Austerities destroy impurities, and with the ensuing perfection in the body and sense organs, physical and mental powers awaken.
Union with the divine happens through self-study.
Total illumination can be accomplished by surrendering to God.
-Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras
Man is like an iceberg: only a part, a minor part, is visible on the surface; the major part of the whole is hidden beneath. Or, man is like a tree: the real life is in the roots, hidden underground; only branches are visible. If you cut the branches, new branches will come up because branches are not the source; but if you cut the roots the tree is destroyed. Only a part of man is visible on the surface; the major part is hidden behind. And if you think that the visible man is all, then you commit a great mistake. Then you miss the whole mystery of man; and then you miss the doors within yourself which can lead you towards the divine.
If you think that by knowing the name of a person, by knowing from which family he comes, by knowing his profession, that he is a doctor or an engineer or a professor, or by knowing his face, his picture, you have known him; you are in great illusion. These are just the appearances on the surface. The real man is far, far away from all these. This way you may be acquainted, but you never know the man. It is enough as far as society is concerned; more is not needed. This skin-deep knowledge is enough for the marketplace, but if you really want to know the man then you have to go deep. And the only way to go deep is to go within yourself first.
Unless you know the unknown within you, you will never be able to know anybody else. The only way to know the mystery that man is, is to know the mystery that you are. There are hidden layers behind hidden layers. Man is infinity.
If you go on diving deep in man you will reach to God. Man is just the surface of the ocean, waves. If you dive deep you reach to the very center of existence. Those who have known God — they have not known him as an object. They have known him as their innermost subjectivity. Those who have known God have not encountered him. They have not seen him as an object; they have seen him as the very seer, as their own consciousness. You cannot encounter God anywhere except within yourself. He is your depth; you are his surface. You are his periphery; he is your center.
And the deeper you move within yourself, the deeper you are moving in the whole existence, in others also, because the center is one. Peripheries are millions, but the center is one. The whole existence is centered on one point — that one point is God. God: that is the deepest depth of being.
It is a great journey, a great pilgrimage to know man. Patanjali’s sutras give you clues how to enter.
The first sutra:
Kayendriya siddhih ashuddhih ksyayat tapasah.
Austerities destroy impurities, and with the ensuing perfection in the body and sense organs, physical and mental powers awaken.
Before you can understand this sutra, many more things have to be understood. The body has been very much misused. You have mistreated your own body. You don’t know the mystery of the body itself. It is not just the skin; it is not just the bones; it is not just the blood. It is a great organic unity, a great dynamism.
For centuries man thought that blood filled the body as water fills a container. Only just three centuries ago, we came to know that blood does not fill the body, that it is not a stagnant thing — blood circulates. Only just three centuries ago, we came to know that blood circulates, it is a dynamic force. It does not fill the body, but it circulates — so silently and so continuously, and the movement is so graceful, without any noise, that we have lived with bodies for millions of lives and we have never come to encounter the reality of the blood, that it circulates.
There are many more mysteries which are hidden. This body is just the first layer of many bodies — in all, seven bodies. If you move deep in this body, you will come across new phenomena. Behind this gross body is hidden the subtle body. Once that subtle body awakes, you become very powerful because you attain to certain new dimensional forces. This body can lie down in your bed, and your subtle body can move. For it there is no barrier. The gravitation of the earth does not affect it; there is no barrier of time and space for it. It can move . . . it can move anywhere. The whole world is open for it. For the gross body that is not possible.
In some of your dreams the subtle body actually leaves your physical body. In some of your deep meditations your subtle body leaves your physical body. Many of you, deeply meditating, sometimes have become aware that it feels as if you have risen above the earth, a few inches, a few feet. When you open your eyes you are sitting on the earth. You think you have imagined it. It is not so. The subtle body, in deep meditation, can go a little higher than your gross body. Sometimes that, too, happens — that the gross body also follows the subtle body.
There is a woman in Europe; she has been investigated by all the scientific methods. In deep meditation she rises four feet above the earth; not only in the subtle body, but the gross body also. It has been found to be a fact. This is said in the oldest yoga treatises: that in deep meditation it happens that with the subtle body the gross body can go above the ground — and, exactly, it says it can go four feet very easily.
And the gross body is just the surface body, the skin of other bodies. Then behind the subtle there are subtler bodies — in all, seven bodies. They all belong to seven different planes of being. The more you enter in your own being, the more you become aware that this body is not the all. But you will encounter the second body only if this body has become pure.
Yoga does not believe in torturing the body, it is not a masochistic affair — but it believes in purifying it. And, sometimes, purifying it and torturing it may look alike. A distinction has to be made. A man can fast, and he may be only torturing. He may be just against his own body, suicidal, masochistic. But then another man can fast and he may not be a torturer, and he may not be a masochist, and he may not be trying to destroy the body in any way. Rather, he may be trying to purify it. Because in deep fasting, body attains to certain purities.
You continuously go on eating every day; you never give any holiday to the body. The body goes on accumulating many dead cells — they become a load. Not only are they a load and a burden, they are toxins, they are poisonous. They make the body impure. When the body is impure you cannot see the hidden body behind it. This body needs to be clean, transparent, pure; then suddenly you become aware of the second layer, the subtle body. When the subtle body is pure then you become aware of the third body, and the fourth, and so on.
Fasting helps tremendously, but one needs to be very much aware that one is not destroying the body. No condemnation should be in the mind; and there is the problem because almost all religions have condemned the body. Their original founders were not condemners; they were not poisoners. They loved their bodies. They loved the body so much that they always tried to purify it. Their fasting was a purification.
Then came blind followers, unaware of the deep science of fasting. They started fasting, blindly. They enjoyed, because mind is violent. It enjoys being violent with others, it enjoys the power, because whenever you are violent with others you feel powerful; but to be violent with others is risky because the other will retaliate. Then there is a simple way: to be violent with your own body. Then there is no risk. The body cannot retaliate. The body cannot harm you. You can go on harming your own body; there is nobody to react. This is simple. You can torture and enjoy power — that now you control your body; the body doesn’t control you.
If this fasting is aggressive, violent, if there is anger and destructiveness, then you miss the point. You are not purifying the body; you are in fact destroying it.
And to clean a mirror is one thing and to destroy the mirror is another. To clean the mirror is totally different, because when the mirror is clean of all dust, pure, you will be able to look into it — it will reflect you. But if you destroy the mirror, then there is no possibility to look into it. If you destroy the gross body, you lose all possibility of contact with the second, the subtle body. Purify it, but don’t be destructive.
And how does fasting purify? Because whenever you are on a fast the body has no more work of digestion. In that period the body can work in throwing out dead cells, toxins. It is just as [if] one day, Sunday or Saturday, you are on a holiday and you come home and you clean the whole day. The whole week you were so engaged and so busy you couldn’t clean the house. When the body has nothing to digest, you have not eaten anything, the body starts a self-cleaning. A process starts spontaneously, and the body starts throwing out all that is not needed, which is like a load. Fasting is a method of purification. Once in a while, a fast is beautiful — not doing anything, not eating, just resting. Take as much liquid as possible and just rest, and the body will be cleaned.
Sometimes, if you feel that a longer fast is needed, you can do a longer fast also — but be deep in love with the body. And if you feel the fast is harming the body in any way, stop it. If the fast is helping the body, you will feel more energetic; you will feel more alive; you will feel rejuvenated, vitalized. This should be the criterion: if you start feeling that you are getting weaker, if you start feeling that a subtle trembling is coming into the body, then be aware — now the thing is no longer a purification. It has become destructive. Stop it.
But one should learn the whole science of it. In fact one should do fasting near somebody who has been fasting for long and who knows the whole path very well, who knows all the symptoms: if it becomes destructive what will start happening; if it is not destructive then what will happen. After a real, purifying fast you will feel new, younger, cleaner, weightless, happier; and the body will be functioning better because now it is unloaded. But fasting comes only if you have been eating wrongly. If you have not been eating wrongly there is no need for fasting. Fasting is needed only when you have already done the wrong with the body — and we all have been eating wrongly.
Man has lost the path. No animal eats like man; every animal has its chosen food. If you bring buffaloes in the garden and leave them, they will eat only a particular grass. They will not go on eating everything and anything — they are very choosey. They have a certain feeling about their food. Man is completely lost, has no feeling about his food. He goes on eating everything and anything. In fact you cannot find anything which is not eaten somewhere or other by man. In some places, ants are eaten. In some places, snakes are eaten. In some places, dogs are eaten. Man has eaten everything. Man is simply mad. He does not know what is in resonance with his body and what is not. He is completely confused.
Man, naturally, should be a vegetarian, because the whole body is made for vegetarian food. Even scientists concede to the fact that the whole structure of the human body shows that man should not be a nonvegetarian. Man comes from the monkeys. Monkeys are vegetarians — absolute vegetarians. If Darwin is true then man should be a vegetarian. Now there are ways to judge whether a certain species of animal is vegetarian or nonvegetarian: it depends on the intestine, the length of the intestine. Nonvegetarian animals have a very small intestine. Tigers, lions — they have a very small intestine, because meat is already a digested food. It does not need a long intestine to digest it. The work of digestion has been done by the animal. Now you are eating the animal’s meat. It is already digested — no long intestine is needed. Man has one of the longest intestines: that means man is a vegetarian. A long digestion is needed, and much excreta will be there which has to be thrown out.
If man is not a nonvegetarian and he goes on eating meat, the body is burdened. In the East, all the great meditators — Buddha, Mahavir — they have emphasized the fact. Not because of any concept of nonviolence — that is a secondary thing — but because if you really want to move in deep meditation your body needs to be weightless, natural, flowing. Your body needs to be unloaded; and a nonvegetarian’s body is very much loaded.
Just watch what happens when you eat meat: when you kill an animal what happens to the animal when he is killed? Of course, nobody wants to be killed. Life wants to prolong itself; the animal is not dying willingly. If somebody kills you, you will not die willingly. If a lion jumps on you and kills you, what will happen to your mind? The same happens when you kill a lion. Agony, fear, death, anguish, anxiety, anger, violence, sadness — all these things happen to the animal. All over his body — violence, anguish, agony spreads. The whole body becomes full of toxins, poisons. All the body glands release poisons because the animal is dying very unwillingly. And then you eat the meat — that meat carries all the poisons that the animal has released. The whole energy is poisonous. Then those poisons are carried in your body.
And that meat which you are eating belonged to an animal body. It had a specific purpose there. A specific type of consciousness existed in the animal’s body. You are on a higher plane than the animal’s consciousness, and when you eat the animal’s meat your body goes to the lowest plane, to the lower plane of the animal. Then there exists a gap between your consciousness and your body, and a tension arises, and anxiety arises.
One should eat things which are natural — natural for you. Fruits, nuts, vegetables — eat as much as you can. And the beauty is that you cannot eat these things more than is needed. Whatsoever is natural always gives you a satisfaction, because it satiates your body, saturates you. You feel fulfilled. If something is unnatural it never gives you a feeling of fulfillment. Go on eating ice cream: you never feel that you are satiated. In fact the more you eat, the more you feel like eating. It is not a food. Your mind is being tricked. Now you are not eating according to the body need; you are eating just to taste it. The tongue has become the controller.
The tongue should not be the controller. It does not know anything about the stomach. It does not know anything about the body. The tongue has a specific purpose to fulfill: to taste food. Naturally, the tongue has to judge, that is the only thing, which food is for the body — for my body — and which food is not for my body. It is just a watchman on the door; it is not the master. And if the watchman on the door becomes the master, then everything will be confused.
Now advertisers know well that the tongue can be tricked, the nose can be tricked. And they are not the masters. You may not be aware: much food research goes on in the world, and they say if your nose is closed completely, and your eyes closed, and then you are given an onion to eat, you cannot tell what you are eating. You cannot tell onion from apple if the nose is closed completely because half of the taste comes from the smell, is decided by the nose, and half is decided by the tongue — and these two have become the controllers. Now they know whether ice cream is nutritious or not is not the point. It can carry a flavor; it can carry some chemicals which fulfill the tongue but are not needed for the body.
Man is confused — more confused than buffaloes. You cannot convince buffaloes to eat ice cream. Try!
A natural food . . . and when I say “natural” I mean that which your body needs. The need of a tiger is different; he has to be very violent. If you eat the meat of a tiger you will be violent, but where will your violence be expressed? You have to live in human society, not in a jungle. Then you will have to suppress the violence. Then a vicious circle starts.
When you suppress violence, what happens? When you feel angry, violent, a certain poisonous energy is released, because that poison creates a situation where you can be really violent and kill somebody. The energy moves towards your hands; the energy moves towards your teeth — these are the two places from where animals become violent. Man is part of the animal kingdom.
When you are angry, energy is released — it comes to the hands and to the teeth, to the jaw — but you live in a human society, and it is not always profitable to be angry. You live in a civilized world, and you cannot behave like an animal. If you behave like an animal, you will have to pay too much for it — and you are not ready to pay that much. Then what do you do? You suppress the anger in the hand; you suppress the anger in your teeth — you go on smiling a false smile, and your teeth go on accumulating anger.
I have rarely come to see people with a natural jaw. It is not natural — blocked, stiff — because too much anger is there. If you press the jaw of a person, the anger can be released. Hands become ugly. They lose grace, they lose flexibility, because too much anger is suppressed there. People who have been working on deep massage, they have come to know that when you touch the hands deeply, massage the hands, the person starts becoming angry. There is no reason. You are massaging the man and suddenly he starts feeling angry. If you press the jaw, persons become angry again. They carry accumulated anger.
These are the impurities in the body: they have to be released. If you don’t release them the body will remain heavy. Yoga exercises exist to release all sorts of accumulated poisons in the body. Yoga movements release them; and a yogi’s body has a suppleness of its own. Yoga exercises are totally different from other exercises. They don’t make your body strong; they make your body more flexible. And when your body is more flexible, you are strong in a very different sense: you are younger. They make your body more liquid, more flowing — no blocks in the body. The whole body exists as an organic unity, in a deep rhythm of its own. It is not like noise in the market; it is like an orchestra. A deep rhythm inside, no blocks, then the body is pure. Yoga exercises can be tremendously helpful.
Everybody is carrying much rubbish in the stomach because that is the only space in the body where you can suppress things. There is no other space. If you want to suppress anything it has to be suppressed in the stomach. If you want to cry — your wife has died, your beloved has died, your friend has died — but it doesn’t look good, looks as if you are a weakling, crying for a woman, you suppress it: where will you put that crying? Naturally, you have to suppress it in the stomach. That is the only space available in the body, the only hollow place, where you can force.
If you suppress in the stomach . . . And everybody has suppressed many sorts of emotions: of love, of sexuality, of anger, of sadness, of weeping — even of laughter. You cannot laugh a belly laugh. It looks rude, looks vulgar — you are not cultured then. You have suppressed everything. Because of this suppression, you cannot breathe deeply, you have to breathe shallowly. Because if you breathe deeply then those wounds of suppression, they would release their energy. You are afraid. Everybody is afraid to move in the stomach.
Every child, when born, breathes through the belly. Look at a child sleeping: the belly goes up and down — never the chest. No child breathes from the chest; they breathe from the belly. They are completely free now, nothing is suppressed. Their stomachs are empty, and that emptiness has a beauty in the body.
Once the stomach has too much suppression in it, the body is divided in two parts, the lower and the higher. Then you are not one; you are two. The lower part is the discarded part. The unity is lost; a duality has entered into your being. Now you cannot be beautiful, you cannot be graceful. You are carrying two bodies instead of one — and there will always remain a gap between the two. You cannot walk beautifully. Somehow you have to carry your legs. In fact if the body is one, your legs will carry you. If the body is divided in two then you have to carry your legs.
You have to drag your body. It is like a burden. You cannot enjoy it. You cannot enjoy a good walk, you cannot enjoy a good swim, you cannot enjoy a fast run — because the body is not one. For all these movements, and to enjoy them, the body needs to be reunited. A unison has to be created again: the stomach will have to be cleansed completely.
For the cleansing of the stomach, very deep breathing is needed, because when you inhale deeply and exhale deeply, the stomach throws all that it is carrying. In exhalations, the stomach releases itself. Hence the importance of pranayam, of deep rhythmic breathing. The emphasis should be on the exhalation so that everything that the stomach has been unnecessarily carrying is released.
And when the stomach is not carrying emotions inside, if you have constipation, it will suddenly disappear. When you are suppressing emotions in the stomach, there will be constipation because the stomach is not free to have its movements. You are deeply controlling it; you can’t allow it freedom. So if emotions are suppressed, there will be constipation. Constipation is more a mental disease than a physical one. It belongs to the mind more than it belongs to the body.
But remember, I am not dividing mind and body in two. They are two aspects of the same phenomenon. Mind and body are not two things. In fact to say “mind and body” is not good: “mind-body” will be the right expression. Your body is a psychosomatic phenomenon. Mind is the subtlest part of the body, and body is the grossest part of the mind. And they both affect each other; they run parallel. If you are suppressing something in the mind, the body will start a suppressing journey. If the mind releases everything, the body also releases everything. That’s why I emphasize catharsis very much. Catharsis is a cleansing process.
These are all austerities: fasting; natural eating; deep, rhythmic breathing; yoga exercises; living a more and more natural, flexible, supple life; creating less and less suppressed attitudes; allowing the body to have its own say, following the wisdom of the body. “Austerities destroy impurities . . .” These I call austerities. “Austerities” does not mean to torture the body. It means to create a living fire in the body so that the body is cleansed. As if you have thrown gold into the fire — all that was not gold is burned. Only pure gold comes out.
Austerities destroy impurities, and with the ensuing perfection in the body and sense organs, physical and mental powers awaken.
When the body is pure, you will see tremendous new energies arising, new dimensions opening before you, new doors suddenly opening, new possibilities. Body has much hidden power. Once it is released, you will not be able to believe it, that the body carried so many things in it, and so close.
And every sense has a hidden sense behind it. Eyes have a hidden eyesight, an insight behind them. When the eyes are pure, clean, then you don’t see things only as they are on the surface. You start seeing their depth. A new dimension opens. Right now when you see a person you don’t see his aura; you just see his physical body. The physical body is surrounded by a very subtle aura. A diffused light surrounds the body. And everybody’s body is surrounded by a different color aura. The moment your eyes are clean you can see the aura; and by seeing the aura you know many things about the man that you cannot know in any other way. And the man cannot deceive you, it is impossible, because his aura reveals his being.
Somebody comes with an aura of dishonesty and he tries to convince you that he is a very honest man: the aura cannot deceive because that man cannot control the aura. That is not possible. The dishonest aura has a different color. The aura of an honest man has a different color. The aura of a pure man is pure white. The more impure a man, the more white moves towards gray. The more impure, it moves still more towards black. The aura of a man who is absolutely dishonest is absolutely black. The aura of a confused man changes; it is never the same. Even if you go on looking for just a few minutes, you will see the aura is changing. The man is confused. He himself is not settled in what he is. He is a changing aura.
A man who is meditative has a very silent quality to the aura, a calmness, a coolness around him. The man who is in deep anxiety, turmoil, tension, has the same quality to the aura also. The man who is very tense may try smiling, may create a face, may have a mask, but when he comes to you his aura will show the reality.
And the same happens with the ears also. Just as eyes have a deep insight, the ears have a deep hearing quality. Then you don’t hear what the man is saying, but rather, you hear the music. You don’t bother about the words that he is using, but the tone, but the rhythm of his voice . . . an inner quality of the voice which says many things which words cannot deceive, cannot change. The man may be trying to be very polite, but his rudeness will be in his sound. The man may be trying to be very graceful, but his sound will show his ungracefulness. The man may be trying to show his certainty, but his sound will show the . . . the hesitant quality.
And if you can hear the very sound, and if you can see the aura, and if you can feel the quality of the being that is near you, you become capable of many things. And these are very simple things. They start happening once the austerity starts.
Then there are deeper powers which yoga calls siddhis — magical powers, miraculous powers. They look like miracles because we don’t understand their mechanism, how they function. Once you know the mechanism, they are not miracles. In fact a miracle is not possible. All that happens, happens according to a law. The law may not be known, then you call it a miracle. When the law is known, the miracle disappears.
Just now in India they have introduced television in the villages. For the first time, villagers have watched Indira Gandhi in the television boxes, as the villagers call them — “picture boxes.” They could not believe. Impossible. They went around the boxes, they looked from everywhere. How is Indira Gandhi hidden in the box? A miracle, unbelievably miraculous, but once you know the law the thing is simple.
All miracles are according to hidden laws. Yoga says there is no miracle in the world because “miracle” means something against the law, which is not possible.
How is there any possibility to go against the universal law? There is no possibility. It may be people don’t know.
Siddhis become possible as you go deeper into purities and perfection. For example, if you can move your astral body out of the gross body you can do many things which will be miraculous. You can visit people. They can see you but they cannot touch you. You can even talk to them by your astral projection. You can heal people. If you are really pure, just your touch, laying on of the hands, and there will be a miracle. Just surrounding you will be the healing power — wherever you will move, healing will happen automatically. Not that you do it. The very purity . . . you have become a vehicle of the infinite forces.
But one has to move withinwards, one has to search one’s own innermost core.
Austerities destroy impurities, and with the ensuing perfection in the body and sense organs, physical and mental powers awaken.
And the greatest power that awakens in you is the feeling of deathlessness. Not that you have a theory, a system, a philosophy that you are immortal, no. Now you have a feeling, now you are grounded in it — now you know it. It is not a question of any theory: it has become your knowing that there is no death. This body will disappear into its elements, but your consciousness cannot disappear. The mind will disintegrate, the thoughts will be released, the body will go into the elements — but you, the witnessing self, will remain.
You know it because now you can see your body from the far, faraway space. You can see your body separate from you. You can come out of the body and look at it. You can move around your own body. Now you know that the body will be left when you die, but not you. Now you can see the mind functioning as a mechanism, as a biocomputer. You are the seer, not the mind. Now the body and mind go on functioning, but you are not identified.
This is the greatest miracle that can happen to a man: that he comes to know that he is deathless. Then the fear of death disappears, and with the fear of death, all fears disappear.
And when fears disappear, love arises. When there is no fear, love arises; only then love arises. How can love arise in a fear-ridden mind? You may seek friendship, you may seek a relationship, but you seek it out of fear — to forget yourself, to drown yourself in the relationship. It is not love. Love arises only when you have transcended death. They both cannot exist together: if you are afraid of death, how can you love? Out of this fear you may try to find company, but the relationship will remain of fear.
That’s why ninety-nine per cent of religious people pray, but their prayer is not real prayer. It is not out of love; it is out of fear. Their God is out of the fear. Only rarely, one per cent of religious persons come to realize deathlessness. Then a prayer arises which is not out of fear, which is out of love, sheer gratitude, a thankfulness.
Swadhyayat istadevata samprayogah.
Union with the divine happens through self-study — swadhyaya.
This is a very important sutra: “Union with the divine happens through self- study.” One has to study oneself — that is the only way to reach the divine. Patanjali does not say, “Go to the temple.” He does not say, “Go to the church.” He does not say, “Do the rituals.” No, that is not the way to be one with the divine. Go into yourself — swadhyaya, self-study — because he is hidden behind you, within you. He is your withinmost core. You are the temple; go within. Study yourself. You are a tremendous phenomenon — study yourself. Study all that you are. And the day you have studied yourself completely, he will be revealed. He is hidden behind you, within you. He is you in your deepest being. So study yourself.
This “study” means actually what Gurdjieff means by “self-remembering.” Patanjali’s swadhyaya is exactly what Gurdjieff means by “self-remembering.” Remember yourself and just go on watching. How you relate with people — watch. Relationship is a mirror. How you relate with strangers, how you relate with people who are known to you, how you relate with your servant, how you relate with your boss — just go on watching. Let every relationship be a mirror, a reflection, and watch how you change your mask. Look at your greed, look at your jealousies, look at your fear, look at your anxieties, possessiveness — go on looking and watching.
There is no need to do anything! That’s the beauty of the sutra. Patanjali does not say, “Do something!” He says, “Study yourself.” The very study, the very awareness will do. A transformation will happen when you come face to face to know your whole being.
In different moods: when you are sad — watch; when you are happy — watch; when you are indifferent — watch; when you are feeling hopeless — watch; when you are filled with hope so much — watch; in desire, in frustration . . . There are millions of moods around you — go on watching. Let every mood be a window to look within yourself. From all colors of the rainbow, watch yourself. When you are alone — watch. When you are not alone — watch. Move to the mountains, isolated — watch. Go to the factory, to the office — watch how you change, where you change.
If you go on watching . . . Never relax this watching for a single moment. Buddha has said, “Then when you go to your bed — go on watching. When you go on, falling into sleep — go on watching how you fall asleep.” Go on watching. Don’t allow anything to pass without watching. Just this self-remembering, this self-study, will do all. You need not ask, “What do I do after I have watched?” Nothing is needed. Once you watch your hatred totally, it disappears.
And this is the criterion: that which disappears by watching is sin, and that which grows by watching is virtue. That’s the only definition I can give to you. I don’t say that “this is sin and that is virtue.” No, sin and virtue cannot be objectified. That which grows by watching is virtue; that which disappears by watching is sin. Anger will disappear by watching; love will grow. Hatred will disappear; compassion will grow. Violence will disappear; prayer will grow, gratitude will grow. So whatsoever disappears through watching is sin. Nothing else is needed to be done with it. Just watch it and it disappears. It disappears just as when you bring light to a dark room the darkness disappears. The room does not disappear; the darkness disappears.
You will not disappear by watching. In fact, by watching, you will be revealed. Only darkness will disappear: the darkness of anger, the darkness of possessiveness, the darkness of jealousy — all that will disappear. Only you will be left in your pristine purity. Only your inner space will be left — empty, void.
Union with the divine happens through self-study. Nothing else is needed — awareness.
Samadhi siddha Ishwar pranidhanat.
Total illumination can be accomplished by surrendering to God.
And when you have studied yourself, when you have come to know yourself . . . surrender. That becomes very simple. It is not an effort then. Now if you want to surrender, it will be a tremendous effort; and then too it will never be total. If right now you want to surrender, how can you surrender with hatred inside? How can you surrender with jealousy inside? How can you surrender with violence inside? Surrender is possible only when you are absolutely pure.
How can you go to God and put your hatred, violence, jealousies at his feet? No, only when you are pure, a flower of purity — then you enter the temple and surrender it.
To surrender, one should become worthy of it, because surrender is the greatest act. Nothing is beyond it. You cannot surrender by your will and effort, because will and effort belong to the ego. The ego cannot surrender. When you go on studying yourself, watching yourself, the ego disappears. You remain, but there is no longer the “I.” You are a vast emptiness — with no “I” in it. You are a vast amness, but no “I” in it. Being exists, ego no more — then it is possible to surrender.
Total illumination can be accomplished by surrendering to God.
Total illumination, samadhi: you become light itself. Everything disappears. You remain as energy; and the purest energy is light. Now scientists, physicists, say that if anything is moved at the speed of light it will become light. If a stone brick is thrown at the speed of light, the brick will disappear. It will become light itself because at that speed things disappear; only energy remains. They have discovered it just now, within this century, that there is a possibility that all matter is convertible into light, into energy. Matter is a slow-speed energy; light is a high-speed energy.
Ego is a material thing; it is a slow-speed energy. When you surrender it, you attain to the speed of light. Then you are no longer a solid thing: then you are weightless energy. And weightless energy has no limitation; it is unlimited. And weightless energy cannot be defined in any other way — the only way is to say that it is light. The Bible says, “God is light.” The Koran says, “God is light.” The Upanishads say, “God is light.” You become light.
Total illumination can be accomplished by surrendering to God.
First, move through self-study so you can encounter God within. Then surrender to it. All and all that you are — surrender to it. And remember, that surrendering is not an effort, so don’t be bothered about how to surrender. Just first remember yourself; surrendering comes as a shadow. There is no technique to surrender. Once you know yourself, you know now how to bow down and surrender yourself. Surrendered, you become God himself. Fighting with the whole, you remain an ugly ego. Surrendered with the whole, you become the whole. Let go is the ultimate mantra.
But the greed may arise in your mind: “Then why wait? Why should I not surrender now?” You cannot. You are the barrier, so how can you surrender? When you are not, surrender will be. If you are, surrender is not possible. You will not surrender; your disappearance will be the surrender. You go out of one door; from another door enters surrender. You and surrender cannot exist together.
So remember, you cannot surrender. Watch yourself, so you become purer and purer and purer — so pure that almost nothing is left, only a purity, a fragrance — then surrender happens.
In this sutra Patanjali is simply saying that total illumination can be accomplished by surrendering to God. He is not saying how to surrender. He is not saying that surrender has to be done. He is simply indicating a phenomenon. Self-study has to be done; you will come face to face with God. If you have done self-study, you enter the temple, you face God, and then there is no problem. The moment you face him surrender happens. It is not a doing; it is a happening.
-Osho
From The Essence of Yoga, Discourse #5, Yoga: Science of the Soul. V.6 (previously titled Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, V.6).
Copyright © OSHO International Foundation
This discourse is the Listening Meditation in the ninth program of the module, Osho Yoga and the Discipline of Transformation, one of several modules in A Course in Witnessing.
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