Philosophia Perennis is Pathagoras Philosophia Perennis is Pathagoras
Philosophia Perennis is Pathagoras 
turiya
61 h
41
PYTHAGORAS Represents the ETERNAL PILGRIM for PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS - the perennial philosophy of life. He is a seeker of truth par excellence. He staked all that he had for the search. He travelled far and wide, almost the whole known world of those days, in search of the Masters, of the mystery schools, of any hidden secrets. From Greece he went to Egypt - in search of the lost Atlantis and its secrets.
In Egypt, the great library of Alexandria was still intact. It had all the secrets of the past preserved. It was the greatest library that has ever existed on the earth; later on it was destroyed by a Mohammedan fanatic. The library was so big that when it was burnt, for six months the fire continued.
Just twenty-five centuries before Pythagoras, a great continent, Atlantis, had disappeared into the ocean. The ocean that is called 'Atlantic' is so called because of that continent, Atlantis. Atlantis was the ancient-most continent of the earth, and civilization had reached the highest possible peaks. But whenever a civilization reaches a great peak there is a danger: the danger of falling apart, the danger of committing suicide.
Humanity is facing that same danger again. When man becomes powerful, he does not know what to do with that power. When the power is too much and the understanding is too little, power has always proved dangerous. Atlantis was not drowned in the ocean by any natural calamity. It was actually the same thing that is happening today: it was man's own power over nature. It was through atomic energy that Atlantis was drowned - it was man's own suicide. But all the scriptures and all the secrets of Atlantis were still preserved in Alexandria.
All over the world there are parables, stories, about the great flood. Those stories have come from the drowning of Atlantis. All those stories - Christian, Jewish, Hindu - they all talk about a great flood that had come once in the past and had destroyed almost the whole civilization. Just a few initiates, adepts, had survived. Noah is an adept; a great Master, and Noah's ark is just a symbol.
Library of Alexandria
A few people escaped the calamity. With them, all the secrets that the civilization attained had survived. They were preserved in Alexandria.
Pythagoras lived in Alexandria for years. He studied, he was initiated into the mystery schools of Egypt - particularly the mysteries of Hermes. Then he came to India, was initiated into all that the Brahmins of this ancient land had discovered, all that India had known in the inner world of man.
For years he was in India, then he travelled to Tibet and then to China. That was the whole known world. His whole life he was a seeker, a pilgrim, in search of a philosophy - philosophy in the true sense of the word: love for wisdom. He was a lover, a philosopher - not in the modern sense of the word but in the old, ancient sense of the word. Because a lover cannot only speculate, a lover cannot only think about truth: a lover has to search, risk, adventure.
Truth is the beloved. How can you go on only thinking about it? You have to be connected with the beloved through the heart. The search cannot be only intellectual; it has to be deep down intuitive. Maybe the beginning has to be intellectual, but only the beginning. Just the starting point has to be intellectual, but finally it has to reach the very core of your being.
He was one of the most generous of men, most liberal, democratic, unprejudiced, open. He was respected all over the world. From Greece to China he was revered. He was accepted in every mystic school; with great joy he was welcomed everywhere. His name was known in all the lands. Wherever he went he was received with great rejoicing.
Even though he had become enlightened, he still continued to reach into hidden secrets, he still continued to ask to be initiated into new schools. He was trying to create a synthesis; he was trying to know the truth through as many possibilities as is humanly possible. He wanted to know truth in all its aspects, in all its dimensions. He was always ready to bow down to a Master. He himself was an enlightened man - it is very rare.
Once you have become enlightened, the search stops, the seeking disappears. There is no point. Buddha became enlightened... then he never went to any other Master. Jesus became enlightened... then he never went to any other Master. Or Lao Tzu, or Zarathustra, or Moses.... Hence, Pythagoras is something unique. No parallel has ever existed. Even after becoming enlightened, he was ready to become a disciple to anybody who was there to reveal some aspect of truth. His search was such that he was ready to learn from anybody. He was an absolute disciple. He was ready to learn from the whole existence. He remained open, and he remained a learner to the very end.
The whole effort was... and it was a great effort in those days, to travel from Greece to China. It was full of dangers. The journey was hazardous; it was not easy as it is today. Today things are so easy that you can take your breakfast in New York and your lunch in London, and you can suffer indigestion in Poona. Things are very simple. In those days it was not so simple. It was really a risk; to move from one country to another country took years.
By the time Pythagoras came back, he was a very old man. But seekers gathered around him; a great school was born. And, as it always happens, the society started persecuting him and his school and his disciples. His whole life he searched for the perennial philosophy, and he had found it! He gathered all the fragments into a tremendous harmony, into a great unity. But he was not allowed to work it out in detail; to teach people - he was not allowed.
He was persecuted from one place to another. Many attempts were made on his life. It was almost impossible for him to teach all that he had gathered. And his treasure was immense - in fact, nobody else has ever had such a treasure as he had. But this is how foolish humanity is, and has always been. This man had done something impossible: he had bridged East and West. He was the first bridge. He had come to know the Eastern mind as deeply as the Western mind.
He was a Greek. He was brought up with the Greek logic, with the Greek scientific approach, and then he moved to the East. And then he learnt the ways of intuition. Then he learnt how to be a mystic. He himself was a great mathematician in his own right. And a mathematician becoming a mystic is a revolution, because these are poles apart.
The West represents the male mind, aggressive intellect. The East represents the female mind, receptive intuition. East and West are not just arbitrary - the division is very very significant and profound.
Pathagoras: The Golden Mean turiya
47 h
38
Sutra:
'Cosmos' means order, rhythm, harmony. Existence is not a chaos but a cosmos. Pythagoras has contributed much to human thought, to human evolution. His vision of a cosmos became the very foundation of scientific investigation.
Science can exist only if existence is a cosmos. If it is a chaos, there is no possibility of any science. If laws change every day, every moment - one day the water evaporates at one hundred degrees [100°], another day at five hundred degrees [500°] - if water functions in a whimsical way and follows no order, how can there be a science?
Science presupposes that existence functions in a consistent way, in a rational way, that existence is not mad, that if we search deep into existence, we are bound to find laws - and those laws are the keys to all the mysteries.
Just as it is true for science so it is true for religion too - because religion is nothing but the science of the inner. The outer science is called science; the inner science is called religion - but both can exist only in a cosmos.
There are laws of the inner world. Those laws have been discovered just as much as scientific laws have been discovered. Neither have scientific laws been invented, nor have religious laws been invented. Truth is - you need not invent. it And whatsoever you invent will be untrue - all inventions are lies.
Truth has to be discovered, not invented. Einstein discovers a certain law; Patanjali also discovers a certain law; Newton discovers gravitation, Krishna discovers grace - both are laws. One belongs to the earth, the other belongs to the sky; one belongs to the world of necessity, the other belongs to the world of power. One belongs to the visible and the other belongs to the invisible.
The inner world, the world of the spirit, follows certain laws, and those laws are unchangeable, they are perennial. Hence I have called this series 'Philosophia Perennis' - the perennial philosophy. Those laws are not time-bound, they are beyond time. Time itself functions within those laws. If you want to do something in the outside world, you will need to know how the outer existence functions, because unless you know how it functions you are bound to fail.
Nature has no obligation to adjust to you - you will have to adjust to nature. You can win nature only by adjusting yourself to nature. You can become a conqueror too, but not against nature - with nature, in tune with nature. You can become a master of the inner kingdom too - not against the laws but in tune with those laws.
It is because of this mystic vision - that the world is not accidental, not anarchic, but an absolutely harmonious, cosmic, orderly world - that Pythagoras was able to discover many things for the seekers. One thing that he discovered was that music can become the milieu for meditation. He was the first to introduce that idea too to the West. In the East we have known it for centuries, that music is the best aid to meditation. Why? because music creates harmony around you, and the harmony around you can provoke harmony within you. If the outside is harmonious, the inside also starts falling in line with it - and that you have watched many times.
In the marketplace, you feel a great disturbance inside you - with the crowd you never feel at home. In the market-place the whole atmosphere is anti-music; there is no harmony, it is a chaos. And the outer chaos provokes inside chaos.
Go into a madhouse and be with mad people for a few hours and you will see: you start feeling something going crazy inside you. Go to the hospital and just be with the ill patients there for a few hours, and you start feeling a sickening is entering into you, a kind of sick feeling. You are not sick; you were not sick when you entered the hospital.
What has happened? The sick vibe all around you starts synchronizing inside you, because the outer and the inner are not divided; they are part of one whole. The inner is the inner of the outer, and the outer is the outer of the inner. They cannot be separated. So each affects the other.
If you know meditation deeply, you can sit in the market-place and nothing will be disturbed because you have a powerful music going on inside you. It is so powerful that the market-place and its noise cannot affect it; on the contrary, people who are around you may start feeling a certain soothing effect, a calmness coming. If a real Buddha sits in the marketplace, he creates there too a Buddhafield, and whosoever enters into the Buddhafield is affected immediately - he starts falling into harmony. Something starts settling inside him; something starts getting together inside him. He becomes more centered, together.
That's the secret of satsang - being with a Buddha, an enlightened mystic. The whole secret is this: to be with the Master means just to allow his vibe to provoke your inner harmony which is fast asleep and you are unaware of it. But ordinarily if you go to the market-place, you come home a little lost, exhausted, tired, something is missing. You need rest; only after a good night's rest will you be able to go to the marketplace again.
Music is a harmony - it is harmony between sound and silence. Sound belongs to the earth, silence belongs to the beyond. Music is, as Pythagoras believed and called it 'numinous'. The word 'numinous' comes from a Latin root 'numen'. It is a tremendously significant word, very pregnant with meaning. Numen means a nod from the above, a yes from the beyond.
Music creates such a harmony that even God starts nodding at you, saying yes to you.
Music is numinous... suddenly the sky starts touching you; you are overwhelmed by the beyond. And when the beyond is closer to you, when the footsteps of the beyond are heard, something inside you gets the challenge, becomes silent, quieter, calmer, cool, collected.In the Pythagorean mystery school, music was one of the greatest things. We have to create great music so that great meditative states become possible. Music is outer meditation: meditation is inner music. They go together, hand in hand, embracing each other. It is one of the greatest experiences of life when music is there surrounding you, overwhelming you, flooding you, and meditation starts growing in you - when meditation and music meet, world and God meet, matter and consciousness meet. That is UNIO MYSTICA - the mystical union.
In the East we have called it 'yoga'. Yoga simply means union. The best definition of yoga, and the shortest, is by the great seer Vyasa. He says yoga is samadhi, yoga is enstasis. Ordinarily samadhi is translated as ecstasy - that is not right, because ecstasy literally means to stand out. Samadhi is to stand in! It should be translated as enstasis not as ecstasis. Yoga is enstasis - standing in, doing nothing, just being. That state is meditation.
And anything that can help from the outside will have some music in it, only then can it help. The sound of running water in the hills can help, because it has its own music. The roaring waves of the ocean can help, because they have their own music. The singing of the birds in the morning can help, or the sound of insects in the silent night, or the rain falling on the rooftop - anything that creates music can also create meditation.
The Pythagorean school was a school of music, of song and dance, of great celebration.
People have forgotten that music can take you downwards, and can also take you upwards. Most modern music takes you downwards; it is concerned with the lowest center of your being, with the sex center.
The ancient music, the classical music, has a totally different effect: it pulls you upwards, it takes you beyond gravitation. It is part of levitation; you start floating upwards and upwards. It has a more meditative quality in it. It reaches to your higher centers. The real music worth calling music will have something to do with sahasrar - your seventh center, but very rarely a genius reaches there to create such music. But if even your heart center is moved, it is more than enough. If your heart center starts dancing and revolving, you are very close to meditation.
Sutra:
HEALTH to Pythagoras has two aspects to it. One is the physical, the other is the spiritual. The body is your temple - don't neglect it. Your foolish, stupid ascetics have been telling you to neglect it - not only to neglect but to destroy your body.
Ascetic
Pythagoras is not an ascetic. An ascetic is one who ascribes to the practice of voluntarily denying pleasure or basic human needs in order to achieve some higher spiritual goal. Pythagoras is a man of understanding.
He says: Respect, don't neglect, your body. If your body is neglected, you will not be able to find the inner harmony - because if the body is harmonious it helps to attain to inner harmony. Take every care of your health, of your body; love it, respect it, it is a great gift.
It is a miracle! a mystery.
What food is for the body repose is exactly the same for the soul: food nourishes the body and repose nourishes the soul. The materialist forgets about repose; that's why in the West there is so much restlessness - they have forgotten repose, they don't know how to relax. They don't know how to be in a state of unoccupiedness; they don't know how to sit silently doing nothing. They have completely forgotten! The materialist is bound to forget. He goes on eating too much, and he has forgotten that only his body goes on becoming fatter and fatter, and his soul goes on becoming thinner and thinner.
Sometimes I see people who have only bodies and no soul. Just layers and layers of fat, and nothing behind. Howsoever sophisticated they may be, educated, full of knowledge, there is not much difference. They say the difference between a cauliflower and a cabbage is not much: when the cabbage goes through college it becomes a cauliflower.
Repose is far more essential even than food. If sometimes you go on a small fast it is good, but repose should never be forgotten - because basically the body is only a temple: the deity is within. The body has to be loved only because it is a temple of the deity. The body is only a means; the end is inside.
Repose is food, meditation is food, for the soul. Repose means silence, rest, relaxation, calmness, coolness, collectedness, meditativeness. A state of unoccupied mind, empty, silent, with no idea of any doing, not going anywhere, not rushing anywhere - just being herenow. That is repose. And to be herenow is tremendously nourishing, because then you are deeply in tune with God, then music showers on you.
The past is no more, it is dead; the future is not yet, it is unborn. Only the present is. Only the present is alive. When you are herenow, life flows in you. When you are herenow, you are in God. And that is nourishment, that is real food.
In that sense the Upanishads have said: Anam Brahm - food is God, God is food. In the sense of repose, it is really food. As the body will die without food, the soul dies without repose. The materialist thinks only of the body, and the spiritualist thinks only of repose, and both remain lopsided. One has a very nourished soul but an undernourished body; the temple is in ruins. And one has a beautiful temple, a marble temple, but the deity is dead, or has not come yet. Both are missing something.
We need a music of earth and sky, of body and soul; we need a harmony between the visible and the invisible. The food is visible, repose is invisible. And you need both, and you need a rhythm between the two.
The person who has not known what repose is starts stuffing too much food in himself. Nothing can help him unless he learns repose - no dieting is going to help, no exercises are going to help, no disciplining is going to help. Sooner or later he will start eating again, because his inner being feels so empty and he knows no other way to fill it - he knows only one way: to go on throwing food inside himself.
When people come to me with the problem of too much obsession with food, my only suggestion is: become more meditative. Don't be worried about food. Become more loving, become more meditative, and the problem will disappear. When you are full of love and meditativeness, you need not stuff yourself with food. The food is only a substitute - because you are missing the inner food, you are trying to substitute it by outer food.
The man of repose always remains very, very alert, aware, of what he is eating, how much he is eating. He cannot eat more than is needed, and he will not eat less than is needed. He is always in the middle, he is a balance.
Pythagoras is always reminding you about the golden mean: be in the middle - as much as Buddha goes on reminding about MAJJHIM NIKAYA, the middle path.
Don't hanker for too much attention from people - that is an ego trip. Don't try to become very famous, well-known, this and that - that is an ego trip. But that does not mean start trying to become a nonentity - that nobody should know you, that you should remain anonymous - that is again the same trip on the other extreme. Avoid both.
All extremes have to be avoided. Excess is evil according to Pythagoras - and it is. And to be in the middle, to be exactly in the middle, is virtue. Never be an ascetic, and never become indulgent. Don't eat too much food and don't go on long fasts. Don't become too much obsessed with luxury, and don't become too much anti-luxury, anti-comfort.
Don't renounce the world, and don't be worldly either. Rejoice in the balance - dance, because balance is dance. Sing because balance is a song. Become musical because balance creates music.
And remember, in each and everything the golden mean has to be followed. And if you can follow the golden mean, you will become gold, your baser metal will be transformed into the highest metal, gold.
Gold is a symbol of the ultimate peak - that's why Pythagoras has called these sutras, GOLDEN VERSES. It is an alchemical expression. Down the ages alchemists have been trying to find ways to transmute baser metals into gold. Remember, they were not concerned with baser metals and gold at all: their whole purpose was how to transform man from a sexual animal into an ecstatic consciousness, how to transform the animal in man into God. That state is represented by gold.
Follow the golden mean and you will become the gold. Follow the path of balance and all the mysteries will be revealed to you. That's my message to my sannyasins too: Don't leave the world and yet be not of it.
The Golden Mean turiya
123 mi
20
Modern philosophy and the modern philosopher is just worthless. It has lost it's peaks: it no more moves into the beyond. It is neither science nor religion. It is just a very confused affair today.
For Pythagoras, science is a search for truth in the objective world and religion is a search for truth in the subjective world - and philosophy is a search for the truth. So science and religion are like two hands or two wings. They are not opposites but complementaries. And the world would be better if we were reminded of it again.
The church, the temple and the lab need not be enemies. They should exist in a kind of friendship. Man will be far richer then. Now, if he chooses science he becomes rich outside and goes on becoming poorer and poorer inside. If he chooses religion, he becomes rich inside, but goes on becoming poorer and poorer on the outside. And both are ugly scenes.
The West has chosen science; it has all the riches of the world, but the man is completely lost, feeling meaningless, suicidal. The man, when he looks inside, finds nothing but hollowness, emptiness. The inner world has become very poor in the West.
In the East, just the opposite has happened: people have chosen religion against science. Their inner world is calmer, quieter, richer; but on the outside they are starving, dying - no food, no medicine, no facilities to live a human life, living almost like animals or even worse.
This is the consequence of not listening to Pythagoras. The whole history of humanity would have been totally different if Pythagoras had been listened to, understood. There is no need for the East to be East and the West to be West. There is no need for anybody to be just a materialist or just a spiritualist. If body and soul can exist together - they are existing together in you, in everybody - then why can't materialism and spiritualism exist together? They should!
A man must be materialist and spiritualist. To choose is fatal. There is no need to choose; you can have both the worlds - you should have both the worlds; that is your birthright.
I teach you this synthesis: you have to be a materialist, as materialistic as any materialist, and a spiritualist, as much a spiritualist as any spiritualist. And remember: both will be angry at you, because the spiritualist will not be able to forgive you for your materialism, and the materialist will not be able to forgive you for your spiritualism.
That's why [1978] people are against me - all kinds of people! The religious people are against me because they cannot accept my materialist approach; and the materialists are against me because they cannot accept my spiritualist approach. I would like to remind you that you have to be both together. This will bring a new man and a new humanity on the earth - and it is utterly needed, absolutely needed: a new man, a new humanity, a new concept.
There is no need to choose. God has given you a body - that means you have to be a materialist; and God has given you a soul - that means you have to be a spiritualist. You have to be a meeting of the two: you have to be a yogi, a union. And if your body and soul ARE balanced, and your spiritualism and your materialism are balanced, in a rhythm, you will attain to the greatest music possible. And that music is meditation, that music is samadhi.
