Now, try to understand these sutras of Patanjali.
The seen which is composed of the elements and the sense organs is of the nature of stability, action, and inertia, and is for the purpose of providing experience and thus liberation to the seer.
The first thing to be understood is that the world exists for you to be liberated. Many a time the question has arisen in your mind: “Why does this world exist? Why is there so much suffering? For what? What is the purpose of it?” Many people come to me and they say, “This is the ultimate question — ‘Why are we at all?’ And if life is such a suffering, what is the purpose of it? If there exists a God, why can’t he destroy all this chaos? Why can’t he destroy this whole suffering life, this hell? Why does he go on forcing people to live in it?” Yoga has the answer: Patanjali says, ” . . . for the purpose of providing experience and thus liberation to the seer.”
It is a training; suffering is a training — because there is no possibility of becoming mature without suffering. It is like fire: the gold, to be pure, has to pass through it. If the gold says. “Why!” then the gold remains impure, worthless. Only by passing through the fire will all that is not gold be burned, and only the purest gold will remain. That’s what liberation is all about: a maturity, a growth so ultimate that only the purity, only the innocence remains, and all that was useless has been burned.
There is no other way to realize it. There cannot be any other way to realize it. If you want to know what satiety is, you will have to know hunger. If you want to avoid hunger, you will avoid satiety also. If you want to know what deep quenching is, you will have to know thirst, deep thirst. If you say, “I don’t want to be thirsty,” then you will miss that beautiful moment of deep quenching of the thirst. If you want to know what light is, you will have to pass through a dark night; the dark night prepares you to realize what light is. If you want to know what life is, you will have to pass through death; death creates the sensitivity in you to know life. They are not opposites; they are complementary.
There is nothing which is opposite in the world; everything is complementary. “This” world exists so that you can know “that” world; “this” exists to know “that.” The material exists to know the spiritual; the hell exists to come to heaven. This is the purpose. And if you want to avoid one you avoid both, because they are two aspects of the same thing. Once you understand, there is no suffering: you know this is training, a discipline. Discipline is to be hard. It has to be hard because only then will real maturity come out of it.
Yoga says this world exists as a training school, a learning school — don’t avoid it and don’t try to escape from it. Rather live it and live it so totally that you need not be forced again to live it. That’s the meaning when we say that an enlightened person never comes back — there is no need. He has passed all the examination that life provides. He need not come back. You have to be forced again and again to the same life pattern because you don’t learn. You go on repeating the experience without learning. The same experience you repeat again and again — the same anger. How many, how many thousand times have you been angry? Count it. What have you learned out of it? Nothing. Whenever the situation arises, you will be angry again — the same, as if it is for the first time that you are getting into anger.
How many times has greed, lust possessed you? Again, it will possess. And again, you will react in the old way — as if you have decided not to learn. And to be ready to learn is to be ready to become a yogi. If you have decided not to learn, if you want to remain blindfolded, if you want to repeat the same nonsense again and again; then you will have to be thrown back: you will have to be sent back to the same class — unless you pass.
Don’t take life in any other way. It is a vast training school, the only university there is. The word “university” comes from “universe.” In fact, no university should call itself “university”; the name is too big. The whole universe is the only university. But you have created small universities, and you think that when you pass through them you have become entitled, as if you have become a knower. No, these small, man-made universities won’t do. You will have to pass through this university your whole life.
Says Patanjali, ” . . . for the purpose of providing experience and thus liberation . . .” Experience is liberating. Jesus has said, “Know the truth and the truth will liberate you.” Whenever you experience a thing, alert, aware, fully watching what is happening — participating and watching together — -it is liberating. Immediately, something arises out of it: an experience which becomes true. You have not borrowed it from scriptures; you have not borrowed it from somebody else.
Experience cannot be borrowed; only theories can be borrowed. That’s why all theories are dirty, because they have been passing through so many hands, so many millions of hands. They are just like dirty currency notes. Experience is ever fresh — fresh like the dew in the morning, fresh like this morning’s rose. Experience is always innocent and virgin — nobody has ever touched it. You come upon it for the first time. Your experience is yours, it is nobody else’s, and nobody Can give it to you.
Buddhas can indicate the way, but you have to walk. No Buddha can walk for you; there is no possibility. A Buddha cannot give his eyes to you so that you can look through them. Even if the Buddha gives you the eyes, you will change the eyes — the eyes will not be able to change you. When the eyes will be fit into your mechanism, your mechanism will change the eyes themselves, but the eyes cannot change you. They are parts; you are a very big phenomenon.
I cannot lend my hand to you. Even if I do, the touch will not be mine, it will be yours. When you will go and feel something — even from my hand — it will be you who will feel, not my hand. There is no possibility of borrowing reality.
Experience liberates. Every day I come across people who say, “How is one to get free from anger? How is one to get free from sex, lust? How is one to get free from this and that?” And when I say, “Live it through,” they are shocked. They had come to me in search of a method to repress themselves. And if they had gone to another guru in India, they would have found some method to repress themselves with. But repression can never be liberating, because repression means repressing experience. Repression means cutting all the roots of experience. It can never be liberating. Repression is the greatest bondage that you can find anywhere.
You live in a cage. Just the other day, one new sannyasin told me, “I feel like an animal in a cage.” There is every possibility that he meant that he wanted me to help him so that the animal is killed, because we say “animal” only when we condemn. The very word carries condemnation. But when I told the sannyasin, “Yes, I will help you. I will break the cage and make the animal completely free,” he was a little shocked; because when you say “animal” you have already valued it, condemned it — it is not a simple fact. In the very word “animal” or “animality” you have said everything that you wanted to say. You don’t accept it. You don’t want to live it. That’s why you have created the cage.
Cage is character. All characters are cages, imprisonments, chains around you. And men of character are imprisoned men. A really awakened man is not a man of character. He is alive. He is fully alive, but he has no character, because he has no cage. He lives spontaneously; he lives through awareness — so nothing can go wrong — but he has no cage around him to protect him.
The cage is a substitute for awareness. If you want to live a sleepy life you need character, so the character gives you guidelines. Then you need not be alert. You are going to steal something — the character just hinders you: it says, “No! This is wrong! This is sin! You will suffer in hell! Have you forgotten the whole Bible? Have you forgotten all the punishment that a man has to go through?” This is character. This is just hindering you. You want to steal; character is just a hindrance.
A man of awareness will not steal, but he has no character; and that is the miracle and the beauty. He has no character, and he will not steal, because he understands. Not that he is afraid of sin — there is nothing like sin; at the most, errors — nothing like sin. He is not afraid of being punished, because punishment is not in the future — it is not that sins are punished, in fact: sins are the punishment. It is not that you are angry today and tomorrow you will be punished or in the next life — sheer nonsense. When you put your hand in the fire today, do you think it will be burned in the next life? When you put your hand in the fire today it burns today; immediately it burns. Putting the hand in and the burning of it — all simultaneous. Not even a single moment’s gap. Life never believes in the future because life is only present.
Not that sins will be punished in the future, sins are the punishment. Intrinsic punishment is there: you steal and you are punished. In the very stealing you are punished — because you are more imprisoned: you will become more afraid; you will not be able to face the world; continuously, you will feel some guilt, you have done something wrong, any moment you can be caught. You are already caught! Maybe nobody ever catches you and no court punishes you — and there is no other heavenly court anywhere — but you are caught. You are caught by yourself. How will you forget it? How will you forgive yourself? How will you undo the thing that you have done? It will linger and linger. It will follow you like a shadow; it will haunt you like a ghost. It itself is the punishment.
Character hinders you from committing wrong things, but it cannot hinder you from thinking them. But to steal or to think about it is the same. To commit a murder really and just to think about it is the same, because as far as your consciousness is concerned you have committed it if you have thought about it. It never became action because the character hindered you; if the character was not there it would have become action. So in fact character, at the most, does this: it hinders the thought; it doesn’t allow it to be transformed into action.
It is good for the society, but nothing good for you. It protects the society; your character protects the society. Your character protects others, that’s all. That’s why every society insists on character, morality, this and that; but it does not protect you.
You can be protected only in awareness. And how to gain awareness? There is no other way except to live life in its totality. ” . . . for the purpose of providing experience and thus liberation to the seer.”
“The seen which is composed of the elements and the sense organs is of the nature of . . .” three gunas. Yoga believes in three gunas: sattva, rajas, tamas. Sattva is the quality which makes things stable; rajas is the quality which gives action; and tamas is the quality which is inertia. These three are the basic qualities. Through these three this whole world exists. This is the yoga trinity.
Now physicists are ready to agree with yoga. They have split the atom and they have come across three things: electrons, neutrons, protons. Those three are of the same three qualities: one is of the quality of light — sattva — stability; another is of the quality of rajas — activity, energy, force; and the third is of the quality of inertia — tamas. The whole world consists of these three gunas; and through these three gunas, a man of awareness has to pass. He has to experience all these three gunas. And if you experience them as a harmony, which is the real discipline of yoga . . .
Everybody experiences: sometimes you feel lazy, sometimes you feel so full of energy; sometimes you feel so good and light, and sometimes you feel so evil and bad; sometimes you are a darkness, and sometimes you are a dawn. You feel all these gunas. Many moments of them come continuously, you move in a wheel, but they are not in proportion. A man of lethargy is ninety percent lethargy. He is active also — he has to be because just to keep on living a life of lethargy he will have to act a little. That’s all his activity is — just to support his inertia. And he has to be a little good to people also; otherwise people will be very, very bad to him. People will not tolerate his inertia.
Have you watched? People who are not very active . . . For example, very fat people are always smiling. That is their protection. They know they cannot fight. They know that if the fight happens, they cannot escape, they cannot “flight.” You always see very fat people smiling, happy. What is the reason? Why do thin people look sad and why do fat people never look so sad, always happy? Psychologists and physiologists say that is their protection, because in the struggle of life it will be very difficult for them to be always in a fighting mood, as lean and thin people always are. They can fight — if the other person is weak, they will beat him; if the other person is strong, they will escape. They can do both, and the fat person cannot do either — he goes on smiling; he goes on being good to everybody. That’s his protection so others should be good to him.
Lazy people are always good. They have never committed any bad thing because even to commit a sin one need be a little active. You cannot make a lazy person a Hitler, impossible. You cannot make a lazy person a Napoleon or Alexander, impossible. Lazy persons have not committed any great sin; they cannot. They are, in a way, good people because even to commit a sin or to do something bad they will have to be active — that’s not for them.
Then there are active people, unbalanced; they are always on the go. They are not worried in any way where to reach; they are only worried how to go with speed. They don’t bother about whether they are leaching anywhere — that is not the point at all. If they are moving with speed everything is okay. Don’t ask, “Where are you going?” They are not going anywhere; they are simply going. They have no destiny. They have only energy to be active. These people are the dangerous people in the world, more dangerous than the lazy people. Out of this second category come all Adolf Hitlers, Mussolinis, Napoleons, Alexanders. All mischief-mongers come from the second category because they have energy, a disproportionate energy.
Then there is a third kind of people, which is rare to find: somewhere a Lao Tzu just sitting silently — not lazy, passive. Not active, not lazy — passive: full of energy, a reservoir, but sitting silently. Have you watched somebody sitting silently, full of energy? You feel a field around him, radiant with life, but still — not doing anything, just being.
And yoga is to find the equilibrium between these three. If you can find a balance between these three, suddenly you transcend. If one is more than the others, then that one becomes your problem. If you are more lazy than active, then laziness will be your problem: you will suffer through it. If activity is more than laziness, then you will suffer from your activity. And the third is never more, it is always less; but even if that is theoretically possible — that somebody is too good — that too will be a suffering for him, that too will create imbalance. A right life is a life of balance.
Buddha has eight principles for his disciples. Before every principle he adds a word, sama. If he says, “Be aware,” he not only says “smriti,” he says “samyak smriti.” In English they have always been translating it as “right memory.” If he says, “Be active,” he always says, “Be rightly active.” By “rightly” he means be in an equilibrium. The Indian term samyak means equilibrium. Even for samadhi, even for meditation, Buddha says “samyak samadhi.” Even samadhi can be too much, and then it will be dangerous. Even good can be too much, and then it will be dangerous.
Equilibrium should be the key factor. Whatsoever you do, always be balanced like a man walking on a tightrope, continuously balancing. That is the rightness: the factor of balance. The man who wants to attain to the ultimate marriage, ultimate yoga, has to be in a deep balance. In balance you transcend all the three gunas. You become gunateet: you go beyond all these three attributes. You are no longer part of the world; you have gone beyond.
The three gunas — stability, action, and inertia — have four stages: the defined, the undefined, the indicated, and the unmanifest.
These three gunas have four stages. The first, Patanjali calls “the defined.” You can call it matter; that is the most defined thing around you. Then, “the undefined” — you can call it mind; that too is there, felt by you continuously, but is an undefined factor. You cannot define what mind is. You know it, you live it continuously, but you cannot define it. Matter can be defined but not mind. And then “the indicated” — the indicated is even subtler than the undefined: it is the self. You can only indicate it. You cannot even say it is undefined because to say something is undefined is, in a subtle way, to define it, because that too is a definition. To say that something is undefined . . . you have already defined it in a negative way; you have said something about it. So, then, there is this subtle layer of existence, which is self, that is the indicated. And then beyond it there is again the subtlest which is “the unmanifest” — unindicated — that is, no-self.
So: matter, mind, self, no-self — these are the four stages of all these three gunas.
If you are deeply in lethargy, you will be like matter. A man of lethargy is almost matter, vegetates; you don’t find him alive. Then there is the second quality, mind. If rajas, activity, is too much, then you become too much of the mind. Then you are very, very active — mind is continuously active, obsessed with activity, continuously in search of new occupations. Somebody asked Edmund Hillary, who was the first man to reach the Everest peak, “Why? Why did you take such a risk?” He said, “Because the Everest peak was there, man had to go.” There is nothing . . . Why is man going to the moon? Because the moon is there. How can you avoid it? You have to go. A man of activity is continuously in search of occupation. He cannot remain unoccupied, that is his problem Unoccupied he is hell; occupied he forgets himself.
If tamas, inertia, is too much, you become like matter. If rajas is too much you become mind: mind is activity. That’s why mind goes mad. Then, if sattva is too much you become self, you become atma. But that too is an imbalance. If all the three are in balance, then comes the fourth, the no-self. That is your real being where not even the feeling of “I” exists, that’s why the term “no-self.”
These are the four stages — three of un-equilibrium, and the fourth of equilibrium. First is defined, second is undefined, third is indicated, fourth is not even indicated. unindicated; and the fourth is the most real. The first seems to be most real because you live in the first. The second seems to be very near because you live in the mind. The third even seems to be a little far away, but you can understand. Fourth seems to be simply unbelievable — no-self? Brahman, God, whatsoever you name it, seems to be very far away, seems to be almost non-existential; and that is the most existential.
The seer, although pure consciousness, sees through the distortions of the mind.
And that fourth, even if you attain it . . . while you are in the body you will have to use all the layers of your being. Even a Buddha, when he talks to you, has to talk through the mind. Even a Buddha, when he walks . . . he has to walk through the body. But now, once you have known that you are beyond mind, the mind can never deceive you: you can use it and you will never be used by it. That’s the difference. Not that a Buddha doesn’t use mind, he uses: he uses; you are being used. Not that he doesn’t live in the body: he lives; you are being lived — the body is the master and you are the slave. Buddha is the master; the body is the slave. A total change, a total mutation happens — that which is up goes down and that which is down goes up.
The seen exists for the seer alone.
This is the climax of yoga or vedanta: “The seen exists for the seer alone.” When the seer disappears, the seen disappears, because it was there only for the seer to be liberated. When the liberation has happened, it is not needed. This will create many problems because a Buddha . . . for him the seen has disappeared, but for you it still exists. There is a flower, somebody amongst you becomes an enlightened person: for him the flower has disappeared, but for you it still continues. So how is it possible — for one it disappears and for you it continues?
It is just like this: you all go to sleep this night, you all dream; then, one person becomes awake — his sleep is broken, his dream disappears — but all others’ dreams continue. His disappearance of the dream does not help in any way for your dreams to be disturbed; they continue on their own. That’s why enlightenment is individual. One person becomes awakened; all others continue in their ignorance. He can help others to be awakened. He can create devices around you to help you come out of your sleep, but unless you come out of your sleep your dream will continue: “The seen exists for the seer alone.”
Although the seen is dead to him who has attained liberation, it is alive to others because it is common to all.
In India we have made only one distinction between dream and that which you call reality, and this is the distinction: that dreams are private realities and this reality that you call the world is a common dream, that’s all. When you dream you dream a private world. In the night you live a private life; you cannot invite anybody else to share in your dream. Even your closest friend or your wife or your beloved is far away. When you are dreaming you are dreaming alone. You cannot take anybody there; it is a private world. Then what is this world, because in India we have called this world also dreamlike? This is a common dream. We all dream together because our minds function in the same way.
Just go to the river. Take a straight stick with you; you know the stick is straight. Push it down in the river: immediately, you see it has become crooked, bent. Pull it out; you know it is straight. Again put it in the water; it has again become bent. Now, you know well that the stick remains the same, but the functioning of your mind and the functioning of the light rays create the phenomenon, illusion, that it has become bent. Even if you know now, still it will be bent. Your knowledge will not help. You know well, perfectly well, it is not bent, but it looks bent — because the functioning of the eyes and the light rays is such that the illusion is created. Then take a dozen friends with you: you all will see it bent. It is a common illusion. The world is a common dream.
The seer and the seen come together so that the real nature of each may be realized.
The cause of this union is ignorance.
To be united with this world. which is like a dream, to be united with the body, with the mind — which you are not — is a necessity. Through this union you will be prepared for a greater union. Through this union you will come to realize that this union is false. The day you realize that this union is false, the final union will happen.
When you are divorced from the world, you get married to the divine. When you are married to the world, you remain in a divorce from God. That’s why all the mystics — Meera, Chaitanya, Kabir; in the West, Theresa — they all talk in terms of marriage, in terms of bride and bridegroom. And they are all waiting for a final consummation.
The allegory has always been used. Psychologists have even become suspicious about it, about why mystics use that allegory of love, marriage, embrace, kiss. In India even sexual intercourse has been used as an allegory: when the final marriage happens there is the ultimate crescendo, the total orgasm of the individual with the whole, of the wave with the ocean.
Why do these people use sexual allegories? Psychologists suspect that there must be some repression about sex. They are wrong. There is no repression about sex, but sex is such a fundamental phenomenon, how can religion avoid it? It has to be used. And sex is the only, the deepest, phenomenon where you lose yourself. You don’t know any other phenomenon where you lose yourself so completely. And in God or in the total one loses himself completely — becomes a no-self. In sex just a little glimpse of it comes to you. It is good to use the allegory of marriage, of bride and bridegroom.
Remain married to the world and you remain divorced from the divine. Pass through the worldly experience — enriched, liberated — suddenly you become aware that this marriage was illusory, a dream. Now, the real marriage is getting ready for you. The bridegroom is waiting for you.
-Osho
From Yoga: A New Direction, Discourse #5; Yoga: Science of the Soul, V.5 (previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, V.5)
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