Nirvitarka samadhi is attained when the memory is purified, and the mind is able to see the true nature of things without obstruction.
The explanations given for the samadhis of savitarka and nirvitarka, also explain the higher states of samadhi, but in these higher states of savichara and nirvichara samadhis, the objects of meditation are more subtle.
The province of samadhi that is connected with these finer objects extends up to the formless stage of the subtle energies.
-Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras
Mind is memory; it is like a computer. To be exact, it is a biocomputer. It accumulates all that is experienced, known. Through many lives, through millions of experiences the mind gathers memory. It is a vast phenomenon. Millions and millions of memories are stored in it. It is a great storehouse.
All your past lives are stored in it. Scientists say even in a single moment thousands of memories are being collected continuously – without your knowing, the mind goes on functioning. Even while you are asleep, memories are being formed. Even while you are asleep . . . somebody cries and weeps, your senses are functioning and collecting the experience. You may not be able to recall it in the morning because you were not conscious, but in deep hypnosis it can be recalled. In deep hypnosis, everything that knowingly and unknowingly you have experienced ever, can all be recalled back – your past lives also. The simple expanse of mind is really vast. These memories are good if you can use them, but these memories are dangerous if they start using you.
A pure mind is that mind who is master of its own memories. An impure mind is that mind who is continuously impressed by the memories. When you look at a fact, you can look without interpreting it. Then the consciousness is in direct touch with reality. Or, you can look through the mind, through interpretations. Then you are not in touch with reality. The mind is good as an instrument, but if the mind becomes an obsession and the consciousness is suppressed by the mind, then the reality will also be suppressed by the mind. Then you live in a maya; then you live in illusion.
Whenever you see a fact, if you see it directly, immediately, without the mind and the memory coming in, only then it is a fact. Otherwise, it becomes an interpretation. And all interpretations are false because all interpretations are loaded by your past experience. You can see only things which are in tune with your past experience. You cannot see things which are not in tune with your past experience, and your past experience is not all. Life is bigger than your past experience. Howsoever big the mind may be, it is just a tiny part if you consider the whole existence – so small. The known is very little; the unknown is vast and infinite. When you try to know the unknown through the known, then you miss the point. This is the impurity. When you try to know the unknown by the unknown inside you, then there is revelation.
It happened: Mulla Nasruddin caught a very, very big fish in the river. A crowd gathered, because nobody has ever seen such a big fish. Mulla Nasruddin looked at the fish, couldn’t believe that it is possible – such a big fish! With bulging eyes, he moved around the fish but still couldn’t believe. He touched the fish but still couldn’t believe, because he had heard about such a big fish only in fishermen’s tall tales. The crowd was also standing there with unbelieving eyes. Then Mulla Nasruddin said, “Please help me to throw this fish back into the river. It is no fish; it is a lie.”
Anything is true if it fits with your past experience. If it doesn’t fit, it is a lie. You cannot believe in God because it doesn’t fit with your past experience. You cannot believe in meditation because you have always lived in the market, and you only know the reality of the market, of the calculating mind, of the business mind. You don’t know anything about celebration – pure, simple, with no reason at all, uncaused. If you have lived in a scientist’s world, you cannot believe that there can be anything spontaneous because the scientist lives in the world of cause and effect. Everything is caused; nothing is spontaneous. So when the scientist hears that something is possible which is spontaneous – when we say spontaneous we mean that it has no cause, suddenly out of the blue – the scientist cannot believe. He will say, “It is no fish at all, it is a lie. Throw it back into the river.”
But those who have worked in the inner world know that there are phenomena which are uncaused. Not only that – that they know this – they know that the whole existence is uncaused. It is a different, totally different world from the scientific mind.
Whatsoever you see, even before you have seen it, the interpretation has entered. Continuously I watch people; I am talking to them – if it fits, even they have not said anything, they have given me an inner nod, “Yes.” They are saying, “Right.” If it doesn’t fit with their attitudes, they have not said anything, the “no” is written on their face. Deep down they have started saying, “No, it is not true.” […]
You cannot listen because of the memory; you cannot see because of the memory; you cannot look at the facticity of the world because of the memory. Memory comes in – your past, your knowledge, your learning, your experiences – and they color reality. The world is not illusory, but when interpreted, you live in an illusory world. Remember this.
Hindus say the world is maya, illusory. When they say it, they don’t mean the world that is there, they simply mean the world that is inside you, the world of your interpretations. The world of facticity is not unreal; it is the brahma itself. It is supreme reality. But the world that you have created through your mind and memory and in which you live, which surrounds you, like an atmosphere around you . . . and you move with it and in it. Wherever you go you take it around you. It is your aura, and through it you look at the world. Then whatsoever you are looking at is not a fact, it is an interpretation.
Patanjali says:
Nirvitarka samadhi is attained when the memory is purified, and the mind is able to see the true nature of things without obstruction.
Interpretation is the obstruction. Interpret, and the reality is lost. Look without interpretation and the reality is there, and always has been there. The reality is every moment there. How it can be otherwise? Reality means that which is real. It has not moved from its place even for a single moment. Just you live in your interpretations and you create a world of your own. The reality is common, illusion is private.
You must have heard the story, a very old, ancient Indian story. Five blind men came to see an elephant. They had never seen it; it was absolutely new in the town. Elephants didn’t exist in their part of the country. They all touched, they all felt the elephant, and they all interpreted whatsoever they felt. They interpreted through their experience. One man said, “An elephant is like a pillar,” because he was touching the legs of the elephant – and he was true [right]. He touched, himself, by his own hands, and then he remembered the pillars – and exactly like the pillars. And so on, so forth, they all interpreted. It happened in a primary school in America: a teacher told this story to the boys and girls without telling them that the five persons who came to the elephant were blind. And the story is so well known, and she expected that the children will understand. Then she asked, “Now tell me, who were those five persons who came to see the elephant?” One small boy raised his hand and said, “Experts.”
Experts are always blind. That boy was really a discoverer. This is the essence of the whole story. In fact, they were experts because an expert knows too much about too little. He becomes more and more narrow, narrow, narrow – almost blind to the whole world. Only in a particular direction he is with eyes; otherwise, he is blind. His vision becomes narrower and narrower and narrower. The greater an expert, the narrower the vision. An absolute expert must be completely blind. They say that an expert is a man who knows more and more about little and little [less and less].
Few centuries before there were physicians, doctors, who knew everything about the body. There were no experts. Now, if you have something wrong with your heart then you go to an expert, something wrong with your teeth, you go to another expert . . . […]
To know reality, you don’t have to be an expert. To know reality, you don’t have to be narrow, exclusive. To be in tune with reality you have to put down all your knowledge, put it aside and look at it with the eyes of a child, not with the eyes of an expert – because those eyes are always blind. Only a child has real eyes wide looking, looking everywhere, all around in all directions – because he doesn’t know anything. He is moving in all directions all the time. The moment you know, and you are hooked somewhere. If you can become a child again and can look at reality without any obstruction, interpretation, experience, knowledge, expertise, then Patanjali says, nirvitarka samadhi is attained Because when there is no interpretation, memory is purified, and the mind is able to see the true nature of things.
Patanjali divides samadhi into many layers. First, he talks about savitarka samadhi. It means samadhi with reasoning. You are still a reasoning person, logical. Then he calls the second samadhi nirvitarka, samadhi without reasoning. Now, you are not arguing about reality. You are not even looking at reality with your knowledge. You are simply looking at reality.
The man who looks at reality with logic, reasoning never looks at reality. He projects his own mind on the reality. The reality works like a screen for him to project himself. And whatsoever you project, you will find there. First you put it there, and then you find it there. It is a deception because you yourself put it there, and then you find it there. It is not real.
Nasruddin once told me that “My wife is the most beautiful woman in the world.” I asked him, “Mulla, how you came to know about it?” He said, “How? – simple. My wife told me!” This is how it goes on in the mind: you put it in the reality, and then you find it there. This is the attitude of the savitarka mind. Nirvikalpa mind, nirvitarka mind, puts nothing; it simply looks at whatsoever is the case.
Why you go on putting into reality something from your mind? – because you are afraid of reality. A deep fear of reality is there. It may be that it is not of your liking. It may be that it is against you, your mind. Because the reality is natural; it doesn’t bother who you are. You are afraid: the reality may not be your wish-fulfillment, so it is better not to see it; go on seeing whatsoever you desire. This is how you have lost many lives – fooling around. And you are not fooling anybody else, you are fooling yourself, because by your interpretations and projections the reality cannot be changed. Only you suffer unnecessarily. You think there is a door and there is no door; it is a wall, and you try to pass through it. Then you suffer, then you are shocked.
Unless you see the reality, you will never be able to find the door out of the prison in which you are. The door exists, but the door cannot exist according to your desires. The door exists; if you drop the desires, you will be able to see it. And this is the trouble: you go on wish-fulfilling; you just go on believing and projecting, and every time a belief is shattered, and a projection falls. Because it will happen many times, because your daydreams cannot be fulfilled by reality. Whenever a dream is shattered, a rainbow falls down, a desire dies, you suffer. But immediately you start creating another desire, another rainbow of your wishes. Again, you start making a new rainbow bridge between you and reality.
Nobody can walk on a rainbow bridge. It looks like a bridge; it is not a bridge. In fact, a rainbow doesn’t exist; it only appears. If you go there, you will not find any rainbow. It is a dreamlike phenomenon. The maturity consists in having come to the realization that “Now no more projections, interpretations. Now I am ready to see whatsoever is the case.”
Wittgenstein, one of the very keen intellects of this age, starts his tremendously valuable book Tractatus with the sentence, “The world is all that is the case. You can go on dreaming around it; it will not help. You stop dreaming and see. The world is all that is the case.” You don’t unnecessarily waste your life and time and energy in trying to see something that is not there. Stop dreaming and look at reality.
That is the meaning of nirvitarka samadhi, samadhi without any reasoning. It is just a pure look. You don’t reason about it; you simply look at it. You don’t do anything about it, you simply allow it to be there and penetrate you. In savitarka samadhi you try to penetrate into reality. In nirvitarka samadhi you allow the reality to penetrate you. In savitarka samadhi you try [to make] the reality to be according to you. In nirvitarka samadhi you try yourself to be according to the reality.
The explanations given for the samadhis of savitarka and nirvitarka, also explain the higher states of samadhi, but in these higher states of savichara and nirvichara samadhis, the objects of meditation are more subtle.
Then, Patanjali brings two other words, savichara and nirvichara. Savichara means with contemplation, and nirvichara means without contemplation. They are the higher states of the same phenomenon he calls savitarka and nirvitarka. Savitarka samadhi, if followed, will become savichara.
If you think about logically, and go on thinking, and go on thinking, logic has a boundary to it. It is not infinite. Logic cannot be infinite. In fact, logic denies all infinities. Logic is always in a boundary. Only then it can remain logical, because with the infinite enters the illogical; with the infinite enters the mysterious, with the infinite enters the miraculous. With the entry, the Pandora’s box is open. So logic never talks about the infinite. Logic says everything is finite, can be defined. Everything is within boundaries, can be understood. Logic is always afraid of the infinite. It looks like a vast darkness; logic trembles to move into it. Logic keeps itself on the highway, it never moves into the wild. On the highway everything is safe, and you know where you are going. Once you step aside and move into the wild, you don’t know where you are going. Logic is a very deep fear.
If you ask me, logic is the greatest coward. People who are courageous always go beyond logic. People who are cowardly always remain within the confinements of logic. Logic is a prison, beautifully decorated, but it is not like a vast sky. The sky is not decorated at all. It is undecorated, but it is vast. It is freedom, and freedom has its own beauty; it needs no decorations. The sky is enough unto itself. It needs no painter to paint it, no decorator to decorate it. The very vastness is its beauty. But vastness is terrific [terrifying] also, because it is so tremendous. The mind simply boggles before it; the mind seems so puny. The ego gets shattered before it, so the ego creates a beautiful prison of logic, definitions – everything clean-cut, everything known – of the experience and closes its doors to the unknown, makes a world of itself, a separate world, a private world. That world doesn’t belong to the whole; it has been cut. All the relationships with the whole have been cut.
That’s why logic will never lead anybody to the divine, because logic is human, and it has broken all the bridges with the divine. Divine is wild; it is mysterium and tremendum. It is a great mystery that cannot be solved. It is not a riddle that you can solve, it is a mystery. Its nature is such that it cannot be solved. But if you go on continuing logically thinking, there comes a moment when you reach to the boundary of logic. If you go on thinking more and more, then logical thinking changes into contemplation, into vichar.
The first step is logical thinking and, if you continue, the last step will be contemplation. If a philosopher continues, goes on moving, is not stuck somewhere, he is bound to become a poet someday, because when the boundary is crossed, suddenly there is poetry. Poetry is contemplation; it is vichar.
Think of it this way: a logical philosopher is sitting in the garden and looking at a rose flower. He interprets it. He classifies it – he knows what type of rose this is, from where it comes, the physiology of the rose, the chemistry of the rose: everything logically he thinks about. He classifies it, defines it, works around and around – in fact, never touching the rose at all – moves just around and around, around and around, beating the bush around, leaving the rose there.
Because logic cannot touch a rose. It can cut it, it can put it into pigeonholes, it can classify, it can label it – but it cannot touch it. The rose won’t allow logic to touch it. And even if logic wants, it is not possible. Logic has no heart, and only the heart can touch the rose. Logic is just a head affair. The head cannot touch the rose. The rose will not allow its mystery for the head because the head is just like a rape. And the rose opens itself only for love, not for a rape.
Science is rape; poetry is love. If somebody continues, like Einstein, then the philosopher or the scientist or the logician becomes a poet. Einstein became a poet in his last days. Eddington became a poet in his last days. They started talking about the mysterious. They had come to the boundary of the logic. People who always remain logical are people who have not gone to the very extent, to the very end of their logical reasoning. They are not really logical. If they really go, then a moment is bound to come where logic ends and poetry starts.
Vichar is contemplation. What a poet does? – he contemplates. He just looks at the flower, he doesn’t think about it. This is the distinction, very subtle: the logician thinks about the flower, the poet thinks the flower, not about it. And “about it” is not the flower. You may talk and talk about it, but it is not the flower. The logician goes round and round, a poet goes direct and hits the very reality of flower. For a poet, a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose – not “about”. He moves inwards, into the flower. Now the memory is not brought in. The mind is put aside; it is a direct contact.
This is a higher stage of the same phenomenon. The quality has become refined but the phenomenon is the same.
That’s why Patanjali says,
The explanations given for the samadhis of savitarka and nirvitarka, also explain the higher states of samadhi, but in these higher states of savichara and nirvichara samadhis, the objects of meditation are more subtle.
In savichara, the poet – and anybody who enters savichara becomes a poet – thinks the flower, not about it, but immediate and direct, but there is still division. The poet is separate from the flower. The poet is the subject, and the flower is the object. The duality exists. The duality is not transcended: the poet has not become the flower; the flower has not become the poet. The observer is the observer, and the observed is still the observed. The observer has not become the observed; the observed has not become the observer. Duality exists.
In savichara samadhi logic has been dropped, but not duality. In nirvichara samadhi even duality is dropped. One simply looks at the flower, not thinking of himself and not thinking of the flower; not thinking at all. That is nirvichara: without contemplating, beyond contemplation. One simply is being with the flower, not thinking about, not thinking – neither like the logician nor like the poet.
Now comes the mystic, the sage, who is simply with the flower. You cannot say that he thinks about, or he thinks. No, he is simply with. He allows the flower to be there and allows himself to be there. In that moment of allowing, there comes suddenly a unity. The flower is no more the flower, and the observer is no more the observer. Suddenly energies meet and mingle and become one. Now the duality is transcended. The sage doesn’t know who is the flower and who is watching it. If you ask the sage, the mystic, he will say, “I don’t know. It may be the flower who is watching me. It may be I who is watching the flower. It changes,” he will say, “it depends. And sometimes, there is neither I nor the flower. Both disappear. Only a unified energy remains. I become the flower and the flower becomes me.” This is the state of nirvichara, of no contemplation but of being.
Savitarka is the first step, nirvitarka is the last step in the same direction. Savichara is the first step, nirvichara is the last step in the same direction, on two planes. But Patanjali says the same explanation applies. The highest, up to now, is nirvichara.
Patanjali will come to higher stages also, because few more things have to be explained, and he moves very slowly – because if he moves very fast it will not be possible for you to understand. He is going deeper and deeper every moment. He is leading you, by and by, to the infinite ocean, step by step. He is not a believer of sudden enlightenment – gradual, that’s why his appeal is so great.
Many people have existed who have talked about sudden enlightenment, but they have not appealed to the masses because it is simply unbelievable that sudden enlightenment is possible. Tilopa may say, but that is not the point – that Tilopa says. The point is: does anybody understand it? – that’s why many Tilopas have disappeared. Patanjali’s appeal continues, because nobody can understand those wildflowers, like Tilopa. They suddenly appear just out of the blue and they say, “Suddenly, you can also become like us.” This is incomprehensible. Under their magnetic personality you may listen to them, but you cannot believe them. The moment you leave them you will say, “This man is saying something which is beyond me. It goes over my head.”
Tilopas have lived, talked, tried, but they have not been able to help many people. Rarely somebody will understand them. That’s why Tilopa had to go to Tibet to find a disciple – this vast country, and he couldn’t find a single disciple – and Bodhidharma had to go to China to find a disciple. This ancient country, for thousands of years working on the religious dimension, and he couldn’t find a single disciple. Yes . . . difficult for Tilopa, difficult for Bodhidharma to find a single disciple.
To find someone who can understand Tilopa is difficult because he talks of the goal, and he says, “There is no path and no method.” He is standing on the hilltop and he says, “There is no path,” and you are standing in the valley, dark, damp, in your misery. You look at Tilopa and you say, “Maybe . . . but how, how one reaches?” You go on asking, “How?”
Krishnamurti goes on telling people there is no method, and after each talk people ask, “Then how? Then how to reach?” And he simply shrugs his shoulders and becomes angry that “I have told you there is no method, so don’t ask how, because how is again asking for the method.” And these are not new people who ask. Krishnamurti has people who have been listening to him for thirty, forty years. Very old, ancient people you will find in his talks. They have been listening to him continuously; religiously they listen to him. They come always – whenever he is there, they come always, and they listen. You will find almost the same faces for years and years and years, and again and again they ask from their valleys, “But how?” – and Krishnamurti simply shrugs his shoulders and says, “There is no how. You simply understand, and you reach. There is no path.”
Tilopa, Bodhidharma, Krishnamurti, they come and go; they are not much help. The people who listen to them enjoy listening to them – even come to a certain intellectual understanding – but they remain in the valley. I myself have come across many people who listen to Krishnamurti, but I have never seen a single person who has gone beyond his valley by listening to him. He remains in the valley, starts talking like Krishnamurti, that’s all; starts telling to other people that there is no way and no path, and remains in the valley.
Patanjali has been a tremendous help, incomparable. Millions have passed through this world by the help of Patanjali because he doesn’t talk according to his understanding, he moves with you. And as your understanding grows, he goes deeper and deeper and deeper. Patanjali follows the disciple; Tilopa would like the disciple to follow him. Patanjali comes to you; Tilopa would like you to come to him. And of course, Patanjali takes your hand and, by and by, he takes you to the highest peak possible, of which Tilopa talks but cannot lead because he will never come to your valley. He will remain on his hilltop and will go on shouting from there. In fact, he will irritate many people because he will not stop; he will go on shouting from the top that “This is possible! And there is no way, and there is no method. You can simply come. It happens; you cannot do [it].” He irritates.
When there is no method, people get irritated and they would like him to stop, not to shout. Because if there is no way, then how to move from the valley to the top? You are talking nonsense. But Patanjali is very sensible, very sane, he moves step by step, takes you from where you are, comes to the valley, takes your hand and says, “One by one, take steps.”
Patanjali said, “There is a path. There are methods.” And he is really very, very wise. By and by, he will persuade you in the end that drop the method and drop the path – there are none – but only at the end, at the very peak, just when you have reached, when even Patanjali leaves you, there is no trouble; you will reach by yourself. At the last moment he becomes nonsensical. Otherwise, he is sensible. And he has remained so sensible the whole way that when he becomes nonsensical, then too he appeals, then too he looks very sensible. Because a man like Patanjali cannot talk nonsense. He is reliable.
The explanations given for the samadhis of savitarka and nirvitarka, also explain the higher states of samadhi, but in these higher states of savichara and nirvichara samadhis, the objects of meditation are more subtle.
By and by, the object of meditation has to be made more and more subtle. For example, you can meditate on a rock, or you can meditate on a flower, or you can meditate on the fragrance of the flower, or you can meditate on the meditator. And then things go subtle and subtle and subtle and subtle. For example, you can meditate on the sound aum. The first meditation is to say it loudly, so it resounds all around you. It becomes a temple of sound all around you: aum, aum, aum. You create vibrations all around you – gross, the first step. Then you close your mouth. Now you don’t say it loudly. Inside you say, aum, aum, aum. Lips are not allowed to move, not even the tongue. Without the tongue and without the lips you say, aum. Now you create an inner atmosphere, inner climate of aum. The object has become subtle. Then the third step: you don’t even recite it; you simply listen to it. You change the position – from the doer, you move to a passivity of a listener. In the third state you don’t pronounce the aum inside also. You simply sit and you hear the sound. It comes because it is there. You are not silent; that’s why you cannot hear it.
Aum is not a word of any human language. It doesn’t mean anything. That’s why Hindus don’t write it in the usual alphabetical order. No, they have made a separate form for it just to distinguish it, that this is not part of the alphabet. It exists on its own, separate, and it means nothing. It is not a word of human language. It is the sound of the very existence itself, the sound of the soundless, the sound of the silence. When everything is silent then it is heard. So you become the hearer. It goes on and on, more and more subtle. And in the fourth stage you simply forget about everything: the doer, and the hearer, and the sound – everything. In the fourth stage there is nothing.
You must have seen ten ox herding pictures of Zen. In the first picture a man is looking for his ox – the ox has gone somewhere in the wild forest, no sign, no footprints – just looking all around, trees and trees and trees. In the second picture he looks happier – footprints have been found. In the third he seems a little bewildered – just the back of the ox is seen near a tree, but difficult to distinguish. The forest is wild, thick. Maybe it is just a hallucination that he is seeing the back of the ox; it may be just a part of the tree, and he may be projecting. Then in the fourth, he has caught hold of the tail. In the fifth, he has controlled by the whip; now the ox is in his power. In the sixth, he is riding on the ox, he is coming back towards the home with a flute, singing a song, riding on the ox. In the seventh, the ox in the stable, he is in the home, happy; the ox has been found. In the eighth, there is nothing; the ox has been found, and the ox and the seeker, the seeker and the sought, both have disappeared. The search is over.
In the ancient days these were the eight pictures. It was a complete set. The emptiness is the last. But then a great Master added two more pictures. The ninth – the man is back, again there. And in the tenth not only the man is back, he has gone to purchase few things to the market, and not only things, he is carrying a bottle of wine. This is really beautiful. This is complete. If it ends on emptiness, something is incomplete. The man is back again, and not only back, he is in the market. Not only in the market, he has purchased a bottle of wine.
The whole becomes more and more subtle, more and more subtle. A moment comes when you will feel it is the perfect, the most subtle. When everything becomes empty and there is no picture, the seeker and the sought both have disappeared. But this is not really the end. There is still a subtleness. The man comes back to the world totally transformed. He is no more the old self – reborn, and when you are reborn, the world is also not the same. The wine is wine no more, the poison is no more poison, the market is no more market. Now everything is accepted. It is beautiful. Now he is celebrating. That is the symbol: the wine.
More and more subtle becomes the search, and more and more strong becomes the consciousness. And a moment comes when the consciousness is so strong that you live like an ordinary being in the world, without fear. But move with Patanjali step by step. The objects of meditation are more and more subtle.
The province of samadhi that is connected with these finer objects extends up to the formless stage of the subtle energies.
This is the eighth picture. The province of samadhi that is connected with these finer objects becomes more and more fine, and a moment comes when the form disappears, and it is formless.
. . . extends up to the formless stage of the subtle energies.
The energies are so subtle you cannot make a picture out of them, you cannot carve them; only the emptiness can show them: a zero – the eighth picture. By and by you will understand how these two other remaining pictures come in.
Patanjali – I call him the scientist of the religious world, the mathematician of mysticism, the logician of the illogical. Two opposites meet in him. If a scientist reads Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras he will understand immediately. A Wittgenstein, a logical mind, will feel immediately an affinity with Patanjali. He’s absolutely logical. And if he leads you towards the illogical, he leads you in such logical steps you never know when he has left the logic and taken you beyond it. He moves like a philosopher, a thinker, and makes so subtle distinctions that the moment he takes you into nirvichara, into no-contemplation, you will not be able to watch when the jump has been taken. He has cut the jump into many small steps. With Patanjali you will never feel fear, because he knows where you will feel fear. He cuts the steps smaller and smaller, almost as if you move on the plain ground. He takes you so slowly that you cannot observe when the jump has happened, when you have crossed the boundary. And he is also a poet, a mystic – a very rare combination. Mystics are there, like Tilopa; great poets are there like the rishis of Upanishads, great logicians are there like Aristotle, but you cannot find a Patanjali. He is such a combination that since him there has been no one who can be compared to him. It is very easy to be a poet because you are out of one piece. It is very easy to be a logician – you are made of one piece. It is almost impossible to be a Patanjali because you comprehend so many opposites, and in such a beautiful harmony he combines them all. That’s why he has become the alpha and the omega of the whole tradition of yoga.
In fact, it was not he who invented yoga; yoga is far [more] ancient. Yoga had been there for many centuries before Patanjali. He is not the discoverer, but he almost became the discoverer and founder just because of this rare combination of his personality. Many people had worked before him and almost everything was known, but yoga was waiting for a Patanjali. And suddenly, when Patanjali spoke about it, everything fell in line, and he became the founder. He was not the founder, but his personality is such a combination of opposites, he comprehends in himself such incomprehensible elements, he became the founder – almost the founder. Now yoga will always be known with Patanjali. Since Patanjali, many have again worked and many have reached new corners of the world of yoga, but Patanjali towers like an Everest. It seems almost impossible anybody ever will be able to tower higher than Patanjali – almost impossible. This rare combination is impossible. To be a logician and to be a poet and to be a mystic, and not of ordinary talents . . . It is possible: you can be a logician, a great logician, and a very ordinary poet. You can be a great poet and a very ordinary logician, third-rate – that’s possible, that’s not very difficult. Patanjali is a genius logician, a genius poet, and a genius mystic; Aristotle, Kalidas and Tilopa all rolled in one – hence the appeal.
Try to understand Patanjali as deeply as possible, because he will help you. Zen Masters won’t be of much help. You can enjoy them – beautiful phenomena. You can be awe-struck, you can be filled with wonder, but they won’t help you. Rarely somebody will be able within you who can take the courage and jump into the abyss. Patanjali will be of much help. He can become the very foundation of your being, and he can lead you, by and by. He understands you more than anybody else. He looks at you and he tries to speak the language that the last amongst you will be able to understand. He is not only a Master; he is a great teacher also.
Educationists know that a great teacher is not one who can be understood only by the topmost few students in the class, just the first benchers, four or five in a class of fifty. He is not a great teacher. A great teacher is one who can be understood by the last benchers. Patanjali is not only a Master, he is a teacher also. Krishnamurti is a Master, Tilopa is a Master – but not teachers. They can be understood only by the topmost. This is the problem – the topmost need not understand. They can go [on] their own. Even without Krishnamurti they will move into the ocean and reach to the other shore; a few days sooner or later, that’s all. The last benchers who cannot move on their own, Patanjali is for them. He starts from the lowest and he reaches to the highest. His help is for all. He is not for the chosen few.
-Osho
From The Mystery Beyond Mind, Discourse #5; Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V.3, (previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega).
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This discourse is the Listening Meditation in the fifth 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.
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