The First sutra: Athayoganushasanam.

Each & every single word has to be understood because Patanjali will not use a single superfluous word.

Now the Discipline of Yoga.

First try to understand the word "now". This "now" indicates to the state of mind [that was just talked about in the above post].

Anguish

If you are disillusioned, if you are hopeless, if you have completely become aware of the futility of all desires, if you see your life as meaningless - whatsoever you have been doing up to now has simply fallen dead, nothing remains in the future, you are in absolute despair - what Kierkegaard calls 'anguish'. If you are in anguish, suffering, not knowing what to do, not knowing where to go, not knowing to whom to look, just on the verge of madness or suicide or death, your whole pattern of life suddenly has become futile.

If this moment has come, Patanjali says, NOW, THE DISCIPLINE OF YOGA. Only now you can understand the science of yoga, the discipline of yoga.

If that moment has not come, you can go on studying yoga, you can become a great scholar, but you will not be a yogi. You can write theses upon it, you can give discourses upon it, but you will not be a yogi. The moment has not come for you. Intellectually, you can become interested, through your mind you can be related to yoga, but yoga is nothing if it is not a discipline. Yoga is not a shastra; it is not a scripture. It is a discipline. It is something you have to do. It is not curiosity; it is not philosophic speculation. It is deeper than that. It is a question of life and death.

If the moment has come where you feel that all directions have become confused, all roads have disappeared; the future is dark, and every desire has become bitter, and through every desire you have known only disappointment; all movement into hopes and dreams has ceased:

This 'Now' may not have come. Then I may go on talking about yoga but you will not listen. You can listen only if the moment is present in you.

Are you really dissatisfied? Everybody will say "yes", but that dissatisfaction is not real. You are dissatisfied with this, you may be dissatisfied with that, but you are not totally dissatisfied. You are still hoping. You are dissatisfied because of your past hopes, but for the future you are still hoping. Your dissatisfaction is not total. You are still hankering for some satisfaction somewhere, for some gratification somewhere.

Sometimes you feel hopeless, but that hopelessness is not true. You feel hopeless because certain hopes have not been achieved, certain hopes have fallen. But hoping is still there: hoping has not fallen. You will still hope. You are dissatisfied with this hope, that hope, but you are not dissatisfied with hope as such. If with hope as such you are disappointed, the moment has come and then you can enter yoga. And then this entry will not be entering into a mental, speculative phenomenon. This entry will be an entry into a discipline.

What is discipline? Discipline means creating an order within you. As you are, you are a chaos. As you are, you are totally disorderly. Gurdjieff used to say - and Gurdjieff is in many ways like Patanjali - he was again trying to make the core of religion a science. Gurdjieff says that you are not one, you are a crowd, not even when you say "I", is there any "I"? There are many "I's" in you, many egos. In the morning, one "I"; in the afternoon another "I"; in the evening, a third "I", but you never become aware of this mess because who will become aware of it? There is not a center who can become aware.

"Yoga is discipline" means yoga wants to create a crystallized center in you. As you are, you are a crowd and a crowd has many phenomena. One is, you cannot believe a crowd. Gurdjieff used to say that man cannot promise. Who will promise? You are not there. If you promise, who will fulfill the promise? Next morning the one who promised is no more.

People come to me and they say, "Now I will take the vow. I promise to do this." I tell them, "Think twice before you promise something. Are you confident that next moment the one who promised will be there?" You decide to get up early in the morning from tomorrow - at four o'clock. And at four o'clock somebody in you says, "Don't bother. It is so cold outside. And why are you in such a hurry? We can do it tomorrow." And you fall asleep again.

When you get up, you repent. And you think, "This is not good. I should have done it." You decide again that "Tomorrow I will do;" and the same is going to happen tomorrow because at four in the morning the one who promised is no more there, somebody else is in the chair. And you are a Rotary Club: the chairman goes on changing. Every member becomes a rotary chairman. Rotation is there. Every moment someone else is the master.

Gurdjieff used to say, "This is the chief characteristic of man, that he cannot promise." You cannot fulfill a promise. You go on giving promises, and you know well you cannot fulfill, because you are not one: you are a disorder, a chaos. Hence, Patanjali says, NOW THE DISCIPLINE OF YOGA. If your life has become an absolute misery, if you have realized that whatsoever you do creates hell, then the moment has come. This moment can change your dimension, your direction of being.

Up until now you have lived as a chaos, a crowd. Yoga means now you will have to be a harmony, you will have to become one. A crystallization is needed; a centering is needed. And unless you attain a center, all that you do is useless. It is wasting life and time. A center is the first necessity, and only a person can be blissful who has got a center. Everybody asks for it, but you cannot ask. You have to earn it! Everybody hankers for a blissful state of being, but only a center can be blissful. A crowd cannot be blissful, a crowd has got no Self. There is no atman. Who is going to be blissful?

Bliss means absolute silence, and silence is possible only when there is harmony - when all the discordant fragments have become one, when there is no crowd, but one. When you are alone in the house and nobody else is there, you will be blissful. Right now everybody else is in your house, you are not there. Only guests are there, the host is always absent. And only the host can be blissful.

This centering Patanjali calls discipline - Anushasanam. The word "discipline" is beautiful. It comes from the same root from where the word "disciple" comes. "Discipline" means the capacity to learn, the capacity to know. But you cannot know, you cannot learn, unless you have attained the capacity to be.

One man once came to Buddha and he said... He must have been a social reformer, a revolutionary. He said to Buddha, "The world is in misery. I agree with you."

But, Buddha has never said that the world is in misery. Buddha says, "You are the misery," not the world. "Life is misery," not the world. "Man is misery," not the world. "Mind is misery," not the world.

But that revolutionary said, "The world is in misery. I agree with you. Now tell me, what I can do? I have a deep compassion, and I want to serve humanity." Service must have been his motto.

Buddha looked at him and remained silent. Buddha's disciple, Ananda, said, "This man seems to be sincere. Guide him. Why you are silent?" Then Buddha said to that revolutionary, "You want to serve the world, but where are you? I don't see anyone inside. I look in you, there is no one. You don't have any center, and unless you are centered whatsoever you do will create more mischief."

All of your social reformers, your revolutionaries, your leaders, they are the great mischief creators, mischief-mongers. The world will be better if there were no leaders. But they cannot help. They must do something because the world is in misery. And they are not centered, so whatsoever they do, they create more misery. Compassion will not help, service will not help. Compassion through a centered being is something totally different. Compassion through a crowd is mischief. That type of compassion is poison.

Stillness

Discipline means the capacity to be, the capacity to know, the capacity to learn. We must understand these three things.

The capacity to be. All the yoga postures are not really concerned with the body, they are concerned with the capacity to be. Patanjali says if you can sit silently without moving your body for few hours, you are growing in the capacity to be. Why you move? You cannot sit without moving even for few seconds. Your body starts moving. Somewhere you feel itching; the legs go dead; many things start happening. These are just excuses for you to move.

You are not a master. You cannot say to the body, "Now for one hour I will not move." The body will revolt immediately. Immediately it will force you to move, to do something, and it will give reasons: "You have to move because an insect is biting." You may not find the insect when you look. You are not a being, you are a trembling - a continuous hectic activity. Patanjali's asanas, postures, are concerned not really with any kind of physiological training, but an inner training of being, just to be - without doing anything, without any movement, without any activity, just remain. That remaining will help centering.

If you can remain in one posture, the body will become a slave; it will follow you. And the more the body follows you, you will have a greater being within you, a stronger being within you. And, remember, if the body is not moving your mind cannot move, because mind and body are not two things. They are two poles of one phenomenon. You are not body and mind, you are body-mind. Your personality is psychosomatic - body-mind both. The mind is the most subtle part of the body. Or you can say the reverse, that body is the most gross part of the mind.

So whatsoever happens in the body happens in the mind, and the vice versa: whatsoever happens in the mind happens in the body. If the body is non-moving and you can attain a posture, if you can say to the body "Keep quiet," the mind will remain silent. Really, the mind starts moving and tries to move the body, because if the body moves then the mind can move. In a nonmoving body, the mind cannot move; it needs a moving body.

If the body is non-moving, the mind is non-moving, you are centered. This non-moving posture is not a physiological training only. It is just to create a situation in which centering can happen, in which you can become disciplined. When you are, when you have become centered, when you know what it means to be, then you can learn, because then you will be humble. Then you can surrender. Then no false ego will cling to you because once centered you know all egos are false. Then you can bow down. Then a disciple is born.

A disciple is a great achievement. Only through discipline you will become a disciple. Only through being centered you will become humble, you will become receptive, you will become empty, and the guru, the Master, can pour himself into you. In your emptiness, in your silence, he can come and reach to you. Communication becomes possible.

A disciple means one who is centered, humble, receptive, open, ready, alert, waiting, prayerful. In yoga, the Master is very, very important, absolutely important, because only when you are in a close proximity of a being who is centered your own centering will happen.

That is the meaning of satsang. You have heard the word satsang. It is totally wrongly used. Satsang means in close proximity of the truth; it means near the truth, it means near a Master who has become one with the truth - just being near him, open, receptive and waiting. If your waiting has become deep, intense, a deep communion will happen.

The Master is not going to do anything. He is simply there, available. If you are open, he will flow within you. This flowing is called satsang. With a Master you need not learn anything else. If you can learn satsang, that's enough - if you can just be near him without asking, without thinking, without arguing: just present there, available, so the being of the Master can flow in you. And being can flow. It is already flowing. Whenever a person achieves integrity, his being becomes a radiation.

He is flowing. Whether you are there to receive or not, that is not the point. He flows like a river. If you are empty like a vessel, ready, open, he will flow in you.

A disciple means one who is ready to receive, who has become a womb - the Master can penetrate into him. This is the meaning of the word satsang. It is not basically a discourse; satsang is not a discourse. Discourse may be there, but discourse is just an excuse. You are here and I will talk on Patanjali's sutras. That is just an excuse. If you are really here, then the discourse, the talk, becomes just an excuse for your being here, for you to be here. And if you are really here, satsang starts. I can flow, and that flow is deeper than any talk, deeper than any communication through language, deeper than than any intellectual meeting with you.

While your mind is engaged, if you are a disciple, if you are a disciplined being, your mind is engaged in listening to me, your being can be in satsang. Then your head is occupied, your heart is open. Then on a deeper level, a meeting happens. That meeting is satsang, and everything else is just an excuse, just to find ways to be close to the Master.

Closeness is all, but only a disciple can be close. Anybody and everybody cannot be close. Closeness means a loving trust. Why we are not close? Because there is fear. Too close may be dangerous, too open may be dangerous, because you become vulnerable and then it will be difficult to defend. So just as a security measure we keep everybody at a distance, never allow to enter a certain distance.

Everybody has a territory around him. Whenever somebody enters your territory you become afraid. Everybody has a space to protect. You are sitting alone in your room. A stranger enters in the room. Just watch when you become really scared. There is a point. If he enters that point, beyond that point, you will become scared, you will be afraid. A sudden trembling will be felt. Beyond a certain territory he can move.

To be close means now no territory of your own. To be close means to be vulnerable, to be close means whatsoever happens you are not thinking in terms of security.

A disciple can be close for two reasons. One: he is a centered one; he is trying to be centered. A person who is trying even to be centered becomes unafraid; he becomes fearless. He has something which cannot be killed. You don't have anything, hence the fear. You are a crowd. The crowd can disperse any moment. You don't have something like a rock which will be there whatsoever happens. Without a rock, without a foundation you are existing - a house of cards, bound to be always in fear. Any wind, any breeze even, can destroy you, so you have to protect yourself.

Because of this constant protection, you cannot love, you cannot trust, you cannot be friendly. You may have many friends but there is no friendship, because friendship needs closeness. You may have wives and husbands and so-called lovers, but there is no love, because love needs closeness, love needs trust. You may have gurus, Masters, but there is no disciplehood because you cannot allow yourself to be totally given to somebody's being, nearness to his being, closeness to his being, so that he can overpower you, overflood you.

A disciple means a seeker who is not a crowd, who is trying to be centered and crystallized, at least trying, making efforts, sincere efforts to become individual, to feel his being, to become his own master. All discipline of yoga is an effort to make you a master of yourself. As you are, you are just a slave of many, many desires. Many, many masters are there, and you are just a slave - and pulled in many directions.

Yoga is discipline. It is an effort on your part to change yourself. Many other things have to be understood. Yoga is not a therapy. In the West many psychological therapies are prevalent now, and many western psychologists think that yoga is also a therapy. It is not! It is a discipline. And what is the difference? This is the difference: a therapy is needed if you are ill, a therapy is needed if you are diseased, a therapy is needed if you are pathological. A discipline is needed even when you are healthy. Really, when you are healthy only a discipline can help then.

It is not for pathological cases. Yoga is for those who are completely healthy as far as medical science is concerned, normal. They are not schizophrenic; they are not mad they are not neurotic. They are normal people, healthy people with no particular pathology. Still, they become aware that whatsoever is called normality is futile, whatsoever is called health is of no use. Something more is needed, something greater is needed, something holier and whole is needed.

Therapies are for ill people. Therapies can help you to come to yoga, but yoga is not a therapy. Yoga is for a higher order of health, a different order of health - a different type of being and wholeness. Therapy can, at the most, make you adjusted. Freud says we cannot do more. We can make you an adjusted, normal member of the society. But if the society itself is pathological, then what? And it is! The society itself is ill. A therapy can make you normal in the sense that you are adjusted to the society, but the society itself is ill!

So sometimes it happens that in an ill society a healthy person is thought to be ill. A Jesus is thought to be ill, and every effort is done to make him adjusted. And when it is found that he is a hopeless case, then he is crucified. When it is found nothing can be done, this man is incurable, then he is crucified. The society is ill itself because society is nothing but your collective. If all the members are ill, the society is ill, and every member has to be adjusted to it.

Yoga is not therapy; yoga is not trying in any way to make you adjusted to the society. If you want to define yoga in terms of adjustment, then it is not adjustment with the society, but it is adjustment with existence itself. It is adjustment with the divine!

So it may happen that a perfect yogi may appear mad to you. He may look out of his senses, out of his mind, because now he is in touch with the greater, with a higher mind, higher order of things. He is in touch with the universal mind.

Pontius Pilot Interrogating the 'Eccentric' Jesus

It has happened always so: a Buddha, a Jesus, a Krishna, they always look somehow eccentric. They don't belong to us; they seem to be outsiders.

That's why we call them avatars, outsiders. They have come as if from some other planet; they don't belong to us. They may be higher, they may be good, they may be divine, but they don't belong to us. They come from somewhere else. They are not part and parcel of our being, mankind. The feeling has persisted that they are outsiders; they are not. They are the real insiders because they have touched the innermost core of existence. But to us they appear.

If your mind has come to realize that whatsoever you have been doing up to now was just senseless, it was a nightmare at the worst or a beautiful dream at the best, then the path of discipline opens before you.

VIDEO

What is that path?
The basic definition is: chittavrittinirodha.

I told you that Patanjali is just mathematical. In a single sentence, NOW THE DISCIPLINE OF YOGA, he is finished with you. This is the only sentence that has been used for you. Now he takes it for granted that you are interested in yoga, not as a hope, but as a discipline, as a transformation right here and now. He proceeds to define:

This is the definition of yoga, the best. In many ways yoga has been defined; there are many definitions. Some say yoga is the meeting of the mind with the divine; hence, it is called yoga - yoga means meeting, joining together. Some say that yoga means dropping the ego: ego is the barrier; the moment you drop the ego you are joined to the divine. You were already joined, only because of the ego it appeared that you were disjoined. And there are many, but Patanjali's is the most scientific. He says:

Yoga is the state of no-mind. The word 'mind' covers all - your egos, your desires, your hopes, your philosophies, your religions, your scriptures. "Mind" covers all. Whatsoever you can think is mind. All that is known, all that can be known, all that is knowable, is within mind. Cessation of the mind means cessation of the known, cessation of the knowable. It is a jump into the unknown. When there is no mind, you are in the unknown. Yoga is a jump into the unknown. It will not be right to say "unknown"; rather, "unknowable".

What is the mind? What the mind is doing there? What it is? Ordinarily we think that mind is something substantial there inside the head. Patanjali doesn't agree - and no one who has ever known the insides of the mind will agree. Modern science also doesn't agree. Mind is not something substantial inside the head. Mind is just a function, just an activity.

You walk and I say you are walking. What is walking? If you stop, where is walking? If you sit down, where the walking has gone? Walking is nothing substantial; it is an activity. So while you are sitting, no one can ask, "Where you have put your walking? Just now you were walking, so where the walking has gone?" You will laugh. You will say, "Walking is not something substantial, it is just an activity. I can walk. I can again walk and I can stop. It is activity."

Mind is also activity, but because of the word 'mind', it appears as if something substantial is there. It is better to call it 'minding' - just like 'walking'. Mind means 'minding', mind means thinking. It is an activity.

I have been quoting again and again Bodhidharma.

Bodhidarma went to China, and the emperor of China went to see him. And the emperor said, "My mind is very uneasy, very disturbed, troubled. You are a great sage, and I have been waiting for you. Tell me what I should do to put my mind at peace."

Bodhidharma said, "You don't do anything. First you bring your mind to me." The emperor could not follow, he said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Come in the morning at four o'clock when nobody is there. Come alone, and remember to bring your mind with you."

The emperor couldn't sleep the whole night. Many times he cancelled the whole idea: "This man seems to be mad. What does he mean, 'Come with your mind; don't forget?'" The man was so enchanting, so charismatic that he couldn't cancel the appointment. As if a magnet was pulling him, at four o'clock he jumped out of the bed and said, "Whatsoever happens, I must go. This man may have something; his eyes say that he has something. Looks a little crazy, but still I must go and see what can happen."

So he reached, and Bodhidharma was sitting with his big staff. He said, "So you have come? Where is your mind? Have you brought it or not?"

The emperor said, "You talk nonsense. When I am here my mind is here, and it is not something which I can forget somewhere. It is in me." So Bodhidharma said, "Okay. So the first thing is decided - that the mind is within you." The emperor said, "Okay, the mind is within me." Bodhidharma said, "Now close your eyes and find out where it is. And if you can find out where it is, immediately indicate to me. I will put it at peace."

So the emperor closed his eyes, tried and tried, looked and looked. The more he looked, the more he became aware there is no mind, mind is an activity. It is not something there so you can pinpoint it. But the moment he realized that it is not something, then the absurdity of his quest became exposed to himself. If it is not something, nothing can be done about it. If it is an activity, then don't do the activity; that's all. If it is like walking, don't walk.

He opened his eyes. He bowed down to Bodhidharma and said, "There is no mind to be found." Bodhidharma said, "Then I have put it at peace. And whenever you feel that you are uneasy, just look within, where that uneasiness is."

The very look is anti-mind, because to look is not a thinking. And if you look intensely, your whole energy becomes a look, and the same energy becomes movement and thinking.

This is Patanjali's definition. When there is no mind, you are in yoga; when there is mind, you are not in yoga. So you may do all the postures, but if the mind goes on functioning, if you go on thinking, you are not in yoga. Yoga is the state of no-mind. If you can be without the mind without doing any posture, you have become a perfect yogi. It has happened to many without doing any postures, and it has not happened to many who have been doing postures for many lives.

Because the basic thing to be understood is: when the activity of thinking is not there, you are there; when the activity of the mind is not there, when thoughts have disappeared - they are just like clouds - when they have disappeared, your being, just like the sky, is uncovered. It is always there - only covered with the clouds, covered with thoughts.

In the West now, there is much appeal for Zen - a Japanese method of yoga. The word "zen" comes from dhyana. Bodhidharma introduced this word dhyana in China. In China the word dhyana became jhan and then chan and then the word traveled to Japan and became zen.

The root is dhyana. Dhyana means no-mind, so the whole training of Zen in Japan is of nothing but how to stop minding, how to be a no-mind, how to be simply without thinking. Try it! When I say try it, it will look contradictory, because there is no other way to say it. Because if you try, the very try, the effort is coming from the mind. You can sit in a posture and you can try some japa chanting, mantra - or you can just try to sit silently, not to think. But then not to think becomes a thinking. Then you go on saying, "I am not to think; don't think; stop thinking," but this is all thinking.

Try to understand. When Patanjali says, no-mind, cessation of mind, he means complete cessation. He will not allow you to make a japa, a chanting - like saying, "Ram-Ram-Ram." He will say that this is not cessation; you are using the mind. He will say, "Simply stop!" but you will ask, "How? How to simply stop?" The mind continues. Even if you sit, the mind continues. Even if you don't do, it goes on doing.

Patanjali says just look. Let mind go, let mind do whatsoever it is doing. You just look. You don't interfere. You just be a witness, you just be an onlooker not concerned, as if the mind doesn't belong to you, as if it is not your business, not your concern. Don't be concerned! Just look and let the mind flow. It is flowing because of past momentum, because you have always helped it to flow. The activity has taken its own momentum, so it is flowing. You just don't cooperate Look, and let the mind flow.

For many, many lives, million lives maybe, you have cooperated with it, you have helped it, you have given your energy to it. The river will flow awhile. If you don't cooperate, if you just look unconcerned - Buddha's word is indifference, upeksha: looking without any concern, just looking, not doing anything in any way - the mind will flow for a while and it will stop by itself When the momentum is lost, when the energy has flowed, the mind will stop. When the mind stops, you are in yoga: you have attained the discipline. This is the definition: YOGA IS THE CESSATION OF MIND.

When the mind ceases, the witness is established in itself. When you can simply look without being identified with the mind, without judging, without appreciating, condemning, without choosing - you simply look and the mind flows, a time comes when by itself, of itself, the mind stops.

When there is no mind, you are established in your witnessing. Then you have become a witness - just a seer - a drashta, a sakchhi. Then you are not a doer, then you are not a thinker. Then you are simply being pure being, purest of being. Then the witness is established in itself.

Except witnessing, in all states, you are identified with the mind. You become one with the flow of thoughts, you become one with the clouds: sometimes with the white cloud, sometimes with the black cloud, sometimes with a rain-filled cloud, sometimes with a vacant, empty cloud, but whatsoever, you become one with the thought, you become one with the cloud, and you miss your purity of the sky, the purity of space. You become clouded, and this clouding happens because you get identified, you become one.

A thought comes. You are hungry, and the thought flashes in the mind. The thought is simply that there is hunger, that the stomach is feeling hunger. Immediately you get identified; you say, "I am hungry." The mind was just filled with a thought that hunger is there; you have become identified and you say, "I am hungry." This is the identification.

Buddha also feels hunger, Patanjali also feels hunger, but Patanjali will never say that, "I am hungry." He will say "The body is hungry"; he will say, "My stomach is feeling hungry"; he will say, "There is hunger. I am a witness. I have come to witness this thought, which has been flashed by the belly in the brain, that 'I am hungry.'" The belly is hungry; Patanjali will remain a witness. You become identified, you become one with the thought.

This is the definition:

When mind ceases, you are established in your witnessing self. In other states, except this, there are identifications. And all identifications constitute the samsar; they are the world. If you are in the identifications, you are in the world, in the misery. If you have transcended the identifications, you are liberated. You have become a siddha, you are in nirvana. You have transcended this world of misery and entered the world of bliss.

And that world is here and now - right now, this very moment! You need not wait for it a single moment even. Just become a witness of the mind, and you have entered. Get identified with the mind, and you have missed. This is the basic definition.

Remember everything, because later on, in other sutras, we will enter details what is to be done, how it is to be done - but always keep in the mind this is the foundation.

One has to achieve a state of no-mind: that is the goal.

Mind can be either the source of bondage or the source of freedom. Mind becomes the gate for this world, the entry; it can also become the exit. Mind leads you to the hell; mind can lead you also to the heaven. So it depends how the mind is used. Right use of mind becomes meditation, wrong use of the mind becomes madness.

Mind is there with everyone. The possibility of darkness and light both are implied in it. Mind itself is neither the enemy nor the friend. You can make it a friend, you can make it an enemy. It depends on you => you, the one who is hidden behind the mind. If you can make the mind your instrument, your slave, the mind becomes the passage through which you can reach the Ultimate. If you become the slave & the mind is allowed to be the master, then this mind, which has become master, will lead you to ultimate anguish and darkness.

All the techniques, all the methods, all the paths of yoga, are really concerned deeply only with one problem => how to use the mind. Rightly used, mind comes to a point where it becomes a no-mind.

Wrongly used, mind comes to a point where it is just a chaos, many voices antagonistic to each other - contradictory, confusing, insane.

The madman in the madhouse and Buddha under his bodhi tree - both have used the mind; both have passed through the mind. Buddha has come to a point where mind disappears. Rightly used it goes on disappearing; a moment comes when it is not. The madman has also used the mind. Wrongly used, mind becomes divided; wrongly used, mind becomes many; wrongly used it becomes a multitude. And, finally, the mad mind is there, you are absolutely absent.

Buddha's mind has disappeared, and Buddha is present in his totality. A madman's mind has become total, and he himself has disappeared completely. These are the two poles. You and your mind, if they exist together, then you will be in misery. Either you will have to disappear or the mind will have to disappear. If the mind disappears, then you achieve truth; if you disappear, you achieve insanity. And this is the struggle: who is going to disappear? Are you going to disappear, or the mind? This is the conflict, the root of all struggle.

These sutras of Patanjali will lead you step by step towards this understanding of the mind - what it is, what types of modes it takes, what types of modifications come into it, how you can use it and go beyond it. And, remember, you have nothing else right now - only the mind. You have to use it.

Wrongly used, you will go on falling into more and more misery. You are in misery. That is because for many lives you have used your mind wrongly. And the mind has become the master; you are just a slave, a shadow following the mind. You cannot say to the mind, "Stop!" You cannot order your own mind; your mind goes on ordering you and you have to follow it. Your being has become the shadow and the slave, an instrument.

Mind is nothing but an instrument, just like your hands or your feet. You order your feet - your legs, they move. When you say "Stop" they stop. You are the Master. If I want to move my hand, I move it. If I don't want to move, I don't move it. The hand cannot say to me, "Now I want to be moved." The hand cannot say to me, "Now I will move whatsoever you do. I am not going to listen to you." And if my hand starts moving in spite of me, then it will be a chaos in the body. The same has happened in the mind.

You don't want to think, and the mind goes on thinking. You want to sleep. You are Lying down on your bed, changing your sides; you want to go to sleep, and the mind continues, the mind says, "No, I am going to think about something." You go on saying, "Stop" and it never listens to you. And you cannot do anything. Mind is also an instrument, but you have given it too much power. It has become dictatorial, and it will struggle hard if you try to put it in its right place.

Buddha also uses the mind, but his mind is just like your legs. People go on coming to me and they ask, "What happens to the mind of an enlightened one? Does it simply disappear? He cannot use it?"

It disappears as a Master, it remains as a slave. It remains as a passive instrument. A Buddha wants to use it, he can use it. When Buddha speaks to you he will have to use it, because there is no possibility of speech without the mind. The mind has to be used. If you go to Buddha and he recognizes you, that you have been before also, he has to use the mind. Without mind there can be no recognition; without mind there is no memory. But he uses the mind to remember, this is the distinction - and you are being used by the mind. Whenever he wants to use it, he uses it. Whenever he doesn't want to use it, he doesn't use it. It is a passive instrument; it has no hold upon him.

So Buddha remains like a mirror. If you come before the mirror, the mirror reflects you. When you have moved, the reflection has gone; the mirror is vacant. You are not like a mirror. You see somebody, the man has gone, but the thinking continues, the reflection continues. You go on thinking about him. And even if you want to stop, the mind won't listen.

Mastery of the mind is yoga. And when Patanjali says "cessation of the mind", this is what is meant: cessation as a master. Mind ceases as a master. Then it is not active. Then it is a passive instrument. You order, it works; you don't order, it remains still. It is just waiting. It cannot assert by itself. The assertion is lost; the violence is lost. It will not try to control you.

Now just the reverse is the case. How to become masters? And how to put mind into its proper place, where you can use it; where, if you don't want to use it, you can put it aside and remain silent? So the whole mechanism of the mind will have to be understood.

Now we should enter the sutras.
The First Sutra:

First thing to be understood: that mind is not something different from the body, remember. Mind is part of the body. It is body, but deeply subtle - a state of body, but very delicate, very refined. You cannot catch it, but through the body you can influence it. If you take a drug, if you take LSD or marijuana or something else, or alcohol, suddenly the mind is affected. The alcohol goes in the body, not in the mind, but the mind is affected. Mind is the subtlest part of the body.

The reverse is also true. Influence the mind and the body is affected. That happens in hypnosis. A person who cannot walk, who says that he has a paralysis, can walk under hypnosis. You don't have paralysis, but if under hypnosis it is said that "Now your body is paralyzed; you cannot walk," you cannot walk. A paralyzed man can walk under hypnosis. What is happening? Hypnosis goes into the mind, the suggestion goes into the mind. Then the body follows.

First thing to be understood: mind and body are not two. This is one of the deepest discoveries of Patanjali. Now modern science recognizes it; it is very recent in the West. Now they say, 'body & mind' -- to talk in this dichotomy is not right. Now they say it is "psychosoma": it is mind-body. These two terms are just two functions of one phenomenon. One pole is mind, another pole is body, so you can work from either and change the other.

The body has five organs of activity -- five indriyas, five instruments of activity. The mind has five modifications, five modes of function. Mind and body are one. Body is divided into five functions; mind is also divided into five functions. We will go into each function in detail.

The second thing about this sutra is:

These five modifications of the mind, this totality of the mind, can lead you into deep anguish, into dukkha, into misery. Or, if you rightly use this mind, its functioning, it can lead you into non-misery. It can lead you at the most into non-misery.

That word 'non-misery' is very significant. Patanjali doesn't say that it will lead you into ananda, into bliss - no. The mind can lead you into misery if you wrongly use it, if you become a slave to it. If you become the Master, the mind can lead you into non-misery - not into bliss, because bliss is your nature; the mind cannot lead you to it - your nature. But if you are in non-misery, the inner bliss starts flowing.

The bliss is always there inside; it is your intrinsic nature. It is nothing to be achieved and earned; it is nothing to be reached somewhere. You are born with it; you have it already; it is already the case. That's why Patanjali doesn't say that the mind can lead you into misery and can lead you into bliss - no! He is very scientific, very accurate. He will not use even a single word which can give you any untrue information. He simply says either misery or non-misery.

Buddha also says many times, whenever seekers will come to him - and seekers are after bliss, so they will ask Buddha, "How can we reach to the bliss, the ultimate bliss?" He will say, "I don't know. I can show you the path which leads to non-misery, just the absence of misery. I don't say anything about the positive bliss, just the negative. I can show you how to move into the world of non-misery."

That's all that methods can do. Once you are in the state of non-misery, the inner bliss starts flowing. But that doesn't come from the mind, that comes from your inner being. So mind has nothing to do with it; mind cannot create it. If mind is in misery then mind becomes a hindrance. If mind is in non-misery, then mind becomes an opening. But it is not creative; it is not doing anything.

You open the windows and the rays of the sun enter. By opening the windows you are not creating the sun. The sun was already there. If it was not there, then just by opening the windows, rays wouldn't enter. Your window can become a hindrance - the sunrays may be outside and the window is closed. The window can hinder or it can give way. It can become a passage, but it cannot be creative. It cannot create the rays; the rays are there.

Your mind, if it is in misery, becomes closed. Remember, one of the characteristics of misery is closedness. Whenever you are in misery, you become closed. Observe, whenever you feel some anguish, you are closed to the world. Even to your dearest friend you are closed. Even to your wife, your children, your beloved, you are closed when you are in misery, because misery gives you a shrinking inside. You shrink. From everywhere you have closed your doors.

That's why in misery people start thinking of suicide. Suicide means total closure - no possibility of any communication, no possibility of any door. Even a closed door is dangerous. Someone can open it, so destroy the door, destroy all possibilities. Suicide means, "Now I am going to destroy all possibility of any opening. Now I am closing myself totally."

Whenever you are in misery you start thinking of suicide. Whenever you are happy you cannot think of suicide; you cannot imagine. You cannot even think that "Why people commit suicide? Life is such joy, life is such a deep music, why people destroy life." It appears impossible.

Why, when you are happy, it looks impossible? Because you are open; life is flowing in you. When you are happy you have a bigger soul, expansion. When you are unhappy you have a smaller soul, shrinked.

When someone is unhappy, touch him, take his hand into your hand. You will feel that his hand is dead. Nothing is flowing through it - no love, no warmth. It is just cold, as if it belonged to a corpse.

When someone is happy, touch his hand, there is communication, energy is flowing. His hand is not just a dead hand, his hand has become a bridge. Through his hand something comes to you, communicates, relates. A warmth flows. He reaches to you. He makes every effort to flow in you and he allows you also to flow within him.

When two persons are happy, they become one. That's why in love oneness happens and lovers start feeling that they are not two. They are two, but they start feeling they are not two because in love they are so happy that a melting happens. They melt into each other; they flow into each other. Boundaries dissolve, definitions are blurred, and they don't know who is who. In that moment they become one.

When you are happy, you can flow into others and you can allow others to flow in you: this is what celebration means. When you allow everybody to flow in and you flow into everybody, you are celebrating life. And celebration is the greatest prayer, the highest peak of meditation.

In misery you start thinking of committing suicide; in misery, you start thinking of destruction. In misery, you are just on the opposite pole of celebration. You blame. You cannot celebrate. You have grudge against everything. Everything is wrong and you are negative, and you cannot flow, and you cannot relate, and you cannot allow anybody to flow into you. You have become an island - closed completely. This is a living death. Life is only when you are open and flowing, when you are unafraid, fearless, open, vulnerable, celebrating.

Patanjali says mind can do two things. It can create misery. You can use it in such a way that you can become miserable, and you have used it. You are past masters of it. There is no need to talk much about it; you know it already. You know the art, how to create misery. You may not be aware, but that is what you are doing, continuously. Whatsoever you touch becomes a source of misery. I say whatsoever!

I see poor men. They are miserable, obviously. They are poor; basic needs of life are not fulfilled. But then I see rich men, they are also miserable. And they think, these rich men, they think that wealth leads nowhere. That is not right. Wealth can lead to celebration, but you don't have the mind to celebrate. So if you are poor you are miserable; if you become rich you are more miserable. The moment you touch the riches, you have destroyed them.

You have heard the Greek story of the king Midas? Whatsoever he will touch it will turn into gold. You touch gold, immediately it becomes mud. It is turned into dust, and then you think that there is nothing in this world, even riches are useless. They are not. But your mind cannot celebrate, your mind cannot participate in any non-misery. If you are invited in the heaven, you will not find heaven there, you will create a hell. As you are, wherever you go you will take your hell with you.

There is one Arabic proverb, that hell and heaven are not geographical places, they are attitudes. And no one enters heaven or hell; everybody enters with heaven or hell. Wherever you go you have your hell projection or the heaven projection with you. You have a projector inside. Immediately you project.

But Patanjali is careful. He says misery or non-misery - positive misery or negative misery - but not bliss. Mind cannot give you bliss; no one can give. It is hidden in you, and when mind is in a non-miserable state that bliss starts flowing. It is not coming from the mind, it is coming from beyond. That's why he says they can be either a source of anguish or of non-anguish.

Right Knowledge < ----------------------------------- > Wrong Knowledge

Now we should enter the sutra.
The Second Sutra:

The first is praman, right knowledge. The Sanskrit word praman is very deep and really cannot be translated. Right knowledge is just a shadow, not the exact meaning, because there is no word which can translate praman. Praman comes from the root prama. Many things have to be understood about it.

Patanjali says that the mind has a capacity. If that capacity is directed rightly, then whatsoever is known is true; it is self-evidently true. We are not aware about it because we have never used it. That faculty has remained unused. It is just like... The room is dark, you come in it, you have a torch, but you are not using it - so the room remains dark. You go on stumbling on this table, on that chair, and you have a torch, but the torch has to be put on. Once you put the torch on, immediately darkness disappears. And wherever the torch is focused you know. At least that spot becomes evident, self-evidently clear.

Mind has a capacity of praman, of right knowledge, of wisdom. Once you know how to put it on, then wherever you move that light, only right knowledge is revealed. Without knowing it, whatsoever you know will be wrong.

Mind has the capacity of wrong knowledge also. That wrong knowledge is called in Sanskrit viparyaya - false, mithya. And you have that capacity also. You take alcohol. What happens? The whole world becomes a viparyaya; the whole world becomes false. You start seeing things which are not there.

What has happened? Alcohol cannot create things. Alcohol is doing something within your body and brain. The alcohol starts working the center that Patanjali calls viparyaya. The mind has a center which can pervert anything. Once that center starts functioning, everything is perverted.

I am reminded...

Once it happened that Mulla Nasrudin and his friend were drinking in a pub. They came out, completely drunk, and Nasrudin was an old, experienced drinker. The other was new, so the other was affected more. So the other asked, "Now I cannot see, I cannot hear, I cannot even walk rightly. How I will reach my home? You tell me, Nasrudin please direct me. How I should reach my home?"

Nasrudin said, "First you go. After so many steps you will come to a point where there are two ways: one goes to the right, the other goes to the left. You go to the left because that which goes to the right doesn't exist. I have been many times on that right also, but now I am an experienced man. You will see two paths. Choose the left one; don't choose the right. That right doesn't exist. Many times I have gone on it, and then you never reach, you never reach your home."

Once Nasrudin was teaching his son the first lessons of drinking. So he told him... The son was asking, he was curious. He asked that, "When is one to stop?" Nasrudin said, "Look at that table. Four persons are sitting there. When you start seeing eight, stop!" The boy said, "But father, there are only two persons sitting!"

Mind has a faculty. That faculty functions when you are under any influence of a drug, any intoxicant. That faculty Patanjali calls viparyaya, wrong knowledge, the center of perversion.

Exactly opposite to it there is a center you don't know. Exactly opposite to it there is a center. If you meditate deeply, silently, that other center will start functioning. That center is called praman, right knowledge. Through the functioning of that center, whatsoever is known is right. What you know is not the question, from where you know is the question.

That's why all the religions have been against alcohol. It is not on any moralistic grounds, no! It is because alcohol influences the center of perversion. And every authentic religion is for meditation because meditation means more and more creating a stillness, more and more becoming silent.

Alcohol goes on doing quite the opposite, makes you more and more agitated, excited, disturbed. A trembling enters within you. The drunkard cannot even walk rightly. His balance is lost. Not only in the body, but in the mind also balance is lost.

Meditation means gaining the inner balance. When you gain the inner balance and there is no trembling, the whole body-mind has become still, then the center of right knowledge starts functioning. Through that center, whatsoever is known is true.

Where you are? You are not alcoholics, you are not meditators, you must be somewhere between the two. You are not in any center. You are between these two centers of wrong knowledge and right knowledge. That's why you are confused.

Sometimes you have glimpses. You lean a little towards the right knowledge center, then certain glimpses come to you. You lean toward the center, which is of perversion, then perversion enters you. And everything is mixed, you are in chaos. That's why either you will have to become meditators or you will have to become alcoholics, because confusion is too much. And these are the two ways.

Either you lose yourself into intoxication, then you are at ease. At least you have gained a center - may be of wrong knowledge, but you are centered. The whole world may say you are wrong. You don't think, you think the whole world is wrong. At least in those moments of unconsciousness you are centered, centered in the wrong center. But you are happy because even centering in the wrong center gives a certain happiness. You enjoy it, hence, so much appeal for alcohol.

Governments have been fighting for centuries. Laws have been made, prohibition and everything, but nothing helps. Unless humanity becomes meditative, nothing can help. People will go on; they will find new ways and new means to get intoxicated. They cannot be prevented, and the more you try to prevent them, more prohibition laws, the more appeal.

America did it, and had to fall back. They tried their best, but when alcohol was prohibited more alcohol was used. They tried; they failed. India has been trying after independence. It has failed, and many states have started again. It seems useless.

Unless man changes inwardly, you cannot force man for any prohibition. It is impossible because then man will go mad. This is his way to remain sane. For few hours he becomes drugged, "stoned", then he is okay. Then there is no misery; then there is no anguish. The misery will come, the anguish will come, but at least it is postponed. Tomorrow morning the misery will be there, the anguish will be there - he will have to face it. But by the evening he can hope again - he will take drink and be at ease.

These are the two alternatives. If you are not meditative, then sooner or later you will have to find some drug. And there are subtle drugs. Alcohol is not very subtle, it is very gross. There are subtle drugs. Sex may become a drug for you. And through sex you may be just losing your consciousness. Anything you can use as a drug. Only meditation can help. Why? Because meditation gives you centering on the center which Patanjali calls praman.

Why so much emphasis of every real religion for meditation? Meditation must be doing some inner miracle.

This is the miracle: that meditation helps you to put on the light of right knowledge. Then wherever you move, then wherever your focus moves, whatsoever is known is true.

Buddha has been asked thousands and thousands of questions. One day somebody asked him that, "We come with new questions. We have not even put the question before you and you start answering. You never think about it. How it happens?"

So Buddha says, "It is not a question of thinking. You put the question and, simply, I look at it. And whatsoever is true is revealed. It is not a question of thinking and brooding about it. The answer is not coming as a logical syllogism. It is just a focusing of the right center."

Buddha is like a torch. So wherever the torch moves, it reveals. Whatsoever the question, that is not the point. Buddha has the light, and whenever that light will come on any question, the answer will be revealed. The answer will come out of that light. It is a simple phenomenon, a revelation. [Similar to having a direct connection to what is known as the Akashic.]

When somebody asks you something, you have to think about it. But how can you think if you don't know? If you know, there is no need to think. If you don't know, what you will do? You will search in the memory, you will find many clues. You will just do a patchwork. You don't know really; otherwise the response would have been immediate.

I have heard about one teacher, a woman teacher in a primary school. And she asked the children that, "Have you got any questions?" One small boy stood and he said, "I have one question and I have been waiting - whenever you ask I will ask: what is the weight of the whole earth?"

She became disturbed because she has never thought about it, never read about it. What is the weight of the whole earth? So she played a trick teachers know. They have to play tricks. She said, "Yes, the question is significant. Now tomorrow, everybody has to find the answer." She needed time. "So tomorrow I will ask the question. Whoever brings the right answer there will be a present for him."

All the children searched and searched, but they couldn't find. And the teacher ran to the library. The whole night she searched, and only just by the morning she could find the weight of the earth. She was very happy. And she came back to school, and the children were there. And they were exhausted. They said they couldn't find. "We asked Mom and we asked Dad and we asked everybody. Nobody knows. This question seems to be so difficult."

The teacher laughed and she said, "This is not difficult. I know the answer, but I was just trying whether you could find it out or not. This is the weight of the earth..." That small child who had raised the question, he stood again, and he said, "With people or without?" Now the same situation.

You cannot put Buddha in such a situation. It is not a question of finding somewhere; it is not really a question of answering you. Your question is just an excuse. When you put a question, he simply moves his light toward that question and whatsoever is revealed is revealed. He answers you; that's a deep response of his right center - praman.

Patanjali says there are five modifications of the mind. Right knowledge. If this center of right knowledge starts functioning in you, you will become a sage, a saint. You will become religious. Before that you cannot become religious.

That's why Jesus or Mohammed, they look mad - because they don't argue; they don't put their case logically, they simply assert. You ask Jesus, "Are you really the only son of God?" He says, "Yes." And if you ask him, "Prove it," he will laugh. He will say, "There is no need to prove. I know. This is the case; this is self-evident." To us it looks illogical. This man seems to be neurotic, claiming something without any proof.

If this praman, this center of prama, this center of right knowledge starts functioning, you will be the same: you can assert, but you cannot prove. How can you prove? If you are in love, how can you prove that you are in love? You can simply assert. You have pain in your leg; how can you prove that you have pain? You simply assert that, "I have pain." You know somewhere inside. That knowing is enough.

Ramakrishna was asked, "Is there God?" He said "Yes." He was asked, "Then prove it." Ramakrishna said, "There is no need. I know. To me, there is no need. To you there is a need, so you search. Nobody could prove it for me I cannot prove it for you. I had to seek; I had to find. And I have found. God is!"

This is the functioning of the right center. So Ramakrishna or Jesus look absurd. They are claiming certain things without giving any proof. They are not claiming; they are not claiming anything. Certain things are revealed to them because they have a new center functioning which you don't have. And because you don't have it you have to prove.

Remember, proving proves that you don't have an inner feeling of anything - everything has to be proved, even love has to be proved. And people go on. I know many couples. The husband goes on proving that he loves, and he has not convinced the wife, and the wife goes on proving that she loves, and she has not convinced the husband. They remain unconvinced and that remains the conflict. And they go on feeling that the other has not proved.

Lovers go on searching. They create situations in which you have to prove that you love. And by and by both get bored - this futile effort to prove, and nothing can be proved. How can you prove love? You can give presents, but nothing is proved. You can kiss and hug and you can sing, you can dance, but nothing is proved. You may be just pretending.

This first modification of the mind is right knowledge. Meditation leads to this modification. And when you can rightly know and there is no need to prove, then only mind can be dropped, not before it. When there is no need to prove, mind is not needed, because mind is a logical instrument.

You need it every moment. You have to think, find out what is wrong and what is right. Every moment there is choices and alternatives. You have to choose. Only when praman functions, when right knowledge functions, you can drop the mind, because now choosing has no meaning. You move choicelessly. Whatsoever is right is revealed to you.

The definition of the sage is one who never chooses. He never chooses good against bad. He simply moves towards the direction which is that of good. It is just like sunflowers. When the sun is in the east, the flower moves to the east. It never chooses. When the sun moves to the west, the flower moves to the west. It simply moves with the sun. It has not chosen to move; it has not decided. It has not taken a decision that, "Now I should move because the sun has moved to the west."

Those who knew - and people in the days of Upanishads knew - they have decided that, "We will not judge a sage." Once a person has come to be centered in himself, when a person has achieved meditation, once a person has become silent and the mind has been dropped, he is beyond our morality, beyond tradition. He is beyond our limitations. If we can follow, we can follow him. If we cannot follow, we are helpless. But nothing can be done, and we should not judge.

If right knowledge functions, if your mind has taken the modification of right knowledge, you will become religious. Look, it is totally different. Patanjali doesn't say if you go to the mosque, to the gurudwara, to the temple, you do some ritual, you pray... No, that's not religion. You have to make your right-knowledge-center functioning. So whether you go to the temple or not, it is immaterial; it doesn't matter. If your right-knowledge-center functions, whatsoever you do is prayer and wherever you go it is a temple.

Kabir has said, "Wherever I go, I find you, my God. Wherever I move, I move into you, I stumble upon you. And whatsoever I do, even walking, eating, it is prayer." Kabir says, "This spontaneity is my samadhi. Just to be spontaneous is my meditation."

Second is viparyaya - wrong knowledge. If your center of wrong knowledge is functioning, then whatsoever you do, you will do wrongly, and whatsoever you choose, you will choose wrongly. Whatsoever you decide will be wrong because you are not deciding, the wrong center is functioning. The wrong center is deciding.

There are people, they feel very unfortunate because whatsoever they do goes wrong. And they try not to do wrong again, but that's not going to help because the center has to be changed. Their minds function in a wrong way. They may think that they are doing good, but they will do bad. With all their good wishes, they cannot help; they are helpless.

Mulla Nasrudin used to visit a saint. He visited for many, many days. And the saint was a silent one; he will not speak anything. Then Mulla Nasrudin had to say, he had to ask, "I have been coming again and again, waiting that you will say something, and you have not said anything. And unless you say, I cannot understand, so just give me a message for my life, a direction so that I can move in that direction."

So that Sufi sage said, "NEKI KAR KUYEN MAY DAL: Do good and throw it in the well." It is one of the oldest Sufi sayings: "Do good and throw it in the well." It means do good and forget it immediately; don't carry that "I have done good."

So next day Mulla Nasrudin helped one old woman to cross the road, and then he pushed her into the well.

"NEKI KAR KUYEN MAY DAL: DO good and throw it in the well."

If your wrong center is functioning, whatsoever you do... You can read Koran, you can read Gita, and you will find meanings - Krishna will be shocked, Mohammed will be shocked to see that you can find such meanings.

Mahatma Gandhi wrote his autobiography with the intention that it will help people. Then many letters came to him because he describes his sex life. He was honest, one of the most honest men, so he wrote everything - whatsoever has happened in his past - how he was too much indulgent the day his father was dying; he couldn't sit by his side. Even that day he had to go with his wife to bed.

And doctors had said that "This is the last night. Your father cannot survive the morning. He will be dead by the morning." But just about twelve, one, in the night, he started feeling desire, sexual desire. The father was feeling sleepy, so he slipped away, went to his wife, indulged in sex. And the wife was pregnant. It was the ninth month. And the father was dying, and the child also died the moment he was born. And the father died in the night, so the whole life Gandhi had a deep repentance - he couldn't be with his dying father. Sex was so obsessive.

So he wrote everything, he was honest-and just to help others. But many letters started coming to him, and those letters were such that he was shocked. Many people wrote to him that "Your autobiography is such that we have become more sexual than before just reading. Just reading through your autobiography we have become more sexual and indulgent. It is erotic."

If the wrong center is functioning, then nothing can be done. Whatsoever you do, read, behave, it will be wrong. You will move to the wrong. You have a center which is forcing you to move towards the wrong. You can go to Buddha, but something wrong you will see in him. Immediately! You cannot meet Buddha, because something wrong is what you will see immediately. You have a focusing for the wrong, a deep urge to find wrong anywhere, everywhere.

This modification of the mind Patanjali calls viparyaya. Viparyaya means perversion. You pervert everything. You interpret everything in such a way it becomes a perversion, a distortion.

All over the world people have done that. In India we say, "If you go to the Ganges, if you bathe in the Ganges, your sins will dissolve." It was a beautiful concept in itself. It shows many things. It shows that sin is not something very deep, it is just like dust upon you. So don't get too much obsessed by it, don't feel guilty; it is just dust, and you remain pure inside. Even bathing in the Ganges can help.

This is just to show you, don't become so much obsessed with sin as Christianity has become. Guilt has become so burdensome, so even just taking a bath in the Ganges will help. Don't be so much afraid. But how we have interpreted it? We say, "Then it is okay. Go on committing sin." And after a while, when you feel now you have committed many, so give a chance to the Ganges to purify; then come back and commit again. This is the center of perversion.

Imagination - The Third Modification Of The Mind

Continuing with the second sutra:

The Third modification is imagination. Mind has the faculty to imagine. It is good, it is beautiful. All that is beautiful has come through imagination. Paintings, art, dance, music, everything that is beautiful has come through the imagination. But everything that is ugly, that has also come through the imagination. Hitler, Mao, Mussolini they have all come through imagination.

Hitler imagined a world of supermen. And he believed in Friedrich Nietzsche who has said, "Destroy all those who are weak. Destroy all those who are not super. Leave only supermen on the earth." So he destroyed. Just imagination, just utopian imagination - that just by destroying the weak, just by destroying the ugly, just by destroying the physically crippled you will have a beautiful world. But the very destruction is the most ugly thing in the world possible - the very destruction.

But he was working through imagination. He had an imagination, a utopian imagination - the most imaginative man! Hitler is one of the most imaginative. And his imagination became so fantastic and so mad that for his imaginative world, he tried to destroy this world completely. His imagination had gone mad.

Imagination can give you poetry and painting and art, and imagination can give you madness also. It depends how you use it. All the great scientific discoveries have been through imagination - people who could imagine, who could imagine the impossible. Now we can fly into the air, now we can go to the moon.

These are deep imaginations. Man has been imagining for centuries, millennia, how to fly, how to go to the moon. Every child is born with the desire to go to the moon, to catch the moon. But we reached. Through imagination creativity comes, but through imagination destruction also.

Patanjali says imagination is the third mode of mind. You can use it in a wrong way, and then it will destroy you. You can use it in a right way. And then there are imaginative meditations. They start with imagination, but by and by imagination becomes subtler and subtler and subtler. And then imagination is dropped ultimately, and you are face to face with the truth.

All Christian, Mohammedan meditations are basically through imagination. First you have to imagine something. And then you go on imagining it, and then through imagination you create an atmosphere around you. You try it, that through imagination what is possible. Even impossible is possible.

If you think you are beautiful, if you imagine you are beautiful, a certain beauty will start happening to your body. So whenever a man says to a woman that "You are beautiful," the woman has changed immediately. She may not have been beautiful. Before this moment she may not have been beautiful - just homely, ordinary. But this man has given imagination to her. The reverse can also be the effect.

So every woman who is loved becomes more beautiful, every man who is loved becomes more beautiful. A person who is not loved-may be beautiful - becomes ugly because she cannot imagine, he cannot imagine. And if imagination is not there, one shrinks.

Emile Coue, one of the great psychologists of the West, helped millions of people just through imagination to be cured of many, many diseases. His formula was very simple. He will say that, "Just you start feeling that you are okay. Just go on repeating inside the mind, I am getting better and better. Every day I am getting better. In the night while you fall asleep, go on thinking you are healthy, and you are getting healthier every moment, and by the morning you will be the healthiest person in the world. Go on imagining."

And he helped millions of people. Even incurable diseases were cured. It looked like a miracle; it is nothing. It is just a basic law: your mind follows imagination.

Now psychologists say that if you say to children that "You are duffers, dull," they become dull. You force them to be dull. You give their imagination the suggestion that they are dull.

Many experiments have been done. Say to a child, "You are dull. You cannot do anything; you cannot solve this mathematical problem, and give him the problem and tell him, 'Now try,' he will not be able to solve it. You have closed the door. Say to the child, 'You are intelligent and I have not seen any intelligent boy like you are; for your stage, your age, you are over-intelligent. You show many potentialities; you can solve any problem. Now try this," and he will be able to solve it. You have given imagination to him.

Now these are scientific proofs, now scientific discoverings, that whatsoever imagination catches, it becomes a seed. Whole generations have been changed, whole ages, whole countries have been changed, just through imagination.

You go to Punjab. I was traveling once from Delhi to Manali. My driver was a Sikh, a sardar. The way, the road, was dangerous, and the car was very big. And the driver became many times afraid. And many times he will say, "Now I cannot go ahead. We will have to go back." We tried in every way to persuade him. At one point he became so afraid he stopped the car, got out of the car and said, "No! Now I cannot move from here. It is dangerous," he said, "It may not be dangerous for you; you may be ready to die. But I am not. I want to go back."

By chance one of my friends who is also a sardar and was a big police official, he was also coming, following me to attend the meditation camp in Manali. His car reached, so I told him that "Do something! The man has gone out of the car." That police official came and he said, "You being a sardar, and a Sikh - and a coward? Get into the car." The man immediately came into the car and started. So I asked him, "What is the matter?" He said "Now he has touched my ego. He says, You are a sardar?" Sardar means leader of men. "A Sikh? And a coward? He has touched my imagination. He has touched my pride. Now we can go. Dead or alive, but we will reach Manali."

And this has not happened with one man. If you go to Punjab, you will see that it has happened with millions. Look at the Hindus of Punjab and at the Sikhs of Punjab. Their blood is same; they belong to the same race. Five hundred years before all were Hindus. And then a different type of race, a military race, was born. Just by growing beard, just by changing your face, you cannot become brave. But you can! Imagination.

Nanak gave the imagination that "You are a different type of race. You are unconquerable." And once they believe, once that imagination started to work, in the Punjab, within five hundred years, a new race, totally different from Punjabi Hindus has come into being. Nothing is different. But in India, no one is braver than they. These two world wars have proved that on whole of the earth Sikhs have no comparison. They can fight fearlessly.

What has happened? Just their imagination has created a milieu around them. They feel that just being Sikhs they are different. Imagination works. It can make a brave man out of you, it can make a coward.

I have heard...

Mulla Nasrudin was sitting in a pub drinking. He was not a brave man, one of the most coward. But alcohol gave him courage. And then a man, a giant of a man, entered the pub ferocious looking, dangerous, looked like a murderer. At any other time, in his senses, Mulla Nasrudin would have been afraid. But now he was drunk, so he was not afraid at all.

That ferocious looking man came near to Mulla, and seeing that he is not afraid at all he stomped on his feet. Mulla got angry, furious, and he said, "What are you doing? Are you doing that on purpose or it is just a sort of joke?" But by this time, his stomping on his feet, Mulla was brought back from his alcohol. He was brought back; he came to his senses. But he has said, "What are you doing - on purpose or it is just a sort of joke?"

The man said, "On purpose." Mulla Nasrudin said, "Then thank you. On purpose, it is okay, because I don't like such type jokes"

Patanjali says imagination is the third faculty. You go on imagining. If you wrongly imagine, you can create delusions around you, illusions, dreams - you can be lost in them. LSD and other drugs, they help and work on this center. So whatsoever inside potentiality you have, your LSD trip will help you to develop it. So nothing is certain. If you have happy imaginations, the drug trip will be a happy trip, a high. If you have miserable imaginations, nightmarish imaginations, the trip is going to be bad.

That's why many people report contradictorily. Huxley says that it can become a key to the door of heaven, and Rheiner says it is ultimate hell. It depends on you; LSD cannot do anything. It simply jumps on your center of imagination, starts functioning chemically there. If you have an imagination of the nightmarish type, then you will develop that and you will pass through hell. And if you are addicted to beautiful dreams, you may reach heaven.

This imagination can function either as a hell or as heaven. You can use it to go completely insane. What has happened to madmen in the madhouses? They have used their imagination, and they have used it in such a way that they are engulfed by it. A madman may be sitting alone and he is talking to someone loudly. Not only he talks, he answers also. He questions, he answers, he speaks for the other also who is absent. You may think that he is mad, but he is talking to a real person. In his imagination the person is real, and he cannot judge what is imaginary and what is real.

Children cannot judge. So many times children may lose their toy in the dream, and then they will weep in the morning, "Where is my toy?" They cannot judge that dream is dream and reality is reality. And they have not lost anything, they were just dreaming. Boundaries are blurred. They don't know where dream ends and where reality starts.

A madman also is blurred. He doesn't know what is real, what is unreal. If imagination is used rightly, then you will know that this is imagination and you will remain alert that this is imagination. You can enjoy it, but this is not real.

So when people meditate, many things happen through their imagination. They start seeing lights, colors, visions, talking to God himself, or moving with Jesus, or dancing with Krishna. These are imaginative things, and a meditator has to remember that these are functions of the imagination. You can enjoy it; nothing is wrong in them - they are fun. Don't think that they are real.

Remember that only the witnessing consciousness is real; nothing else is real. Whatsoever happens may be beautiful, worth enjoying - enjoy it. It is beautiful to dance with Krishna; nothing is wrong in it. Dance! Enjoy it! But remember continuously that this is imagination, a beautiful dream. Don't be lost in it. If you are lost, then imagination has become dangerous. Many religious people are just in imagination. And they move in imagination and waste their lives.

The fourth is sleep. Sleep means unconsciousness as far as your outward-moving consciousness is concerned. It has gone deep into itself. Activity has stopped; conscious activity has stopped. Mind is not functioning. Sleep is a non-functioning of the mind. If you are dreaming, then it is not sleep. You are just in the middle, in the waking and the sleep. You have left the waking, and you have not entered sleep. You are just in the middle.

Sleep means totally contentless state - no activity, no movement in the mind. Mind has completely been absorbed, relaxed. This sleep is beautiful; it is life-giving. You can use it. And this sleep if you know how to use it, it can become samadhi. Because samadhi and sleep are not very different. Only one difference is there that in samadhi you will be aware. Everything else will be the same.

In sleep everything is the same, only that you are not aware. You are in the same bliss in which Buddha entered, in which Ramakrishna lives, in which Jesus has made his home. In deep sleep you are in the same blissful state, but you are not aware. So in the morning you feel the night has been good, in the morning you feel refreshed, vital, rejuvenated, in the morning you feel that the night was just beautiful - but this is just an afterglow. You don't know what has happened, what really happened. You were not aware.

Sleep can be used in two ways. Just as a natural rest - you have even lost that. People are not really going into sleep. They continuously go on dreaming. Sometimes, for very few seconds, they touch. They touch, and they again start dreaming. The silence of sleep, the blissful music of sleep, has become unknown. You have destroyed it. Even natural sleep is destroyed. You are so agitated and excited that the mind cannot fall completely into oblivion.

But Patanjali says natural sleep is good for the body health, and if you can become alert in sleep it can become samadhi, it can become a spiritual phenomenon. So there are techniques - we will discuss them later on - how sleep can become an awakening. Gita says that the yogi doesn't sleep even while he is asleep. He remains alert. Something inside goes on being aware. The whole body falls into sleep, the mind falls into sleep, but the witnessing remains. Someone is watching - a watcher on the tower goes on. Then sleep becomes samadhi. It becomes the ultimate ecstasy.

And the last is memory. Memory is the fifth modification of the mind. That too can be used, misused. If memory is misused, it creates confusion. Really, you may remember something, but you cannot be certain whether it happened that way or not. Your memory is not reliable. You may add many things in it; imagination may enter into it. You may delete many things from it, you may do many things to it. And when you say that "This is my memory," it is a very refined and changed thing. It is not real.

Everybody says that "My childhood was just paradise," and look at children These children will also say later on that their childhood was paradise, and they are suffering. And every child hankers how to grow soon, how to become an adult. Every child thinks that adults are enjoying, all that is worth enjoying they are enjoying. They are powerful; they can do everything, he is helpless. Children think they are suffering, but these children will grow as you have grown, and then later on they will say that childhood was beautiful, just a paradise.

Your memory is not reliable. You are imagining; you are just creating your past. You are not true to it. And you drop many things from it - all that was ugly, all that was sad, all that was painful you drop it; all that was beautiful you continue. All that was a support to your ego you remember, and all that was not a support you drop it, you forget it.

So everybody has a great storehouse of dropped memories. And whatsoever you say is not true, you cannot remember truly. All your centers are confused, and they enter into each other and disturb.

Right memory. Buddha has used the words "right memory" for meditation. Patanjali says if memory is right, that means one has to be totally honest to oneself. Then, only then, can memory be right. Whatsoever has happened, bad or good, don't change it. Know it as it is. It is very hard! It is arduous! You choose and change. Knowing one's past as it is will change your whole life. If you rightly know your past as it is, you will not like to repeat it in the future. Right now everybody is thinking how to repeat it in a modified form, but if you know your past exactly as it was you will not like to repeat it.

Right memory will give you the impetus how to be free from all lives. And if memory is right, then you can go even in past lives. If you are honest, then you can go into the past lives. And then you have only one desire, how to transcend all this nonsense. But you think past was beautiful, and you think future is going to be beautiful, only this present is wrong. But the past was present a few days before, and the future will become present a few days after. And every time every present is wrong, and all past is beautiful and all future is beautiful. This is wrong memory. Look directly. Don't change. Look at the past as it was. But we are dishonest.

Every man hates his father, but if you ask anybody he will say, "I love my father. I honor my father as anything." Every woman hates her mother, but ask and every woman will say, "My mother, she is just divine." This is wrong memory.

Gibran has a story. He says, one night one mother and daughter were awakened suddenly because of a noise. They both were sleepwalkers, and the time the sudden noise happened in the neighborhood they were both walking in the garden, asleep. They were sleep-walkers.

It must have been a shock, because in sleep the old woman, the mother, was saying to the daughter that, "Because of you, you bitch, because of you, my youth is lost. You destroyed me. And now anybody who comes to the house looks at you. Nobody looks at me." A deep jealousy that comes to every mother when the daughter becomes young and beautiful. It happens to every mother, but it is inside.

And the daughter was saying, "You old rotten... Because of you I cannot enjoy life. You are the hindrance. Everywhere you are the hindrance, the obstacle. I cannot love; I cannot enjoy."

And suddenly, because of the noise, they were both awakened. And the old woman said, "My child, what are you doing here? You may catch cold. Come inside." And the daughter said, "But what are you doing here? You were not feeling well and this is a cold night. Come, mother. Come to the bed."

The first thing that was happening was coming from the unconscious. Now they are again pretending; they have become awakened. Now the unconscious has gone back, the conscious has come in. Now they are hypocrites. Your conscious is hypocrisy.

To be truly honest with one's own memories one will have to really pass through arduous effort. And you have to be true, whatsoever. You have to be nakedly true, you have to know what really you think about your father, about your mother, about your brother, about your sister-really. And what you have in the past, don't mix, don't change, don't polish; let it be as it is. If this happens, then, Patanjali says, this will be a freedom. You will drop it. The whole thing is nonsense, and you will not like to project it again in the future.

And then you will not be a hypocrite. You will be real, true, sincere - you will become authentic. And when you become authentic, you become like a rock. Nothing can change you; nothing can create confusion.

You become like a sword. You can always cut whatsoever is wrong; you can divide whatsoever is right from the wrong. And then a clarity of mind is achieved. That clarity can lead you towards meditation; that clarity can become the basic ground to grow - to grow beyond.

The sutras:

The First sutra:

Pratyaksha, direct cognition, is the first source of right knowledge. Direct cognition means a face- to-face encounter without any mediator, without any medium, without any agent. When you know directly something, the knower faces the known immediately There is no one to relate it, no bridge. Then it is right knowledge. But then many problems arise.

Ordinarily, pratyaksha, direct cognition, has been translated, interpreted, commented, in a very wrong way. The very word pratyaksha means before the eyes, in front of the eyes. But eyes themselves are a mediation, the knower is hidden behind. Eyes are the mediums. You are hearing me, but this is not direct; this is not immediate. You are hearing me through the senses, through the ears. You are seeing me through the eyes.

Your eyes can wrongly report to you; your ears can wrongly report. No one should be believed; no mediator should be believed, because you cannot rely on the mediator. If your eyes are ill, they will report differently; if your eyes are drugged, they will report differently; if your eyes are filled with memory, they will report differently.

If you are in love, then you see something else. If you are not in love then you can never see that. An ordinary woman can become the most beautiful person in the world if you see through love. When your eyes are filled with love, then they report something else. And the same person can appear the ugliest if your eyes are filled with hate. They are not reliable.

You hear through the ears. Ears are just instruments, they can function wrongly; they can hear something which has not been said; they can miss something which was being said. Senses cannot be reliable; senses are just mechanical devices.

Then what is pratyaksha? Then what is direct cognition?

Direct cognition can only be when there is no mediator, not even senses. Patanjali says then it is right knowledge. This is the first basic source of right knowledge: when you know something and you need not depend on anybody else.

Only in deep meditation you transcend senses. Then direct cognition becomes possible. When Buddha comes to know his innermost being, that innermost being is pratyaksha; that is direct cognition. No senses are involved; nobody has reported it; there is no one like an agent. The knower and known are face to face. There is nothing in between. This is immediacy, and immediacy can only be true.

So the first right knowledge can only be that of the inner self. You may know the whole world, but if you have not known the innermost core of your being your whole knowledge is absurd. It is not really knowledge; it cannot be true, because the first, basic right knowledge, has not happened to you. Your whole edifice is false. You may know many things. If you have not known yourself, all your knowledge is based on reports, reports given by the senses. But how can you be certain that senses are reporting rightly?

In the night you dream. While dreaming you start believing in the dream, that it is true. Your senses are reporting the dream - your eyes are seeing it, your ears are hearing it, you may be touching it. Your senses are reporting to you; that's why you fall under the illusion that it is real. Here you are; it may be just a dream. How can you be certain that I am speaking to you in reality? It is possible it may be just a dream, you are dreaming me. Every dream is true while you dream.

Chuang Tzu once saw a dream that he has become a butterfly. And in the morning he was sad. And his disciples asked, "Why are you so sad?" Chuang Tzu said, "I am in trouble. In such a trouble I have never been before. This puzzle seems to be impossible; it cannot be solved. Last night I saw a dream that I have become a butterfly!"

The disciples laughed. They said, "What is there? This is not a riddle. A dream is just a dream." Chuang Tzu says, "But listen. I am troubled. If Chuang Tzu can dream that he has become a butterfly, a butterfly may be dreaming now that she has become Chuang Tzu. So how to decide whether I am now facing reality or again a dream? And if Chuang Tzu can become a butterfly, why can't a butterfly dream that she has become a Chuang Tzu?"

There is no impossibility; the reverse can occur. You cannot rely on the senses. In the dream they deceive you. If you take a drug, LSD or something, your senses start deceiving you; you start seeing things which are not there. They can deceive you to such an extent that you can start believing things so absolutely, that you may be in danger.

One girl jumped in New York from sixtieth floor because under LSD she thought now she can fly. Chuang Tzu was not wrong: the girl really flew out of the window. Of course, she died. But she will never be able to know that she has been deceived by her senses under the influence of the drug.

Even without drugs we have illusions. You are passing through a dark street, and suddenly you get scared - a snake is there. You start running, and later on you come to know that there was no snake, just a rope was Lying there. But when you felt that there was a snake, there was a snake. Your eyes were reporting that the snake is there and you behaved accordingly-you escaped from the place.

Senses cannot be believed. Then what is direct cognition? Direct cognition is something which is known without senses. So the first right knowledge can only be of the inner self because only there senses will not be needed. Everywhere else senses will be needed. If you want to see me you will have to see through the eyes, but if you want to see yourself, eyes are not needed. Even a blind man can see himself. If you want to see me light will be needed, but if you want to see yourself darkness is okay, light is not needed.

Even in the darkest cave you can know yourself. No medium - light, eyes, anything - is needed. The inner experience is immediate, and that immediate experience is the basis of all right knowledge.

Once you are rooted in that inner experience then many things will start happening to you. It will not be possible to understand them right now. One is rooted in his center, in his inner being, one has come to feel it as a direct experience, then senses cannot deceive him. He is awakened. Then eyes cannot deceive, then his ears cannot deceive, then nothing can deceive. Deception has dropped.

You can be deceived because you are living in delusion; you cannot be deceived once you have come to be a right knower. You cannot be deceived! Then everything by and by takes the shape of right knowledge. Once you know yourself, then whatsoever you know will fall automatically to be right because you are right now. This is the distinction to be remembered: if you are right, then everything becomes right; if you are wrong, then everything goes wrong. So it is not a question of doing something outside, it is a question of doing something inside.

You cannot deceive a Buddha - it is impossible. How can you deceive a Buddha? He is rooted in himself. You are transparent to him; you cannot deceive. Before you know, he knows you. Even a glimmer of thought in you is clearly seen by him. He penetrates you to your very being.

Your penetration goes to the same extent in others as it goes into yourself. If you can penetrate into yourself, to the same extent you can penetrate into everything. Deeper you move within, deeper you can move without. And you have not moved within even a single inch, so whatsoever you do outside is just like a dream.

Patanjali says the first source of right knowledge is immediate, direct cognition pratyaksha. He is not concerned with charvakas, old materialists, who said that pratyaksha, that which is before the eyes, is only true.

Because of this word pratyaksha, direct cognition, much misunderstanding has happened. The Indian school of materialists is charvaka. The source of Indian materialism was Brihaspati, a very penetrating thinker, but a thinker; a very profound philosopher, but a philosopher - not a realized soul. He says only pratyaksha is true, and by pratyaksha he means whatsoever you know is true - through the senses. And he says there is no way of knowing anything without the senses, so only sense knowledge is real for charvakas.

Hence, he denies there can be any God because no one has ever seen him. And that which can be seen can only be real; that which cannot be seen cannot be real. God is not because you cannot see; the soul is not because you cannot see. And he says, "If there is God, bring him before me so I can see. If I see, then he is, because only seeing is truth."

He also uses the word pratyaksha, direct cognition, but his meaning is totally different. When Patanjali uses the word pratyaksha, his meaning is on an altogether different level. He says knowledge not derived from any instrument, not derived from any medium, immediate, is true. And once this knowledge happens, you have become true. And now nothing false can happen to you. When you are true, authentically rooted in truth, then illusions become impossible.

That's why it is said Buddhas never dream; one who is awakened never dreams. Because even dream cannot happen to him; he cannot be deceived. He sleeps, but not like you. He sleeps in a totally different way the quality is different. Only his body sleeps, relaxes. His being remains alert.

And that alertness won't allow any dream to happen. You can dream only when alertness is lost. When you are not aware, when you are deeply hypnotized, then you start dreaming. Dream can happen only when you are completely unaware. More unawareness, more dreams will be there. More awareness, less dreams. Fully aware, no dream. Even dreaming becomes impossible for one who is rooted in himself, who has come to know the inner being immediately.

This is the first source of right knowledge.

Second source is inference. That is secondary, but that too is worth consideration because, as you are right now, you don't know whether there is a Self within or not. You have no direct knowledge of your inner being. What to do? There are two possibilities. You can simply deny that there is no inner core of your being, there is no soul, like charvakas do, or in the West, Epicurus, Marx Engels and others have done.

But Patanjali says that if you know, there is no need for inference, but if you don't know then too it will be helpful to infer. For example, Descartes, one of the greatest thinkers of the West, started his philosophical quest through doubt. He took the standpoint from the very beginning that he will not believe in anything which is not indubitable. That which can be doubted, he will doubt. And he will try to find out a point which can not be doubted, and only on that point he will create the whole edifice of his thinking. A beautiful quest - honest, arduous, dangerous.

So he denied God because you can doubt. Many have doubted, and no one has been able to answer their doubts. He went on denying. Whatsoever could be doubted, conceived to be dubitable, he denied. For years continuously he was in inner turmoil. Then he fell upon the point which was indubitable: he couldn't deny himself; that was impossible. You cannot say, "I am not." If you say it, your very saying proves that you are. So this was the basic rock - that "I cannot deny myself; I cannot say I am not. Who will say it? Even to doubt, I am needed."

This is inference. This is not direct cognition. This is through logic and argument, but it gives a shadow, it gives a glimpse, it gives you a possibility, an opening. And then Descartes had the rock, and on this rock a great temple can be built. One indubitable fact, and you can reach to the absolute truth. If you start with a doubtful thing, you will never reach anywhere. In the very base, doubt remains.

Patanjali says inference is the second source of right knowledge. Right logic, right doubting, right argument can give you something which can help towards real knowledge. That he calls inference, anuman. Directly you have not seen, but everything proves it; it must be so. Situational proofs are there that it must be so.

For example, you look around the vast universe. You may not be able to conceive there is a God, but you cannot deny - even through simple inference you cannot deny - that the whole world is a system, a coherent whole, a design. That cannot be denied. The design is so apparent, even science cannot deny. Rather, on the contrary, science goes on finding more and more designs, more and more laws.

If the world is just an accident, then science is impossible. But the world doesn't seem to be an accident, it seems to be planned, and it is running according to certain laws, and those laws are never broken.

Patanjali will say that design in the universe cannot be denied, and if once you feel there is a design, the designer has entered. But that is an inference; you have not known him directly - but the design of the universe, the planning, the laws, the order. And the order is so superb! It is so minute, so superb, so infinite! The order is there; everything is humming with an order, a musical harmony of the whole universe. Someone seems to be hidden behind, but that's an inference.

Patanjali says inference also can be a help towards right knowledge, but it has to be right inference. Logic is dangerous; it is double-edged. You can use logic wrongly; then too you will reach conclusions.

For example, I told you that the plan is there, the design is there; the world has an order, a beautiful order, perfect. Right inference will be that there seems to be somebody's hand behind it. We may not be directly aware, we may not be in direct touch with that hand but a hand seems to be there, hidden. This is the right inference.

But from the same premises you can infer wrongly also. There have been thinkers who have said... Diderot has said that, "Because of order I cannot believe there is God. In the world there seems to be perfect order. Because of this order, I cannot believe in God." What is his logic? He says if there is a person behind, then there cannot be so much order. If a person is behind it, then he must commit sometimes mistakes. Sometimes whimsical he must go, crazy, sometimes he must change. Laws cannot be so perfect if someone is behind. Laws can be perfect if there is no one behind and they are simply mechanical.

That too has an appeal. If everything goes perfectly, it looks mechanical because about man, it is said, to err is human. If some person is there, then he must err sometimes - he will get bored with so much perfection. And sometimes he must like to change.

The water boils at hundred degrees. It has been boiling at hundred degrees for millennia, always and always. God must get bored, if someone is behind, Diderot says. So just for a change, one day he will say, "Now, from onwards the water will boil at ninety degrees." But it has never happened, so there seems to be no person.

Both arguments look perfect. But Patanjali says right inference is that which gives you possibilities of growth. It is not a question whether the logic is perfect or not. The question is your conclusion should become an opening. If there is no God, it becomes a closing. Then you cannot grow. If you conclude there is some hidden hand, the world becomes a mystery. And then you are not here just by accident. Then your life becomes meaningful. Then you are part of a great scheme. Then something is possible; you can do something you can rise in awareness.

A right inference means one which can give you growth, that which can give you growth; a wrong inference is that, howsoever perfect looking, which closes your growth. Inference can also be a source of right knowledge. Even logic can be used to be a source of right knowledge, but you have to be very aware what you are doing. If you are just logical, you may commit suicide through it. Logic can become a suicide. It becomes for many.

Just a few days before one seeker was here from California. He traveled long. He had come to meet me. And then he said, "Before I meditate or before you tell me to meditate, I have heard, that whosoever comes to you, you push into meditation, so before you push me in, I have got questions." He had at least a list of hundred questions. I think he has not left any that is possible - about God, about soul, about truth, about heaven, hell and everything - a sheet full of questions. He said, "Unless you solve these questions first, I am not going to meditate."

He is logical in a way because he says, "Unless my questions are answered how can I meditate? Unless I feel confident that you are right, you have answered my doubts, how I can go in some direction you show and indicate? You may be wrong. So you can prove your rightness only if my doubts disappear."

And his doubts are such they cannot disappear. This is the dilemma: if he meditates they can disappear, but he says he will meditate only when these doubts are not there. What to do? He says, "First prove there is God. No one has ever proved, no one can ever prove. That doesn't mean that God is not there, but he cannot be proved. He is not a small thing which can be proved or disproved. It is such a vital thing, you have to live it to know it. No proof can help.

But he is right logically. He says, "Unless you prove how I can start? If there is no soul, who is going to meditate? So first prove that there is a self, then I can meditate."

This man is committing suicide. No one will be ever able to answer him. He has created all the barriers, and through these barriers he will not be able to grow. But he is logical. What should I do with such a person? If I start answering his questions, a person who can create a hundred doubts can create millions, because doubting is a way, a style of mind. You can answer one question through your answer he will create ten more questions because the mind remains the same.

He looks for doubts, and if I answer logically I am helping his logical mind to be fed, to be more strengthened. I am feeding. That will not help. He has to be brought out of his logicalness.

So I told him that, "Have you ever been in love?" He said, "But why? You are changing the subject." I said, "I will come to your points, but suddenly it has become very meaningful to me to ask have you ever loved." He said, "Yes!" His face changed. I asked, "But you loved before or before falling in love you doubted the whole phenomenon?"

Then he was disturbed. He was uncomfortable. He said, "No, I never thought about it. I simply had fallen in love, and then only I became aware." So I said, "You do the opposite. First think about love, whether love is possible, whether love exists, whether love can exist. And first let it be proved, and make it a condition unless it is proved you will not love anybody."

He said, "What you are saying? You will destroy my life. If I make this a condition, then I cannot love." But, I told him, "This is the same you are doing. Meditation is just like love. You have to know it first. God is just like love. That's why Jesus goes on saying that God is love. It is just like love. First one has to experience."

A logical mind can be closed, and so logically, that he will never feel that he has closed his own doors of all possibilities for all growth. So inference, anuman, means thinking in such a way that growth is helped. Then it can become a source of right knowledge.

And the third is most beautiful. And nowhere else it has been made a source of right knowledge - words of the awakened ones, agama. There has been a long controversy about this third source. Patanjali says you can know directly, then it is okay. You can infer rightly, then too you are on the right path and you will reach the source.

But there are few things you cannot infer even, and you have not known. But you are not the first on this earth, you are not the first seeker. Millions have been seeking for millions of ages - and not only on this planet, but on other planets also. The search is eternal and many have arrived. They have reached the goal, they have entered the temple. Their words are also a source of right knowledge.

Agama means 'the words of those who have known.' Buddha says something or Jesus says something... We don't know what he is saying. We have not experienced that, so we have no way of judging it. 'We don't know what or how to infer rightly through his words. And the words are contradictory, so you can infer anything you like.

Few are there who think Jesus was neurotic. Western psychiatrists have been trying to prove that he was neurotic, he was a maniac. These claims that, "I am the son of God, and the only son," - he was mad, an egomaniac, neurotic. It can be proved that he was neurotic because there are many neurotic people who claim such things. You can find out. In madhouses there are many people.

In Baghdad it happened once. Caliph Omar was the king, and one man declared on the streets of Baghdad that "I am the Paigamber, I am the messenger, I am the prophet. And now Mohammed is cancelled because I am here. I am the last word, the last message from the divine. And now there is no need for Mohammed, he is just out of date. He was the messenger up to now, but now I have come. You can forget Mohammed."

It was not a Hindu country. Hindus can tolerate everything; no one has tolerated like Hindus. They can tolerate everything because they say, "Unless we know exactly, we cannot say 'yes', we cannot say 'no'. He may be the messenger, who knows?"

But Mohammedans are different, very dogmatic. They cannot tolerate. So Caliph Omar, having caught the new prophet, threw him in the jail and told him that, "Twenty-four hours are being given to you. Reconsider. If you say you are not the prophet, Mohammed is the prophet, then you will be released. If you insist in your madness, then after twenty-four hours I will come to the jail and you will be killed."

The man laughed. He said, "Look! This is written in the scriptures - that prophets will always be treated like this, as you are treating me." He was logical. Mohammed himself was treated like that, so this is nothing new. The man said to Omar, "This is nothing new. This is how things are naturally going to be. And I am not in any position to reconsider. I am not the authority, I am just the messenger. Only God can change. In twenty-four hours you can come, you will find me the same. Only he can change who has appointed me."

While this talk was going on, another madman, who was chained to a pillar, started laughing. So Omar asked, "Why are you laughing?" He said, "This man is absolutely wrong. I never appointed him! I cannot allow this. After Mohammed I have not sent any messenger."

In every madhouse these people are there, and Jesus can be proved that he is a similar case.

And the words are so contradictory and illogical. And every person who has known is compelled to speak contradictorily, paradoxically, because the truth is such, it can be expressed only through paradoxes. Their statements are not clear; they are mysterious. And you can conclude anything out of them if you infer. You infer. Your mind is there; the inference is going to be your inference.

So Patanjali says, a third source. You don't know. If you know directly, then there is no question, then there is no need of any other source. If you have direct cognition, then there is no need for inference, or for the words of the enlightened ones, you yourself have become enlightened. Then you can drop the two other sources. But if this has not happened, then inference, but inference will be yours. If you are mad, then your inference will be mad. Then the third source is worth trying - the words of the enlightened ones.

You cannot prove them, you cannot disprove them. You can only have a trust, and that trust is hypothetical; it is very scientific. In science also you cannot proceed without a hypothesis. But hypothesis is not belief. It is just a working arrangement. A hypothesis is just a direction; you will have to experiment. And if the experiment proves right, then the hypothesis becomes a theory. If the experiment goes wrong, then the hypothesis is discarded. The words of the enlightened ones are to be taken on trust, as a hypothesis. Then work them out in your life. If they prove true, then the hypothesis has become a faith; if they prove false, then the hypothesis has to be discarded.

You go to a Buddha. He will say, 'Wait! Be patient, meditate, and for two years don't ask any question." This you have to take on trust; there is no other way.

You can think, "This man may be just deceiving me. Then my two years life is wasted. If after two years it is proved that this man was just hocus-pocus, just a deceiver, or self-deceived - in an illusion that he has become enlightened - then my two years are wasted." But there is no other way. You have to take the risk. And if without trusting Buddha you remain there, these two years will be useless - because unless you trust you cannot work. And the work is so intense that if you have trust only can you move wholly into it, totally into it. If you don't have trust, then you go on withholding something. And that withholding will not allow you to experience what Buddha is indicating

Risk is there, but life itself is risk. For higher life, higher risks will be there. You move on a dangerous path. But remember, there is only one error in life, and that is not moving at all; that is just afraid, sitting, just afraid if you move something may go wrong, so it is better to wait and sit. This is the only error. You will not be in danger, but no growth will be possible.

Patanjali says there are things which you do not know, there are things which your logic cannot infer. You have to take on trust. Because of this third source, the guru, the Master, becomes a necessity, someone who knows. And you have to take the risk, and I say it is a risk, because there is no guarantee. The whole thing may prove just a wastage, but it is better to take the risk, because even if it is proved a wastage, you have learned much. Now no other person will be able to deceive you so easily. At least you have learned this much.

And if you move with trust, if you move totally & follow a Buddha like a shadow, things may start happening, because they have happened to the person: to this Gautam Buddha, to Jesus, to Mahavira. They have happened, and they know the path; they have traveled. If you argue with them, you will be the loser. They cannot be the losers. They will simply leave you aside.

In this [last] century this has happened with Gurdjieff. So many people were attracted towards him, but he would create such a situation for the new disciples that unless they can trust totally, they will have to leave immediately - unless they can trust even in absurdities. And those absurdities were planned. Gurdjieff will go on lying. In the morning he will say something, in the afternoon something else. And you are not to ask! He will shatter your logical mind completely.

In the morning he will say, "Dig this ditch. And this is a must! By the evening this must be complete. And the whole day you have been digging it. You have exerted, you are tired, you will be perspiring, you have not taken food, and by evening he comes and he says, "Throw the mud back in the ditch! And before you go to bed it has to be completed."

Now even an ordinary mind will say, 'What do you mean? The whole day I have wasted. And I was thinking it was something very necessary, by the evening it has to be completed, and now you say, "Throw the mud back!" If you ask such a thing, Gurdjieff will say, "You simply leave! You go away! I am not for you; you are not for me."

The ditch or the digging is not the thing. What he is trying is whether you can trust him even when he is absurd. And once he knows that you can trust him and you can move with him wherever he leads, only then real things will follow. Then the test is over; you have been examined and found authentic - a real seeker who can work and who can trust. And then real things can happen to you, never before.

Patanjali is a Master, and this third source he knows very well through his own experience with thousands and thousands of disciples. He must have worked with many, many disciples and seekers, only then it is possible to write such a treatise as YOGA SUTRAS. It is not by a thinker. It is by one who has experimented with many types of minds and who has penetrated with many many layers of minds, every type of person who has worked. This he makes the third source: the words of the awakened ones.

 

The Second sutra:

If you are a Hindu and someone is introduced to you, and said that he is a Mohammedan, immediately you have taken a wrong attitude that this man must be wrong. If you are a Christian and someone is introduced as a Jew, you are not going to dig this man; you are not going to enter this particular man. Just by saying, "a Jew", your prejudice has come in; you have already known this man. Now there is no need, you know what type of man is this - a Jew.

You have a preconception, a prejudiced mind, and this prejudiced mind gives you wrong knowledge. All Jews are not bad. Neither are all Christians good, nor all are Mohammedans bad. Neither are all Hindus good. Really, goodness and badness doesn't belong to any race, it belongs to persons, individuals. There may be bad Mohammedans, bad Hindus; good Mohammedans, good Hindus. Goodness and badness does not belong to any nation, to any race, to any culture, it belongs to individuals, personalities. But that's difficult, to face a person without any prejudice. And you will have a revelation.

Once it happened to me. I was traveling. I entered my compartment. And many people had come to see me off, so the person who was in the compartment, another passenger, he immediately touched my feet and he said, "You must be a great saint. So many persons have come to see you off!"

So I told that man that, "I am a Mohammedan. I may be a great saint, but I am a Mohammedan." He felt shocked! He has touched a Mohammedan's feet, and he was a Brahmin! He started perspiring; he was nervous. He looked again and he said, "No, you are joking." Just to console himself he said, "You are joking." I said, "I am not joking. Why I should joke? You must have inquired before you touched my feet!"

Then we were both together in the compartment. Again and again he will look at me and will take a long, deep breath. He must have been thinking to go and take a bath. But he is not encountering me. I am there, and he is concerned with a concept of "Mohammedan" and he is a Brahmin, he has become impure by touching me.

Nobody encounters things, persons, as they are. You have a prejudice. These prejudices create viparyaya; these prejudices create wrong knowledge. Whatsoever you think, if you have not freshly come upon the fact it is going to be wrong. Don't bring your past, don't bring your prejudices. Put aside your mind and encounter the fact. Just see whatsoever there is to be seen. Do not project.

We go on projecting. Our mind is just completely filled and fixed from the very childhood. Everything has been given to us ready-made, and through that readymade knowledge our whole life becomes an illusion. You never meet a real person, you never see a real flower. Just by hearing "This is a rose" you say, "Beautiful!" mechanically. You have not felt the beauty; you have not sensed the beauty; you have not touched this flower. Just "Rose is beautiful" is in your mind; the moment you hear "rose", the mind projects and says, "It is beautiful!"

And you may believe that you have come to feel that the rose is beautiful; this is not so. This is false. Just look. That's why children come to things more deeply than grown-up people - because they do not know names. They are not yet prejudiced. If a rose is beautiful, then only it will be beautiful; all roses are not beautiful. Children come nearer to things, their eyes are fresh. They see things as they are because they don't know how to project anything.

But we are always in a hurry to make them grown-ups, to make them adults. We are filling their mind with knowledge, information. This is one of the recent-most discoveries of psychologists, that when children enter into school they have more intelligence than when they leave the university. Latest findings prove this. In the first grade, when children enter, they have more intelligence. They will have less and less intelligence as they grow in knowledge.

And by the time they become bachelors and masters and doctors, they are finished. When they come back with a doctor's degree, a Ph.D., they have left their intelligence somewhere in the university. They are dead, filled with knowledge, crammed with knowledge, but this knowledge is just false - a prejudice about everything. Now they cannot feel things directly, they cannot feel live persons directly, they cannot live directly, everything has become verbal, wordy. It is not real now; it has become mental.

Put aside your prejudices, knowledge, conceptions, preformulated information, and look fresh, become a child again. And this has to be done moment-to-moment because every moment you are gathering.

One of the oldest yoga aphorisms is: 'Die every moment so you can be reborn every moment.' Die every moment to the past, throw all the dust that you have collected, and look afresh. But this has to be done continuously, because next moment the dust has gathered again.

Nan-in was in search of a Zen Master when he was a seeker. He lived with his Master for many years, and then the Master said, "Everything is okay. You have almost achieved." But he said "almost", so Nan-in said, "What do you mean?" The Master said, "I will have to send you for a few days to another Master. That will do the last finishing touch."

Nan-in was very much excited. He said, "Send me immediately!" A letter was given to him, and he was so excited, he thought he was being sent to someone who was a greater Master than his own. But when he reached to the man, he was no one, just a keeper of an inn, a doorkeeper of an inn.

He felt very much disappointed and he thought, "This must be some sort of a joke. This man is going to be my last Master? He is going to give me the finishing touch?" But he had come, so he thought, "It is better to be here for a few days, at least rest, then I will go back. It was a long journey." So he said to the inn-keeper, "My Master has given this letter."

The innkeeper said, "But I cannot read, so you can keep your letter; it is not needed. And you can be here." Nan-in said, "But I have been sent to learn something from you."

The innkeeper said, "I am just an innkeeper, I am not a Master, I am not a teacher. There must have been some misunderstanding. You may have come to a wrong person. I am just an innkeeper. I cannot teach; I don't know anything. But when you have come, you can just watch me. That may be helpful. You rest and watch."

But there was nothing to watch. In the morning he will open the door of the inn. Then guests will come and he will clean their things - the pots, the utensils and everything - and he will serve. And in the night again, when everybody has gone and the guests have gone to sleep to their beds, he will clean things again, pots, utensils, everything. And in the morning, again the same.

By the third day, Nan-in was bored. And he said "There is nothing to watch. You go on cleaning utensils you go on doing ordinary work, so I must leave." The doorkeeper laughed, but said nothing.

Nan-in came back, was very angry with his Master and said, "Why? Why I was sent for such a long journey, tedious it was, and the man was just a doorkeeper? And he didn't teach me anything, and he simply said, 'Watch,' and there was nothing to watch."

But the Master said, "Still, you were there for three four days. Even if there was nothing to watch, you must have watched. What you were doing?" So he said, "I was watching. In the night he will clean the utensils, pots, put everything there, and in the morning he was again cleaning."

The Master said, "This, this is the teaching! This is for what you were sent! He had cleaned those pots in the night, but in the morning he was again cleaning those clean pots. What does it mean? Because even by the night, when nothing has happened, they have become unclean again, some dust has settled again. So you may be pure: now you are. You may be innocent, but every moment you have to continue cleaning. You may not do anything, still you become impure just by the passage of time. Moment to moment, just the passage, not doing anything, just sitting under a tree, you become unclean. And that uncleanliness is not because you were doing something bad or something wrong, it happens just through the passage of time. Dust collects. So you go on cleaning, and this is the last touch, because I feel you have become proud that you are pure, and now you are not worried of constant effort to clean."

Moment to moment one has to die and be reborn again. Only then you are freed from wrong knowledge.

 

The Third Sutra:

Imagination is just through words, verbal structures. You create a thing - it is not there, it is not a reality. But you create it through your mental images. And you can create it to such an extent that you yourself become deceived by it and you think it is real. This happens in hypnosis. Hypnotize a person and say anything; he conjures up the image, and that image becomes real. You can do it. You are doing it in many ways.

One of the most famous American actresses, Greta Garbo, has written a memoir. She was an ordinary girl, just a homely, ordinary girl, very poor, and working in a barber shop just for few annas, and she would put soap on the customers' faces. For three years she was doing that.

One day one American film director was there in that barber shop, and she was putting soap on his face, and just the way Americans are - he may not have even meant it - he simply looked in the mirror, the reflection of the girl, and said, "How beautiful!" And Greta Garbo was born that very moment!

She writes: suddenly she became different; she had never thought herself beautiful; she couldn't conceive of it. And she has never heard anybody saying that she was beautiful. For the first time she also looked in the mirror and the face was different - this man has made her beautiful. And the whole life changed. She followed the man and became a most famous film actress.

What happened? Just a hypnosis, a hypnosis through a word "beautiful" - worked. It works; it becomes chemical. Everybody believes something about himself. That belief becomes reality because that belief starts working on you.

Imagination is a force, but it is a conjured-up force, imagined force. You can use it and you can be used by it. If you can use it, it will be helpful, but if you are used by it, it is fatal, it is dangerous. Imagination can become madness any moment; imagination can be helpful if through it, you create a situation for your inner growth and crystallization.

But it is through words, a conjured-up thing. For human beings, words, language, verbal constructions have become so significant that nothing is more significant now. If suddenly someone says, "Fire!" the word "fire will change you immediately. There may be no fire, you will stop listening to me. There will be no effort to stop; suddenly you will stop listening to me, you will start running here and there. The word "fire" has taken imagination.

And you are influenced by words that way. The people in the advertisement business know what words to use to conjure up images. Through those words they catch you, they capture the whole market. There are many such words. They go on changing with the fashions.

For these few years, "new" is the word. So everything, if you look in the advertisements, is "new" - "new" Lux Soap. "Lux Soap" won't do. The "new" appeals immediately. Everybody is for the new; everybody is searching for the new, something new, because everybody is bored with the old. So anything new has appeal. That may not be better than the old, may be worse, but just the word "new" opens vistas in the mind.

These words and their influence have to be understood deeply. For a person who is in search of the truth he must be aware of the influence of words. Politicians, advertisement people, they are using words and they can create, through words, such imagination that you can even put your life - you can throw your life just for words.

What are these: "nation", "the national flag" - just words! "Hinduism" - you can say, "hinduism is in danger," and suddenly many people are ready to do something or even to die. Just few words. Our nation is insulted. What is "our nation"? Just words. A flag is nothing but a piece of cloth, but a whole nation can die for the flag because someone has insulted the flag, lowered it. What nonsense goes on in this world because of words! Words are dangerous. They have deep sources of influence within you. They trigger something in you, and you can be captured.

Imagination has to be understood, Patanjali says, because on the path of meditation words will have to be dropped so that influence by others can be dropped. Remember, words are taught by others; you are not born with words. They are taught to you, and through words many prejudices. Through words religion, through words myths - everything is fed. Word is the medium, the vehicle of culture, society, information.

You cannot excite animals to fight for a nation. You cannot excite because they don't know what "nation" is. That's why there are no wars in the animal kingdom. There are no wars, no flags, no temples, no mosques. And if animals can look at us, they are bound to think that man has some obsession with words, because wars go on around it; millions are killed just because of words.

Someone is a Jew, "Kill him - just the word "Jew". Change the label, he becomes a Christian, and then there is no need to kill. But he is not ready to change the label. He will say, "I will like to be killed but I cannot change my label. I am a Jew." He is also adamant; others are also adamant. But just words.

Jean-Paul Sartre has written his autobiography and he has given it the title, "Words". It is beautiful because as far as mind is concerned the whole autobiography of any mind consists of words and nothing else. And Patanjali says that one has to be aware of this, because on the path of meditation, words have to be left behind. Nations, religions, scriptures, languages, they have to be left behind and man has to become innocent, freed of words. When you are free of words there will be no imagination, and when there is no imagination you can face truth. Otherwise, you will go on creating.

If you come to meet God, you must meet him without any words. If you have some words, he may not fit and suit your idea. Because if a Hindu thinks he has one thousand hands, and if God comes only with two hands, a Hindu, he will reject: "You are not a God at all. Only with two hands? God has a thousand hands. Show me your other hands. Only then I can believe you."

It happened: One of the most beautiful persons of this past century was Sai Baba of Shirdi. He had a friend and a follower. Sai Baba was a Mohammedan. Or no one knows whether he was a Mohammedan or a Hindu, but he lived in a mosque, so it was believed he was a Mohammedan. And a Hindu follower was there, who loved, respected, has much faith in Sai Baba. Every day he will come for his darshan, and without seeing him he will not go. Sometimes it will happen that for the whole day he will have to wait, but without seeing he will not go, and he will not take food unless he has seen Sai Baba.

Once it happened the whole day passed, there was much gathering and much crowd - he couldn't enter. When everybody has gone, just in the night he touched the feet.

Sai Baba said to him, "Why you unnecessarily wait? There is no need to see me here, I can come there. And drop this from tomorrow. Now I will do. Before you take your food you will see me every day."

The disciple was very happy. So next day he was waiting and waiting; nothing happened. Many things happened really, but nothing happened according to his conception. By the evening he was very angry. He has not taken the food, and Sai Baba has not appeared so he went again. He said, "You promise and you don't fulfill?"

Sai Baba said, "But I appeared thrice, not even once. First time I came, I was a beggar and you said to me, 'Move away! Don't come here!' Second time I came I was an old woman, and you just won't look at me; you closed your eyes-because the disciple had the habit of not seeing women; he was practicing not seeing women, so he closed the eyes. Sai Baba said, "I had come, but what do you expect? Should I enter your eyes, closed eyes? I was standing there, but you closed the eyes. The moment you saw me, you closed the eyes. Then third time I reached as a dog, and you won't allow me in. With a stick you were standing in the door."

And these three things had happened. And these things have been happening to whole humanity. The divine comes in many forms, but you have a prejudice; you have a pre-formulated conception; you cannot see. He must appear according to you, and he never appears according to you. And he will never appear according to you. You cannot be the rule for him and you cannot put any conditions.

When all imagination falls, only then truth appears. Otherwise, imagination goes on making conditions and truth cannot appear. Only in a naked mind, in a nude, empty mind, truth appears, because you cannot distort it.

 

 

The Fourth Sutra:

This is the definition of sleep, the fourth modification of the mind: when there is no content. Mind is always with content, except sleep. Something or other is there. Some thought is moving, some passion is moving, some desire is moving, some memory, some future imagination, some word, something is moving. Something continues continuously. Only when you are fast asleep, deep asleep, contents stop. Mind disappears, and you are in yourself without any content.

This has to be remembered because this is going to be the state of samadhi also, with only one difference: you will be aware. In sleep, you are unaware, mind goes completely to non-existence. You are alone, left alone - no thought, just your being. But you are not aware. Mind is not there to disturb you, but you are not aware.

Otherwise sleep can become enlightenment. Contentless consciousness is there, but the consciousness is not alert. It is hidden - just in a seed. In samadhi, the seed is broken; the consciousness becomes alert. And when consciousness is alert and there is no content, this is the goal. Sleep with awareness is the goal.

This is the fourth modification of the mind - sleep. But that goal, sleep with awareness, is not a modification of the mind, it is beyond mind. Awareness is beyond mind. If you can join sleep and awareness together, you have become enlightened. But it is difficult because even when we are awake in the day we are not alert. Even when we are awake, we are not awake. The word is false. When we sleep how can we be awake? When we are awake we are not awake.

So one has to start from the day when you are awake. You have to be more awake, more and more intensely awake. And then you have to try with dreams: in dream you have to be alert. Only if you succeed with the waking state, then with the dreaming state, then you will be able to succeed with the third state of sleep.

Try first walking on the street. Try to be awake. Just don't go on walking automatically, mechanically. Be alert of every movement, of every breath that you take. Exhale, inhale - be alert. Of every eye movement you are doing, of every person you look at, be alert. What you are doing, be alert and do it with alertness.

And then in the night, while you are falling asleep, try to remain alert. The last phase of the day will be passing; memories will be floating. Remain alert, and try to fall asleep with alertness. It will be difficult, but if you try, within a few weeks, you will have a glimpse: you are asleep and alert. Even for a single moment, and it is so beautiful, it is so bliss-filled, that you will never be the same again.

And then you will not say that sleep is just wasting time. It can become the most precious sadhana, because when the waking state goes and the sleeping starts there is a change, a change of gears inside. It is just like change of gears in a car. When you change gears from one gear to another, for a single moment, between these two, there is a neutral gear, there is no gear. That moment of neutrality is very significant.

The same happens in the mind. When from waking you move to the sleep, there is a moment when you are neither awake nor asleep. In that moment there is no gear, mechanism is not functioning. Your automatic personality is nullified in that moment. In that moment your old habits will not force you in a certain pattern. In that moment you can escape and become alert.

This moment in India has been called sandhya, the moment in between. There are two sandhyas, two in-between moments: one in the night when you go from the waking to sleep, and another in the morning when you again move from sleep to waking. And these two Hindus have called the moments of prayer, sandhyaka! - the period in between because then your personality is not there for a single moment. In that single moment you are pure, innocent. If in that moment you can become alert, your whole life will have changed. You have put a base for transformation.

And then try, in the dream state, to be alert. There are methods how to be alert in a dream state. Do one thing, if you want to try... First try in the waking. When you succeed in the waking, then you will be able to succeed in the dreaming. Because dreaming is deeper, more effort will be needed. And difficult also, because what to do in a dream and how to do?

For the dreaming, Gurdjieff developed a beautiful method. It is one of the old Tibetan methods, and Tibetan seekers have worked very deeply into the dreamworld. The method is, just falling into sleep, you try to remember one thing, any one thing, just a rose flower. Just visualize a rose flower. And just go on thinking that you will see it in the dream. Visualize it and go on thinking that in the dream, whatsoever the dream, this rose flower must be there. Visualize its color, its scent - everything. Feel it so it will become alive inside you. And with that rose flower, fall into sleep.

Within few days you will be able to bring that flower into your dream. This is a great success because now you have created at least a part of the dream. Now you are the master. At least one part of the dream, the flower, has come. And the moment you see the flower, you will immediately remember this is a dream.

There is no other need. The flower and "This is a dream" have become associated because you have created the flower in the dream. And you were thinking continuously for this flower to appear in the dream, and the flower has appeared. Immediately you will recognize this is a dream, and the whole quality of the dream will change, the flower-dream and everything around the dream. You have become alert.

And then you can enjoy the dream in a new way, just like a film, and then if you want to stop the dream you can simply stop, put off. But that will take a little more time and more practice. And then you can create your own dreams. There is no need to be a victim of dreams. You can create your own dreams; you can live your own dreams. You can have a theme just before you fall into sleep; you can direct your dreams just like a film director. And you can create a theme out of it.

Tibetans have used dream creations, because through dream creation you can change your total mind, the structure. And when you succeed in dreams, then you can succeed in sleep. But there is no technique for sleep because there is no content. A technique can work only with a content. Because there is no content, no technique can help. But through dream you will learn to be aware, and that awareness can be carried on into the sleep.

The 5th & Last Sutra:

These are definitions. He is clarifying things so later on you need not get mixed up. What is memory? - calling up of past experiences. Continuously, memory is happening. Whenever you see something, immediately memory comes in and distorts it. You have seen me before. You see me again, immediately memory comes in. If you had seen me five years before, then the picture of five years, the past picture, will come into your eyes and fill your eyes. And you will see me through that picture.

That's why, if you have not seen your friend for many days, the moment you see you immediately say, "You are looking very thin," or "You are looking very unhealthy," or "You have gathered fat." Immediately! Why? Because you are comparing; the memory has come in. The man himself is not aware that he has gathered fat or he has become thin, but you become aware because immediately you can compare. The past, the last picture comes in, and immediately you can compare.

And this memory is continuously there, being projected on everything you see. This past memory has to be dropped. It should not be a constant interference in your knowing because it doesn't allow you to know the new. You always know in the pattern of the old. It doesn't allow you to feel the new, it makes everything old and rotten. Because of this memory, everybody is bored; the whole humanity is bored. Look at anybody's face, he is bored, bored to death. There is nothing new, no ecstasy.

Why children are so ecstatic? And for such simple things you cannot imagine how this ecstasy is happening. Just for few colored stones on the beach and they start dancing. What is happening to them? Why you cannot dance? Because you know those are just stones; your memory is there. For those children there is no memory, those stones are a new phenomenon - as if they have reached to the moon.

I was reading when the first man reached the moon all over the world there was excitement. And everybody was looking on their TV's, but within fifteen minutes, everybody was bored, finished. What to do now? The man is walking on the moon. After just fifteen minutes and this dream has taken millions of years to reach there... And nobody is now interested what is happening.

Everything becomes old. Immediately it becomes memory, it becomes old. If you can drop your memories! Dropping doesn't mean that you cease to remember, dropping only means this constant interference. When you need, you can pull it back to the focus. When you don't need it, just let it be there silently, not coming continuously.

Past, if continuously present, will not allow present to be. And if you miss present, you miss all.