Instantaneous Cognition

 The Sixth Sense: "I see dead people."

Now the sutras.

The first thing to be understood is that you have senses but you have lost sensitivity.

Your senses are almost dull, dead. They are there hanging with you, but energy is not flowing in them; they are not alive limbs of your being. Something has deadened within you, has become cold, blocked. It has happened to the whole of humanity because of thousands of years of repression. And thousands of years of conditioning and ideologies, which are against the body, have crippled you. You live only in name's sake.

So the first thing to be done is: your senses should become really alive and sensitive.

Only then can they be mastered. You see but you don't see deeply. You see only the surface of things. You touch but your touch has no warmth; nothing flows in and out from your touch. You hear also. The birds go on singing and you hear and you can say, "Yes, I am hearing," and you are not wrong - you are hearing - but it never reaches to the very core of your being. It does not go dancing within you; it doesn't help a flowering, an unfolding within you.

These senses have to be rejuvenated. Yoga is not against the body, remember. Yoga says go beyond the body, but it is not against the body. Yoga says, 'use the body, don't be used by it,' but it is not against the body. Yoga says, 'the body is your temple.' You are in the body, and the body is so beautiful an organism, so complex and so subtle, so mysterious, and so many dimensions open through it. And those senses are the only doors and windows through which you will reach to God - so don't deaden them. Make them more alive. Let them vibrate, pulsate, and, what Stanley Keleman has said, let them "stream."

That is exactly the right word: let them flow like a stream, rushing. You can have the sensation. Your hand, if it is rushing like a stream of energy: you will feel a tingling sensation, you will feel something inside the hand is flowing and wants to make contact, wants to be connected.

When you love a woman or a man and you take her hand in your hand, if your hand is not streaming, this love is not going to be of any use. If your hand is not jumping and throbbing with energy and pouring energy into your woman or into your man, then this love is almost dead from the very beginning. Then this child is not born alive. Then sooner or later you will be finished - you are already finished. It will take a little time to recognize because your mind is also dull; otherwise you would not have entered into it, because it is already dead. For what are you entering? You take time to recognize things because your sensitivity, brilliance, intelligence, is so much clouded and confused.

Only a streaming love can become a source of blissfulness, of joy, of delight. But for that you will need senses streaming.

Sometimes you have that glimpse also; and everybody had it when he was a child. Watch a child running after a butterfly. He is streaming, as if any moment he can jump out of his body. Watch a child when he is looking at a rose flower. See his eyes, the brilliance, the light that comes to his eyes. He is streaming. His eyes are almost dancing on the petals of the flower.

This is the way to be...  be riverlike. And only then is it possible to master these senses. In fact people have had a very wrong attitude.

Bed of Nails

They think that if you want to master your senses you have to make them almost dead. But then what is the point of mastering? You can kill, and you are the master. You can sit on the corpse. But what is the point of being a master? But this looked easier: first to kill them, and then you can master. If the body feels too strong, fast. Make it weak, and then you start feeling that you are the master.

But you have killed the body. Remember, life has to be mastered, not dead things. They will not be of any use.

But this has been found to be a shortcut, so all the religions of the world have been using it. Destroy your body by and by. Disconnect yourself from the body. Don't be in contact. Remove yourself away. Become indifferent. When your body is almost a dead tree; no longer do leaves come to it, no longer does it flower, no longer do birds come to rest. It is just a dead stump. Of course you can master it, but now what are you going to gain from this mastery?

This is the problem; that's why people don't understand what Patanjali means.

"Performing samyama on their power of cognition...." Your eyes see, your ears hear, your nose smells, your tongue tastes, your hands make contact, your feet make connectedness with the earth - that is their power of cognition.

"Performing samyama on their power of cognition...." But they have to be powerful.

Otherwise you will not be able to even feel what power is. These senses have to be so full of power, so high with power, that you can perform samyama, that you can meditate upon them.

Right now when you look at a flower, the flower is there, but have you ever felt your eyes? You see the flower, but have you felt the power of your eyes? It should be there because you are using your eyes to see the flower. And of course eyes are more beautiful than any flower because all flowers have to come through the eyes. It is through the eyes that you have become aware of the world of flowers, but have you ever felt the power of the eyes? Are they almost dull, dead? They have become passive, just like windows, receptive. They don't go to their object. And power means being active. Power means your eyes going and almost touching the flowers, your ears going and almost touching the songs of the birds, your hands going with the total energy in you, focused there and touching your beloved. Or you are lying down on the grass, your whole body, full of power, meeting in a contact with the grass, having a dialogue with the grass. Or you are swimming in the river and whispering with the river and listening to the whispers of the river. Connected, in communion, but power is needed.

So the first thing I would like you to do is when you see, really see, become the eyes.

Forget everything. Let your whole energy flow through the eyes. And your eyes will be cleaned, bathed in an inner shower, and you will be able to see that these trees are no longer the same, the greenery is no longer the same. It has become greener, as if dust has disappeared from it. The dust was not on the trees. It was on your eyes. And you will see for the first time and you will hear for the first time.

Jesus goes on saying to his disciples, "If you have ears listen. If you have eyes see."

They were not all blind, and they were not all deaf. What does he mean? He means that you have almost become deaf and almost become blind. You see and yet you don't see. You hear yet you don't hear. It is not a power, it is not energy, it is not vital.

"Performing samyana on their power of cognition, real nature...." 

Then you will be able to see what is the real nature of your senses. It is divine. Your body embodies the divine. It is God who has looked through your eyes!

I remember Meister Eckhart's famous saying. The day he realized and became enlightened, his friends and disciples and brothers asked, "What have you seen?" He laughed. He is the only one in the whole of Christianity who comes very close to Zen Masters, almost a Zen Master. He laughed; he said, "I have not seen him. He has seen himself through me. God has seen himself through me. These eyes are his. And what a game, what a play. He has seen himself through me."

When you really feel the nature of your senses, you will feel it is divine. It is God who has moved through your hand. It is God's hand. All hands are his. It is God who has loved through you. All love affairs are his. And how can it be otherwise? Hindus call it leela - God's play. It is he who is calling you through the cuckoo, and it is he who is listening through you. It is he and he alone spread all over.

"Performing samyama on their power of cognition, real nature, egoism, all-pervasiveness, and functions brings mastery over the sense organs."

This word "egoism" has to be understood because in Sanskrit we have three words for the ego and in English there is only one word. That creates difficulty. The Sanskrit word in the sutra is asmita, so let me first explain it to you.

There are three words: ahankar, asmita, atma. All mean 'I'. Ahankar can be translated as the "ego," the very gross, too much emphasis on I. For asmita there is no word in English.

Asmita means amness. I am; in ego the emphasis is on 'I'; in asmita the emphasis is on 'am'. Amness, purer than ego. Still it is there, but in a very different form. Amness. And atma; even amness has disappeared. In the ego 'I am'; in asmita only 'am'; in atma even that has disappeared. In atma there is pure being, neither I nor amness.

In this sutra asmita is used, amness. Remember, the ego is of the mind. Senses have no ego. They have a certain amness but no ego. The ego is of the mind. Your eyes don't have any ego; your hands don't have any ego. They have a certain amness. That's why if your skin has to be replaced and somebody else's skin is planted on you, your body will reject it, because the body knows "it is not mine." So your own skin has to be replaced from some other part of the body, from your thighs. Your own skin has to be replaced; otherwise the body will reject. The body will not accept it: "It is not mine." The body has no I but it has an amness.

If you need blood, anybody's blood won't do. The body will not accept all sorts of blood, only a particular blood. It has its own amness. That will be accepted; some other blood will be rejected. The body has its own feel of its being. Very unconscious, very subtle and pure, but it is there.

Your eyes are yours, just like your thumbprints. Everything yours is yours. Now physiologists say that everybody's heart is different, of a different shape. In the books of physiology the picture that you will find is not a real picture. It is just average; it is just imagined. Otherwise each person's heart has a different shape. Even each person's kidney has a different shape. These parts all have their signatures; everybody is so unique. That is the amness.

You will never be here again, you have never been before, so move cautiously and alertly and happily. Just think, the glory of your being. Just think, that you are so superb and unique. God has vested much in you. Never imitate, because that will be a betrayal. Be yourself. Let that be your religion. All else is politics. Don't be a Hindu, don't be a Mohammedan, don't be a Christian. Be religious, but there is only one religion, and that is just being yourself, authentically yourself.

"Performing samyama on their power of cognition, real nature, asmita (the subtle amness), all-pervasiveness, and functions brings mastery over the sense organs." And if you meditate on these things, you will become a master. Meditation brings mastery; nothing else brings mastery except meditation. If you meditate on your eye, first you will see the rose flower; by and by you will be able to see the eye that is seeing. Then you have become a master of the eye. Once you have seen the seeing eye, you have become a master. Now you can use all its energies; and they are all-pervasive. Your eyes are not as limited as you think them to be. They can see many more things which you have not seen. They can penetrate many more mysteries that you have not even dreamed about.

But you are not master of your eyes, and you have used them in a very haphazard way, not knowing what you are doing.

And having been in contact with objects too much, you have forgotten the subjectivity of your eyes. It happens if you keep company with someone, by and by you become influenced by him. You have been in contact with objects too much and you have forgotten the inner quality of your senses. You see things, but you never see your seeing.

You hear the songs, but you never hear the subtle vibration that goes on within you, the sound of your being.

Let me tell you one anecdote.

I have heard that one extremely confident tramp had enormous nerve.

He had just completed a very large meal in a swanky restaurant when he announced to the manager, "My good man, I have really enjoyed your food, but unfortunately I cannot afford to pay for any of it at all. I have not a penny to my name. Now don't get angry. I am by profession a beggar, as you may see. I happen to be an extremely talented beggar too. I can go out and within one hour get the money I owe you for this meal. Naturally though, you cannot trust me to come back, and this I fully understand. You would be most welcome to accompany me, but can a man like you, a well-known restaurant owner, afford to be seen with a man of my calibre? No. So I have, sir, the perfect solution to our little problem. I will wait here and you go out and beg until you have the cost of this meal."

If you keep company with a beggar, you will become a beggar. He will suggest in a thousand and one ways to you to become like him.

We have kept company with objects so long that we have forgotten our subjectivity. We have remained focused outwardly so long on things that we have forgotten that we are individuals. This long association with objects has completely destroyed your image of yourself. You have to come back home.

In yoga, when you start seeing your seeing eye, you come across a subtle energy. They call it tanmatra. When you can see your eye seeing, just hidden behind the eyes you see a tremendous energy. That is tanmatra, the energy of the eye. Behind the ear you see tremendous energy accumulated, tanmatra of the ear. Behind your genital organs you see tremendous energy accumulated, tanmatra of sexuality. And so on and so forth.

Everywhere, behind your senses there is a pool of energy - unused. Once you know it, you can pour that energy into your eyes, and then you will see visions which only sometimes poets see, painters see. Then you will hear sounds which only sometimes musicians hear, poets hear. And then you will touch things which only sometimes in rare moments lovers know how to touch. You will become alive, streaming.

Ordinarily you have been taught to repress your senses, not to know them. It is very foolish, but very convenient.

It happened:

After a rural wedding, the bride and the groom climbed into his wagon and set out for their farm home. About a mile down the road, the horse stumbled. "That's one!" shouted the groom.

They continued on and the horse stumbled again. "That is two!" shouted the groom.

As they neared the farm, the horse stumbled again. "That is three!" shouted the groom and, seizing a gun from behind the seat, put a bullet through the horse's brain. The bride sat aghast. Then, in no uncertain terms, she told her new husband what she thought of his action. He sat quietly until she subsided, then pointed at her and shouted, "That is one!"

The couple lived happily for sixty years.

But that happiness cannot be real happiness. Easy to repress at the point of a gun, but then what sort of love will happen between these two people? The gun will always stand in between, and the wife will always be afraid now any moment he is going to say, "Now this is two! Now this is three!" and finished.

That's what you have done with your senses, with your body. You have repressed it. But you were helpless. I don't say that you are responsible for repressing it. You were brought up in such a way, nobody allowed your senses freedom. In the name of love, only repression continues. The mothers, the fathers, the society, they go on repressing. By and by they teach you a trick, and the trick is not to accept yourself deny. Everything has to be channelized into conformity. Your wilderness has to be thrown into the dark part of your soul and a small corner has to be clean, like a drawing room, where you can see people, meet people, and live and forget all about your wilder being, your real existence.

Your fathers and your mothers are not responsible either, because they were brought up in the same way.

So nobody is responsible. But once you know it, and you don't do anything, then you become responsible. Being near me I am going to make you very, very responsible, because you will know it, and then if you don't do anything, then you cannot throw the responsibility on anybody else. Then you are going to be responsible.

Now you know about how you have destroyed your senses and you know also how to revive them. Do something. Throw the gun completely, the repressive mind completely. Unblock yourself. Start flowing again. Start connecting again with your being. Start connecting with your senses again. You are like a disconnected telephone line. Everything looks perfectly okay, the telephone is there, but the line is disconnected. Your eyes are there, your hands are there, your ears are there, but the line is disconnected. 

Reconnect it. If it can be disconnected, it can be reconnected. Others have disconnected it because they were also taught in the same way, but you can reconnect it.

All my meditations are to give you a streaming energy. That's why I call them dynamic methods. Old meditations were just to sit silently, not to do anything. I give you active methods because when you are streaming with energy you can sit silently, that will do, but right now first you have to become alive.

If you can see tanmatras, the subtle energies of your senses, you will become -capable of using your cognition without the grosser instruments. If you know that behind the eye there is an accumulated pool of energy, you can close your eyes and use that energy directly. Then you will be able to see without opening your eyes. That's what telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience is.

In Soviet Russia there is a woman who has been investigated scientifically who stands just twenty feet away from any object and starts pulling it just with energy. She makes movements with her hands, twenty feet away. As you have seen a hypnotist making passes, she simply draws, gestures. Within fifteen minutes, things start moving towards her. She has not touched them. Much investigation has been done to know what happens.

And that woman loses at least half a pound of weight in a half-hour experiment. Certainly she is losing some sort of energy.

This is what yoga calls tanmatra. Ordinarily you use the energy through the hand, when you pick something up, a stone, a rock. You can try it; you use the same energy through the hand. But if you know the energy directly, you can drop the use of the hand. The energy can move the object directly. The same way with telepathy - you can hear or read people's thoughts or can see faraway scenes. Once you know the tanmatra, the subtle energy, that is being used by your eyes, eyes can be discarded. Once you know that it is not really the sense that is functioning but the energy, you are freed of the sense.

I have heard a story.

So this guy phoned Cohen & Goldberg, wholesalers, "Put me through to Mr. Cohen, please."

"I am afraid Mr. Cohen has gone out, sir," said the switchboard girl.

"Then get me Mr. Goldberg."

"I am afraid Mr. Goldberg is tied up at present, sir."

"Okay, I will phone back later."

Ten minutes later: "Mr. Goldberg, please."

"I am afraid Mr. Goldberg is still tied up, sir."

"I will phone back."

Half an hour later: "Get me Mr. Goldberg."

"I am terribly sorry, sir, but Mr. Goldberg is still tied up."

"I will phone back."

Another half an hour later: "Goldberg!"

"I have dreadful news for you, sir. Mr. Goldberg is still tied up."

"But look, this is ridiculous. How can you run a business like that? The one partner is out all morning and the other is tied up for hours on end. What is going on there?"

"Well, you see, sir, whenever Mr. Cohen goes out he ties up Mr. Goldberg."

 

This is what is happening inside you also. Whenever you go out, through the eyes, through the hands, through your genital organs, through your ears, whenever you go out, Continuously a certain type of bondage and tying is created. By and by you become tight with the particular sense - eyes, ears - because that is from where you go out, again, again, again. By and by you forget the energy that is going out.

This getting in bondage to the senses is the whole world, the samsar. How to untie yourself from the senses? And once you are tied up with the senses, you start thinking in terms of them. And you completely forget who your are.

Another story:

A disciple wanted very much to renounce the world and follow his guru, but he said that his wife and family loved him too much and he was unable to leave his home.

The guru came up with a plan. The man was taught certain yogic secrets so that he could give the appearance to all who looked upon his body that he was deceased. The next day the man followed instructions and his body was besieged with the wailings and sobbings of his wife and family.

The guru appeared at the door in the guise of a magician and told the family that if they loved this man so much he could bring him back to life. He said that the man would live if someone would die in his place by drinking the potion he had.

Each member of the family had an excuse that made it necessary to keep his own life, and the wife added, "Anyway, he is already dead; we will manage."

At this the yogi stood up and said, "Woman, if you can live-without me then I can go with my guru." He faced the teacher and said, "Let us go, sir, revered Master. I will follow you."

The whole attachment to the senses is as if you are the senses, as if you cannot live without them, as if your whole life is confined to them. But you are not confined to them.

You can renounce them, and you can live still, and live on a higher plane. Difficult. Just as if you want to persuade a seed that "Die, and soon a beautiful plant will be born." How can he believe, because he will be dead? And no seed has ever known that by his death a new sprout comes up, a new life arises. So how to believe it? Or if you go near an egg and you want to persuade the bird within that "Come out," but how is the bird to believe it, that there is any possibility of life without the egg? Or if you talk to a child inside the womb of a mother and tell him, "Come out, don't be afraid," but he knows nothing outside the womb. The womb has been his whole life; he knows only that much. He is afraid. The same is the situation: surrounded by the senses, we live in a sort of confinement, an imprisonment.

One has to be a little daring, courageous. Right now, wherever you are and whatsoever you are, nothing is happening to you. Then take the risk. Then move into the unknown. Then try to find out a new way of life.

"From this follows instantaneous cognition without the use of the body, and complete mastery over prakriti, the material world."

Up to now you have been possessed by the material world. Once you know that you have your own energy, totally independent from the material world, you become a master. The world possesses you no more; you possess it. Only those who renounce become the real masters.

And the subtlest discrimination has to be made between sattva and purusha - intelligence and awareness. It is very easy to separate yourself from the body. The body is so gross you can feel it; you cannot be it. You must be inside it. It is easy to see that you cannot be the eyes. You must be someone hidden behind who looks through the eyes; otherwise who will look through the eyes? Your glasses cannot look. Behind the glasses eyes are needed. Your eyes are also like glasses. They are glasses; they cannot look. You are needed somewhere behind to look.

But the subtlest identification is with intelligence. Your power to think, your power of intellect, understanding, that is the subtlest thing. It is very difficult to discriminate between awareness and intelligence. But it can be discriminated.

By and by, step by step, first, know that you are not the body. Let that understanding grow deep, crystallize. Then know that you are not the senses. Let that understanding grow, crystallize. Then know that you are not the tanmatras, the energy pools behind the senses. Let that grow and crystallize. And then you will be able to see that intelligence is also a pool of energy. It is the common pool, in which eyes pour their energy, ears pour their energy, hands pour their energy. All the senses are like rivers, and intelligence is the central thing, in which they bring information and pour.

Whatsoever your mind knows is given by the senses. You have seen colors: your mind knows. If you are color-blind, if you cannot see the color green, then your mind does not know anything about green.

Bernard Shaw lived his whole life unaware that he was color-blind. It is very difficult to come to know it, but one accidental incident allowed him to become aware. On one of his birthdays somebody presented him a suit, but the tie was missing, so he went to the market to find a tie which could fit with the suit. The suit was green, and he started purchasing a yellow tie. His secretary was watching, and she said, "What are you doing? It won't fit. The suit is green and the tie is yellow." He said, "Is there any difference between these two?"

 

For seventy years he had lived, not knowing that he could not see yellow. He saw green. Whether it was yellow or green, both the colors looked green. Now yellow was not part of his mind; the eyes never poured that information into the mind.

The eyes are like servants, information collectors, PROs, roaming all over the world, collecting things, pouring into the mind. They go on feeding the mind; mind is the central pool.

First you have to become aware that you are not the eye, not the energy that is hidden behind the eye, then you will be able to see that every sense is pouring into the mind. You are not this mind, also. You are the one who is seeing it being poured. You are just standing on the bank, all the rivers pouring into the ocean - you are the watcher, the witness.

Swami Ram has said: "Science is difficult to define, but perhaps the most essential feature of it involves the study of something which is external to the observer. The techniques of meditation offer an approach which allows one to be external to one's own internal states." 

The techniques of meditation offer an approach which allows one "TO BE EXTERNAL TO ONE'S OWN INTERNAL STATES" - and the ultimate of meditation is to know that whatsoever you can know, you are not it. Whatsoever can be reduced to a known object, you are not it, because you cannot be reduced to an object.

You remain eternally subject - the knower, the knower, the knower. And the knower can never be reduced to the known. This is purusha, awareness. This is the final understanding that arises out of yoga.

Meditate over it.

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