Chapter 9: Absolute Aloneness: Liberation at Yoga Support Forum

Absolute Aloneness: Liberation

LIBERATION IS OBTAINED WHEN THERE IS EQUALITY OF PURITY BETWEEN THE PURUSHA AND SATTVA.

Satyakam asked his mother, Jabala, "Mother, I want to live the life of a student of supreme knowledge. What is my family name? Who is my father?"

"My son," replied the mother, "I don't know. In my youth when I went about a great deal as a maidservant I conceived you. I do not know who is your father. I am Jabala and you are Satyakam, so call yourself Satyakam Jabal."

Then the boy went to Gautama, a great seer of those days, and asked to be accepted as a student. "Of what family are you, my dear?" inquired the sage.

Satyakam replied, "I asked my mother what my family name was, and she answered, 'I don't know. In my youth when I went about a great deal as a maidservant I conceived you. I do not know who is your father. I am Jabala and you are Satyakam, so call yourself Satyakam Jabal.' Sir, I am therefore Satyakam Jabal."

The sage then said to him, "None but a true brahmin, a true seeker of truth, would have spoken thus. You have not swerved from the truth, my dear. I will teach you that supreme knowledge."

The first quality of the seeker is to be authentic, not to swerve from truth, not to deceive in any way. Because if you deceive others, eventually you are deceived by your own deceptions. If you tell a lie too many times, it almost starts looking like a truth to you.

When others start believing in your lies, you also start believing in them. Belief is infectious. That's how we have got into the mess we are in.

The first lie that we have accepted as truth is that "I am a body." Everybody believes in it. You are born in a society which believes that we are bodies. Everybody reacts as a body; nobody responds as a soul.

And remember the difference between reaction and response: reaction is mechanical; response is alert, aware, conscious. When you push a button and the fan starts moving, it is a reaction. When you push a button, the fan does not start thinking, "Am I to move or not?"

When you put the light on, the electricity does not respond; it reacts. It is mechanical. There is not any gap between your pushing of the button and the electricity's functioning. There is not a little gap of thought, of awareness, of consciousness.

If you go on reacting in your life - somebody insults you and you become angry, somebody says something and you become sad, somebody says something, you become very happy - if it is a reaction, a push-button reaction, then by and by you will start believing that you are the body.

The body is a mechanism. It is not you. You live in it, it is your abode, but you are not it. You are totally different. This is the first lie that cripples life.

Then there is another lie: that, "I am the mind." And this is deeper than the first, obviously, because the mind is closer to you than the body. You go on thinking thoughts, dreaming dreams, and they move so close to you, almost touching your being, just surrounding you; you start believing in them also. Then you become the mind. The mind also reacts.

You become a soul the moment you start responding. Response means now you are not reacting mechanically. You contemplate, you meditate, you give a gap to your consciousness to decide. You are the deciding factor. Somebody insults you: in reaction, he is the deciding factor. You simply react - he manipulates you. In response you are the deciding factor: somebody insults you - that is not primary, that is secondary. You think over it. You decide whether to do this or that. You are not overwhelmed by it. You remain untouched, you remain aloof, you remain a watcher.

These two lies have to be broken. These are fundamental lies. I am not counting the millions of lies that are not fundamental. You go on identifying yourself with a name. A name is just a label, utilitarian. You don't come into this world with a name, and you don't go from this world with a name. A name is just used by the society; it will be difficult to eXist in a society without a name. Otherwise, you are nameless. Then you think you belong to a certain religion, to a certain caste. You think that you belong to a certain man who is your father, a certain woman who is your mother. Yes, you come through them, but you don't belong to them.

They have been passages, you have travelled through them, but you are different.

In Kahlil Gibran's masterpiece, THE PROPHET, a woman asks the prophet Almustafa, "Tell us something about our children," and Almustafa says, "They come through you, but they don't belong to you. Love them, but don't give your thoughts to them. Love them, because love gives freedom, but don't possess them."

Your innermost core belongs to nobody; it is not anybody's possession. It is not a thing; it cannot be possessed. Your body can be possessed, your mind can also be possessed.

When you become a Mohammedan, your mind is possessed by people who call themselves Mohammedans. When you become a Hindu, your mind is possessed by people who call themselves Hindus. When you become a communist, you are possessed by DAS KAPITAL. When you become a Christian, you are possessed by the Bible.

When you think yourself as the body, you think yourself in terms of white, black, brown, etc.

Your innermost core is neither Christian nor Hindu, your innermost core is neither white nor black, your innermost core is neither communist nor anticommunist. Your innermost core remains absolutely aloof from the body and the mind. It is higher than the body and higher than the mind. The mind cannot touch it; the body cannot reach it.

Why did Gautama, the great sage, accept Satyakam Jabal? He was true. He could have deceived; the temptation is easy. To move in the world, saying to people, "I don't know who is my father," is very humiliating. And the mother was also true. It is easy to deceive the child because the child has no means to discover whether you are deceiving or not.

When a child asks his mother, "Who created the world?" there is every temptation for the mother to say, "God created the world" - not knowing at all what she is saying.

This is the basic reason why when children grow up they become almost antagonistic towards their parents; they can never forgive them because they lie too much. They lose all respect for them. Parents go on saying, "Why? Because we loved you. We brought you up. The best we could do we have done. Why don't children respect us?" You have lost the opportunity because of your lies. Once the child discovers that the mother and the father have been lying, all respect disappears. Deceiving a small helpless child? Saying things they did not know anything about?

That Jabala was a rare mother. She said, "I don't know who is your father." She accepted that when she was young she was moving with many men. She loved many men and was being loved by many men, so she does not know who is the father. A true mother. And the child was also brave. He told it to the Master; he repeated exactly the words that the mother had said.

This truth appealed to Gautama; and he said, "You are a true brahmin." This is the definition of being a brahmin; a true man is a brahmin. A brahmin has nothing to do with any caste. The very word comes from "Brahman"; it means "a seeker of God," a true authentic seeker.

Remember, the more you get involved in lies, howsoever paying they appear in the beginning, in the end you will find that they have poisoned your whole being.

Be authentic. If you are authentic, sooner or later you will discover you are not the body.

Because authenticity cannot go on believing in a lie. The clarity dawns, the eyes become more perceptive, and you can see: you are in the body, certainly, but you are not the body. When a hand is broken, you are not broken. When you have a fractured leg, you are not fractured. When there is a headache, you know the headache; you are not the headache itself. When you feel hungry, you know the hunger, but you are not hungry. By and by the basic lie is sabotaged. Then you can enter deeper and can start seeing your thoughts, dreams floating in the consciousness. Then you can distinguish, discriminate - what Patanjali calls vivek - then you can discriminate what is the cloud and what is the sky.

Thoughts are like clouds moving in empty space. That empty space is the real sky, not the clouds that come and go. Not the thoughts, but the empty space in which those thoughts appear and disappear.

Just as physicists think that the whole consists of nothing but electrons, electric energy, yoga thinks that the whole consists of nothing but sound electrons. The basic element of existence for yoga is sound because life is nothing but a vibration. Life is nothing but an expression of silence. Out of silence we come, and into silence we dissolve again. Silence, space, nothingness, nonbeing, is your innermost core, the hub of the wheel. Unless you come to that silence, to that space where nothing else remains except your pure being, liberation is not attained. This is the yoga framework.

For example, I am speaking to you; this is the last layer, the fourth layer. Yoga calls it vaikhari; the word means "fruition," flowering. But before I speak to you, before I utter something, it becomes manifest to me as a feeling, as an experience; that is the third stage. Yoga calls it madhyama, "the middle." But before something is experienced inside, it moves in a seed form. You cannot experience it ordinarily unless you are very meditative, unless you have become so totally calm that even a stirring in the seed which has not sprouted yet can be perceived; it is very subtle. Yoga calls that pashyanti; the word pashyanti means "looking back," looking to the source. And beyond that is your fundamental being out of which everything arises. That is called para; para means "the transcendental."

1. Para - the transcendental, beyond all manifestation.
2. Pashyanti - looking back to the source - like a seed
3. madhyama - the middle - like a tree.
4. vaikhari - fruition or flowering.

"Fetch me from thence a fruit of the nyagrodh tree," asked the father, the great sage Uddalak, to his son.

The father said, "My son, that subtle essence which you do not perceive there, of that very essence this great nyagrodh tree exists. Believe it, my son, that there is the subtle essence in that all things have existence. That is the truth. That is the self. And that, Svetaketu, that art thou - tatvamasi, Svetaketu."

The nyagrodh tree, a big tree. The father asks for a fruit; Svetaketu brings it. Fruit is vaikhari - the thing has flowered, fruition has happened. Fruit is the most peripheral thing, absolutely manifested. The father says, "Break it." Svetaketu breaks it - millions of seeds. The father says, "Choose one seed. Break it also." He breaks that seed also.

Now there is nothing in hand. Now inside the seed there is nothing. Uddalak says, "Out of this nothingness comes the seed. Out of the seed comes the tree. Out of the tree comes the fruit. But the basis is nothingness, the silence, the space, the formless, the unmanifest, the beyond, the transcendental."

At the point of vaikhari, you are very much confused because you are farthest from your being. If you move deeper into your being, when you come closer to madhyama, the third point, you will be a little closer to your being. That's why it is called the "middle", the bridge. That's how a meditator enters into his being. That's how a mantra is used....

When you use a mantra and you repeat rhythmically "aum, aum, aum..." first it is to be repeated loudly: vaikhari. Then you have to close your lips and you have to repeat it inside - "aum, aum, aum..." - nothing comes out: madhyama. Then you have to drop even repeating inside; it repeats itself. You get in such tune with it that you drop the repeating and it goes on, on its own accord - "aaahhhhuuuuummmmmm...."

Now you have become a listener rather than repeating it. You can listen and watch and see: it has become pashyanti. Pashyanti means looking back to the source; now your eyes are turned towards the source. Then by and by that aum also disappears into the formless: suddenly there is emptiness and nothing else. You don't hear "aum, aum, aum..."; you don't hear anything.

Neither is there anything heard, nor is there the hearer. Everything has disappeared.

"Tatvamasi, Svetaketu" - Uddalak said to his son, "That art thou." That nothingness, when the chanter & the chanting has disappeared.

Now if you are attached to things too much, you will remain at the point of vaikhari. If you are attached to your body too much, you will remain at the point of madhyama. If you are attached to your mind too much, you will remain at the point of pashyanti. And if you are not attached at all, suddenly you dissolve into para, the transcendental, the beyond. That is liberation.

Being liberated means coming back home. We have gone far away. Hmm ?... just see.

Out of nothingness comes the seed, then out of the seed the sprout, then a big tree, then fruits and flowers. How far things have gone. But the fruit falls back into the earth; the circle is complete. Silence is the beginning, silence is the end. Out of pure space we come and into pure space we go. If the circle is not complete, then you will have a being stuck at some point where you have become almost frozen and you cannot move and you have lost the dynamism, the energy, the life.

Yoga wants to make you so alive that you can complete the whole circle, the wheel of life, and you can come to the very beginning again. The end is nothing but the very beginning. The goal is nothing but the source. It is not that we are going to achieve God for the first time. We had him in the first place. We lost him. We will be regaining it, reclaiming it. God is never a discovery; it is always a rediscovery. We have been in him, in that womb of peace and silence and bliss, but we have gone farther away.

It was also part of growth to go far away because if you have never gone out of your home, you will never know what home is. If you have never gone farther away from home, you will never know the beauty, the peace, the comfort, the rest of your home. To come to one's own home one has to knock at many doors. To come back to oneself one has to stumble upon many things. To come to the right path one has to go astray.

This is necessary, absolutely necessary for growth, but don't get stuck somewhere. People are stuck. A few people are stuck with their bodies, with their bodily habits. A few people are stuck with their minds, ideologies, thoughts, patterns of dreams.

Says the Katha Upanishad, "Beyond the objects are the senses. Beyond the senses is the mind. Beyond the mind is the intelligence. Beyond the intelligence the soul. Beyond the soul the nonmanifest. Beyond the nonmanifest the Brahman. And beyond Brahman himself there is nothing." This is the end, the pure consciousness.

And this pure consciousness can be achieved through many paths. The real thing is not a path. The real thing is the authenticity of the seeker. Let me emphasize this.

You can travel on any path. If you are sincere and authentic, you will reach to the goal.

Some paths may be hard, some may be easier, some may have greenery on both sides, some may be moving through deserts, some may have beautiful scenery around them, some may not have any scenery around them, that's another thing; but if you are sincere and honest and authentic and true, then each path leads to the goal. Krishna has said in Shrimad Bhagavad Geeta, "Whatever path men travel is my path. No matter where they walk, it leads to me."

So it simply can be reduced to one thing: that authenticity is the path. No matter what path you follow, if you are authentic, every path leads to him. And the opposite is also true: no matter what path you follow, if you are not authentic, you will not reach anywhere. Your authenticity brings you back home, nothing else. All paths are just secondary. The basic thing is to be authentic, to be true.

A man heard that if he went to a certain place in the desert at dawn and stood facing a distant mountain, his shadow would point to a great buried treasure.

The man left his cabin before the first light of day and at dawn was standing in the designated place. His shadow shot out long and thin over the surface of the sand. "How fortunate," he thought as he envisioned himself with great wealth. He began digging for the treasure.

He was so involved with his work that he did not notice the sun climbing in the sky and shortening his shadow, and then he noticed it. It was now almost half of the previous size. He became worried and started digging again in the new spot. Hours later, at noon, the man again stood in the designated spot. He cast no shadow. He became very much worried.

He started crying and weeping - the whole effort lost. Now where is the place?

Then there passed a Sufi Master, who started laughing at him and said, "Now exactly the shadow is pointing to the treasure. It is within you."

All paths can lead to it because in a way it is already achieved. It is within you. You are not seeking something new. You are seeking something which you have forgotten. And how can you really forget it? That's why we go on searching for bliss, because we cannot forget it. It goes on resounding inside us. The search for bliss, the search for joy, the search for happiness is nothing but the search for God. You may not have used the word "God," that doesn't matter, but all searching for bliss is the search for God - is the search for something that you knew, that one day was yours and you lost.

That's why all the great saints have said "remember." Buddha calls it SAMYAK SMRITI, "right remembrance." Nanak calls it NAM SMARAN, "remembering the name" - remembering the address. Have you not observed many times it happens? You know something, you say, "It is exactly on the tip of my tongue," but still it is not coming. God is at the tip of your tongue.

In a small school the chemistry teacher wrote a formula on the blackboard, and he asked a small boy to stand up and tell him what this formula represents. The boy looked, and he said, "Sir, it is just on the tip of my tongue, but I cannot remember."

God is also on the tip of the tongue, and I will tell you, "Swallow it! Swallow it! Don't spit it out! It is God!" Let him circulate in your blood. Let him become part of your innermost vibrations. Let him become a song inside your being, a dance.

The identification with the body is nothing but a habit. A child is born, he does not know who he is, and the parents have to create some identity; otherwise he will be lost in the world. They have to tell him who he is. They also don't know. They have to create a false label. They give him a name, they give him a mirror, and they tell him, "Look. This is your face. Look. This is your name. Look. This is your home. Look. This is your caste, your religion, your country." These identifications help him to feel who he is - without knowing who he is.

Then by and by his mind starts developing. If he is born in a Hindu home, he reads the Geeta, listens to the Geeta. If in a Christian home, he is brought to the church. A new identity starts, an innermost identity - he becomes a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan.

He is born in India, he becomes an Indian. In China, he becomes Chinese. And he starts identifying himself with the tradition of the country. A Chinese identifies himself with Chinese tradition and history, the past of China. Then one feels at home, one has roots - the whole tradition. If one is Indian, one has roots, one is not a vagabond. One has created a certain home: in the tradition, in the country, in the history, in the heroes - Ram, Krishna - now one feels at home. One has found his place, but that is not a real place. It is false. But this identity is utilitarian.

And then this habit becomes so solid that even one day you come to know what nonsense it is that you think you are Indian, Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Chinese - what nonsense - but then too the old habit will persist.

Bertrand Russell has written that he knows that he is no longer a Christian, but somehow he goes on forgetting it again and again. The whole conditioning.... You may go against the tradition, but still you will cling to it. Even people who become revolutionaries remain attached to their traditions; maybe in a negative way. If a Hindu goes against Hinduism, he will still talk about Krishna - now, against Krishna; he will still talk about Rama - against him. If a Mohammedan goes against his tradition, he will still be criticizing the Koran; of course criticizing now, criticizing Mohammed, but he remains attached to the tradition.

A real rebel is one who drops the tradition so deeply, so utterly, that he is not even against it. He is neither for nor against; then one is free. If you are against, you are still not free. If you are against anything, you will find you are bound with that thing; there is a tie.

I know a very, very learned man, very scholarly, very famous, and really a great intellectual. He has been a follower of J. Krishnamurti for long, almost forty years. And whenever he will come to see me, he will again and again say, "There is no meditation. What are you teaching to people? Krishnamurti says there is no meditation; all mantras are just repetitive; and all meditations, all methods, condition the mind. And I don't meditate."

I waited for a right moment to hammer the truth home. Then he fell ill, a heart attack. I rushed to see him, and he was repeating, "Ram, Ram, Ram...." I could not believe it. I shook his head and I said, "What are you doing? - Ram, Ram, Ram.... You are a follower of Krishnamurti. Have you forgotten?"

He said, "Forget all about that. I am dying. And who knows? Maybe Krishnamurti is wrong. And there is no loss in just repeating Ram, Ram, Ram; and it is very consoling."

What happened to this man? Forty years of listening to Krishnamurti, but his Hindu is there. At the last moment the mind will start reacting. No, he is not a rebel. He was thinking he is a rebel. He has been fighting everything, he has been against all that Hindus say, and in the last moment the whole edifice falls.

Life ordinarily is nothing but a habit, a mechanical habit. Unless you become aware, unless you become really aware, it will be difficult to get out of it.

An inveterate gambler died, and his ghost wandered around disconsolately for several weeks. Although he was entitled to be admitted to heaven, he found himself bored by the place. No gambling, no gamblers - what is the use of going to paradise or heaven ?

Eventually he asked St. Peter if he could go and take a look at the other place.

"I'm afraid that is impossible," said St. Peter. "If you go down there, you won't be allowed back."

So St. Peter agreed to issue him with a special pass allowing him to stay for just twenty hours.

Off went the gambler to have a look round hell, and the first thing he saw when he arrived was a group of old acquaintances playing poker. However, they refused to admit him into the game because he had no money.

"I will soon fix that," he said, and off he went down one of the corridors. Ten minutes later he was back, flourishing a big roll of ten-pound notes.

Habits can be too much; you can even refuse heaven. In a fit of habit you are almost unconscious and helpless. That's why the insistence of yoga is to bring more awareness to your ties. Remember as much as you can that you are not the body. And remember one thing more, that it is difficult to break a habit, but not difficult if you create another to substitute it. And that's how it happens; people go on substituting habits. If you tell them, "You are not the body," they will start thinking they are the mind. Then nothing changes, just the name of the habit changes.

This I see. If I tell somebody, "Stop smoking," he starts chewing paan. If I tell him to stop chewing paan, he starts chewing gum. Or if you stop him from that too, he starts talking too much; that too is the same thing. In the beginning he was just smoking; at least he was harming only himself, nobody else. Now he cannot smoke, so he talks too much; now he is destroying others' peace and silence also. A smoker is good in a way; he remains confined to himself. Women talk too much; once they start smoking, their talking becomes less.

In fact you must have observed: whenever you feel nervous, you start smoking. That smoking is just to escape from nervousness. And the same happens whenever you start talking. You are feeling nervous; you want to distract yourself with something.

The patient, who was only eighteen, caused a lot of worry to his parents because he would spend hours in his room dressing himself very meticulously in his smart clothes.

He would take ages brushing his hair, polishing his shoes, then he would go into the kitchen, stick a carrot in his left ear and go dancing at a disco. Naturally his parents were worried about all this and they persuaded him to see a psychiatrist.

He arrived at the psychiatrist's office, beautifully groomed and wearing a stick of celery in his left ear. The doctor gently mentioned that his parents were a little worried about him and then he asked, "By the way, is there any reason for you to have a stick of celery protruding from your left ear?"

The boy looked surprised and said, "Of course there is. Mum did not have any carrots."

Sometimes it happens you can change a bad habit into a good habit, and everybody will be happy and everybody will be satisfied. But yoga will not be satisfied. You can stop smoking and you can start repeating a mantra. Now if you don't repeat your mantra one day, you feel uneasiness in the same way as you used to feel when you were smoking and if you did not smoke for one day - the same desire to follow the routine, to do whatsoever you have been doing, mechanically. You can change a bad habit into a good habit, but the habit is still a habit. It may be good in the eyes of society, but for your inner growth it has no meaning.

All habits have to be dropped. I am not saying become a chaos. I am not saying live a life absolutely hectic and haphazard, zigzag, no. But let your life be decided by your awareness.

It is possible you can get up at five o'clock, early in the morning, as a habit; and it is also possible to get up early, five o'clock in the morning, not as a habit but as an awareness.

And both are so different, their quality is absolutely different. When a person rises at five o'clock just as a habit, then he is almost as mechanical as the other person who gets up at nine o'clock as a habit. Both are in the same boat. And the person who rises at five o'clock will be as dull as the person who rises at nine o'clock because the dullness is not a question of when you get up. The dullness is a question of whether you get up through habit or awareness.

If you get up through awareness, you will be alert. It may be nine o'clock in the morning, but if you get up aware, you will be sensitive, you will see things with a clarity, and everything will be beautiful. After a long rest, after all the senses have rested, they become alive again, more alive. The dust has disappeared; everything is more clear.

Rested, deep down into your para, your beyond, you had fallen in your sleep - all thoughts, body forgotten, left far away - you had moved to your home. You come back from there rejuvenated, fresh. But if it is just a habit, then it is as useless as any other habit.

Religion is not a question of habit. If you go to the church or to The temple just as a habit, a formality, a routine in which you have got into, you have been trained into, then it is useless. If you go to the temple alert, then the temple bells will have a totally different meaning for you, a different significance. Those temple bells will ring something within your heart. Then the silence of the church will surround you in a totally new way.

So remember, it is not a question of habit. Religion is not a question of practice. You have to understand, and this is how Patanjali has brought you, by and by, giving you more and more understanding, revealing to you more and more of the path.

The more you become clear, the more you can read the message written everywhere, on every leaf, on every flower. The message is God's. His signatures are everywhere. You need not go into the Bhagavad Geeta, you need not go into the Bible and the Koran. The Koran and the Bhagavad Geeta and the Bible are written all over existence. You only need penetrating eyes.

A young married woman in London believed she was pregnant and went to the doctor to verify it. The doctor gave her a cursory examination and assured her that her suspicions were correct. Then, to her astonishment, he simply took a rubber stamp, printed something with it on her abdomen, and said, "That's all."

The wife related this strange event to her husband, and he asked, "What does it say?"

He found that the print was too small for him to read, but a magnifing glass made everything clear. It read: "When you can read this without a magnifying glass, rush your wife to the hospital."

Right now you need a magnifying glass - of a Buddha, of a Jesus, of a Krishna, of a Patanjali. And then, too, you cannot read because your eyes are almost blind. Once your eyes are clear, his message is everywhere. And so clear is the message that you will simply be surprised how you missed for so long, how you couldn't see it. It was everywhere, all around; from every direction and dimension he was knocking at your door.

But if you live in the body, you will not hear it. If you live in the mind, you will hear it a little, but you will theorize about it and you will miss. If you go deeper than the mind into pashyanti, where meditations lead you, you will be able to read the message and you will not become a victim of theorization, you will not philosophize. And once you don't philosophize about it, once you don't think about God but you see him and you don't go around and around, about and about, and you penetrate directly; you disappear from pashyanti, the seed is broken. You fall into the abyss of para, the beyond.

The circle is complete: from silence to silence, from space to space, from God to God.

SATTVA-PURUSHAYOH SHUDDHI-SAMYE KAIVALYAM.

LIBERATION IS OBTAINED WHEN THERE IS EQUALITY OF PURITY BETWEEN THE PURUSHA AND SATTVA.

Yoga divides existence in two. The unmanifest is one, and the manifest is two because in the very process of manifestation things become two. For example, you look at a rosebush, beautiful flowers. You just look, you don't say a word. You simply see the rose, not even uttering a word inside. The experience is one. Now if you want to say to somebody, "The flowers are beautiful," the moment you say, "The flowers are beautiful," you have said something about ugliness also. The flowers are "not ugly." With beauty, ugliness enters in. If somebody asks, "What is beauty?" you will have to use ugliness to explain it.

If you look at a woman and no word arises in you, then the experience is one, nondual.

The moment you say, "I love you," you have brought hate in. Because love cannot be explained without hate. The day cannot be explained without night and life cannot be explained without death. The opposite has to be brought in.

At the point of vaikhari, everything is clear-cut, duality; night is separate from day, death is separate from life, beauty is separate from ugliness, light is separate from darkness - everything divided in an Aristotelean way, clear-cut, no bridge. Move a little deeper. At the point of madhyama, division starts but is not so clear; night and day meet, mix, as in the evening or in the morning. Go Still deeper. At the point of pashyanti, they are in the seed, the duality has not arisen yet; you cannot say what is what, everything is undifferentiated. Move still deeper. At the point of para, there is no division - visible, invisible.

At the point of expression, yoga divides reality in two: purusha and prakriti. Prakriti means "matter"; purusha means "consciousness." Now when you are identified with the bodymind, with prakriti, with nature, with matter; both are polluted. Pollution is always double.

For example, if you mix water and milk, you say, "The milk is no longer pure," but you have not observed anything: the water is also no longer pure. Because water is free so nobody is worried, that is one thing; but when you mix water and milk, both become impure. This is something, because both were pure - water was water, milk was milk - both were pure. This is a miracle. Two purities meet, and both become impure.

Impurity has nothing condemnatory in it. It simply says the foreign element has entered.

It simply says something which is not of its innermost nature has entered, that's all.

This sutra is very beautiful. "Vibhuti Pada" ends with this sutra; it is a culmination. This sutra says when you are identified with the body, you are impure, body is impure. When you are identified with the mind, you are impure, mind is impure. When you are not identified, both become pure.

Now this will look like a paradox. A siddha, or a Buddha, one who has achieved, his mind functions in purity. His genius functions in purity; all his talents become pure. And his consciousness functions in purity. Both are separated - milk is milk, water is water.

The sutra says, "Liberation is obtained when there is equality of purity between the purusha and sattva." Sattva is the highest point of prakriti, nature, matter. Sattva means the "intelligence"; and purusha means the "awareness." That is the most subtle tie inside you because they are so similar. Intelligence and awareness are so similar that many times you may start thinking that an intelligent man is an aware man. It is not so.

Einstein is intelligent, tremendously intelligent, but he is not a Buddha, he is not aware. He may even be more unaware than ordinary people because he will be inside his intelligence so much.

It happened that Einstein was going to some place in a bus, and the conductor came and asked for the money. He gave him the money. The conductor gave Einstein his change.

Einstein counted it but counted it wrongly - the greatest mathematician of the world - and he said, "You have not given me the right change; give me a few more coins."

He was not aware that this was Albert Einstein. There has never been such a great mathematical genius ever... and the conductor said, "Don't you know figures?" Nobody has known anything more than this man about figures, but what happened?

People who are very intelligent almost always become absentminded. They are moved by and attached to their intelligence so much that they become oblivious to many things in the outside world.

I have heard about a great psychoanalyst, a very intelligent man. He was absorbed so much in his experiments that for two or three days he didn't turn up at home. The wife was worried. The third day she could not wait anymore, so she phoned and she said, "What are you doing? Come back; I am waiting for you. And supper is ready."

Intelligence is not necessarily awareness. Awareness is necessarily intelligence! A man who is aware is intelligent, but a man who is intelligent need not be aware, there is no necessity in it. But both are very close. Intelligence is part of body-mind, and awareness is part of purusha, the ultimate, the beyond.

The sky meets the earth. That point, that horizon where the sky meets the earth is the point to become perfectly unidentified - there, where intelligence meets awareness. Both are very similar. Intelligence is purified matter, so pure that one can get into it and one can think, "I have become aware." That's how many philosophers waste their lives: they think their intelligence is their awareness. Religion is the search of awareness; philosophy the search of intelligence.

LIBERATION IS OBTAINED WHEN THERE IS EQUALITY OF PURITY BETWEEN THE PURUSHA AND SATTVA.

But how to attain liberation? First you have to attain to the purity of sattva, intelligence.

So move deeper. Vaikhari is intelligence manifest; madhyama is intelligence manifest only to you not to the world; pashyanti is intelligence in seed form; and para is awareness. By and by detach yourself, discriminate, start looking at the body as an instrument, a medium, an abode; and remember it as much as you can. By and by the remembrance settles. Then start working on the mind. Remember you are not the mind.

Once you are separate from the body-mind, your sattva will be pure. And your purusha has always been pure; just the identity with matter has helped it to appear impure. Once both mirrors are pure, nothing is mirrored. Two mirrors facing each other: nothing is mirrored, they remain empty.

This point of absolute emptiness is liberation. Liberation is not from the world. Liberation is from identification with worldly things notions. Don't be identified, never be identified with anything.

Always remember you are the witness, never lose that point of witnessing; then one day the inner awareness rises like thousands of suns rising together. This is what Patanjali calls kaivalya, liberation.

In India different prophets have used different words for that ultimate thing. Mahavir calls it moksha. Moksha can be rightly translated as "absolute freedom," no bondage, all imprisonment has fallen. Buddha has used the word nirvana; nirvana means "cessation of the ego." As you put a light off and the flame simply disappears, just the same way the light of the ego disappears: you are no longer an entity. The drop has dissolved into the ocean; or the ocean has dissolved into the drop. It is dissolution, annihilation.

Patanjali uses kaivalya; the word means "absolute aloneness." It is neither moksha nor nirvana. It means absolute aloneness: you have come to a point where nobody else exists for you. Nothing else exists; only you, only you, only you. In fact it is not possible to call yourself "I", because "I" has reference with "thou," and "thou" has disappeared. It is no longer possible to say you are in moksha, freedom, because when all bondage has disappeared, what is the meaning of freedom? Freedom is possible if imprisonment is possible. You are free because the prison exists just near the neighborhood. You are not inside the prison, there are other people inside the prison, but potentially, theoretically, you can be put into the prison any day. That's why you are free. But if the prison has disappeared absolutely, utterly, then what is the point of calling oneself free?

Kaivalya, just aloneness. But remember, this aloneness has nothing to do with your loneliness. In loneliness "the other" exists, is felt, the absence of the other is felt. That's why loneliness is a sad thing. You are "lonely": that means you are feeling the need for the other. "Alone": when the need for the other has disappeared. You are enough unto yourself, absolute unto yourself, no need, no desire, nowhere to go: this is what Patanjali calls "you have come home." This is liberation in his description; this is his nirvana or moksha.

Glimpses can come to you also. If you sit silently and detach yourself.,.. First detach yourself from the objects. Close your eyes, forget the world, even if it exists just take it as a dream. Then look at the ideas and remember that you are not them, they are floating clouds. Detach yourself from them; they have disappeared. Then one idea arises: that you are detached. That is pashyanti. Now drop that too because otherwise you will hang there.

Drop that too; simply be a witness to this idea also. Suddenly you explode into nothingness. It may be only for a single split moment, but you will have the taste of tao, the taste of yoga and tantra; you will have the taste of truth. And once you have had it, it becomes easier and easier to approach it, allow it, become vulnerable to it, become available to it. Every day it becomes easier and easier. The more you travel the path, the more the path becomes clear.

One day you go in and never come out... KAIVALYAM. This is what Patanjali calls the absolute liberation. This is the goal in the East.

Eastern goals reach very much higher than Western goals. In the West heaven seems to be the last thing; not so in the East. Christians, Mohammedans, Jews, for them heaven is the last thing, nothing beyond it. But in the East we have worked more, we have drilled into reality deeper. We have drilled to the very end, when suddenly the drill comes to face the emptiness and nothing can be drilled anymore.

Heaven is a desire, desire of being happy; hell is a fear, fear of being unhappy. Hell is pain accumulated; heaven is pleasure accumulated. But they are not freedom. Freedom is when you are neither in pain nor in pleasure. Freedom is when the duality has been dropped. Freedom is when there is no hell and no heaven: kaivalyam. Then one attains to the uttermost purity.

This has been the goal in the East, and I think this has to be the goal of all humanity.

Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 9
Chapter #9
Chapter title: Absolute Aloneness: Liberation