The Meeting of Sun and Moon

Pratibhad va sarvam.

The word pratibha is a difficult word; it cannot be translated into English. "Intuition" is a very, very poor substitute for it, and I will have to explain it to you. It cannot be translated; I can only describe it.

The sun is intellect; the moon is intuition. When you transcend both then comes pratibha - and there is no word for it. The sun is intellect, analysis, logic. The moon is intuition, the hunch, just a flash - suddenly you jump on the conclusion.

Intellect moves through method, process, syllogism. Intuition suddenly comes to the conclusion - with no process, no methodology, no syllogism. You cannot ask intuition 'why'. There is no "therefore" in intuition. A sudden revelation - as if lightning has happened and you have come to see something, and then the lightning disappears and you don't know how it happened and why it happened, but it has happened and you have seen something. All primitive societies are intuitive; all women are intuitive; all children are intuitive; all poets are intuitive.

Pratibha is totally different. It has been translated as "intuition" in all the English translations of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, but I would not like to translate it that way. Pratibha means when the energy has moved beyond the duality of intellect and intuition. It is beyond both. Intuition is beyond intellect; pratibha is beyond both. Now there is no logic in it, no sudden lightning in it - everything is eternally revealed. In pratibha one becomes omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. Everything is revealed simultaneously - the past, the present, the future - all. That is the meaning - "Pratibhad va sarvam" --> "Through pratibha, all."

When your energy moves through sahasrar and ten million moons and ten million suns meet within you and you become an oceanic experience of ogasm - which goes on and on and on, eternally; then there is no end to it - there is pratibha. Then you see - you see all through and through, you know all through and through. Then space and time both disappear, with all their limitations.

So, one psychology is sun-oriented, another is moon-oriented, but the real psychology - the real psychology of being will be pratibha-oriented. It will not he divided into man and woman. It will he the highest and the greatest synthesis, and transcendence.

Intellect is like a blind man: it gropes in the dark. That's why so much argumentation is needed.

Intuition is not blind but is like a crippled man: it cannot move. Pratibha is like a healthy man, all limbs healthy.

There is an Indian story that once a forest caught fire. There was one blind man and one crippled man in the forest. The blind man could not see, he could run; But it was dangerous to run without knowing where you are running - where the fire is all over, all around. The crippled man could not walk, but he could see. They came to a tacit understanding: the blind man allowed the crippled man to ride on his back and to see for him, and the crippled man agreed to see for him if he was to run for him.  In their synthesis they could get out of the forest and the fire.

Intellect is half, intuition is also half. Intuition cannot run - it is just in flashes. It cannot be a continued source of revelation. And intellect goes on groping in the dark, continuously groping in the dark.

Pratibha is a synthesis and a transcendence.

If you are too intellectual, you will miss a few things in life which are very beautiful. You will not be able to enjoy poetry, you will not be able to delight in singing, you will not be able to celebrate in dancing. They will look a little foolish, a little below you. You will be uptight, you will hold yourself back, you will remain a little repressed. Your moon will suffer.

If you are just intuitive, you may be able to enjoy much, but you will not be able to help others much because the communication will be lacking. You may be able to live a beautiful life yourself, but you will not be able to create a beautiful world around you because that is possible only through intellect.

When science and poetry meet, then a perfect world is possible. Otherwise, intellect goes on condemning intuition; intuition goes on condemning intellect.

I have heard:

A woman asked a new acquaintance, "How long have you been married?"

"Twenty odd years," replied the other.

"Why do you call them odd?"

"Wait," said the woman, "until you see my husband."

The intuition thinks the intellect is odd; the intellect thinks the intuition is odd. Separately they are odd. Together they create a great orchestra, a great harmony.

The great Persian mystic Rumi in a beautiful poem tells us of how one day Moses, the prophet, sees a shepherd on the way, crying, "O Lord, where art thou? I long to serve thee and comb thy hair and wash thy clothes and kill thy lice and bring milk to thee and kiss thy little hand and rub thy little feet and sweep thy little room at night before thou dost retire."

Moses, the prophet, hearing these words is greatly annoyed and quickly he speaks rough words to the shepherd, "O foolish man! To whom are you speaking these foolish words? What blasphemy are you uttering? Better that you were stricken dumb than that you should speak thus to God the Most High. Thy words are a crime. A shepherd! Put cotton into your mouth and speak no longer a word of irreverance to the Lord who in a moment can consume thee to ashes and dust." And the shepherd, we are told, rends his garment in agony and heaves a sigh and goes quickly forth into the wilderness.

Then unto Moses comes a revelation at night. To Moses speaks the Lord, "Moses, thou wert sent into the world to unite, not to sever. But you have parted from me my servant, my devotee. Dear to me is that shepherd. Forget not, Moses, that every mode of worship is mine. The modes are many, religions are many, yet all are mine. Each one has his own path, his own way, his own form, his own idiom. Moses, I look not at tongues and words: I look at the spirit and the inward feeling."

And Moses goes out to meet the shepherd and says to him, "I repent. And I ask thee to forgive me."

The intellect always goes on thinking in its own idiom. The intuition remains incomprehensible to it. And the intuition cannot believe in intellect; it seems too superficial, with no depth.

You have to come to a synthesis within you. That's what Patanjali means when he says, "Pratibhad va sarvam."  You have to come to such a deep synthesis that pratibha arises in you - which is one where logic and prayer meet, where work and worship meet, where science is not antagonistic to poetry and poetry is not antagonistic to science.

That's why I say man is yet in the making, he is evolving. Man is yet a form without content. The content has to be achieved; that great alchemy has to be achieved. You have to make yourself a great experimental lab of evolution and you have to bring your energy from the muladhar, from the sex center, upwards to the sahasrar.

Hridaye chitta samvit.

 

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