Witnessing the Inner Astronomy (and, more)

Nabhi chakre kaya vyuha gyanam.

   
The navel center is the center of your body, because it is through the navel center that you were fed by your mother in the womb. For nine months you existed only by the navel center. You were connected with the navel; that was the passage, the bridge. And when the navel center was disconnected from the mother and the cord was cut, you became an independent being. Your navel is tremendously significant as far as the body is concerned.

”By performing samyama on the navel, knowledge of the organization of the body is gained.”

And the body is a great, complicated mechanism, very delicate. In your single body there are millions of cells; in your small head there are millions of nerves. Scientists have developed many complicated mechanisms, but nothing to compare with the human body – and there seems to be no possibility that they will ever be able to create such a complicated mechanism, and functioning so well. It is a miracle. And functioning so automatically; and continuously it functions for seventy or even a hundred years.

Everything is made as if it is perfect. It is a self-perpetuating system: eats; whenever you are hungry, creates hunger; when you have eaten well, gives you an indication – stop; digests; makes blood and bones and the marrow; and continuously goes on cleaning itself because so many cells are dying every moment they have to be thrown out. Creating, cleaning, maintaining itself; and that everything is automatic.

If you follow a natural way of life, the body functions so beautifully, it hums so beautifully.

By knowing the navel center, you will be able to know the whole mechanism of the body. That’s how yoga physiology was known. It has been known not from the outside; it has not been known by postmortem reports. Because yoga says when a man is dead, whatsoever you know about him is not true about a man who is alive. Because a dead man is totally different than an alive man. Now scientists are coming to guess it, that the postmortem at the most is a guess; because when a man is dead the body functions one way and when a man is alive it functions differently, so whatsoever we know about the dead body is, at the most, approximately true about the living body but not exactly true.

Yoga came to know from the inside. Yoga discovered the physiology with full life and awareness. That’s why there are many things which yoga talks about and modern physiology will not agree, because modern physiology is of a dead man, of a corpse, and yoga is concerned with life.

Just think. When the electricity is flowing through the wires you cut the wires; then you will have one experience. When the electricity has stopped flowing then cut the wires; you will have another experience. And these are totally different.

You dissect a dead body. You cannot dissect an alive body because by the time you dissect, it will be dead. So one day or other, physiologists have to agree with yoga research that if you want to know the alive body, when the electricity is flowing and one is vital, then somehow one has to go deep within oneself and from there, from that vantage point of view, one has to know what the body is, how it is arranged.

When you go in a dead body, it is going in a house whose owner has left it. You may come across furniture, but you will not come across the owner. When you go inside a house when the owner is there, he fills, his presence fills, the whole house. When you are present in the body, your presence is making every cell qualitatively different. When you are gone, then just a dead thing is left, just matter.


These are the inner investigations. Yoga came to know that if you are hungry, the hunger is not exactly in the stomach. When you are thirsty, it is not exactly in the throat. The stomach gives the information to the brain, and then the brain gives the information to you; it has some indications. For example, when you are feeling thirsty, the brain makes your throat feel thirsty. When the water is needed in the body, the brain creates a symptom in the throat, and you feel thirsty. When you need food, the brain creates something in the stomach, and you have the hunger pangs.

But you can deceive the brain very easily: you can drink water with sugar. Because the brain understands the language of the sugar only. So if you eat sugar, or drink sugar, immediately the brain thinks now there is no need; the hunger disappears. That’s why people who eat too many sweets lose their appetite. Just a small quantity of sugar is not going to nourish you, but the brain has been befooled by you. Sugar is the language. Immediately the brain thinks the sugar level has risen high, finished. It thinks as if you have eaten well and through the food the sugar level has risen high. You have simply taken a sugar pill; that is a deception.

Yoga came to know that by bringing samyama to certain centers things can disappear. For example, if you bring samyama to the throat, you will feel thirst has gone and hunger has gone. That’s how yogis could fast so long. It is said about Mahavir that he fasted sometimes even three months, four months, continuously. During the whole period of twelve years while he was meditating, he fasted almost eleven years. Three months he will fast, and then one day he will eat, then again one month he will fast, and two days he will eat; this way. In twelve years it adds up to only one year when he was eating; that means in twelve days, one day of eating, eleven days of fasting, average.

How did he do it? How could he do it? It is almost impossible, humanly impossible. Yoga has some secrets.

If you concentrate on the throat.... Try. Next time you feel thirsty, close your eyes, sit, and bring your total attention in the throat. Once the attention is there, you will see the throat is relaxing. Because whenever your total attention is at any point, you become separate from it. The throat is thirsty: you feel I am thirsty. If you bring your witnessing consciousness to it, suddenly you are separate. Your cooperation is broken. Now you know the throat is thirsty, not I. And how can a throat be thirsty without you?

How can the body be hungry without you? Have you ever seen a dead man hungry or thirsty? Even if all the water disappears and evaporates from the body, a dead man will not feel thirst. Identification is needed.

Try it. Next time you feel hungry try it. Just close your eyes, go deep down into the throat... watch. You will see the throat separate from you. The moment you will see the throat separate from you, the body will stop saying that the body is hungry. The body cannot be hungry; only your identification with the body.


Kurma-nadhi is the vehicle of prana, breathing. If you silently watch your breathing, not changing its rhythm in any way, neither making it fast nor slow, just leaving it natural and relaxed, and if you simply watch it; you will become absolutely still. There will be no movement in you. Why? Because all movement comes through breathing, prana. All movement comes through breathing. The movement exists in you through breathing. When the breathing stops, a person is dead – he cannot move.

If you constantly bring your samyama to breathing, to kurma-nadhi, by and by you will come to a state where you will see breathing has almost stopped. Yogis do this meditation facing a mirror because the breathing becomes so silent, they cannot feel it. They can only see whether there is some mist on the mirror from their breathing or not. Sometimes they have become so silent that they cannot decide whether they are still alive or not. In deep meditation this experience will happen to you also sometimes. Don’t be afraid. Breathing almost stops.

When consciousness is perfect, breathing almost stops, but don’t be worried. That is not death; that is simply stillness.

The whole effort of yoga is to bring you to such stillness that it cannot be broken by anything, to such a state of consciousness which cannot be disturbed.

I have heard:

A madman of the Way called at a shop and asked the businessman, ”What makes you sit here day in, day out?”

”In order to make profit.”

”What is profit?” asked the madman.

”It is the making of one into two,” said the businessman.

”This is no profit,” the madman said. ”Profit is when you can make two into one.”

That madman was not an ordinary madman; he must have been a realized man. He was a Sufi Master.

Yes, profit is when you make two into one. Profit is when all duality disappears, when only one remains.

The word ”yoga” means the method of becoming one. Yoga means how to join together that which has fallen apart. The very word ”yoga” means ”joining together.” The word ”yoga” means UNIO MYSTICA. The word ”yoga” means ”union.” Yes, profit is when you can make two into one.

And the whole effort is how to find the permanent, how to find the one behind the many, how to find the unmoving behind all the changes, the flux – how to find the deathless, how to find the beyond. Habits will create trouble because people have generally lived with wrong habits for so long. The mind is conditioned for wrong habits – it always divides. One's intellect has been trained to divide and dissect and make many out of one. Man has lived up to now through the intellect, and has forgotten how to bring everything back together.

A man came to a Mohammedan mystic, Farid, with golden scissors as a present; the scissors were really very beautiful and very valuable. But Farid laughed, and he said, ”What am I going to do with scissors, because I never cut a thing in two? You take it. Rather, bring me a needle – and no need to bring a golden needle, any needle will do – because my whole effort is to sew things together.”

But old habits are of dissecting. Old habits are of finding that which is continuously changing. The mind is excited about something new and the changing; the unchanging seems uninteresting. You will have to be aware of these habits; otherwise they will assert themselves in some way or other... and mind is very cunning.

Let me tell you one story:

Maulana Arshad Va’ez was a great preacher, very eloquent, but he was also a beggar.

Once the king called him to his court and said, ”Maulana, on the recommendations of my ministers I am sending you as a delegate to Shah Shoja’s court in Shiraz. However, I want you to promise me that you will refrain from begging during your stay abroad – because I would not like my representative to beg, so you have to promise.”

Maulana did as asked and set out for Shiraz.
After bringing his mission to a successful termination, he was addressed by the Shah of Shiraz, ”The fame of your preaching has reached to our land and has made us desirous of listening to one of your sermons.”

Maulana consented.

On the appointed day, Friday, he climbed to the pulpit and delivered a moving sermon, bringing tears to the eyes of his audience. But before he had left the pulpit, suddenly he could not resist his begging habit any longer.

He said, ”O Muslims! Until several weeks ago I used to beg. But before coming here they made me take an oath that I would not beg during my stay in your city. I ask you, my brothers, if I have sworn to refrain from begging, have you too sworn not to give me anything?”

Mind is very cunning. It will find ways and means: ”If I cannot beg, you can give.”

Remember that the mind is very much accustomed to [left brain] analysis, and yoga is synthesis. So whenever the mind comes to analyze, put it aside, set it aside. Through analysis you will reach to the last, the minutest, the atomic; through synthesis you will reach to the greatest, to the total. Science has come to discover atom, and yoga came to discover atma. Atom means the minutest, and atma means the biggest. Yoga came to know the whole, to realize the total; and science has come to know the smaller and the smaller and the smaller, and they go on.

First science divided matter into molecules, then they thought that the molecule is difficult to divide; then they succeeded in dividing it, then they called it ”atom.” The word ”atom” means indivisible, which cannot be divided anymore – but they divided that too. Then they came to electrons and neutrons and they thought now it cannot be divided because it has become almost invisible – it cannot be seen. Nobody has ever seen any electron, so how can you divide it? But now they have succeeded in dividing it also. Without seeing it, they have succeeded in dividing.

They will go on and on and on.... Everything has slipped out of hand.

Yoga is just the opposite process - of synthesizing, of joining and joining and joining, so you come to the total. The total is one.

The mind is also divided into the sun mind or moon mind. The sun mind is scientific; the moon mind is poetic. The sun mind is analytical; the moon mind is synthetical. The sun mind is mathematical, logical, Aristotelean; the moon mind is totally different – illogical, irrational. They function so differently that there exists no language between them.

A gypsy was having a quarrel with his son. He said to the boy, ”You lazy, do-nothing idler! How many times shall I tell you that you should work and not let your life pass in indolence? How many times shall I tell you that you should learn juggling and clowning so that you can enjoy your life?”

Then he raised his finger in threat, saying, ”By God, if you don’t listen to my words anymore, I will throw you in a school; then you will gather lots of stupid knowledge, become a learned man, and spend the rest of your life in want and misery.”

That’s a gypsy mind – no mind. A gypsy thinks to become a wanderer, be a clown, but enjoy. And a gypsy says, ”I will throw you in a school so that you will gather all sorts of stupid knowledge and become a learned man – and then your whole life will be wasted. You will live in misery.”

Try to see where you are: in the sun mind – rational, arguing, argumentative, logical; or in the moon mind – poetic, imaginative, dreaming. Where are you?

And remember, both minds are half & half. One has to go beyond both. If you are in the sun mind, come to the moon mind first, because the way to go beyond passes through that. If you are a householder, first lean toward becoming a gypsy.

That’s what sannyas is. I make you gypsies, wanderers. If you are too logical, I say trust, surrender, sacrifice, submit. If you are too argumentative, I say to you I have no argument. Just look at me, and fall in love – if you can. It is a love affair. If you can trust, you will shift your energy from the sun to the moon.

Once you shift your energy from the sun to the moon, then there opens a new possibility: you can go beyond moon also. Then you become a witness. That is the goal.