Date:   7/21/2022 8:20:08 PM ( 28 m ago)
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When you are returning home -- moving inwards -- suddenly you become the master. This is the beauty of the process. If you are moving outwards you remain a slave -- and a slave to millions of things. Your slavery is infinite, because infinite are the objects of your desire.

It happened:

I was a teacher in a university. Just next to me a professor used to live. I have never come across such a miserly man; he was really extraordinary. He had enough money; his father had left much. He and his wife lived alone. Enough money, a big house, everything -- but he used such a bicycle that it was known all over the town.

That bicycle was something of a miracle. Nobody else could use it: it was in such a ruin it was impossible to use it. It was known all over the town that he never locked the bicycle, because there was no need -- nobody could steal it. People had tried, and returned it. He would go to the theater; he would leave the bicycle outside. He would not put it on the stand, because one anna would have to be paid. He would leave it anywhere, and after three hours when he would come, he would always find it there. It had no mudguards, no horn, no chain cover, and it made such a noise that you could hear from one mile that that professor was coming.

By and by, he became friendly with me. I suggested to him, "This is too much, and everybody laughs about your cycle. Why don't you get rid of it?"

He said, "What to do? I have been trying to sell it, but nobody is ready to purchase it."

"Nobody is ready to purchase it because it is not worth anything. You simply go and throw it in the river -- and thank God if somebody doesn't bring it back!"

He said, "I will think about it." But he couldn't.

So, his next birthday was coming and I purchased a new cycle, the best that was available, and presented it to him. He was very happy. The next day I was waiting to see him on the new bicycle but he was again on the old. So I asked, "What is the matter?"

He said, "The cycle you have given to me is so beautiful, I cannot use it."

It became a worship object. He would clean it every day; I would see that he was cleaning it. He would clean it and polish it and do and.... Always it was there in his house as a showpiece, and he was running on his bicycle -- four, five miles going to the college; four, five miles coming to the market -- the whole day. It was impossible to persuade him to use it.

He would say, "Today it is raining." "Today it is too hot." and, "I have just polished it. And you know how the students are -- they are mischievous -- somebody may scratch it. I will have to leave it outside the college, and somebody may scratch it and destroy it."

He never used it, and as far as I know he must be still worshipping it. There are people who are worshipping objects. I told that professor, "You are not the master of the cycle, the cycle has become master of you. In fact, I was thinking that I have given you a present of a cycle -- now I can say to the cycle,'I have given you the present of this professor.'" The cycle is the master.

If you desire things you are never the master, and that is the difference: you can be in a palace, but if you use it, it doesn't matter. You may be in a hut, but if you don't use it and the hut uses you, you may look poor to the people from the outside, but you are not: you are obsessed with possessions. A man can live in a palace and be a hermit; and a man can live in a hut and not be a hermit. The quality of being a hermit depends on the quality of your mastery. If you use things, it is good; but if you are used, you are behaving very stupidly.

Patanjali says, "Then comes the complete mastery over all the senses" -- and the objects of senses... only through pratyahar, when you become the most important thing in your life. Nothing is comparable to it. When everything can be sacrificed to your own self-knowledge, your being, when kingdoms are worthless -- if you have to choose between your inner kingdom and the kingdom of the outside you will choose your inner kingdom -- at that moment, for the first time, you are no longer a slave: you have become a master. In India for sannyasins, we have been using the word swami -- swami means "the master," the master of the senses.

Otherwise, you are all slaves -- and slaves of dead things, slaves of the material world.

And unless you become a master, you will not be beautiful. You will be ugly, you will remain ugly. Unless you become a master you will remain in hell. To be master of oneself is to enter heaven. That is the only paradise there is. Pratyahar makes you that master. Pratyahar means: now you are not moving after the things, not chasing, hunting things. The same energy that was moving in the world is now moving towards the center. When the energy falls to the center, revelations upon revelations reveal. You become for the first time manifested to yourself -- you know who you are. And that knowledge, who I am, makes you a god.

Shakespeare's Hamlet is right when he says about man, "How godlike." Pavlov is wrong when he says about man, "How doglike." But, if you are chasing things, Pavlov is true, Hamlet wrong. If you are chasing things then Skinner is true, Lewis is wrong.

Let me repeat: "Man is being abolished," says C. S. Lewis. "Good riddance," says B. F. Skinner. "How like a god," says Shakespeare's Hamlet. "How like a dog," says Pavlov. It is for you to choose what you would like to be. If you go inward, you become a god. If you go outwards, Pavlov is true.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 6
Chapter #9
Chapter title: Returning to The Source
9 September 1975 am in Buddha Hall

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