The mind becomes tranquil by cultivating attitudes of friendliness towards the happy, compassion towards the miserable, joy towards the virtuous and indifference towards the evil.
The mind also becomes tranquil by alternately expelling and retaining the breath. When meditation produces extraordinary sense perceptions, the mind gains confidence and this helps perseverance.
Also, meditate on the inner light which is serene and beyond all sorrow.
Also meditate on one who has attained desirelessness.
–Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras
The mind becomes tranquil by cultivating attitudes of friendliness towards the happy, compassion towards the miserable, joy towards the virtuous and indifference towards the evil.
Many things have to be understood before you can understand this sutra. First, the natural attitudes: whenever you see somebody happy, you feel jealous – not happy, never happy. You feel miserable. That’s the natural attitude, the attitude that you have already got. And Patanjali says the mind becomes tranquil by cultivating attitudes of friendliness towards the happy – very difficult. To be friendly with someone who is happy is one of the most difficult things in life.
Ordinarily, you think it is very easy. It is not! Just the opposite is the case. You feel jealous, you feel miserable. You may show happiness, but that’s just a facade, a show, a mask. And how you can be happy? And how you can be tranquil, silent, if you have such an attitude?
Because the whole life is celebrating, millions of happinesses happening all over the universe, but if you have an attitude of jealousy, you will be miserable, you will be in a constant hell. And you will be in a hell precisely because all over there is heaven. You will create a hell for you – a private hell – because whole existence is celebrating.
If somebody is happy, what comes first to your mind? – as if that happiness has been taken from you, as if he has won and you are defeated, as if he has cheated you . . . Happiness is not a competition, so don’t be worried. If somebody is happy, it does not mean that you cannot be happy, that he has taken happiness – now how you can be happy. Happiness is not somewhere existing, which can be exhausted by happy people.
Why you feel jealous? If somebody is rich, maybe it is difficult for you to be rich because riches exist in a quantity. If somebody is powerful in a material way, it may be difficult for you to be powerful because power is a competition. But happiness is not a competition. Happiness exists in infinite quantity. Nobody has ever been able to exhaust it; there is no competition at all. If somebody is happy, why you feel jealous? And with jealousy enters hell in you.
Says Patanjali, when somebody is happy, feel happy, feel friendly. Then you also open a door towards happiness. In a subtle way, if you can feel friendly with someone who is happy, you immediately start sharing his happiness; it has become yours also – immediately! And happiness is not some thing; it is not material. It is not something that somebody can cling to. You can share it. When a flower blooms, you can share it; when a bird sings, you can share it; when somebody is happy, you can share it. And the beauty is that it does not depend on his sharing. It depends on your partaking.
If it depended on his sharing, whether he shares or not, then it would be totally a different thing. He may not like to share. But this is not a question at all, it does not depend on his sharing. When the sun rises in the morning you can be happy, and the sun cannot do anything about it. It cannot prevent you being happy. Somebody is happy: you can be friendly. It is totally your own attitude, and he cannot prevent you by sharing. Immediately you open a door, and his happiness flows towards you also.
This is the secret of creating a heaven all around you, and only within heaven can you be tranquil. How can you be tranquil in hell-fire? And nobody is creating it: you create it. So the basic thing to be understood is that whenever there is misery, hell, you are the cause of it. Never throw the responsibility on anybody else because that throwing of responsibility is escaping from the basic truth.
If you are miserable, only you – absolutely only you – are responsible. Look within and find the cause of it. And nobody wants to be miserable. If you can find the cause within you, you can throw it out. Nobody is standing in your way to prevent you. There is not a single obstacle to be happy.
But by being friendly towards happy people, you become attuned to happiness. They are flowering; you become friendly. They may not be friendly; that is none of your concern. They may not even know you – that doesn’t matter. But wherever there is a blooming, wherever there is bliss, wherever somebody is flowering, wherever somebody is dancing and is happy and is smiling, wherever there is celebration, you become friendly, you partake of it. It starts flowing within you, and nobody can prevent it. And when there is happiness all around you, you feel tranquil.
The mind becomes tranquil by cultivating attitudes of friendliness towards the happy . . .
With the happy, you feel jealous – in a subtle competition. With happy people, you feel yourself inferior. You always choose people around you who are unhappy. You become friendly with unhappy people because with unhappy people you feel superior. You always seek somebody who is below you. You are always afraid of the higher; you always seek the lower, and the more you seek the lower, the lower you fall. Then even more lower people are needed.
Seek the company of those who are higher than you – higher in wisdom, higher in happiness, higher in tranquility, calmness, quiet, collectedness: always seek the company of the higher because that is the way how you become higher, how you transcend the valleys and reach to the peaks. That becomes a ladder. Always seek the company of the higher, the beautiful, the happy – you will become more beautiful, you will become more happy.
And once the secret is known, once you know how one becomes more happy, how with others’ happiness you create a situation for yourself also to be happy, then there is no barrier; then you can go as far as you like. You can become a god where no unhappiness exists.
Who is a god? A god is one who has learned the secret to be happy with the whole universe, with every flower and with every river and with every rock and every star, who has become one with this continuous eternal celebration, who celebrates, who doesn’t bother whose celebration is this. Wherever there is a celebration, he participates. This art of participating in happiness is one of the foundations if you want to be happy. It has to be followed.
Just the opposite you have been doing: if somebody is happy, immediately you are shocked. How is it possible? How come you are not happy, and he has become happy? There is injustice. This whole world is cheating you and there is no God. If God is, how come you are not happy and others are becoming happy? And these people who are happy, they are the exploiters, they are tricky, cunning. They live on your blood. They are sucking others’ happiness.
Nobody is sucking anybody’s happiness. Happiness is such a phenomenon, there is no need to suck it. It is an inner flowering; it doesn’t come from the outside. Just by being happy with happy people you create the situation in which your own inner flower starts blooming:
The mind becomes tranquil by cultivating attitudes of friendliness . . .
You create the attitude of enmity. You can feel friendly with a sad person, and you think it is very virtuous. You can feel friendly with someone who is depressed, in misery, and you think it is something religious, something moral you are doing, but what you are doing, you don’t know.
Whenever you feel friendly with someone who is sad, depressed, unhappy, miserable, you create misery for you. It looks very irreligious, Patanjali’s attitude. It is not, because when you [will] understand his whole standpoint, you will see what he means. He is very scientific. He is not a sentimental person, and sentimentality won’t help you.
One has to be very, very, clear:
. . . compassion towards the miserable . . .
Not friendliness – compassion. Compassion is a different quality; friendliness is different. Friendliness means you are creating a situation in which you would like to be the same as the other person is, you would like to be the same as your friend. Compassion means that someone has fallen from his state. You would like to help him, but you would not like to be like him. You would like to give him a hand; you would like to bring him up, cheer him up. You would like to help him in every way, but you would not like to be like him because that is not a help.
Somebody is crying and weeping, and you sit by the side and you start crying and weeping: are you helping him? In what way? Somebody is miserable and you become miserable; are you helping him? You may be doubling his misery. He was alone miserable; now there are two persons miserable. But in showing sympathy to the miserable you are again playing a trick. Deep down, when you show sympathy to the miserable – and remember, sympathy is not compassion; sympathy is friendliness. When you show sympathy and friendliness to a depressed, sad, miserable person, deep down you are feeling happy. Always there is an undercurrent of happiness. It has to be so because it is a simple arithmetic: when somebody is happy, you feel miserable, then how it is possible when somebody is miserable you can feel unhappy? Somebody is happy you feel miserable; then somebody is unhappy, deep down you feel very happy.
But you don’t show it. Or if you are observed acutely, you even show it – even in your sympathy there is a subtle current of happiness. You feel good; you feel cheered up really, that it is not you who is unhappy, and you are in a position to show sympathy – and you are higher, superior.
People always feel good when they can show sympathy to others; they are always cheered. Deep down they feel that they are not so miserable, thank God. When somebody dies, immediately an undercurrent in you comes that you are still alive, thank God. And you can show sympathy and it costs nothing. Showing sympathy costs nothing, but compassion is a different thing. Compassion means you would like to kelp the other person; you would like to do whatsoever can be done; you would like to help him to come out of his misery. You are not happy about it, but you are not miserable also.
And just between the two exists compassion: Buddha is in compassion. He will not feel miserable with you because that is not going to help anybody, and he will not feel happy because there is no point in feeling happy. How can you feel happy when somebody is miserable? But he cannot feel unhappy also because that is not going to help. He will feel compassion. Compassion exists just in between these two. Compassion means he would like to help you to come out of it. He is for you, compassion means, but against your misery; he loves you, but not your misery. He would like to bring you up, but not your misery with you.
When you are sympathetic you start loving the misery, not the man who is miserable. And if suddenly the man is cheered up and says, “Don’t bother,” you will feel shocked, because he never gave you a chance to be sympathetic and show him how higher, superior and happy a being you are.
Don’t be miserable with somebody who is miserable. Help him to come out of it. Never make misery an object of love; don’t give any affection to misery, because if you give affection and you make it an object of love, you are opening a door for it. Sooner or later, you will become miserable. Remain aloof. Compassion means remain aloof. Extend your hand, remain aloof, help – don’t feel miserable, don’t feel happy, because both are the same. When you feel miserable on the surface with somebody’s misery, deep down runs the current of being happy. Both have to be dropped. Compassion will bring you tranquility of the mind.
Many people come to me; they are social reformers, revolutionaries, politicians, utopians, and they say, “How you can teach people meditation and silence when there is so much misery in the world?” They tell me, “This is selfish.” They would like me to teach people to be miserable with others who are miserable. They don’t know what they are saying but they feel very good – doing social work, social service, they feel very good. And if suddenly the world becomes a heaven, and God says, “Now everything will be okay,” you will find the social reformers and revolutionaries in absolute misery, because they will have nothing to do. […]
They will be in such a difficulty if the world is really changed. If the world really fulfills the utopia of their minds and imaginations, they will commit suicide or they will go mad. Or they will start preaching just the opposite, just the contradictory, just the opposite [to] whatsoever they are preaching now.
They come to me and they say, “How you can tell people to be silent when the world is in such a misery?” They think first the misery has to be removed, then people will be silent? No, if people are silent misery can be removed, because only silence can remove the misery. Misery is an attitude. It is less concerned with material conditions, more concerned with the inner mind, the inner consciousness. Even a poor man can be happy, and once he is happy many things start falling in line.
Soon he may not be a poor man, because how can you be poor when you are happy? When you are happy, the whole world participates with you. When you are unhappy, everything goes wrong. You create all around a situation which helps your unhappiness to be there. This is the dynamics of the mind. It is a self-defeating system. You feel miserable, then more misery attracts towards you. When more misery attracts you say, “How I can be silent? So much misery there.” Then even more misery is attracted toward you. Then you say, “It is impossible now. And those who say they are happy must be telling lies: these Buddhas, Krishnas, they must be telling lies. These Patanjalis, they must be liars, because it [happiness] is possible, [with] so much misery?”
Then you are in a self-defeating system. You attract, and not only you attract for yourself: when one person is miserable, he helps others also to be miserable, because they are also fools like you. Seeing you in misery, they sympathize. When they sympathize, they become vulnerable. So it is just like that: one ill person infects the whole community. […]
Unless others are in misery, you don’t feel happy. But how can you feel happy when others are unhappy, and how can you feel alive really when others are dead? We exist together. And sometimes you may be the cause of many people’s misery. Then you are earning a karma. You may not have directly hit them; you may not have been violent to them. Subtle is the law. You need not be a murderer, but if simply you infect people by your misery, you are participating in it; you are creating misery. And you are responsible for it, and you will have to pay for it. Very subtle is the mechanism.
Just two, three days before, it happened a sannyasin attacked Laxmi. You may not have observed that you all are responsible for it, because many of you have been feeling antagonism towards Laxmi. That sannyasin is just a victim, just the weakest link among you. He has expressed your antagonism, that’s all, and he was the weakest; he became the victim, and now you will feel that he is responsible. That’s not true. You participated. Subtle is the law!
How you participated? Deep down, whenever somebody managing – and Laxmi is managing things around here . . . There are many situations in which you will feel antagonistic, in which she will have to say no to you, in which you will feel hurt – it cannot be avoided – in which you feel that enough attention is not being paid to you, in which you feel that you are treated as if you are nobody. Your ego feels hurt and you feel antagonism.
If many people feel antagonism towards a person, then the weakest amongst them will become the victim; he will do something. He was the craziest amongst you, that’s right. But he alone is not responsible. If you have ever felt antagonism towards Laxmi, that is part [of it] and you have earned a karma, and unless you become so subtly aware, you cannot become enlightened. Things are very complicated. […]
This is a community; you live here as a family. Many tensions are bound to be there, be aware. Be alert about those tensions because your tensions can create a force. They can become accumulative, and suddenly somebody who is weak, vulnerable, simple, may become the shelter of the accumulated force, and then he reacts in a way. Then you all can throw the responsibility on him. But that is not true if you ever have felt any antagonism, you are part of it. And the same is true in the greater world also.
When Godase murdered Gandhi, I never said that Godase is responsible. He was the weakest link; that is true. But the whole Hindu mind was responsible, deep currents of Hindu antagonism against Gandhi. The feeling that he is for Moslems, Mohammedans, was accumulating. This is an actual phenomenon: antagonism becomes accumulated. Just like a cloud, it hovers, and then somewhere a weak heart, a very unprotected man, becomes the victim. The cloud gets roots into him and then the explosion. And then everybody is freed: Godase is responsible – murdering Gandhi – so you can kill Godase and be finished. Then the whole country moves in the same way, and the Hindu mind remains the same: no change. Subtle is the law!
Always find the dynamics of mind. Only then you will be transformed; otherwise not.
The mind becomes tranquil by cultivating attitudes of friendliness towards the happy, compassion towards the miserable, joy towards the virtuous . . .
Look! Patanjali is making steps – and beautiful and very subtle, but exactly scientific.
. . . joy towards the virtuous, and indifference towards the evil.
When you feel somebody is a virtuous man, joy, the ordinary attitude is that he must be deceiving. How anybody can be more virtuous than you? Hence so much criticism goes on.
Whenever there is somebody who is virtuous, you immediately start criticizing, you start finding faults with him. Somehow or other you have to bring him down. He cannot be virtuous. You cannot believe this. Patanjali says joy, because if you criticize a virtuous man, deep down you are criticizing virtue. If you criticize a virtuous man, you are coming to a point to believe that virtue is impossible in this world. Then you will feel at ease. Then you can move on your evil ways easily because, “Nobody is virtuous; everybody is just like me – even worse than me.” That’s why so much condemnation goes on – criticism, condemnation.
If somebody says, “That person is a very beautiful person,” you immediately find something to criticize. You cannot tolerate – because if somebody is virtuous and you are not, your ego is shattered, and then you start feeling that “I have to change myself,” which is an arduous effort. The simple is to condemn; the simple is to criticize; the simple is to say, “No! Prove it! What are you saying? First, prove how he is virtuous!” And it is difficult to prove virtue; it is very easy to disprove anything. It is very difficult to prove! […]
People always believe in the negative easily because to disprove a no is very difficult – how can you prove? How can you prove that Jesus is the son of God? How will you prove? Two thousand years, and Christian theology has been proving [trying] without proving it. But within seconds it was proved that he was a sinner, a vagabond, and they killed – within seconds! Somebody said that “I have seen this man coming out of a prostitute’s house,” – finished! Nobody bothers whether this man who is saying that “I have seen,” is believable or not – nobody bothers! The negative is always believed easily because it is also helping your ego. The positive is not believed.
You can say no whenever there is virtue. But you are not harming the virtuous man: you are harming you. You are self-destructive. You are, in fact, committing suicide slowly – poisoning yourself. When you say that “This man is not virtuous, that man is not virtuous,” what are you, in fact, creating? You are creating a milieu in which you will come to believe that virtue is impossible; and when virtue is impossible, there is no need to attempt. Then you fall down. Then you settle wherever you are. Growth becomes impossible. And you would like to settle, but then you settle in misery because you are miserable.
You all have settled completely. This settlement has to be broken; you have to be unsettled. Wherever you are you have to be uprooted and replanted in a higher plane, and that is possible only if you are joyful towards the virtuous.
. . . joy towards the virtuous and indifference towards the evil.
Don’t even condemn evil.
The temptation is there; you would like to condemn even virtue. And Patanjali says don’t condemn evil. Why? He knows the inner dynamics of the mind: because if you too much condemn evil, you pay too much attention to evil, and by and by, you become attuned to it. If you say that “This is wrong, that is wrong,” you are paying too much attention to the wrong. You will become addicted with the wrong. If you pay too much attention to anything, you become hypnotized. And whatsoever you are condemning you will commit, because it will become an attraction, a deep-down attraction. Otherwise, why bother? They are sinners, but who are you to bother about them?
Jesus says, “Judge ye not . . . .” That’s what Patanjali means – indifference; don’t judge this way or that – be indifferent. Don’t say yes or no; don’t condemn, don’t appreciate. Simply leave it to the divine; it is none of your business. A man is a thief: it is his business. It is his and God’s. Let them settle themselves; you don’t come in. Who is asking you to come in? Jesus says, “Judge ye not . . . .” Patanjali says, “Be indifferent.” […]
When you say that something is wrong, go in the monasteries – the monks condemning sex. […] Twenty-four hours they are thinking about it: trying to avoid it is thinking about it. The more you try to avoid it, the more you are hypnotized. That is why in the old scriptures it is said whenever a saint concentrates, beautiful girls from heaven come and try to disturb his mind. Why beautiful girls should be interested? Somebody is sitting under a tree with closed eyes, why beautiful girls will be interested in this man?
Nobody comes from anywhere, but he is so much against sex it becomes a hypnosis. He is so much hypnotized that now dreams become real. He opens the eyes and sees a beautiful naked girl standing there. You need a pornographic book to see a nude woman. If you go to the monastery, you will not need a pornographic book: you create your pornography yourself all around. And then the seer, the man who was concentrating, becomes more afraid: he closes his eyes, clenches his fist. Now inside the woman is standing.
And you cannot find such beautiful women on this earth because they are creations of dream – hypnosis byproducts – and the more he becomes afraid, the more they are there. They will rub with his body, they will touch his head, they will cling and embrace him. He is completely mad, but this happens. This is happening to you also. Degrees may differ, but this is what is happening. Whatsoever you are against, you will be joined with it deep down.
Never be against anything. To be against evil is to fall a victim. Then you are falling in the hands of the evil. Indifference: if you follow indifference, it means it is none of your concern. Somebody is stealing: that is his karma. He will know and he will have to suffer. That is not your business at all: you don’t think about it, don’t pay any attention to it. There is a prostitute: she is selling her body – that is her business. You don’t have condemnation in you, otherwise you will be attracted towards her. […]
What you are outwardly is not the question. What your inner hypnosis is will decide your future course of life. Be indifferent to evil. Indifference does not mean apathy – remember. These are subtle distinctions. Indifference doesn’t mean apathy. It does not mean that close your eyes, because even if you close you have taken a standpoint, attitude. It does not mean don’t bother, because there also is a subtle condemnation. Indifference simply means as if it doesn’t exist, as if it is not there. No attitude indifference means. You pass as if it is not happening.
Upeksha, the word Patanjali uses, is very beautiful. It is neither apathy nor antagonism nor escape. It is simple indifference without any attitude – remember, without any attitude, because you can be indifferent with an attitude. You can think it is not worth – it is not worthy of me to think about it. No, then you have an attitude, and a subtle condemnation is hidden in it. Indifference means simply, “Who are you to decide, to judge?” You think about you, “Who are you? How can you say what is evil and what is good? Who knows?”
Because life is such a complexity the evil becomes good, the good becomes evil – they change. Sinners have been known to reach the ultimate; saints have been known to be thrown into hell. So who knows? And who are you? Who is asking you? You take care of yourself. [Even] if you can do that, enough you have done. You be more mindful and aware; then an indifference comes to you without any attitude. […]
So don’t take any attitude: that is the meaning of being indifferent.
The mind also becomes tranquil by alternating expelling and retaining the breath.
Patanjali gives other alternatives also. If you can do this – being happy with happy people, friendly; compassion with the miserable; joy with the virtuous; indifference with the evil ones – if you can do this, then you enter from [through] the transformation of the mind towards the supermind. If you cannot do – because it is difficult, not easy – then there are other ways. Don’t feel depressed.
Says Patanjali:
The mind also becomes tranquil by alternating expelling and retaining the breath.
Then you enter through the physiology. This is entering through the mind – the first: the second is entering through the physiology.
Breathing and thinking are deeply connected, as if they are two poles of one thing. You also sometimes become aware, if you are a little mindful, that whenever the mind changes, the breathing changes. For example, you are angry: immediately the breathing changes, the rhythm is gone. The breathing has a different quality. It is non-rhythmic.
When you have passion, lust, sex takes over, the breathing changes; it becomes feverish, mad. When you are silent, just not doing anything, just feeling very relaxed, the breathing has a different rhythm. If you watch, and Patanjali must have watched very deeply . . . he says if you watch deeply, you can find what type of breathing and its rhythm creates what type of mind. If you feel friendly, the breathing is different. If you feel antagonistic, angry, the breathing is different. So either change the mind and the breathing will change, or you can do the opposite: change the breathing and the mind will change. Change the rhythm of breathing, and the mind will immediately change.
When you feel happy, silent, joyous, remember the rhythm of the breathing. Next time when anger comes, you don’t allow the breathing to change; you retain the rhythm of breathing as if you are happy. Anger is not possible then because the breathing creates the situation. The breathing forces the inner glands in the body which release chemicals in the blood.
That’s why you become red when you are angry: certain chemicals have come into the blood, and you become feverish. Your temperature goes high. The body is ready to fight or take flight; the body is in an emergency. Through hammering of the breathing, this change comes.
Don’t change the breathing. Just remain as if you are silent; just the breathing has to follow a silent pattern – you will feel it impossible to become angry. When you are feeling very passionate, lust, sex takes over. Just try to be tranquil in the breathing, and you feel sex has disappeared.
Here he suggests a method:
The mind also becomes tranquil by alternating expelling and retaining the breath.
You can do two things: whenever you feel the mind is not tranquil – tense, worried, chattering, anxiety, constantly dreaming – do one thing: first exhale deeply. Always start by exhaling. Exhale deeply: as much as you can, throw the air out. With the throwing of the air the mood will be thrown out, because breathing is everything.
And then expel the breath as far as possible. Take the belly in and retain for few seconds – don’t inhale. Let the air be out, and you don’t inhale for few seconds. Then allow the body to inhale. Inhale deeply – as much as you can. Again, stop for few seconds. The same should be the gap as you retain the breath out – if you retain for three seconds, retain the breath in for three seconds. Throw it out; retain for three seconds. Take in; retain for three seconds. But it has to be thrown out completely. Exhale totally and inhale totally, and make a rhythm. Retain, in; retain, out. Retain, in; retain, out. Immediately you will feel a change coming into your whole being. The mood is gone. A new climate has entered into you.
What happens? Why is it so? For many reasons: one, when you start creating this rhythm, your mind is completely diverted. You cannot be angry, because a new thing has started, and mind cannot have two things together. Your mind is now filled with exhaling, inhaling, retaining, creating a rhythm. You are completely absorbed in it, the cooperation with anger is broken: one thing.
This exhaling, inhaling, cleanses the whole body. When you exhale out and retain for three seconds or five seconds – as much as you want, as much as you can – what happens inside? The whole body throws all that is poisonous into the blood. Air is out and the body gets a gap. In that gap all the poisons are thrown out. They come to the heart, they accumulate there – poisonous gases, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, they all gather together there.
You don’t give a chance for them to gather together. You go on breathing in and out. There is no gap, no pause. In that pause, a gap is created, an emptiness. In that emptiness, everything flows and fills it. Then you take a deep inhalation and then you retain. All those poisonous gases become mixed with the breathing; then you again exhale and throw them out. Again pause. Let the poisons gather. And this is a way of throwing things out.
Mind and breath are so much connected – have to be, because breathing is life. A man can be without mind, but cannot be without breathing. Breathing is deeper than mind. Your brain can be operated completely; you will be alive if you can breathe. If the breathing continues, you will be alive. The brain can be taken out completely. You will vegetate, but you will be alive. You will not be able to open the eyes and talk or do anything, but on the bed, you can be alive, vegetating for many years. But mind cannot. If the breathing stops, mind disappears.
Yoga found this basic thing – that breathing is deeper than thinking. If you change breathing, you change thinking. And once you know the key, that breathing has the key, you can create any climate that you want: it is up to you. The way you breathe it depends on it. Just you do one thing: for seven days, you just make a notebook of the different types of breathing that happen with different moods. You are angry: take a notebook and just count breathing – how much you inhale and how much you exhale. Five counts you inhale, three counts you exhale – note it down.
Sometime you are feeling very, very beautiful – note it down, what is the proportion of inhalation and exhalation, what is the length, is there any pause – note it down. And for seven days just make a diary to feel your own breathing, how it is connected with your moods. Then you can sort it out. Then whenever you want to drop a mood, just use the opposite pattern. Or, if you want to bring a mood, then use the pattern.
Actors, knowingly, unknowingly, come to know it because sometimes they have to be angry without being angry. So what they will do? They will have to create the breathing pattern. They may not be aware, but they will start breathing as if they are angry, and soon the blood rushes in and poisons are released. And without being angry their eyes are red, and they are in a subtle anger state without being angry. They have to make love without being in love; they have to show love without being in love. How do they do it? They know a certain secret of yoga.
That’s why I always say a yogi can become the most perfect actor. He is. His stage is vast, that’s all. He is acting – not acting on the stage, but on the stage of the world. He is an actor; he is not a doer. And the difference is that he is taking part in a great drama, and he can remain a witness to it, and he can remain aloof and detached.
When meditation produces extraordinary sense perceptions, the mind gains confidence, and this helps perseverance.
If you work out your breathing pattern, and you find the secret keys how to change the climate of the mind, how to change the moods . . . and if you work from both the poles, that will be better. And try to be friendly towards the happy, indifferent towards the evil, and continue the change and transformation of your breathing patterns also. Then there will be extraordinary sense perceptions.
If you have taken LSD, marijuana, hashish, then you know extraordinary sense perceptions happen. You look at ordinary things, and they become extraordinary. Aldous Huxley remembers that when he took LSD for the first time, he was sitting before an ordinary chair, and when he became more and more deep with the drug, when he was on, the chair immediately started changing color. Radiant it became: an ordinary chair – he had never paid any attention to it – became so beautiful, many colors coming out of it, as if it is made of diamonds. Such beautiful shapes and nuances that he couldn’t believe his eyes what is happening. Later on he remembered this must have happened to Van Gogh, because he has painted a chair almost exactly the same.
A poet need not take LSD. He has an inbuilt system of throwing LSD in the body. That is the difference between a poet and an ordinary man. That’s why they say a poet is born, not made: because he has an extraordinary body structure. The chemicals in his body have a different quantity and quality to them. That’s why where you don’t see anything he sees miracles. You see an ordinary tree, and he sees something unbelievable. You see ordinary clouds: a poet, if he really is a poet, never sees anything ordinary; everything is extraordinarily beautiful.
The same happens to a yogi: because when you change your breathing and your attitudes, your body chemistry changes its pattern; you are going through a chemical transformation, and then your eyes become clear, a new perceptivity happens. The same old tree becomes absolutely new. You never knew the shade of its green: it becomes radiant. The whole world all around you takes a new shape. It is a paradise now – not the ordinary old rotten earth.
People around you are no more the same. Your ordinary wife becomes a most beautiful woman. Everything changes with your clarity of perception. When your eyes change, everything changes.
Says Patanjali,
When meditation produces extraordinary sense perceptions, the mind gains confidence and this helps perseverance.
Then you become confident that you are on the right path. The world is becoming more and more beautiful; the ugliness is disappearing. The world is becoming more and more a harmony; the discord is disappearing. The world is becoming more and more home; you are feeling more and more at ease in it. It is friendly. It is a love affair with you and the universe. You become more confident, and more perseverance comes to your effort.
Also, meditate on the inner light which is serene, beyond all sorrow.
This can be done only when you have attained a certain quality of perceptivity. Then you can close the eyes and you can find a flame – a beautiful flame near the heart, a blue light. But right now you cannot see it. It is there, it has always been there. When you die, that blue light goes out of your body. But you cannot see it because when you were alive you couldn’t see it.
And others will also be not able to see it, that something is going out; but Kirlian in Soviet Russia, he has taken photographs with very sensitive film. When a person dies, something happens around. Some body energy, some light-like thing, leaves, goes and disappears into the cosmos. That light is always there: that is your center of being. It is near the heart – with a blue flame.
When you have some perception, you can see the beautiful world all around you – when your eyes are clear. You close them and you move nearer the heart; you try to find what is there. First you will feel darkness. It is just like as you come from the outside on a hot sunny day inside the room, and you feel everything is dark. But wait. Let the eyes be attuned with the darkness, and soon you start seeing things in the house.
You have been outside for millions of lives. When for the first time you come in, nothing is there except darkness, emptiness. But wait. It will take few days – even a few months, but just wait, close the eyes and look down in the heart. Suddenly, one day it happens: you see a light, a flame. Then concentrate on that flame.
Nothing is more blissful than that. Nothing is more dancing, singing, musical, harmonious as that inner blue light within your heart. And the more you concentrate, the more you become tranquil, silent, calm, collected. Then there is no darkness for you. When your heart is filled with light, the whole universe is filled with light.
Also, meditate on the inner light which is serene, beyond all sorrow.
Also, meditate on one who has attained desirelessness.
That too! All alternatives Patanjali is giving you. A veetraga, one who has gone beyond all desires – also meditate on him. Mahavira, Buddha, Patanjali – your own – Zarathustra, Mohammed, Christ or anybody you feel an affinity and love for . . . . Meditate on one who has gone beyond desires. Meditate on your Master, on your guru, who has gone beyond desires. How it will help? It helps, because when you meditate on someone who has gone beyond desires, he becomes a magnetic force in you. You allow him to enter within you; he pulls you out of yourself. This becomes your availability to him.
If you meditate on someone who has gone beyond desires, you will become like him sooner or later, because meditation makes you like the object of meditation itself. If you meditate on money, you will become just like money. Go and look at a miser; he has no more a soul. He has only a bank balance; he has nothing inside. If you listen, you will just hear notes, rupees: you will not find any heart there. Whatsoever you pay your attention to, you become like it. So be aware. Don’t pay attention to something you would not like to become. Only pay attention to something you would like to become, because this is the beginning. The seed is sown with the attention, and soon it will become a tree.
You sow the seeds of hell, and when it becomes a tree then you say, “Why I am so miserable?” You always pay attention to the wrong; you always look to that which is negative. You always pay attention to the fault; then you become faulty.
Don’t pay attention to the fault. Pay attention to the beautiful. Why count the thorns? Why not see the flower? Why count the nights? Why not count the days? If you count the nights, then there are two nights and only one day between the two. If you count the days, then there are two days and only one night in between. And it makes a lot of difference. Look at the light side if you want to become light; look at the dark if you want to become dark.
Says Patanjali:
Also, meditate on one who has attained desirelessness.
Seek a Master; surrender to a Master. Be attentive to him. Listen, watch, eat and drink him. Let him enter you; allow your heart to be filled with him. Soon you will be on a journey, because the object of attention ultimately becomes the goal of your life. And attention is a secret relationship. Through attention you become the object of your attention.
Krishnamurti goes on saying, “The observer becomes the observed.” He is right: whatsoever you observe, you will become. So be alert. Beware! Don’t observe something which you would not like to become, because that is your goal; you are sowing the seeds.
Live near a veetraga – a man who is beyond desires. Live near a man who has no more to fulfill here, who is fulfilled. His very fulfilledness will overflood you, and he will become a catalyst.
He will not do anything, because a man who is beyond desires cannot do anything. Even he cannot help you because help is also a desire. Much help comes through him, but he doesn’t help you. He becomes a catalyst without doing anything, if you allow him; he drops into your heart and his very presence crystallizes you.
-Osho
From The Heart of Yoga, Discourse #9; Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V.2, (previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega).
Copyright © OSHO International Foundation
This discourse is the Listening Meditation in the third program of the module, Osho Yoga and the Discipline of Transformation, one of several modules in A Course in Witnessing.
An MP3 audio file of this discourse can be downloaded from Osho.com or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library.
Many of Osho’s books are available in the U.S. online from Amazon.com and Viha Osho Book Distributors. In India they are available from Amazon.in and Oshoworld.com.
