PATANJALI is not a speculator. He is not an airy, fairy philosopher; he is very down to earth. He means business, as I mean business. His approach is scientific. The very approach makes him totally different from others. Others have been thinking about the truth. He is not thinking about the truth; he simply prepares you how to receive the truth.
The truth cannot be thought; it can only be received. It is already there and there is no way to think about it. The more you think, the farther away you will wander from it. Thinking is a wandering, a rambling in the clouds; the moment you think, you are already going away.
The truth has to be seen, not thought. Patanjali’s basic approach is how to create the clarity, the eyes, which can see it. Of course it is going to be hard work; it is not just poetry and dreaming. A man has to become a lab, a man has to transform his whole life into an experiment – only then, the truth can be realized.
So while listening to Patanjali’s sutras never forget it, that he is not handing you some theories: he is giving you a methodology which can transform you. But then it depends on you.
There are four types of people who become interested in religion. The first, the majority, is only ’curious,’ is in search of something amusing, something outlandish, something interesting, something fascinating. Patanjali is not for those, because a curious person is never interested so deeply that he can be convinced to transform his life. He is looking for a sensation. Patanjali is not for those people.
Then there is a second type, we will call the ”student.” He is interested intellectually; he would like to know what this man Patanjali is thinking, saying – but he is interested in knowledge. Not in knowing, but knowledge. He is interested in gathering more information. He is not ready to change himself; he would like to remain himself and gather more knowledge. He is on an ego trip. Patanjali is not for that type either.
Then there is the third type, the ”disciple.” A disciple is one who is ready to discipline his life, who is ready to transform his whole being in an experiment, who is courageous enough to go on this inner adventure – which is the greatest, which is the most daring, because nobody knows where one is moving. One is moving into the unknowable. One is moving into the abyss. One is moving into the uncharted. Yoga is for the disciple; the disciple will be able to get in tune with Patanjali.
Then there is the fourth state, or the fourth type, 1 will call it the ”devotee.” The disciple is ready to change himself, but still not ready to sacrifice himself. The devotee is ready to sacrifice himself. The disciple will go a long enough way with Patanjali, but not to the very end, unless he becomes a devotee also, unless he comes to recognize that the transformation religion is concerned about is not a modification. It is not just modifying you, making you better and better; it is a death, and one has to sacrifice oneself totally. It is a discontinuity with your past.
When the disciple is ready – not only to transform himself, but to die – he becomes a devotee. But a disciple can go far enough, and if he goes, one day or other he will become a devotee. If he becomes a devotee, only then will he understand the whole of Patanjali, the whole beauty of it, the whole grandeur of it, the tremendous door that Patanjali opens into the unknown.
But, many people who were just curious, they have written many books about Patanjali. Many people who were just students, they have created great tomes of learning, scholarship, and they have done much harm. They have interpreted and reinterpreted Patanjali these five thousand years. Not only that, there are interpretations of interpretations of interpretations. The whole thing has become almost like a jungle and it is very difficult to find where Patanjali is.
This calamity has happened in India to everybody who has brought any truth to human consciousness. People have been continuously interpreting, and they create more clouds than clarity, because in the first place they are not disciples. And even if they are disciples, they are not in that state of mind where they can rightly interpret. Only a devotee... but devotees ordinarily don’t bother.
Hence, I have taken Patanjali to talk about. The man needs great attention because there are very, very rare people who can be compared to the height of Patanjali, to his scientific attitude. He has made religion almost a science. He has brought religion out of all mystifications; but the interpretations have been trying to force all his sutras again back into the world of mystifications. That is a vested interest. If Patanjali comes back and looks at the interpretations that have been done on his sutras, he will not be able to believe it.
And words are very dangerous things. You can play with them very easily. And words are like whores; you can use them but you can never trust them. And they change meaning with every new interpreter – just a slight change, just a comma from here to there. And Sanskrit is a very poetic language – each word has many meanings – so it is very easy to mystify a thing, very easy.
I have heard:
Once two friends stayed in a hotel. They were travelling in the mountains and they wanted to go early in the morning – very early, near about three o’clock – to the nearest peak to see the sunrise, so they had fixed the alarm. When the alarm rang, one, who was an optimist, said, "Good morning, God.” The other, who was a pessimist, said, ”Good God, morning?”
They both use the same words, but with a tremendous difference.
I have heard a Sufi story...
Two disciples of a Master were sitting in the garden of the monastery, meditating.
One said, ”It would be good if we were allowed smoking.”
The other said, ”It will not be possible; the Master will never allow it.”
They said, ”Why not try? There is nothing to lose. We should ask him.”
The next day they asked the Master. To the first he said, ”No, absolutely no.” To the other he said, ”Yes, certainly yes.”
When they met they could not believe what type of man this is. Then the one asked, ”Please, tell me how you had asked?”
The first, to whom was said no, absolutely no, said, "I asked him, 'Sir, can I smoke while meditating?’
He said,’No, absolutely no!’” Then he asked, ”And how had you asked?”
He said, ”Now I know. I had asked, ’Sir, can I meditate while smoking?’ He said, ’Yes, certainly yes!’”
It makes a lot of difference. Words are whores; and one can go on playing infinitely with words.
I am not an interpreter. Whatsoever I am saying is on my own authority – I am not saying on the authority of Patanjali. Because my experiences and his experience correspond, that’s why I am speaking on him. But I am not trying to prove the authority of Patanjali. How can I prove that? I am not trying to prove that Patanjali is true. How can I prove that? I can only say something about myself. What am I saying then? I am saying this: that I have also experienced the same. And Patanjali has given it beautiful language and expression. It is difficult to improve upon Patanjali as far as scientific explanation, scientific expression, is concerned. Remember this.
If he comes back, he will be almost in a state.... I was reading one story and I remembered him. It happened on a road:
On a road three thieves saw a man on a donkey entering the town. Following the donkey was a goat with a tinkling bell around its neck.
One of the thieves said proudly, ”I am going to steal his goat.”
The second thief said, ”That’s not such a big thing. I am going to steal the donkey he is sitting on.”
The third thief said, ”I will steal the clothes he is wearing.”
The first thief followed the man and on a street corner fastened the bell onto the tail of the donkey and stole the goat. The bell kept tinkling, and the villager thought the goat was still following.
The second thief, who was waiting by another corner faced the man and said, ”A new custom, huh? hanging the bell on the donkey’s tail?”
The man looked behind and exclaimed, ”My goat is gone!”
The thief said, ”I just saw someone with a goat going by that road.”
”Keep an eye on my donkey,” the man said and ran to get the goat.
The thief then rode away on the donkey.
The man searched the road in vain for the thief who stole his goat. Then he came back for his donkey and saw what had happened. He walked a while in distress until he came across someone who was sitting by a well, crying.
”What is the matter with you? They have stolen my goat and donkey; why are you wailing like this?”
”I had a treasure chest that fell into the well. I am too afraid to go in. If you get the chest, I will go fifty-fifty with you.”
Anxious to compensate for his losses, the villager quickly undressed and went into the well. When he came out, empty-handed, he saw his clothes gone. He began to wield a big stick, whirling and whirling around. People gathered to watch.
”They stole everything I had. Now I am afraid they might try to steal me, too!”
That will be the situation if Patanjali comes back: interpretations have taken everything away. They have stolen all; they have not even left his clothes on. And they have done it so beautifully that you will never even suspect. In fact, after five thousand years, things that I am saying will look very strange to people who have been reading Patanjali’s interpreters, commentators. My things will look very strange. They will think I am giving new meanings. I am not giving new meanings, but Patanjali has been misinterpreted so long that if I exactly say what he meant, my sayings will look very strange, outlandish, almost unbelievable.
The last sutra was about the ”sun.” It looks natural to think about the sun in the solar system; that’s how all the commentators have interpreted it. It is not so. The ”sun” is concerned with your sex mechanism – the source of all vitality, energy, heat within you.
In English you have the expression and the name for a certain combination of nerves: you call it ”solar plexus.” But people think that the solar plexus exists inside the navel. That is wrong. The solar energy exists in the sex center, not in the navel, because it is from there that your whole body gets the heat, the warmth. But the explanation may look farfetched; so let me explain it to you more. And then there are others – the moon, the stars, and the polestar.
The words simply indicate as if Patanjali is talking in astrological or astronomical terms about the solar system. He is talking about your inner cosmos, and man is a whole system; and corresponding to everything outside, there exists something within man. Man is almost a miniature universe.
Man can be divided into two types: the sun type and the moon type. The sun type is aggressive; the sun type is violent, outgoing, extrovert. The moon type is introvert, ingoing, nonaggressive, passive, receptive. Or you can call them yang and yin; or you can call them the male and the female. The male is outgoing; the female is ingoing. The male is positive; the female is negative.
Their functioning is different because they function from different centers. The man functions from the sun center; the woman functions from the moon center.
So, in fact, when a man becomes mad he should not be called ”lunatic”; only when a woman becomes mad, she should be called a lunatic. ”Lunar”: the word ”lunatic” comes from ”lunar” – moonstruck. When a man becomes mad he is sunstruck; he is not moonstruck. And when a man becomes mad he becomes aggressive, violent. When a woman becomes mad she simply goes crazy, eccentric.
When I use the word ”man” and ”woman,” I don’t mean exactly all men and all women, because there are men who are more feminine than male and there are women who are more male than feminine. So don’t get confused. A man can be moon-oriented and a woman can be sun-oriented; it depends from where their energy is getting its supply, from what source. The moon has no energy source of its own; it simply reflects the sun. It is a reflective mechanism, that’s why it is so cool. It transforms the energy from hot to cool. The woman also gets the energy from the sex center, but it passes through the moon.
The moon is the hara. Just below the navel, two inches below the navel, there is a center; Japanese call it hara. Their word is perfect. That’s why they call suicide ”hara-kiri”; because the center of moon is the center of death – just as the center of sun is the center of life. All life comes from sun; all death from moon.
Gurdjieff used to say that man is food for the moon. In fact he was saying something very close to Patanjali – and he was one of the men who was very close, but in the West people could not understand what he meant. He used to say that everything is food for something else. Everything has to be food for something else in the ecology of existence. You eat something: you have to be eaten by something else, otherwise the continuity will be broken and the circle will be broken. Man eats fruit; fruits are eating the solar energy, the earth, the water. Man must be eaten in his own turn by something. Who eats man? Gurdjieff used to say that the moon eats man. He was a very eccentric man. His expressions are not scientific; his expressions are apparently very absurd. But if one goes deep in them, one would find pure diamonds there.
