The Obstacles to Meditation

 

 

The sutras:

PATANJALI BELIEVES - NOT ONLY BELIEVES - HE KNOWS - that sound is the basic element of existence. Just as physicists - say that electricity is the basic element, yogis say that sound is the basic element. They agree with each other in a subtle way.

Physicists say that sound is nothing but a modification of electricity and yogis say that electricity is nothing but a modification of sound. Then both are true. Sound and electricity are two forms of one phenomenon, and to me, that one phenomenon is not known yet and will not be known ever. Whatsoever we know will be just a modification of it. You may call it 'electricity', you may call it 'sound', you may call it 'fire' like Heraclitus, you may call it 'water' like Lao Tzu: that depends on you. But all these are modifications - forms of the formless. That formless will always remain unknown.

How can you know the formless? Knowledge is possible only when there is a form. When something becomes visible, then you can know it. How can you make invisibility the object of knowledge? The very nature of invisibility is that it cannot be objectified. You cannot pinpoint it - where it is, what it is. Only something visible can become the object.

So whenever anything is known, it will be just a modification of the unknown. The unknown remains unknown. It is unknowable. So it depends on you what you call it, and it depends on the utility you are going to put it to. For the yogi, electricity is not relevant. He is working in the inner lab of being. There, sound is more relevant, because through sound he can change many phenomena inside and through sound he can change the inner electricity also. Yogis call it prana - the inner bio-energy or bio-electricity. Through sound that can be changed immediately.

That's why, when listening to classical music, you feel a certain silence surrounding you: your inner body energy is changed. Listen to a madman and you will feel you are also going crazy: because the madman is in a chaos of body electricity and his words and sounds carry that electricity to you. Sit with an enlightened person - satsang - and suddenly you feel everything within you is falling in a rhythm. Suddenly you feel a different quality of energy arising in you.

That's why Patanjali says the repetition of AUM and meditation on it destroys all obstacles. What are the obstacles? Now he describes each obstacle, and how they can be destroyed by repeating the sound of Aum and meditating on it; we will have to ponder over.

Take each: disease. For Patanjali, disease means 'dis-ease'. It is a non-rhythmic way of your inner bio-energy. You feel uncomfortable. If this uncomfort, this disease, continues, sooner or later it will affect your body. Patanjali will agree with acupuncture absolutely, and in Soviet Russia a man named Kirlian will agree with Patanjali absolutely. All the three trends... Acupuncture is not concerned with enlightenment, but acupuncture is concerned how the body becomes diseased, how illness happens, and acupuncture has discovered seven hundred points on the body where the inner bio-energy touches the physical body - touchpoints - seven hundred all around the body.

Whenever the electricity is not flowing in a circle in these seven hundred points - some gaps are there, few points are no more functioning, through few points the electricity is no more moving, blocks are there, electricity is cut, it is not a circle - then disease happens. So acupuncture believes that without any medicine, without any other treatment, if you allow the bio-energy flow to become a circle, the disease disappears. And for five thousand years... acupuncture was born almost when Patanjali was alive.

As I told you, that after two thousand five hundred years there comes a peak of human consciousness. It happened in the time of Buddha; in China Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Confucius; in India Buddha, Mahavira and others; in Greece Heraclitus; in Iran Zoroaster: the peak phenomenon happened. All the religions that you see now in the world derive from that moment of human consciousness. From that peak, the Himalaya, all the rivers of all the religions have been flowing for these two thousand five hundred years.

Just the same, two thousand five hundred years before Buddha there was a peak phenomenon. Patanjali, Rishabh - the originator of Jainism - the Vedas, Upanishads; acupuncture in China; yoga in India and tantra - these all happened. They attained a peak. Never again that peak has been surpassed. And from that very remote past, five thousand years back, yoga, tantra, acupuncture, they have been flowing like rivers.

And there is a certain phenomenon which Jung called "synchronicity". When a certain principle is born, not only one person becomes aware of it - many on the earth, as if the whole earth is ready to receive it. Einstein is reported to have said that "If I had not discovered the theory of relativity, then within a year somebody else would have discovered it." Why? Because many people all over the earth were working in the same direction.

When Darwin discovered the theory of evolution that man has evolved out of monkeys, that there is a constant struggle for the survival of the fittest, another man - Wallace Russell - discovered it. He was in Philippines, and both were friends. But for many years they had not known each other. Darwin was working for twenty years continuously, but he was a lazy man. He has many fragments and everything was ready, but he will not make a book out of it and he will not present it to the scientific society of those days.

Friends again and again will request that "Do it. Otherwise somebody else will do it." And then one day from Philippines, a letter arrived and the whole theory was presented in that letter by Russell. And he was a friend, but they both were working separately. They never knew that both are working on the same. And then he became afraid, what to do! Because he will become the discoverer, and for twenty years he had known the principle. He rushed, somehow managed to write a report, presented it to the scientific society.

After three months, everybody else became aware that Russell has also discovered. Russell was really a very beautiful person. He declared that the discovery goes to Darwin because for twenty years, whether he has presented it or not... But he is the discoverer.

And this is happening many times. Suddenly a thought becomes very prominent, as if a thought is trying to take a womb somewhere. And as is the way of the nature, it never takes risks. One man may miss; then many men have to be tried. Nature never takes risks. A tree will drop millions of seeds. One seed may miss, may not fall on the right ground, may be destroyed, but millions of seeds - there is no possibility all the seeds will be destroyed.

When you make love, in one ejaculation millions of seeds are thrown by the man - one of them will reach to the egg of the woman - but millions. Almost in one ejaculation, a man releases as many seeds as there are men on the earth right now. One man in one ejaculation can give birth to the whole earth, to the whole population of the earth. Nature takes no risks. It tries many ways. One may miss, two may miss, a million may miss, but with millions at least one will reach and become alive.

Jung discovered a principle which he calls "synchronicity". It is a rare thing. We know one principle of cause and effect: a cause produces an effect. Synchronicity says whenever something happens, parallel to it many things similar happen. Yet we don't know why it happens, because it is not a cause and effect phenomenon. They are not related with each other as cause and effect.

How can you relate Buddha and Heraclitus? But the same principle. Buddha never heard of Heraclitus; Heraclitus, we cannot imagine, ever knew about Buddha. They lived in separate worlds. There was no communication. But the same principle of flow, of river-like existence, of momentary existence both gave to the world. They are not causing each other. They are parallel. A synchronicity exists as if the whole existence at that moment wants to produce a certain principle and wants to make it manifest - it manifested, and it will not depend only on Buddha or only on Heraclitus: many it will try. And there were others also who went into oblivion: they were not so prominent. Buddha and Heraclitus became the most prominent. They were the most forceful Masters.

In the days of Patanjali, a principle was born. You can call it the principle of prana - bio-energy. In China it took the form of acupuncture, in India it took the form of the whole system of yoga. How it happens when the body energy is not flowing rightly you feel uncomfort? Because a gap exists in you, an absence, and you feel something is missing. This is disease in the beginning. First it will be felt in the mind. As I told you, first it will be felt in the unconscious.

You may not be aware of it; in your dreams it will come first; in your dreams you will see illness, disease, somebody dying, something wrong. A nightmare will happen in your unconscious because the unconscious is nearest to the body and nearest to nature. From the unconscious it will come up to the subconscious; then you will feel irritated. You will feel that stars are wrong, whatsoever you do goes wrong. You would like to love a person, and you try to love but you cannot love. You would like to help somebody, but you only hinder. Everything goes wrong.