the same ego enters in.

I have heard one anecdote. Listen to it very alertly.

Two brothers died at the same time and arrived at the Pearly Gates together, where they were interviewed by St. Peter.

He said to the first brother, "Have you been good during your life on earth?" And he replied, "Oh yes, Your Saintliness, I have been honest, sober, and industrious, and I have never messed around with women."

"Good lad," said St. Peter, and gave him a beautiful gleaming white Rolls-Royce. "There is your reward for being a good boy."

Then he said to the other brother, "And what about you?"

He sighed, "Well, I have always been very different from my brother. I have been crooked, drunk, idle - and a devil with the women."

"Ah well," said St. Peter, "boys will be boys, and at least you have owned up to it. You can have this, then." And he gave him the keys to a Mini-Minor.

The two brothers were about to get in their cars when the one who had been naughty started roaring with laughter. The other one said, "What is so funny then?"

He said, "I have just seen the vicar riding a bike!"

Your whole enjoyment is always just comparative. Comparison gives you a feeling of where you are - behind the man who has a Rolls-Royce but in front of the man who has a bike. It gives you the exact location where you are.

You can pinpoint yourself on the map, but this is not the right way to know where you are, because you are nowhere on the map. The map is illusory. You are somewhere beyond the map. Nobody is in front of you and nobody is at the back. You are alone - tremendously alone. You are unique, you are alone, you are one. And there is nobody else there to be compared with.

That's why people become very much afraid in going within because then they are moving into their aloneness, where all paths disappear, all possibilities of location where you are, disappear. All maps - imaginary, political, cultural, social - all disappear. Suddenly you are in the wilderness of your being and you don't know where you are. This is exactly what has happened: "I feel lost - there is no way back to my old life - the bridges are broken. And I don't see a way in front of me." This is what I call the beginning of meditation, the beginning of the entry within your being. Don't get scared; otherwise you will again become a victim of your dreams. Enter into it boldly, courageously, daringly. If you understand me, it is not difficult; just a tacit understanding is needed.

Of course you will never be able now to know where you are. You will be able to know who you are, but you will never be able to know where you are because "where" is always in relation with others.

"Who" is your nature; "where" is relative.

And now onward there will be no bridges with the past; and of course there is no possibility now for any bridges for the future. The past is gone, the future does not exist. The past is just memory and the future is nothing but hope. The past is just a reference and the future is just a dream. Both are gone. You will be living in the present... and the present is so vast you will be lost as a drop of water becomes lost in the ocean.

Be ready for it. Be ready to dissolve, be ready to be an annihilated.

The mind will hanker for the past, the identity, the clarity - where you are, who you are. But all those are games, language games.

I have heard one anecdote:

An Englishman touring the States remarked to a man in the West, "You have a remarkable country here. Lovely women, big cities, but you have no aristocracy."

"No what?" asked the American.

"No aristocracy."

"What is that?" asked the American. "Oh, you know," he said. "People who never do anything, whose parents never did anything, and whose grandparents never did anything - whose families have always been people of leisure."

"Oh, yeah!" said the American. "We have them here, but we call them hoboes!"

But when you call somebody an aristocrat it looks very grand. When you call somebody a hobo, suddenly you fall from the peak of Everest into the deepest valley possible. But aristocrats have been hoboes, and hoboes think of themselves as aristocrats.

I have heard...

Two hoboes were talking to each other, leisurely sitting on a full-moon night.

The first said, "What do you want to become in your life?"

The other said, "I would like to become a prime minister."

The first said, "What? Don't you have any ambition in your life?" A hobo thinking of becoming a prime minister.

Hoboes also have their values.

If you look at your past references, what are they? Language games. Somebody says that he is a brahmin. Because the society accepts that there are four classes. In India the brahmin is the highest caste and the sudra is the lowest caste. Now this type of caste system does not exist anywhere in the world; it exists only in India. Of course it is imaginary. You cannot sort out who is a brahmin if he does not say so. The blood will not show, the bones will not show - no examination, no X-ray will show who is a brahmin and who is a sudra. But in India the game has been played so long, it has become so deep rooted in the mind, the moment somebody says he is a brahmin, look at his eyes, look at his nose - the ego radiates. When somebody says that he is a sudra, look at him. The very word humiliates; the very word makes him feel guilty. Both are human beings, but just a labeling that a society has accepted destroys their humanity.

When you say you are rich, what do you mean? You have a certain account in the bank. But that too is a game, money is a game. Because the society has agreed upon something to believe in, the game continues.

I have heard about one miser who had a great treasure of gold hidden in his garden somewhere.

Every day he will go and remove a little earth and look at his bricks of gold, hide them again, will come back very happy and glad and smiling, all smiles. By and by one neighbor started suspecting because every day - it was almost a religious ritual - every day exactly in the morning he will come - it was just like a prayer - remove a little soil, look at his bricks of gold shining in the morning sun, and immediately something will flower in him and he will be so happy the whole day.

One night the neighbor removed all the bricks of gold. Instead of gold bricks, he put ordinary bricks there and covered the earth. Next morning he came. He started crying and weeping and shouting that he has been robbed. The neighbor was standing in his garden; he said, "Why, for what are you crying?" He said, "I have been robbed! My twenty gold bricks have been stolen!"

The neighbor said, "Don't be worried, because you were never going to use them. You can do the same with these ordinary bricks. Come every day in the morning, remove the earth, look at them, be happy and go back. Because you were never going to use them in the first place, so whether of gold or of mud, what difference does it make?"

You may have money. That does not make any difference. You may not have. That too does not make any difference. You may have great recognition, degrees, awards from the society, praise, certificates. That does not mean anything - it is a game. Once you look into this game through and through and you realize that in this game you will never be able to find yourself, who you are....

The society goes on befooling you and giving you some illusory ideas about who you are, and you go on trusting and believing in them. Your whole life is wasted.

So when for the first time meditation starts really working in you and starts destroying you, destructuring you - your name disappears, your caste disappears, your religion disappears, your nationality disappears - by and by you are simply nude and naked in your pure aloneness. It is scaring in the beginning because you cannot find any place to put your feet on and you cannot find any place to continue, to remain in the ego. No help, all props withdrawn, your structure starts falling.

Stand by the side, have a good laugh, and let it fall. Have a good laugh that now there is no way to move back.

In fact there is never a way to move back; people only believe so. Nobody can go back; in time there is no possibility to go back. You cannot become a child again. You cannot go back into the womb of your mother. But the illusion, the idea that it is possible will haunt you and will not allow you to grow.

There are many men I see who go on seeking their mother in their love affairs, which is foolish. Out of a hundred, almost ninety-nine men are searching for their mother. The mother has been lost in the past; now they cannot enter the womb of the mother again. Have you watched yourself? Lying in the lap of your beloved, a fantasy arises in you - as if you have found your mother.

Why are men so interested in women's breasts? The interest is basically of the search for the mother because the child knew the mother through the breasts and he still hankers for the mother. So a woman who has beautiful, round, big breasts becomes more attractive to men. A flat chested woman simply becomes unattractive. Why? What is wrong? Nothing is wrong with the woman; something is wrong with the mind. You are seeking the mother, and she cannot help your imagination. She does not fit with your illusion. How can she be your mother? She has no breasts? Breasts are the basic necessity.

You go in Indian temples in Khajurao or in Puri and you will see such big breasts that it seems almost impossible. How were these women walking? The weight seems too much. But that simply shows the search, the search to go back, to find the mother again. Then your love life will be a disturbance because the woman who loves you is not in search of a child. She is in search of a friend, of a beloved, of a lover. She does not want to become your mother. She wants to become your friend, your companion, your consort. And you are asking her to be your mother, to take care of you as your mother used to take care. And you go on expecting the mother and she goes on frustrating it.

The conflict arises.

Nobody can go back. That which is past is past. Past is past and cannot be reclaimed. This understanding makes you a grown up; then you don't hanker for it.

And remember, if you hanker for the past, you hanker for the future. Your future is nothing but your modified, renovated past. What you desire in the future is nothing but all that was happy in the past minus all that was not happy. Your future is nothing but your repainted past - closer to the heart's desire, the painful accidents dropped and the pleasant exaggerated. Once you drop the past you drop the future also because it is nothing else but the repainted past, and then suddenly you are here now.

Then I can tell you, "Look at the cypress in the courtyard." Or I can take a flower in my hand and just let you see it. And if you can see it just here-now, a mysterious phenomenon starts happening within you: a flower within you starts opening. Something spreads over your being - something existential. It is not a dream. It has no hallucinatory quality in it. It has no ideas, no thoughts, no pictures, nothing; just a tremendously austere emptiness - beautiful, but totally empty.

Don't get afraid. That's the way how one comes to meet the present and how one comes to meet oneself.