The first sutra:

Each word has to be understood because each word is tremendously significant.

"Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate...."

All experience is just an error. You say, "I am miserable," or you say, "I am happy," or you say, "I am feeling hungry," or you say, "I am feeling very good and healthy" - all experience is an error, is a misunderstanding.

When you say, "I am hungry," what do you really mean? You should say, "I am conscious that the body is hungry." You should not say, "I am hungry." You are not hungry. The body is hungry; you are the knower of the fact. The experience is not yours; only the awareness. The experience is of the body; the awareness is yours. When you feel miserable, again, the experience may be of the body or of the mind - which are not two.

Body and mind are one mechanism. The body is the gross mechanism of the same entity; the mind is the subtle mechanism. But both are the same. It is not good to say "body and mind"; we should say "body-mind." The body is nothing but mind in a gross way, and if you watch your body you will see that the body also functions as a mind. You are fast asleep, and a fly comes and hangs around your face - you remove it with your hand without in any way getting up or waking up. The body functioned, very mindfully. Or something starts crawling on your feet - you throw it away. Fast asleep. You will not remember in the morning. The body functions as a mind - very gross, but it functions as a mind.

So body-mind has all the experience - good or bad, happy, unhappy, it makes no difference. You are never the experiencer; you are always the awareness of the experience. So Patanjali says in a very bold statement, "Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate...."  All experience is an error. The error arises because you don't discriminate, you don't know who is who.

It happens many times. In the Amazon there is a small tribe of primitive people. When the wife is giving birth to a child, the husband also lies down on another cot. The wife starts screaming and yelling, and the husband also starts screaming and yelling. When for the first time it was discovered, it was unbelievable. What is the husband doing, and for what? The wife is passing through pain, but why is this husband? Is he simply acting? And then much research was done upon it and it has been found the husband is not acting. The pain really starts happening once you get identified.

Since millennia, the mind of that tribe has been conditioned that because the wife and husband both are the parents of the child, both should suffer.

Seems perfectly okay. The women's lib movement should agree with them. Why only women? And these husbands just go on, they don't suffer? They don't carry the child in their womb for nine months, and then again when the child is born the whole responsibility seems to be of the mother.

Why this?

But that tribe has lived that way. Psychologists, medical research workers, have observed the man really goes through pain - really. Unbelievable to us because we are not identified that way. The husband is so identified with the wife - the very identification that "she is going through pain" - he starts having pangs.

You may have watched it sometimes. If you love somebody very much and he is suffering, you start suffering. That's what empathy is. If your loved one is suffering, you start suffering. If your loved one is happy, you start feeling happy. If your loved one is dancing, you feel like dancing. You get in tune with your loved one - you become identified.

Now this seems to be a very absurd case, that this society has continued and the husbands really suffer almost as much as the wife, and there is no difference. Now new light has come upon women's suffering also. One psychoanalyst in France has worked deeply upon it, and he says that women are suffering only because they believe that way. There are tribes in which not even the wife suffers.

In India there are tribes. In primitive societies the wife will go on working in the field, cutting wood, carrying wood, and suddenly she will give birth to a child, put the child in her bucket, and go home.

She will give birth to the child in the field, put the child under the tree and continue her work, the work has to be finished, and by evening she will take the child home. No pain. What has happened?

That too is a belief, a conditioning.

And now millions of women are getting ready to give birth to a child without any pain in the Western world, painless childbirth; just the belief system has to be changed. They have to be dehypnotized. They have to be told that this is just an idea - the pain really does not happen; it is just an idea. And once you have an idea you create it. Once you have an idea it starts happening - it is a projection.

Patanjali says all experience is an error - error in one's vision. One becomes identified with the object, and the subject starts thinking as if it is the object.

You feel hunger, but you are not hungry - the body is hungry. You feel pain, but you are not in pain - the body is in pain; you are only alerted to it.

Next time something happens to you - and every moment something or other is happening - just watch. Just try to keep hold of this remembrance that "I am the witness," and see how much things change. Once you can realize you are the witness, many things simply disappear, start disappearing. And one day comes which is the final day, the day of enlightenment, when all experience falls flat. Suddenly you are beyond experience: you are not in the body, you are not in the mind; you are beyond both. Suddenly you start floating like a cloud, above all, beyond all.

That state of no-experience is the state of kaivalya.

Now one thing more about it. There are people who think that spirituality is also an experience. They don't know. There are people who have come, and they say, "We would like to have some spiritual experience." They don't know what they are saying. Experience as such is of the world. There is no spiritual experience - there cannot be. To call an experience "spiritual" is to falsify it. The spiritual is only a realization of pure awareness, purusha.

How does it happen? How do we get identified?

In yoga terminology the truth, the ultimate truth, has three attributes to it --> sat chit anand --> satchitanand:

1. sat - means "being", the quality of eternity, the quality of permanence, being.
2. chit - means "consciousness," awareness - chit is energy, movement, process.
3. anand - is "blissfulness."

These three have been called the three attributes of the ultimate. This is the yoga trinity; of course, more scientific than the Christian trinity because it does not talk about persons - God, the Holy Ghost, the Son. It talks about realizations.

When one reaches to the ultimate peak of existence, one realizes three things: that one is and one is going to remain, that is sat; the second, one is and one is conscious - one is not like dead matter - one is and one knows that one is, that is chit; and, one knows that one is and one is tremendously blissful.

Now let me explain it to you. It is not right to call it "blissful," because then it will become an experience. So a better way will be to say "one is bliss" - not "blissful." One is sat, one is chit, one is anand; one is being, one is consciousness, one is bliss.

These are the ultimate realizations of the truth. Patanjali says these three, when they are present in the world, create three qualities in prakriti, in nature. They function as a catalytic agent; they don't do anything. Just their presence creates a tremendous activity in prakriti. That activity is corresponded by three gunas, qualities: sattva, rajas, tamas.

Sattva corresponds to anand, the quality of bliss. Sattva means pure intelligence. The closer you come to sattva, the more you feel blissful. Sattva is the reflection of anand. If you can conceive of a triangle, then the base is anand and the other two lines are sat, chit. It is reflected into the world of matter, prakriti. Of course in the reflection it becomes upside down: sattva and rajas, tamas - the same triangle.

But the ultimate truth is not doing anything - that is the emphasis of Patanjali. Because once the ultimate truth is doing something, one becomes a doer and has already moved into the world. 

With Patanjali, in his sutras, God is not the creator; he is just a catalytic agent. This is tremendously scientific because if God is the creator then you will have to find the motive, why he creates. Then you will have to find some desire in him to create. Then he will become just as ordinary as man. No, with Patanjali, God is absolute, pure presence. He does not do anything, but by his presence things happen - the prakriti, the nature, starts dancing.

There is an old story.

A king had made a palace; the palace was called the Mirror Palace. The floor, the walls, the ceiling, all were covered in millions of mirrors, tiny, tiny mirrors. There was nothing else in the whole palace; it was a mirror palace. Once it happened, the king's dog, by mistake, was left inside the palace in the night and the palace was locked from the outside. The dog looked, became frightened - there were millions of dogs everywhere. He was reflected; up, down, in all the directions - millions of dogs. He was not an ordinary dog, he was the king's dog - very brave - but even then, he was alone. He ran from one room to another, but there was no escape, there was nowhere to go.

He became more and more frightened. He tried to get out, but there was no way to get out - the door was locked.

Just to frighten the other dogs he started barking, but the moment he barked the other dogs also barked - because they were pure reflections. Then he became more frightened. To frighten the other dogs he started knocking against the walls. The other dogs also jumped into him, bumped into him. In the morning the dog was found dead.

But the moment the dog died, all the dogs died. The palace was empty. There was only one dog and millions of reflections.

This is the standpoint of Patanjali: that there is only one reality, millions of reflections of it. You are separate from me as a reflection, I am separate from you as a reflection, but if we move towards the real, the separation will be gone - we will be one. One reflection is separate from another reflection; you can destroy one reflection and save another.

That is how one person dies.... There are many argumentative people in the world who ask, "Then if there is only one Brahman, one God, one being spread all over, then when one dies, why don't others die also?" This is simple. If there are a thousand and one mirrors in the room, you can destroy one mirror: one reflection will disappear - not others. You destroy another: another reflection will disappear - not others. When one person dies, only one reflection dies. But the one who is being reflected remains undying; is deathless. Then another child is born - that is, another mirror is born; again another reflection.

This story goes on and on. That's why Hindus have called this world a maya: maya means a magic show. Nothing is there really; everything only appears to be there. And this whole magic world depends on one error, and that error is of identity.

"Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate between purusha, (absolute) pure consciousness, and sattva, pure intelligence...."

Purusha is reflected into prakriti as sattva. Your intelligence is just a reflection of the real intelligence; it is not the real intelligence. You are clever, argumentative, groping in the dark, thinking, contemplating, creating philosophies, systems of thought - this is just a reflection. This intelligence is not the real intelligence because the real intelligence need not discover anything: for the real intelligence everything is already discovered.

Now look at the different paths of philosophy and religion. Philosophy moves in the reflected intelligence, into sattva - it goes on thinking and thinking and thinking and goes on creating bigger palaces of thought. Religion moves into purusha - it drops this so-called intelligence; hence the insistence of meditation to drop thinking.

I have heard, once it happened:

In the bazaar Mulla Nasruddin saw a crowd gathered around a small bird offering big prices for it.

"No doubt the price of birds and fowls has gone very up," Mulla thought to himself. He went home, and after some chase, succeeded in catching his old turkey. In the bazaar they offered only two silver coins for the turkey.

"It is not fair," Mulla said. "My turkey is several times as big as that little bird auctioned at so many gold pieces."

Another man said, "But that bird was a parakeet - it talks."

Mulla took a glance at the turkey dozing in his arms. "Mine meditates," he said.

Become a turkey - meditate. Thinking is just dreaming logically; it is creating verbal palaces. And sometimes one can get caught so much in the verbal; then one completely forgets the real. The verbal is just a reflection.

E. E. Cummings

Language is one of the reasons we got so caught up in the verbal. For example, in English it is very difficult to drop the use of the "I." It is very prominent in English. The "I" stands so vertical - almost a phallic symbol. It is phallic. That's why perceptive people like E. E. Cummings started writing "I" in the lower case. And it is not only vertical, phallic, when you write. When you say, "I," it is phallic, like an erection, egoistic. Just watch how many times "I" has to be used. And the more you use it, the more it is emphasized, the more ego becomes prominent - as if the whole English language hangs around "I."

But in Japanese it is totally different. You can talk for hours without using "I." It is possible to write a book without using "I"; the language has a totally different arrangement. The "I" can be dropped easily.

No wonder Japan became the most meditative country in the world and achieved to the higher peaks of Zen, satori, and samadhi. Why did it happen in Japan? Why has it happened in Burma, in Thailand, in Vietnam? All the countries which have been influenced by Buddhism, their language is different from other countries which have never been influenced by Buddhism because Buddha said there is no "I" - anatta, anatma, no-self, ness, there is no "I." That emphasis entered into the languages.

Buddha says, "Nothing is permanent." So when for the first time the Bible was being translated into Buddhist languages. it was very difficult to translate it. The problem was very basic - how to put "God is." Because in Buddhist countries "is" is a dirty word. Everything is becoming, nothing is. If you want to say, "The tree is," in Burmese, it will come to mean, "The tree is becoming." It will not mean, "The tree is." If you want to say, "The river is," you cannot say it in Burmese. It will come to mean, "The river is becoming." And that's true because the river never is. It is always in a process - the river is "rivering." It is not a noun; it is a verb. The river is rivering, becoming. Never in any stage can you catch it as "is." You cannot take a snapshot of it; it is a movie - continuous process. You cannot have a photograph - the photograph will be false because it will be "is," and the river never is.

Buddhist languages have a different structure to them; then they create a different mind. The mind depends much on language; its whole game is linguistic. Beware of it.

Let me tell you one anecdote. It happened in a very esoteric, small Sufi community:

A pedantic grammarian happened to pass by a Sufi gathering and heard the sheikh say, "Indeed, we are from Him and to Him we will return."

At this the grammarian began to tear his clothes and utter strange yawps and cries. People gathered around him, wondering what had happened; he had never been of religious inclination or mystical talent.

Seeing that the Koranic line had brought the grammarian to such ecstasy, the sheikh said again, "Indeed, we are from Him and to Him we will return." And again the grammarian tore his clothes, stomped his feet, and groaned and yelled.

When the session was over and the grammarian had not a piece of clothing left on his body, the sheikh took him into a comer, splashed water on his face, and said, "Tell me, sir, what happened that a paraphrase from the Koran made you behave like that?"

"Why not!" the grammarian said vehemently. "In all my life, in all my speeches and writings, and in all the writings of scholars, recent and old, the first person plural has been used with shall, and not as you say, "To Him we return"!

The question was of "will" and "shall" - "will" is not right! Looks absurd, looks almost mad, crazy, but this is what is happening. If Buddha comes to you and says, "There is no God," you immediately get anxious, worried. What has he said? He has simply said something which goes against your linguistic pattern, that's all. If he says, "There is no self, no 'I,"' you become disturbed. What has he done? He has simply taken away a strategy of your ego, nothing else. He has simply shattered your linguistic pattern.

It is happening every day here. When I say something, and I destroy some linguistic pattern in you, you become annoyed, you become angry. If you are a Christian, of course, you have a Christian house of language. If you are a Hindu you have a Hindu house of language. I am neither, and I am here to destroy all linguistic patterns. You bet you get angry. You become annoyed. You start thinking what to do. But what am I doing? What can I take from you? Can Buddha take God from you if you have known God - can he take it from you? Then there is no question. But he can take a linguistic theory; he can take a hypothesis from you.

"Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate between purusha, (absolute) pure consciousness, and sattva, pure intelligence...." Language belongs to sattva, theories belong to sattva, philosophies belong to sattva. Sattva means your intelligence, your mind. Mind is not you.

Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, belong to the mind. That's why Buddhist monks say, "If you meet Buddha on the way, kill him immediately." Buddhist monks saying that? They say, "Kill the Buddha if you see him, immediately." They are saying, "Kill the mind, don't carry a theory about the Buddha; otherwise you will never become a Buddha. If you want to become a Buddha, drop all ideas about Buddha - all ideas. Kill Buddha immediately!" They say, "If you utter the name of Buddha, immediately wash and rinse your mouth - the word is dirty." Buddhist monks saying that? They are amazing people... but really wonderful. And they mean it.

If you can see their point, you will become able to see many more things.

Bodhidharma says, "Burn all scriptures, all - including Buddha's." Not only the Vedas, Dhammapada included - burn all scriptures. There is a very famous painting of Bin-chi burning all the scriptures, creating a holi. And they were very, very deep into reality. What are they doing? They are simply taking away your mind from you. Where is your Veda? It is not in the book; it is in your mind. Where is your Koran? It is in your mind; it is not in the book. It is in your mental tape. Drop all that; time to get out of it.

Intelligence, the mind, is part of nature. It is just a reflection. It looks almost like the real, but remember, even "almost like the real," then, too, it is not real. It is as if in the full moon night you see the moon reflected in the cool, placid lake. No ripple is arising; the reflection is perfect, but still it is a reflection. And if the reflection is so beautiful, just think about the real. Don't get caught in the reflection.

What Buddha says is a reflection, what Patanjali writes is a reflection, what I am saying is a reflection.  Don't be caught in it. If the reflection is so beautiful, try reality. Move away from the reflection towards the real moon.

And the path is going to be just the opposite to the reflection. If you go on looking at the reflection and you become hypnotized by the reflection, you will never be able to see the moon in the sky, because it is diametrically opposite. If you want to see the real moon, you will have to move away from the reflection - you will have to burn scriptures and you will have to kill Buddhas. You will have to move in the very opposite, diametrically opposite, dimension. Then your head moves towards the moon; then you cannot see the reflection. The reflection disappears.

All scriptures at the most can train and discipline your intelligence. No scripture can lead you towards the real, pure purusha - the witness, the awareness.

"... inability to differentiate between purusha, pure consciousness, and sattva, pure intelligence...."

That is the very cause of getting into ignorance, into the dark night, into the world, into matter, losing contact with your own reality and becoming a victim of your own ideas and projections.

"... although they are absolutely distinct."

You can see that. Even the greatest idea is different from you - you can watch it arising as an object inside you. Even the greatest idea remains a thing within you and you remain far away from it, a watcher on the hill looking down at the idea.

Never get identified with any object.

"Performing samyama on the self interest brings knowledge of the purusha separated from the knowledge of others" - "SVARTHA SAMYAMAT PURUSHA GYANAM."

Patanjali is saying, "Selfishness brings the absolute knowledge" - svartha. Become selfish, that is the very core of religion. Try to see what your real self-interest is, where your real self is. Try to distinguish yourself from others - "pararth," from the others.

And don't think that the people who are outside you are the others. They are others, but your body is also the other. It will return to the earth one day; it is part of the earth. Your breathing is also the other; it will return to the air. It is just given to you for a time being. You have borrowed it; it will have to be returned. You will not be here, but your breath will be here in the air. You will not be here, but your body will lie down in deep sleep in the earth - dust unto dust. That which you think of as your blood will be flowing into rivers. Everything will go back.

But one thing that is not borrowed from others, from anybody else & that is your witnessing, that's your sakshi bhaw, awareness.

Intellect will disappear, reasoning will disappear. All these things are like formations of clouds in the sky: they come together, they disappear, but the sky remains. You will remain as a vast space. That vast space is purusha - the inner sky is purusha.

How to come to know it?

Samyama on the self-interest. Bring your concentration, dharana; your contemplation, dhyan; your ecstasy, samadhi; bring all the three to your self interest - turn in. In the West people are turning "on" - then you turn out. Turn in. Just bring your consciousness to a focus, to who you are. Differentiate between the objects. Hunger arises - this is an object. Then you are satisfied, you have eaten well, a certain well-being arises - that too is an object. Morning comes - that too is an object. Evening comes - that too is an object. You remain the same - hunger or no hunger. Life or death, misery or happiness, you remain the same watcher.

But even in looking at a movie you get caught. You know well there is only a white screen and nothing else and shadows are moving on it, but have you watched people sitting in a movie house?

A few start crying when something tragic is happening on the screen. Their tears start coming. Just see: there is nothing real on the screen, but the tears are very real. The unreal is bringing tears?

People reading a story in a book become so excited. Or seeing a picture of a nude woman become sexually aroused. Just see, there is nothing. Just a few lines - nothing else. Just a little ink spread on the paper. But their sexual arousal is very real.

This is the tendency of the mind: to get caught with the objects, become identified with them.

Catch yourself red-handed as many times as you can. Again, again, catch yourself red handed and drop the object. Suddenly you will feel a coolness, all excitement gone. The moment you realize there is only the screen and nothing else, for what am I getting so much excited, for what.... The whole world is a screen, and all that you are seeing there are your own desires projected; and whatsoever you want, you start projecting and believing. This whole world is a fantasy.

And remember, you all don't live in the same world. Everybody has their own world because one's fantasies are different from others' fantasies. The truth is one; fantasies are as many as there are minds.

If you are in a fantasy you cannot meet the other person, you cannot communicate with the other. That is what is happening: when people want to relate they cannot relate. Somehow they miss-each other. Lovers, wives, friends, husbands, miss each other, go on missing.

And they are very much worried over why they cannot communicate. They wanted to say something, but the other understands something else. And they go on saying, "I never meant this," but the other goes on hearing something else.

What is happening?

The other also lives in his own fantasy; and you live in your own fantasy. He is projecting some other film on the same screen; you are projecting some other film on the same screen. That's why a relationship becomes such an anxiety, anguish. One feels to be alone is to be good and happy, and whenever you move with somebody you start getting into a mire, into a hell. When Sartre says, he says through experience: "The other is hell." But the other is not creating the hell; just two fantasies clashing, just two worlds of dreams clashing.

Communication is possible only when you have dropped your fantasy world and the other has dropped his fantasy world. Then two beings face each other - and they are not two, because the twoness drops with the world of fantasy. Then they are one.

When a Buddha faces somebody who is also a Buddha, they are not two. That's why two Buddhas have not been known to talk to each other - there are not two persons to talk. They remain quiet; they remain silent. There are stories that when Mahavir and Buddha were alive.... They were both con, temporaries, and they moved, wandered, in the same small province of Bihar; it is called Bihar because of these two people: bihar means wandering. Because these two persons wandered all over the place, it became known as the province of their wandering - but they never met. Many times they were in the same town; the place is not very big. Many times they stayed in the same place, a small village. Once it happened that they stayed in the same serai, in the same dharmasala, but they never met.

Now a problem arises: Why? And if you ask Buddhists or Jains why they didn't meet, they feel a little embarrassed. The question seems embarrassing, because that simply shows maybe they were very egoistic? Who should go to whom? Buddha to Mahavir or Mahavir to Buddha? Nobody can do that. So Jains and Buddhists avoid the question - they have never answered. But I know: the reason is there were not two persons to meet. It is not a question of egoism. Simply there were not two persons to meet! Two emptinesses staying in the same serai, so what to do? How to bring them together? And even if you bring them together, they will not be two. There will be only one emptiness. When two zeros meet, it becomes one zero.

  "Performing samyama on the self interest brings knowledge of the purusha separated from the knowledge of others"