Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate between purusha, pure consciousness, and sattva, pure intelligence, although they are absolutely distinct.
Performing samyama on the self-interest brings knowledge of the purusha separated from the knowledge of others.
From this follow intuitional hearing, touching, seeing, tasting, and smelling.
These are powers when the mind is turned outward but obstacles in the way of samadhi.
-Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras
One of the most important sutras of Patanjali – the very key. This last part of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is called “kaivalya pada.” Kaivalya means the summum bonum – the ultimate liberation, the total freedom of consciousness which knows no limitation, which knows no impurity. The word kaivalya is very beautiful; it means innocent aloneness; it means pure aloneness.
The word “aloneness” has to be understood. It is not loneliness. Loneliness is negative: loneliness is when you are hankering for the other. Loneliness is the feeling of the absence of the other; aloneness is the realization of oneself. Loneliness is ugly; aloneness is tremendously beautiful.
Aloneness is when you are so content that you don’t need the other, that the other has completely disappeared from your consciousness – the other makes no shadow on you, the other creates no dream in you, the other does not pull you out.
The other is continuously pulling you off the center. Sartre’s famous saying, Patanjali would have understood it well, is, “The other is hell.” The other may not be hell, but hell is created by your desire for the other. The desire for the other is hell.
And to be desireless of the other is to attain to your pristine clarity of being. Then you are and you are the whole, and there exists nobody except you. This Patanjali calls kaivalya.
And the way toward kaivalya, the path, is first the most essential step, viveka, discrimination; the second important step is vairagya, renunciation; and the third is the realization of kaivalya, aloneness.
Why are you hankering so much for the other? Why this desire – this constant madness for the other? Where have you taken a wrong step? Why are you not satisfied with yourself? Why don’t you feel fulfilled? Why do you think that somehow you lack something? From where arises this misconception that you are incomplete? It arises out of the identity with the body. The body is the other. Once you have taken the first wrong step, then you will go on and on, and then there is no end to it.
By viveka Patanjali means: to discriminate yourself as separate from the body – to realize that you are in the body but you are not the body, to realize that you are in the mind but you are not the mind. To realize that you are always the pure witness – sakshi, drashta – the seer. You are never the seen; you are never the object. You are pure subjectivity.
Søren Kierkegaard, one of the most influential existential thinkers in the West, has said, “God is subjectivity.” He comes very close to Patanjali. What does he mean when he says God is subjectivity? When all objects are known as separate from you, they start disappearing. They exist through your cooperation. If you think you are the body, then the body continues. It needs your help, your energy. If you think you are the mind, the mind functions. It needs your help, your cooperation, your energy.
This is one of the inner mechanisms: that just by your presence nature becomes alive. Just by your presence the body functions as alive; just by your presence the mind starts functioning. In yoga they say it is as if the master had gone out, then he comes back home. The servants were chitchatting and sitting on the steps of the house and smoking, and nobody was worried about the house. The moment the master enters, their chitchat stops, they are no longer smoking, they have hidden their cigarettes and they have started working, and they are trying to show that they are so much involved in their work that you cannot even conceive that just a moment before they were gossiping, sitting on the steps idling, lazy, resting. Just the presence of the master and everything settles – as if the teacher had gone out of the class and there was much turmoil, almost a chaos, and the teacher comes back and all the children are in their seats and they have started writing, doing their work, and there is complete silence. The very presence.
Now scientists have something parallel to it. They call it the presence of the catalytic agent. There are a few scientific phenomena in which a certain substance is needed just to be present. It does not act in any way, it does not enter into any activity, but just the presence of it helps some activity to happen – if it is not present that activity will not happen. If it is present it remains in itself; it does not go out. Just the very presence is catalytic – it creates some activity in somebody else, somewhere else.
Patanjali says that your innermost being is not active; it is inactive. The innermost being is called, in yoga, the purusha. Your pure consciousness is a catalytic agent. It is just there doing nothing – seeing everything but doing nothing, watching everything but getting involved in nothing. By the sheer presence of the purusha, the prakriti, nature – the mind, the body, everything – starts functioning.
But we get identified with the body, we get identified with the mind: we slip out of the witnesser and become a doer. That’s the whole disease of man. Viveka is the medicine – how to go back home, how to drop this false idea that you are a doer, and how to attain to the clarity of just being a witness. The methodology is called viveka.
Once you have understood that you are not the doer, and you are the watcher, the second thing happens spontaneously – renunciation, sannyas, vairagya. The second is: now, whatsoever you were doing before, you cannot do. You were getting involved too much in many things because you were thinking you are the body, because you were thinking you are the mind. Now you know that you are neither the body nor the mind, so many activities that you were following and chasing and getting mad about simply drop. That dropping is vairagya; that is sannyas, renunciation. Your vision, your viveka, your understanding, brings a transformation: that is vairagya. And when vairagya is complete, another peak arises which is kaivalya – you for the first time know who you are. But the first step of identification leads you astray; then once you have taken the first step, once you have ignored your separation and you have got caught in the identity, then it goes on and on and on; and one step leads to another, then to another, and you are more and more in the mire and in the mess.
Let me tell you one anecdote:
Two young friends were breaking into society, and young Cohen had high hopes of marrying an heiress. To give him moral support, he took young Levy along with him to meet the girl’s parents. The parents smiled at young Cohen and said, “I understand you are in the clothing business.”
Cohen nodded nervously and said, “Yes, in a small way.”
Levy slapped him on the back and said, “He is so modest, so modest. He has twenty-seven shops and is negotiating for more.”
The parents said, “I understand you have an apartment.” Cohen smiled, “Yes, a modest couple of rooms.”
Young Levy started laughing, “Modesty, modesty! He has a penthouse in Park Lane.”
The parents continued, “And you have a car?”
“Yes,” said Cohen. “Quite a nice one.”
“Quite nice nothing!” interjected Levy. “He has three Rolls-Royces, and that is only for the town use.”
Cohen sneezed. “Do you have a cold?” asked the anxious parents. “Yes, just a slight one,” replied Cohen.
“Slight, nothing!” yelled Levy. “Tuberculosis!”
One step leads to another, and once you have taken a wrong step, your life becomes an exaggeration of that wrong. It is mirrored and reflected in millions of ways. And if you don’t correct it there – you can go on correcting all over the world – you will not be able to correct it.
Gurdjieff used to tell his disciples, “The first thing is to become nonidentified and to remember continuously that you are a witness, just a consciousness – neither an act nor a thought.” If this remembrance becomes a crystallized phenomenon in you, you have attained to viveka, discrimination; then spontaneously follows vairagya. If you don’t become discriminate, spontaneously follows samsar, the world. If you become identified with the body and the mind, you move out – you go into the world. You are expelled from the Garden of Eden. If you discriminate, and you remember that you are in the body and the body is an abode and you are the owner and the mind is just a biocomputer, you are the master and the mind is just a slave; then – a turning in.
Then you are not moving into the world because the first step has been removed. Now you are no longer bridged with the world, suddenly you start falling in. This is what vairagya is, renunciation.
And when you go on falling in and in and in and there comes the last point beyond which there is no go, the summum bonum, it is called kaivalya: you have become alone. You don’t need anybody. You don’t need the constant effort of filling yourself with something or other. Now, you are in tune with your emptiness, and because of your tuning in with the emptiness, the very emptiness has become a fullness, an infinity, a fulfillment, a fruition of being.
This purusha is there in the beginning, this purusha is there in the end, and between the two is just a big dream.
The first sutra:
Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate between purusha, pure consciousness, and sattva, pure intelligence, although they are absolutely distinct.
Performing samyama on the self-interest brings knowledge of the purusha separated from the knowledge of others.
Each word has to be understood because each word is tremendously significant.
“Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate . . .” All experience is just an error. You say, “I am miserable,” or you say, “I am happy,” or you say, “I am feeling hungry,” or you say, “I am feeling very good and healthy” – all experience is an error, is a misunderstanding.
When you say, “I am hungry,” what do you really mean? You should say, “I am conscious that the body is hungry.” You should not say, “I am hungry.” You are not hungry. The body is hungry; you are the knower of the fact. The experience is not yours; only the awareness. The experience is of the body; the awareness is yours. When you feel miserable, again, the experience may be of the body or of the mind – which are not two.
Body and mind are one mechanism. The body is the gross mechanism of the same entity; the mind is the subtle mechanism. But both are the same. It is not good to say “body and mind”; we should say “body-mind.” The body is nothing but mind in a gross way, and if you watch your body, you will see that the body also functions as a mind. You are fast asleep, and a fly comes and hangs around your face – you remove it with your hand without in any way getting up or waking up. The body functioned, very mindfully. Or something starts crawling on your feet – you throw it away. Fast asleep. You will not remember in the morning. The body functions as a mind – very gross, but it functions as a mind.
So body-mind has all the experience – good or bad, happy, unhappy, it makes no difference. You are never the experiencer; you are always the awareness of the experience. So Patanjali says in a very bold statement, “Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate . . .” All experience is an error. The error arises because you don’t discriminate, you don’t know who is who. […]
Patanjali says all experience is an error – error in your vision. You become identified with the object, and the subject starts thinking as if it is the object. You feel hunger, but you are not hungry – the body is hungry. You feel pain, but you are not in pain – the body is in pain; you are only alert.
Next time something happens to you – and every moment something or other is happening – just watch. Just try to keep hold of this remembrance that “I am the witness,” and see how much things change. Once you can realize you are the witness, many things simply disappear, start disappearing. And one day comes which is the final day, the day of enlightenment, when all experience falls flat. Suddenly you are beyond experience: you are not in the body, you are not in the mind; you are beyond both. Suddenly you start floating like a cloud, above all, beyond all. That state of no-experience is the state of kaivalya.
Now one thing more about it. There are people who think that spirituality is also an experience. They don’t know. There are people who come to me, and they say, “We would like to have some spiritual experience.” They don’t know what they are saying. Experience as such is of the world. There is no spiritual experience – there cannot be. To call an experience “spiritual” is to falsify it. The spiritual is only a realization of pure awareness, purusha.
How does it happen? How do we get identified? In yoga terminology, the truth, the ultimate truth, has three attributes to it, sat chit anand – satchitanand. Sat means “being” – the quality of eternity, the quality of permanence, being. Chit: chit means “consciousness,” awareness – chit is energy, movement, process. And anand: anand is “blissfulness.” These three have been called the three attributes of the ultimate. This is the yoga trinity; of course, more scientific than the Christian trinity because it does not talk about persons – God, the Holy Ghost, the Son. It talks about realizations.
When one reaches to the ultimate peak of existence, one realizes three things: that one is and one is going to remain, that is sat; the second, one is and one is conscious – one is not like dead matter – one is and one knows that one is, that is chit; and, one knows that one is and one is tremendously blissful.
Now let me explain it to you. It is not right to call it “blissful,” because then it will become an experience. So a better way will be to say “one is bliss” – not “blissful.” One is sat, one is chit, one is anand; one is being, one is consciousness, one is bliss.
These are the ultimate realizations of the truth. Patanjali says these three, when they are present in the world, create three qualities in prakriti, in nature. They function as a catalytic agent; they don’t do anything. Just their presence creates a tremendous activity in prakriti. That activity is corresponded by three gunas, qualities: sattva, rajas, tamas.
Sattva corresponds to anand, the quality of bliss. Sattva means pure intelligence. The closer you come to sattva, the more you feel blissful. Sattva is the reflection of anand. If you can conceive of a triangle, then the base is anand and the other two lines are sat, chit. It is reflected into the world of matter, prakriti. Of course, in the reflection it becomes upside down: sattva, and rajas, tamas – the same triangle.
But the ultimate truth is not doing anything – that is the emphasis of Patanjali. Because once the ultimate truth is doing something, he becomes a doer, and he has already moved into the world. In Patanjali, God is not the creator; he is just a catalytic agent. This is tremendously scientific because if God is the creator, then you will have to find the motive, why he creates. Then you will have to find some desire in him to create. Then he will become just as ordinary as man. No, in Patanjali, God is absolute, pure presence. He does not do anything, but by his presence things happen – the prakriti, the nature, starts dancing.
There is an old story. A king had made a palace; the palace was called the Mirror Palace. The floor, the walls, the ceiling, all were covered in millions of mirrors, tiny, tiny mirrors. There was nothing else in the whole palace; it was a mirror palace. Once it happened, the king’s dog, by mistake, was left inside the palace in the night and the palace was locked from the outside. The dog looked, became frightened – there were millions of dogs everywhere. He was reflected; down, up, all the directions – millions of dogs. He was not an ordinary dog; he was the king’s dog – very brave – but even then, he was alone. He ran from one room to another, but there was no escape, there was no [where to] go. All over. He became more and more frightened. He tried to get out, but there was no way to get out – the door was locked.
Just to frighten the other dogs, he started barking, but the moment he barked, the other dogs also barked – because they were pure reflections. Then he became more frightened. To frighten the other dogs, he started knocking against the walls. The other dogs also jumped into him, bumped into him. In the morning the dog was found dead.
But the moment the dog died, all the dogs died. The palace was empty. There was only one dog and millions of reflections.
This is the standpoint of Patanjali: that there is only one reality, millions of reflections of it. You are separate from me as a reflection, I am separate from you as a reflection, but if we move toward the real, the separation will be gone – we will be one. One reflection is separate from another reflection; you can destroy one reflection and save another.
That’s how one person dies . . . There are many argumentative people in the world who ask, “Then if there is only one Brahman, one God, one being spread all over, then when one dies, why don’t others die also?” This is simple. If there are a thousand and one mirrors in the room, you can destroy one mirror: one reflection will disappear – not others. You destroy another: another reflection will disappear – not others. When one person dies, only one reflection dies. But the one who is being reflected remains undying; it is deathless. Then another child is born – that is, another mirror is born; again, another reflection.
This story goes on and on. That’s why Hindus have called this world a maya: maya means a magic show. Nothing is there really; everything only appears to be there. And this whole magic world depends on one error and that error is of identity.
“Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate between purusha, (absolute) pure consciousness, and sattva, pure intelligence . . .” Purusha is reflected into prakriti as sattva. Your intelligence is just a reflection of the real intelligence; it is not the real intelligence. You are clever, argumentative, groping in the dark, thinking, contemplating, creating philosophies, systems of thought – this is just a reflection. This intelligence is not the real intelligence because the real intelligence need not discover anything: for the real intelligence everything is already discovered.
Now look at the different paths of philosophy and religion. Philosophy moves in the reflected intelligence, into sattva – it goes on thinking and thinking and thinking and goes on creating bigger palaces of thought. Religion moves into purusha – it drops this so-called intelligence; hence the insistence of meditation to drop thinking. […]
Thinking is just dreaming logically; it is creating verbal palaces. And sometimes one can get caught so much in the verbal, then one completely forgets the real. The verbal is just a reflection.
Language is one of the reasons we got so caught up in the verbal. For example, in English, it is very difficult to drop the use of the “I.” It is very prominent in English. The “I” stands so vertical – almost a phallic symbol. It is phallic. That’s why perceptive people like E. E. Cummings started writing “I” in the lower case. And it is not only vertical, phallic, when you write. When you say, “I,” it is phallic, like an erection, egoistic. Just watch how many times “I” has to be used. And the more you use it, the more it is emphasized, the more ego becomes prominent – as if the whole English language hangs around “I.”
But in Japanese it is totally different. You can talk for hours without using “I.” It is possible to write a book without using “I”; the language has a totally different arrangement. The “I” can be dropped easily.
No wonder Japan became the most meditative country in the world and achieved to the higher peaks of Zen, satori, and samadhi. Why did it happen in Japan? Why has it happened in Burma, in Thailand, in Vietnam? All the countries which have been influenced by Buddhism, their language is different from other countries which have never been influenced by Buddhism because Buddha said there is no “I” – anatta, anatma, no-selfness, there is no “I.” That emphasis entered the languages.
Buddha says, “Nothing is permanent.” So when for the first time the Bible was being translated into Buddhist languages, it was very difficult to translate it. The problem was very basic – how to put “God is,” because in Buddhist countries “is” is a dirty word. Everything is becoming, nothing is. If you want to say, “The tree is,” in Burmese, it will come to mean, “The tree is becoming.” It will not mean, “The tree is.” If you want to say, “The river is,” you cannot say it in Burmese. It will come to mean, “The river is becoming.” And that’s true because the river is never is. It is always in a process – the river is “rivering.” It is not a noun; it is a verb. The river is rivering, becoming. Never in any stage can you catch it as “is.” You cannot take a snap of it; it is a movie – continuous process. You cannot have a photograph – the photograph will be false because it will be “is,” and the river never is.
Buddhist languages have a different structure to them; then, they create a different mind. The mind depends much on language; its whole game is linguistic. Beware of it. […]
If Buddha comes to you and says, “There is no God,” you immediately get anxious, worried. What has he said? He has simply said something which goes against your linguistic pattern, that’s all. If he says, “There is no self, no ‘I,”’ you become disturbed. What has he done? He has simply taken away a strategy of your ego, nothing else. He has simply shattered your linguistic pattern.
It is happening every day here. When I say something, and I destroy some linguistic pattern in you, you become annoyed, you become angry. If you are a Christian, of course, you have a Christian house of language. If you are a Hindu, you have a Hindu house of language. I am neither, and I am here to destroy all linguistic patterns. You bet you get angry. You become annoyed. You start thinking what to do. But what am I doing? What can I take from you? Can Buddha take God from you if you have known God – can he take it from you? Then there is no question. But he can take a linguistic theory; he can take a hypothesis from you.
Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate between purusha, pure consciousness, and sattva, pure intelligence . . ..
Language belongs to sattva, theories belong to sattva, philosophies belong to sattva. Sattva means your intelligence, your mind. Mind is not you.
Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, belong to the mind. That’s why Buddhist monks say, “If you meet Buddha on the way, kill him immediately.” Buddhist monks saying that? They say, “Kill the Buddha if you see him, immediately.” They are saying, “Kill the mind, don’t carry a theory about the Buddha; otherwise you will never become a Buddha. If you want to become a Buddha, drop all ideas about Buddha – all ideas. Kill Buddha immediately!” They say, “If you utter the name of Buddha, immediately wash and rinse your mouth – the word is dirty.” Buddhist monks saying that? They are amazing people . . . but really wonderful. And they mean it.
If you can see their point, you will become able to see many more things. Bodhidharma says, “Burn all scriptures, all – including Buddha’s.” Not only the Vedas, Dhammapada included – burn all scriptures. There is a very famous painting of Bin-chi burning all the scriptures, creating a holi. And they were very, very deep into reality. What are they doing? They are simply taking away your mind from you. Where is your Veda? It is not in the book; it is in your mind. Where is your Koran? It is in your mind; it is not in the book. It is in your mental tape. Drop all that; get out of it.
Intelligence, the mind, is part of nature. It is just a reflection. It looks almost like the real, but remember, even “almost like the real,” then too it is not real. It is as if in the full moon night, you see the moon reflected in the cool, placid lake. No ripple is arising; the reflection is perfect, but still it is a reflection. And if the reflection is so beautiful, just think about the real. Don’t get caught in the reflection.
What Buddha says is a reflection, what Patanjali writes is a reflection, what I am saying is a reflection. Don’t be caught in it. If the reflection is so beautiful, try reality. Move away from the reflection toward the moon.
And the path is going to be just the opposite to the reflection. If you go on looking at the reflection and you become hypnotized by the reflection, you will never be able to see the moon in the sky because it is diametrically opposite. If you want to see the real moon, you will have to move away from the reflection – you will have to burn scriptures and you will have to kill buddhas. You will have to move in the very opposite, diametrically opposite, dimension. Then your head moves toward the moon; then you cannot see the reflection. The reflection disappears.
All scriptures, at the most, can train and discipline your intelligence. No scripture can lead you toward the real, pure purusha – the witness, the awareness.
. . . inability to differentiate between purusha, pure consciousness, and sattva, pure intelligence . . .
That is the very cause of getting into ignorance, into the dark night, into the world, into matter, losing contact with your own reality and becoming a victim of your own ideas and projections.
. . . although they are absolutely distinct. You can see that. Even the greatest idea is different from you – you can watch it arising as an object inside you. Even the greatest idea remains a thing within you and you remain far away from it, a watcher on the hill looking down at the idea. Never get identified with any object.
Performing samyama on the self-interest brings knowledge of the purusha separated from the knowledge of others – Svartha samyamat purusha gyanam.
Patanjali is saying, “Selfishness brings the absolute knowledge” – svartha. Become selfish, that is the very core of religion. Try to see what your real self-interest is, where your real self is. Try to distinguish yourself from others – “pararth,” from the others.
And don’t think that the people who are outside you are the others. They are others, but your body is also the other. It will return to the earth one day; it is part of the earth. Your breathing is also the other; it will return to the air. It is just given to you for the time being. You have borrowed it; it will have to be returned. You will not be here, but your breath will be here in the air. You will not be here, but your body will lie down in deep sleep in the earth – dust unto dust. That which you think of as your blood will be flowing into rivers. Everything will go back.
But one thing you have not borrowed from anybody: that’s your witnessing, that’s your sakshi bhav, the awareness.
Intellect will disappear, reasoning will disappear. All these things are like formations of clouds in the sky: they come together, they disappear, but the sky remains. You will remain as a vast space. That vast space is purusha – the inner sky is purusha.
How to come to know it? Samyama on the self-interest. Bring your concentration, dharana; your contemplation, dhyan; your ecstasy, samadhi; bring all the three to your self-interest – turn in. In the West people are turning “on” – then you turn out. Turn in. Just bring your consciousness to a focus, to who you are. Differentiate between the objects. Hunger arises – this is an object. Then you are satisfied, you have eaten well, a certain well-being arises – that too is an object. Morning comes – that too is an object. Evening comes – that too is an object. You remain the same – hunger or no hunger. Life or death, misery or happiness, you remain the same watcher.
But even in looking at a movie you get caught. You know well there is only a white screen and nothing else and shadows are moving on it, but have you watched people sitting in a movie house? A few start crying when something tragic is happening on the screen. Their tears start coming. Just see: there is nothing real on the screen, but the tears are very real. The unreal is bringing tears? People reading a story in a book become so excited. Or seeing a picture of a nude woman become sexually aroused. Just see, there is nothing. Just a few lines – nothing else. Just a little ink spread on the paper. But their sexual arousal is very real.
This is the tendency of the mind: to get caught with the objects, become identified with them.
Catch yourself red handed as many times as you can. Again and again, catch yourself red handed and drop the object. Suddenly you will feel a coolness, all excitement gone. The moment you realize there is only the screen and nothing else, for what am I getting so much excited, for what . . . The whole world is a screen, and all that you are seeing there are your own desires projected; and whatsoever you want, you start projecting and believing. This whole world is a fantasy. And remember, you all don’t live in the same world. Everybody has his own world because his fantasies are different from the others. The truth is one; fantasies are as many as there are minds. If you are in a fantasy, you cannot meet the other person, you cannot communicate with the other.
He is in his fantasy. That is what is happening: when people want to relate, they cannot relate. Somehow, they miss each other. Lovers, wives, friends, husbands, miss each other, they go on missing. And they are very much worried over why they cannot communicate. They wanted to say something, but the other understands something else. And they go on saying, “I never meant this,” but the other goes on hearing something else.
What is happening? The other lives in his fantasy; you live in your own fantasy. He is projecting some other film on the same screen; you are projecting some other film on the same screen. That’s why a relationship becomes such an anxiety, anguish. One feels [to be] alone is to be good and happy, and whenever you move with somebody, you start getting into a mire, into a hell. When Sartre says, he says through his experience: “The other is hell.” But the other is not creating the hell; just two fantasies clashing, just two worlds of dreams clashing.
Communication is possible only when you have dropped your fantasy world and the other has dropped his fantasy world. Then two beings face each other – and they are not two because the twoness drops with the world of fantasy. Then they are one.
When a buddha faces somebody who is also a buddha, they are not two. That’s why two buddhas have not been known to talk to each other – there are not two persons to talk. They remain quiet; they remain silent. There are stories that when Mahavir and Buddha were alive . . . They were contemporaries, and they moved, wandered, in the same small province of Bihar; it is called Bihar because of these two people: bihar means wandering. Because these two persons wandered all over the place, it became known as the province of their wandering – but they never met. Many times, they were in the same town; the place is not very big. Many times, they stayed in the same place, a small village. Once it happened that they stayed in the same serai, in the same dharmasala, but they never met.
Now a problem arises: Why? And if you ask Buddhists or Jains why they didn’t meet, they feel a little embarrassed. The question seems embarrassing because that simply shows maybe they were very egoistic? Who should go to whom? Buddha to Mahavir or Mahavir to Buddha? Nobody can do that. So Jains and Buddhists avoid the question – they have never answered. But I know: the reason is there were not two persons to meet. It is not a question of egoism. Simply, there were not two persons to meet! Two emptinesses staying in the same serai, so what to do? How to bring them together? And even if you bring them together, they will not be two. There will be only one emptiness. When two zeros meet, it becomes one zero.
Performing samyama on the self interest brings knowledge of the purusha separated from the knowledge of others.
Tatah pratibha sravana vedan adarsh asvada varta jayante.
From this follow intuitional hearing, touching, seeing, tasting, and smelling.
Again the word pratibha has to be understood. One who attains to pure attention, to pure awareness, to pure inner clarity, innocence, attains to pratibha. Pratibha is not intuition. Intellect is sun-oriented; intuition is moon-oriented; pratibha is beyond both. Man remains an intellectual, woman intuitional, but the Buddha – purusha, one who has attained, is neither man nor woman. […]
Woman has to flower in her moonhood as man has to flower in his sunhood, but pratibha is beyond both. Intellect is psychological, intuition parapsychological, pratibha para psychological.
From this follows intuitional hearing, touching, seeing, tasting, and smelling.
Remember this, that it can happen on two levels. If you are a moon person, a feminine person – maybe man or woman, that doesn’t make any difference – if you function from the moon center, you will be able to hear many things which others cannot hear and you will be able to see many things which others cannot see. You will become perceptive of the hidden. The hidden dimension will be not so hidden for you; the secret will become a little open for you.
That’s what is being studied by parapsychology. Now it is gaining momentum; a few universities of the world have opened parapsychological departments. Much research work is being done, even in Soviet Russia. Because man has failed in a way. The sun center has failed. We have lived through that sun center for thousands of years; it brings only violence, war, misery. Now the other center has to be tackled.
Even in Soviet Russia, which is dominated by the sun center, by the communists, who don’t believe in any possibility of the beyond, even they are trying. And they have done much work, and they have discovered much. Of course, they interpret it in terms of intellect – -they don’t call it “extrasensory,” they don’t call it “parapsychological.” They say, “This is also sensory, only refined.” Eyes can become more refined and they can see things which ordinarily cannot be seen. For example, eyes can see your inner body just as an X-ray can see it. If the X-ray can see it, then the eye can also see it; one just needs to train the eyes.
And in a way they are right. Intuition is not beyond the senses; it is a refinement of sense. Pratibha is beyond the senses – it is non-sensory, it is immediate, the senses are dropped. This is the yoga standpoint, that within you, you are all knowing – all knowingness is your very nature. In fact, you think that you see through the eyes; yoga says you are not seeing through the eyes – you are being blinded by the eyes. Let me explain it to you.
You are standing in a room and you are looking outside from a small hole. Of course, in a room you will feel that that small hole gives at least a certain knowledge to you about the world outside. You may become focused on it. You may think without this hole it will be impossible to see. Yoga says you are getting into a very, very erroneous attitude. This hole allows you to see, but this hole is not the cause of seeing – seeing is your quality. You are seeing through the hole; the hole is not seeing.
You are the seer. You are looking through the eyes into the world; you are looking at me. Your eyes are just the holes in the body, but you are the seer inside. If you can get out of the body, the same will happen as will happen if you can open the door and can come out into the open sky. Because of the hole being lost, you will not become blind. In fact, then you will understand that the hole was blinding you. It was giving you a very limited vision. Now open, under the sky, you can see the whole in a total, instantaneous vision, altogether. Now your vision is not linear, and your vision is not limited, because there is no window to it. You have come under the sky: you can see all around.
The same is the standpoint of yoga, and [it is] true. The body is giving only small holes to you: from the ears you can hear, from the eyes you can see, from the tongue you can taste, from the nose you can smell. Small holes, and you are hiding behind. Yoga says, come out, get out, go beyond. Get out of these holes, and you will become all-knowing, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. This is pratibha.
From this follows . . . the hearing that is of the beyond, the hearing that is not through the intellect nor through the intuition but through pratibha; and [so with] touching and seeing and tasting and smelling.
Remember it, that one who has achieved lives life in its totality for the first time. The Upanishads say, “ten tyakten bhunjitha” – “Those who have renounced, only they have indulged.” Very paradoxical. “Those who have renounced, only they have known and experienced and enjoyed, indulged.” Your limitation in the body is making you impoverished. Getting up beyond the body, you will become richer. One who has attained is not poorer – he becomes tremendously rich. He becomes a god.
So yoga is not against the world. In fact, you are against the world. And yoga is not against bliss – you are against bliss. And yoga wants you to drop the world so all limitations can be dropped and you can become unlimited in your being, in your experiencing.
These are powers when the mind is turned outward, but obstacles in the way of samadhi.
But Patanjali is always aware to tell you again and again – he goes on hammering the point to hit it home – that even these powers, of immediate hearing, listening, tasting, smelling, touching – remember, they are powers if you are going outward, but if you want to go in, they become hindrances. All powers become hindrances when one is going in.
The person who is going out is going through the moon and to the sun and to the world. And the person who is going in, his energy is moving from the sun to the moon and from the moon to the beyond. Their target and goals are totally different, diametrically opposite.
It happens then, sometimes you start feeling the first glimpse of pratibha, of the beyond, and you become so powerful – you are filled with power, you are power – and in that moment you can fall again. Power corrupts; you can fall. You can get into the head so much, you can get into the ego so much, that you would like to have a ride on it – the power. You would like to do miracles or other foolish things.
All miracle mongers are in a way foolish – whatsoever they say. They may say that they are doing these miracles to help people. They are not helping anybody; they are simply harming themselves – and harming others also. Because in doing such things they are falling below the beyond. And then their whole thing becomes just a trickery. There are tricks of the parapsychic, of the intuitional, of the moon world, which once you know them, you can play around. They are tricks still, and the ego can again use those tricks. […]
Patanjali says, “These are powers when the mind is turned outward, but obstacles in the way of samadhi.” If you want to attain to the ultimate, you have to lose all. You have to lose all! This is the way of the real seeker: whatsoever he gains, he goes and sacrifices it to God. He says, “You have given it to me, but what am I going to do with it? I put it again back at your feet.” He goes on sacrificing whatsoever he attains, and he remains always empty of attainment. That is spirituality: to remain always empty of attainment, and whatsoever comes by the way, one goes on sacrificing it. […]
Whatsoever comes on your way of inner growth . . . and much comes. Every moment is a new discovery on the inner path; every moment something suddenly falls in your hands – you had not even imagined; you have never asked for it. Millions are the gifts of the path, but only the one reaches to the end who goes on offering those gifts back to God. Otherwise, if you start clinging to the gift, then and there your progress stops. Then and there your growth stops. Then and there you make an abode and start living there.
Te samadhav upasarga vyuthane siddhayah.
If you want samadhi, the ultimate peace, the ultimate silence, the ultimate truth, then never get attached to any attainment whatsoever – worldly, other worldly, psychological, parapsychological, intellectual, intuitive, whatsoever. Never get attached to any attainment. Go on offering it to God, go on offering it to God . . . and more will be coming! Go on offering it to God.
When you have offered all, God comes. When you have offered all, given it back to him, he comes as the last gift. God is the last gift.
-Osho
From Secrets of Yoga; Yoga: The Science of the Soul, V.8, Discourse #7 (Previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, V.8).
Copyright © OSHO International Foundation
This discourse is the Listening Meditation in the sixteenth 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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