Performing samyama on their power of cognition, real nature, egoism, all-pervasiveness, and functions brings mastery over the sense organs.
From this follows instantaneous cognition without the use of the body, and complete mastery over pradhana, the material world.
Only after the awareness of the distinction between sattva and purusha does supremacy and knowledge arise over all states of existence.
-Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras
Patanjali’s skill in expressing the inexpressible is superb. Nobody has ever been able to surpass him. He has mapped the inner world of consciousness as accurately as it is possible; he has almost done the impossible job.
I have heard one story about Ramkrishna:
One day he said to his disciples, “I will tell you everything today and will not keep anything secret.” He described clearly the centers and the corresponding experiences up to the heart and throat, and then pointing to the spot between the eyebrows he said, “The supreme self is directly known and the individual experiences samadhi when the mind comes here. There remains then but a thin transparent screen separating the supreme self and the individual self. The sadhaka then experiences . . .” Saying this, the moment he started to describe in detail the realization of supreme self, he was plunged in samadhi and became unconscious. When the samadhi came to an end and he came back, he tried again to describe it and was again in samadhi; again he became unconscious. After repeated attempts Ramkrishna broke into tears, started crying, and told his disciples that it is impossible to speak about it.
But Ramkrishna has tried, has tried in many ways, from different directions, and this always happened his whole life. Whenever he will come beyond the third-eye center and will be coming nearer sahasrar, he will be caught hold of by something inner, so deeply, that the very remembrance of it, the very effort to describe it, and he is gone. For hours he will remain unconscious. It’s natural because the bliss of sahasrar is such [that] one is almost overpowered by it. The bliss is so oceanic that one is possessed by it and taken over. One is no longer oneself, once you transcend the third eye.
Ramkrishna tried and failed, could not describe it. Many others have not even tried. Lao Tzu resisted, for his whole life, saying anything about the world of Tao because of this. Nothing can be said about it, and the moment you try to say it, you are plunged into an inner whirlwind, whirlpool. You are lost, drowned. You are bathed in such beauty and beatitude that you cannot utter a single word.
But Patanjali has done the impossible. He has described as exactly as possible each step, each integration, each chakra, its functioning, and how to transcend it, up to sahasrar — and he has even indicated beyond. On each chakra, on each wheel of energy, a certain integration happens. Let me tell you.
At the sex center, the first center, the most primitive but the most natural, the one that is available to all, the integration happens between the outer and the inner. Of course it is momentary. A woman meeting a man or a man meeting a woman come for a single moment, a split moment, where the outer and inner meet and mingle and merge into each other. That’s the beauty of sex, the orgasm, that two energies, the complementary energies, meet and become one whole. But it is going to be momentary because the meeting is through the most gross element, the body. The body can touch the surfaces but it cannot really enter into the other. It is like ice cubes. If you put two ice cubes together, they can touch each other, but if they melt and become water, then they meet and mingle with each other. Then they go to the very center. And if the water evaporates, then the meeting becomes very, very deep. Then there is no I, no thou, no inner, no outer.
The first center, the sex center, gives you a certain integration. That’s why there is so much hankering for sex. It is natural, it is in itself beneficial and good, but if you stop there, then you have stopped on the porch of a palace. The porch is good, it leads you into the palace, but it is not a place to make your abode, it is not a place to stop forever . . . and the bliss that is waiting for you on the higher integrations of other centers will be missed. And in comparison to that bliss and happiness and joy, the beauty of sex is nothing, the pleasure of sex is nothing. It simply gives you a momentary glimpse.
The second chakra is hara. At the hara, life and death meet. If you reach to the second center, you reach to a higher orgasm of integration. Life meeting death, sun meeting moon. And the meeting is inner now, so the meeting can be more permanent, more stable, because you are not dependent on anybody else. Now you are meeting your own inner woman or your own inner man.
The third center is the navel. There the positive and the negative meet — the positive electricity and the negative electricity. Their meeting is even higher than life and death because the electric energy, the prana, the bioplasma or bioenergy, is deeper than life and death. It exists before life; it exists after death. Life and death exist because of bioenergy. This meeting of bioenergy at the navel, nabhi, gives you even a higher experience of being one, integrated, a unity.
Then is the heart. At the heart center the lower and the higher meet. At the heart center the prakriti and purusha, the sexual and the spiritual, the worldly and the other-worldly — or you can call it the meeting of heaven and earth. It is still higher because for the first time something of the beyond dawns — you can see the sun rising at the horizon. You are still rooted in the earth, but your branches are spreading into the sky. You have become a meeting. That’s why the heart center gives the highest and the most refined experience ordinarily available — the experience of love. The experience of love is the meeting of earth and heaven; so love is in a way earthly and in another way heavenly.
If Jesus defined God as love, this is the reason, because in human consciousness love seems to be the higher glimpse.
Ordinarily, people never go beyond the heart center. Even to reach to the heart center seems to be difficult, almost impossible. People remain at the sex center. If they are trained deeply in yoga, karate, aikido, tai chi, then they reach to the second center, the hara. If they are trained in the deep mechanism of breathing, prana, then they reach the navel center. And if they are trained how to look beyond earth and how to see beyond the body and how to look so deeply and so sensitively that you are no longer confined to the gross, and the subtle can penetrate its first rays into you, only then, the heart center.
All paths of devotion, bhakti yoga, work on the heart center. Tantra starts from the sex center. Tao starts from the hara center. Yoga starts from the navel center. Bhakti yoga, paths of devotion and love, Sufis and others, they start from the heart center.
Higher than heart is the throat center. Again there happens another integration, even more superior, more subtle. This center is the center of receiving and giving. When the child is born, he receives from the throat center. First, life enters into him from the throat center — he sucks air, breathes; and then he sucks milk from his mother. The child functions from the throat center, but it is half functioning and soon the child forgets about it. He just receives. He cannot give yet. His love is passive. And if you are asking for love, then you remain juvenile, you remain childish. Unless you mature, that you can give love, you have not become a grown-up. Everybody asks for love, demands love, and almost nobody gives. That’s the misery all over the world. And everybody who demands thinks that he is giving, believes that he is giving.
I have looked into thousands of people — all hungry for love, thirsty for love, but nobody in any way trying to give. And they all believe that they are giving but they are not receiving. Once you give you receive, naturally. It has never happened otherwise. The moment you give, love rushes in you. It has nothing to do with persons and people. It has something to do with the cosmic energy of God.
The throat center is the meeting of receiving and giving. You receive from it and you give from it. That is the meaning of Christ’s saying that you must become a child again. If you translate it into the yoga terminology it will mean: you must come to the throat center again. The child forgets by and by. […]
When Jesus says you have to be a child again, he means you have to come back to the throat center, but with a new energy to give. All creative people are givers. They may sing a song for you or dance a dance or write a poem or paint a picture or tell you a story. For all these, the throat center is again used as a center to give. The meeting of receiving and giving happens at the throat. The capacity to receive and to give is one of the greatest integrations.
There are people who are only capable of receiving. They will remain miserable because you never become rich by receiving. You become rich by giving. In fact, you possess only that which you can give. If you cannot give it, you simply believe that you possess. You don’t possess it; you are not a master. If you cannot give your money, then you are not the master of it. Then the money is the master. If you can give it, then certainly you are the master. This will look like a paradox but let me repeat it: you are the possessor only of that which you give. The moment you give, in that very moment, you have become a possessor, enriched. Giving enriches you.
Miserly people are the most miserable and poor people in the world — poorer than the poorest. They cannot give; they are stuck. They go on hoarding. Their hoarding becomes a burden on their being; it does not free them. In fact, if you have something you will become freer. But look at the misers. They have much, but they are burdened; they are not free. Even beggars are more free than them. What has happened to them? They have used their throat center just to receive. […]
These people are always constipatory; hoarders, misers always suffer from constipation. Remember, I am not saying that all people who have constipation are misers; there may be other reasons. But misers are certainly constipated. […]
I have heard about two Buddhist bhikkhus. One of them was a miser and a hoarder and he used to collect money and keep it, and the other used to laugh at this foolish attitude. Whatsoever will come on his way, he will use it; he will never hoard it. One night they came across a river. It was evening, the sun was setting, and it was dangerous to stay there. They had to go to the other shore; there was a town. This side was simply wilderness.
The hoarder said, “Now you don’t have any money, so we cannot pay the ferryman. What do you say now about it? You are against hoarding; now if I don’t have any money, we both will die.” You see the point? He said, “Money is needed.” The man who believed in renunciation laughed, but he didn’t say anything. Then the hoarder paid, and they crossed the river; they reached the other shore. The hoarder again said, “Now remember, next time don’t start arguing with me. You see? Money helps. Without money we would have been dead.” The whole night on the other shore, it was dangerous to survive [because of] wild animals.
The other bhikkhu laughed and he said, “But we have come across the river because you could renounce it. It is not because of hoarding that we have survived. If you had insisted on hoarding it, and you were not going to pay the ferryman, we would have died. It is because you could renounce — because you could leave it, you could give it — that’s why we have survived.”
The argument must be continuing still. But remember, I am not against money. I am all for it but use it. Possess it, own it; but your ownership arises only the moment you have become capable of giving it. At the throat center this new synthesis happens. You can accept and you can give.
There are people who change from one extreme to another. First, they were incapable of giving, they could only receive; then they change, they go to the other extreme — now they can give, but they cannot receive. That too is lopsidedness. A real man is capable of accepting gifts and giving them back. In India, you will find many sannyasins, many so-called mahatmas, who will not touch money. If you give them any, they will shrink back, as if you have produced a snake or something — poisonous. Their shrinking back shows that now they have moved to the other extreme: now they have become incapable of receiving. Again, their throat center is half-functioning — and a center never functions really unless it functions fully, unless the wheel moves the full way, goes on moving and creates energy fields.
Then, is the third-eye center. At the third eye center the right and left meet, pingala and ida meet and become sushumna. The two hemispheres of the brain meet at the third eye that is just between the two eyes. One eye represents the right, another eye represents the left, and it is just in the middle. These left and right brains meeting at the third eye, this is a very high synthesis. People have been capable of describing up to this point. That’s why Ramkrishna could describe up to the third eye. And when he started to talk about the final, the ultimate synthesis that happens at sahasrar, he again and again fell into silence, into samadhi. He was drowned in it; it was too much. It was flood like; he was taken over by the ocean. He could not keep himself conscious, alert.
The ultimate synthesis happens at sahasrar, the crown chakra. Because of this sahasrar, all over the world kings, emperors, monarchs, and queens, use the crown. It has become formal, but basically it was accepted because unless your sahasrar is functioning, how can you be a monarch, how can you be a king? How can you rule people, you have not even become a ruler of yourself? In the symbol of the crown is hidden a secret. The secret is that a person who has reached to the crown center, the ultimate synthesis of his being, only he should be the king or the queen, nobody else. Only he is capable of ruling others because he has come to rule himself. He has become a master of himself; now he can be helpful to others also.
Really, when you achieve to sahasrar, a crown flowers within you, a one-thousand-petaled lotus opens. No crown can be compared with it, but then it became just a symbol. And the symbol has existed all over the world. That simply shows that everywhere people became alert and aware in one way or other of the ultimate synthesis in the sahasrar. Jews use the skullcap; it is exactly on the sahasrar. Hindus allow a bunch of hair, they call it choti, the peak, to grow exactly on the spot where the sahasrar is or has to be. There are a few Christian societies which shave just that part of the head. When a Master blesses a disciple, he puts his hand on the sahasrar. And if the disciple is really receptive, surrendered, he will suddenly feel an upsurge of energy running from the sex center to the sahasrar.
Sometimes when I touch your head and you suddenly become sexual don’t be afraid, don’t shrink back, because that is how it should be. The energy is at the sex center. It starts uncoiling itself. You become afraid, you shrink, you repress it — What is happening? And becoming sexual at the feet of your Master seems to be a little awkward, embarrassing. It is not. Allow it, let it be, and soon you will see it has passed the first center and the second, and if you are surrendered, within a second the energy is moving at the sahasrar, and you will have a feeling of a new opening within you. That’s why a disciple is supposed to bow down his head, so the Master can touch the head.
The last synthesis is of object and subject, the outer and inner, again. In a sexual orgasm outer and inner meet but momentarily. In sahasrar they meet permanently. That’s why I say one has to travel from sex to samadhi. In sex ninety-nine percent is sex, one percent is sahasrar; in sahasrar ninety-nine percent is sahasrar, one percent is sex. Both are joined, they are bridged by deep currents of energy. So if you have enjoyed sex, don’t make your abode there. Sex is just a glimpse of sahasrar. Sahasrar is going to deliver a thousandfold, a millionfold, a bliss to you, benediction to you.
The outer and the inner meet: I and thou meet, man and woman meet, yin and yang meet; and the meeting is absolute. Then there is no parting, then there is no divorce.
This is called yoga. Yoga means the meeting of the two into one. In Christianity, mystics have called it unio mystica; that is the exact translation of yoga. Unio mystica: the mysterious union. At the sahasrar, the alpha and the omega meet, the beginning and the end. The beginning is in the sex center, sex is your alpha; samadhi is your omega. And unless alpha and omega meet, unless you have attained to this supreme union, you will remain miserable because your destiny is that. You will remain unfulfilled. You can be fulfilled only at this highest peak of synthesis.
Now the sutras.
Performing samyama on their power of cognition, real nature, egoism, all-pervasiveness, and functions brings mastery over the sense organs.
The first thing to be understood is that you have senses but you have lost sensitivity. Your senses are almost dull, dead. They are there hanging with you, but energy is not flowing in them; they are not alive limbs of your being. Something has deadened within you, has become cold, blocked. It has happened to the whole of humanity because of thousands of years of repression. And thousands of years of conditioning and ideologies which are against the body have crippled you. You live only in name’s sake.
So the first thing to be done is: your senses should become really alive and sensitive. Only then can they be mastered. You see but you don’t see deeply. You see only the surface of things. You touch but your touch has no warmth; nothing flows in and out from your touch. You hear also. The birds go on singing and you hear and you can say, “Yes, I am hearing,” and you are not wrong — you are hearing — but it never reaches to the very core of your being. It does not go dancing within you; it doesn’t help a flowering, an unfolding within you.
These senses have to be rejuvenated. Yoga is not against the body, remember. Yoga says go beyond the body, but it is not against the body. Yoga says use the body, don’t be used by it; but it is not against the body. Yoga says the body is your temple. You are in the body, and the body is so beautiful an organism, so complex and so subtle, so mysterious, and so many dimensions open through it. And those senses are the only doors and windows through which you will reach to God — so don’t deaden them. Make them more alive. Let them vibrate, pulsate, and what Stanley Keleman has said, let them “stream.” That is exactly the right word: let them flow like a stream, rushing. You can have the sensation. Your hand — if it is rushing like a stream of energy — you will feel a tingling sensation, you will feel something inside the hand is flowing and wants to make contact, wants to be connected.
When you love a woman or a man and you take her hand in your hand, if your hand is not streaming, this love is not going to be of any use. If your hand is not jumping and throbbing with energy and pouring energy into your woman or into your man, then this love is almost dead from the very beginning. Then this child is not born alive. Then sooner or later you will be finished — you are already finished. It will take a little time to recognize because your mind is also dull; otherwise, you would not have entered into it because it is already dead. For what are you entering? You take time to recognize things because your sensitivity, brilliance, intelligence, is so much clouded and confused.
Only a streaming love can become a source of blissfulness, of joy, of delight. But for that you will need senses streaming.
Sometimes you have that glimpse also; and everybody had it when he was a child. Watch a child running after a butterfly. He is streaming, as if any moment he can jump out of his body. Watch a child when he is looking at a rose flower. See his eyes, the brilliance, the light that comes to his eyes. He is streaming. His eyes are almost dancing on the petals of the flower.
This is the way to be: be riverlike. And only then is it possible to master these senses. In fact, people have had a very wrong attitude. They think that if you want to master your senses you have to make them almost dead. But then what is the point of mastering? You can kill, and you are the master. You can sit on the corpse. But what is the point of being a master? But this looked easier: first to kill them, and then you can master. If the body feels too strong, fast. Make it weak, and then you start feeling that you are the master. But you have killed the body. Remember, life has to be mastered, not dead things. They will not be of any use.
But this has been found to be a shortcut, so all the religions of the world have been using it. Destroy your body by and by. Disconnect yourself from the body. Don’t be in contact. Remove yourself away. Become indifferent. When your body is almost a dead tree; no longer do leaves come to it, no longer does it flower, no longer do birds come to rest. It is just a dead stump. Of course you can master it, but now what are you going to gain from this mastery?
This is the problem; that’s why people don’t understand what Patanjali means.
Performing samyama on their power of cognition . . . Your eyes see, your ears hear, your nose smells, your tongue tastes, your hands make contact, your feet make connectedness with the earth — that is their power of cognition.
Performing samyama on their power of cognition. . . But they have to be powerful. Otherwise you will not be able to even feel what power is. These senses have to be so full of power, so high with power, that you can perform samyama, that you can meditate upon them.
Right now, when you look at a flower, the flower is there, but have you ever felt your eyes? You see the flower, but have you felt the power of your eyes? It should be there because you are using your eyes to see the flower. And of course eyes are more beautiful than any flower because all flowers have to come through the eyes. It is through the eyes that you have become aware of the world of flowers, but have you ever felt the power of the eyes? They are almost dull, dead. They have become passive, just like windows, receptive. They don’t go to their object. And power means being active. Power means your eyes going and almost touching the flowers, your ears going and almost touching the songs of the birds, your hands going with the total energy in you, focused there and touching your beloved. Or you are lying down on the grass, your whole body, full of power, meeting in contact with the grass, having a dialogue with the grass. Or you are swimming in the river and whispering with the river and listening to the whispers of the river. Connected, in communion, but power is needed.
So the first thing I would like you to do is when you see, really see, become the eyes. Forget everything. Let your whole energy flow through the eyes. And your eyes will be cleaned, bathed in an inner shower, and you will be able to see that these trees are no longer the same, the greenery is no longer the same. It has become greener, as if dust has disappeared from it. The dust was not on the trees. It was on your eyes. And you will see for the first time and you will hear for the first time.
Jesus goes on saying to his disciples, “If you have ears listen. If you have eyes see.” They were not all blind, and they were not all deaf. What does he mean? He means that you have almost become deaf and almost become blind. You see and yet you don’t see. You hear, yet you don’t hear. It is not a power, it is not energy, it is not vital.
Performing samyana on their power of cognition, real nature . . . Then you will be able to see what is the real nature of your senses. It is divine. Your body embodies the divine. It is God who has looked through your eyes!
I remember Meister Eckhart’s famous saying. The day he realized and became enlightened, his friends and disciples and brothers asked, “What have you seen?” He laughed. He is the only one in the whole of Christianity who comes very close to Zen Masters, almost a Zen Master. He laughed; he said, “I have not seen him. He has seen himself through me. God has seen himself through me. These eyes are his. And what a game, what a play. He has seen himself through me.”
When you really feel the nature of your senses, you will feel it is divine. It is God who has moved through your hand. It is God’s hand. All hands are his. It is God who has loved through you. All love affairs are his. And how can it be otherwise? Hindus call it leela, God’s play. It is he who is calling you through the cuckoo, and it is he who is listening through you. It is he and he alone spread all over.
Performing samyama on their power of cognition, real nature, egoism, all-pervasiveness, and functions brings mastery over the sense organs.
This word “egoism” has to be understood because in Sanskrit we have three words for the ego, and in English there is only one word. That creates difficulty. The Sanskrit word in the sutra is asmita, so let me first explain it to you.
There are three words, ahankara, asmita, atma, all mean “I.” Ahankar can be translated as the “ego,” the very gross, too much emphasis on I. For asmita there is no word in English. Asmita means amness, I am. In ego the emphasis is on “I”; in asmita the emphasis is on “am.” Amness, purer than ego. Still it is there, but in a very different form. Amness. And in atma, even amness has disappeared. In the ego “I am”; in asmita only “am”; in atma even that has disappeared. In atma there is pure being, neither I nor amness.
In this sutra asmita is used, amness. Remember, the ego is of the mind. Senses have no ego. They have a certain amness but no ego. The ego is of the mind. Your eyes don’t have any ego; your hands don’t have any ego. They have a certain amness. That’s why if your skin has to be replaced and somebody else’s skin is planted on you, your body will reject it because the body knows “it is not mine.” So your own skin has to be replaced from some other part of the body, from your thighs. Your own skin has to be replaced, otherwise the body will reject. The body will not accept it, “It is not mine.”
The body has no I but it has an amness. If you need blood, anybody’s blood won’t do. The body will not accept all sorts of blood, only a particular blood. It has its own amness. That will be accepted; some other blood will be rejected. The body has its own feel of its being, very unconscious, very subtle and pure, but it is there.
Your eyes are yours, just like your thumbprints. Everything yours is yours. Now physiologists say that everybody’s heart is different, of a different shape. In the books of physiology, the picture that you will find is not a real picture. It is just average; it is just imagined. Otherwise each person’s heart has a different shape. Even each person’s kidney has a different shape. These parts all have their signatures; everybody is so unique. That is the amness.
You will never be here again, you have never been before, so move cautiously and alertly and happily. Just think, the glory of your being. Just think, that you are so superb and unique. God has vested much in you. Never imitate because that will be a betrayal. Be yourself. Let that be your religion. All else is politics. Don’t be a Hindu, don’t be a Mohammedan, don’t be a Christian. Be religious, but there is only one religion, and that is just being yourself, authentically yourself.
Performing samyama on their power of cognition, real nature, asmita (the subtle amness), all-pervasiveness, and functions brings mastery over the sense organs.
And if you meditate on these things, you will become a master. Meditation brings mastery; nothing else brings mastery except meditation. If you meditate on your eye, first you will see the rose flower; by and by you will be able to see the eye that is seeing. Then you have become a master of the eye. Once you have seen the seeing eye, you have become a master. Now you can use all its energies; and they are all-pervasive. Your eyes are not as limited as you think them to be. They can see many more things which you have not seen. They can penetrate many more mysteries that you have not even dreamed about. But you are not master of your eyes, and you have used them in a very haphazard way, not knowing what you are doing.
And having been in contact with objects too much, you have forgotten the subjectivity of your eyes. It happens, if you keep company with someone, by and by you become influenced by him. You have been in contact with objects too much and you have forgotten the inner quality of your senses. You see things, but you never see your seeing. You hear the songs, but you never hear the subtle vibration that goes on within you, the sound of your being. […]
We have kept company with objects so long that we have forgotten our subjectivity. We have remained focused outwardly so long on things that we have forgotten that we are persons. This long association with objects has completely destroyed your image of yourself. You have to come back home.
In yoga, when you start seeing your seeing eye, you come across a subtle energy. They call it tanmatra. When you can see your eye seeing, just hidden behind the eyes you see a tremendous energy. That is tanmatra, the energy of the eye. Behind the ear you see tremendous energy accumulated, tanmatra of the ear. Behind your genital organs you see tremendous energy accumulated, tanmatra of sexuality. And so on and so forth. Everywhere, behind your senses there is a pool of energy — unused. Once you know it, you can pour that energy into your eyes, and then you will see visions which only sometimes poets see, painters see. Then you will hear sounds which only sometimes musicians hear, poets hear. And then you will touch things which only sometimes, in rare moments, lovers know how to touch.
You will become alive, streaming.
Ordinarily you have been taught to repress your senses, not to know them. It is very foolish, but very convenient. […]
That’s what you have done with your senses, with your body. You have repressed it. But you were helpless. I don’t say that you are responsible for repressing it. You were brought up in such a way, nobody allowed your senses freedom. In the name of love, only repression continues. The mothers, the fathers, the society, they go on repressing. By and by they teach you a trick, and the trick is not to accept yourself — deny. Everything has to be channelized into conformity. Your wilderness has to be thrown into the dark part of your soul and a small corner has to be clean, like a drawing room, where you can see people, meet people, and live and forget all about your wilder being, your real existence. Your fathers and your mothers are not responsible either because they were brought up in the same way.
So nobody is responsible. But once you know it, and you don’t do anything, then you become responsible. Being near me, I am going to make you very, very responsible because you will know it, and then if you don’t do anything, then you cannot throw the responsibility on anybody else. Then you are going to be responsible.
Now you know how you have destroyed your senses and you know also how to revive them. Do something. […] Unblock yourself. Start flowing again. Start connecting again with your being. Start connecting with your senses again. You are like a disconnected telephone line. Everything looks perfectly okay, the telephone is there, but the line is disconnected. Your eyes are there, your hands are there, your ears are there, but the line is disconnected. Reconnect it. If it can be disconnected, it can be reconnected. Others have disconnected it because they were also taught in the same way, but you can reconnect it.
All my meditations are to give you a streaming energy. That’s why I call them dynamic methods. Old meditations were just to sit silently, not to do anything. I give you active methods because when you are streaming with energy you can sit silently, that will do, but right now first you have to become alive.
From this follows instantaneous cognition without the use of the body, and complete mastery over pradhana (prakriti), the material world.
If you can see tanmatras, the subtle energies of your senses, you will become capable of using your cognition without the grosser instruments. If you know that behind the eye there is an accumulated pool of energy, you can close your eyes and use that energy directly. Then you will be able to see without opening your eyes. That’s what telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience is. […]
This is what yoga calls tanmatra. […]
Once you know the tanmatra, the subtle energy, that is being used by your eyes, eyes can be discarded. Once you know that it is not really the sense that is functioning but the energy, you are freed of the sense. […]
I have heard a story.
So, this guy phoned Cohen & Goldberg, wholesalers.
“Put me through to Mr. Cohen, please.”
“I am afraid Mr. Cohen has gone out, sir,” said the switchboard girl.
“Then get me Mr. Goldberg.”
“I am afraid Mr. Goldberg is tied up at present, sir.”
“Okay, I will phone back later.”
Ten minutes later: “Mr. Goldberg, please.”
“I am afraid Mr. Goldberg is still tied up, sir.”
“I will phone back.”
Half an hour later: “Get me Mr. Goldberg.”
“I am terribly sorry, sir, but Mr. Goldberg is still tied”
“I will phone back.”
Another half an hour later: “Goldberg!”
“I have dreadful news for you, sir. Mr. Goldberg is still tied up.”
“But look, this is ridiculous. How can you run a business like that? The one partner is out all morning and the other is tied up for hours on end. What is going on there?”
“Well, you see, sir, whenever Mr. Cohen goes out, he ties up Mr. Goldberg.”
This is what is happening inside you also.
Whenever you go out, through the eyes, through the hands, through your genital organs, through your ears, whenever you go out, continuously a certain type of bondage and tying is created. By and by you become tight with the particular sense — eyes, ears — because that is from where you go out, again, again, again. By and by you forget the energy that is going out.
This getting in bondage to the senses is the whole world, the samsar. How to untie yourself from the senses? And once you are tied up with the senses, you start thinking in terms of them. You forget yourself. […]
The whole attachment to the senses is as if you are the senses, as if you cannot live without them, as if your whole life is confined to them. But you are not confined to them. You can renounce them, and you can live still and live on a higher plane. Difficult. Just as if you want to persuade a seed that “Die, and soon a beautiful plant will be born.” How can he believe because he will be dead? And no seed has ever known that by his death a new sprout comes up, a new life arises. So how to believe it? Or if you go near an egg, and you want to persuade the bird within that “Come out,” but how is the bird to believe it, that there is any possibility of life without the egg? Or if you talk to a child inside the womb of a mother and tell him, “Come out, don’t be afraid,” but he knows nothing outside the womb. The womb has been his whole life; he knows only that much. He is afraid. The same is the situation: surrounded by the senses, we live in a sort of confinement, an imprisonment.
One has to be a little daring, courageous. Right now, wherever you are and whatsoever you are, nothing is happening to you. Then take the risk. Then move into the unknown. Then try to find out a new way of life.
“From this follows instantaneous cognition without the use of the body, and complete mastery over prakriti, the material world.” Up to now you have been possessed by the material world. Once you know that you have your own energy, totally independent from the material world, you become a master. The world possesses you no more; you possess it. Only those who renounce become the real masters.
Only after the awareness of the distinction between sattva and purusha does supremacy and knowledge arise over all states of existence.
And the subtlest discrimination has to be made between sattva and purusha — intelligence and awareness. It is very easy to separate yourself from the body. The body is so gross you can feel it; you cannot be it. You must be inside it. It is easy to see that you cannot be the eyes. You must be someone hidden behind who looks through the eyes; otherwise who will look through the eyes? Your glasses cannot look. Behind the glasses eyes are needed. Your eyes are also like glasses. They are glasses; they cannot look. You are needed somewhere behind to look.
But the subtlest identification is with intelligence. Your power to think, your power of intellect, understanding, that is the subtlest thing. It is very difficult to discriminate between awareness and intelligence. But it can be discriminated.
By and by, step by step, first know that you are not the body. Let that understanding grow deep, crystallize. Then know that you are not the senses. Let that understanding grow, crystallize. Then know that you are not the tanmatras, the energy pools behind the senses. Let that grow and crystallize. And then you will be able to see that intelligence is also a pool of energy. It is the common pool, in which eyes pour their energy, ears pour their energy, hands pour their energy. All the senses are like rivers, and intelligence is the central thing, in which they bring information and pour.
Whatsoever your mind knows is given by the senses. You have seen colors: your mind knows. If you are colorblind, if you cannot see the color green, then your mind does not know anything about green. Bernard Shaw lived his whole life unaware that he was colorblind. It is very difficult to come to know it, but one accidental incident allowed him to become aware. On one of his birthdays, somebody presented him a suit, but the tie was missing, so he went to the market to find a tie which could fit with the suit. The suit was green, and he started purchasing a yellow tie. His secretary was watching, and she said, “What are you doing? It won’t fit. The suit is green and the tie is yellow.” He said, “Is there any difference between these two?” For seventy years he had lived not knowing that he could not see yellow. He saw green. Whether it was yellow or green, both the colors looked green. Now yellow was not part of his mind; the eyes never poured that information into the mind.
The eyes are like servants, information collectors, probes, roaming all over the world, collecting things, pouring into the mind. They go on feeding the mind; mind is the central pool.
First you have to become aware that you are not the eye, not the energy that is hidden behind the eye, then you will be able to see that every sense is pouring into the mind. You are not this mind also. You are the one who is seeing it being poured. You are just standing on the bank, all the rivers pouring into the ocean — you are the watcher, the witness.
Swami Ram has said: “Science is difficult to define, but perhaps the most essential feature of it involves the study of something which is external to the observer. The techniques of meditation offer an approach which allows one to be external to one’s own internal states.” “The techniques of meditation offer an approach which allows one to be external to one’s own internal states” — and the ultimate of meditation is to know that whatsoever you can know, you are not it. Whatsoever can be reduced to a known object, you are not it, because you cannot be reduced to an object. You remain eternally subject — the knower, the knower, the knower. And the knower can never be reduced to the known.
This is purusha, awareness. This is the final understanding that arises out of yoga. Meditate over it.
-Osho
From Yoga: The Path to Liberation, Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V.9, Discourse #3 (Previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, V.9).
Copyright © OSHO International Foundation
This discourse is the Listening Meditation in the seventeenth 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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