Five Modifications 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.

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