Yoga : The Alpha and the Omega Volume - 1 Chapter-10

The cause of your misery

The first question:

HOW IS IT THAT YOU DESCRIBE THE LIFE THAT IS REALLY OURS, AND WHICH YOU HAVE TRANSCENDED, SO CORRECTLY AND IN EVERY DETAIL, WHILE WE REMAIN SO IGNORANT OF IT? IS IT NOT PARADOXICAL? 

It looks paradoxical, it is not - because you can understand only when you have transcended. While you are in a certain state of mind, you cannot understand that state of mind; you are so involved in it, you are so much identified with it. For understanding space is needed, a distance is needed, and there is no distance. When you transcend a state of mind, only then you become able to understand it because then there is distance. You are standing aloof, separate. You can look now, unidentified. There is perspective now.

While you are in love you cannot understand love. You may feel it, but you cannot understand it. You are so much in it. For understanding, aloofness, detached aloofness is needed. For understanding you need to be an observer. While you are in love the observer is lost. You have become a doer; you are a lover. You cannot be a witness to it. Only when you transcend love, when you are enlightened and gone beyond love, you will be able to understand it.

A child cannot understand what childhood is. When childhood is lost, you can look back and understand. Youth cannot understand what youth is. Only when you have become old and are capable of looking back, aloof, distant, then you will be able to understand it. Whatsoever is understood, is understood only by transcendence. Transcendence is the base of all understanding. That's why it happens every day - you can give advice, good advice, to somebody else who is in trouble; in the same trouble, if you are, you cannot give that good advice to yourself.

Yoga : The Alpha and the Omega Volume - 1 Chapter-09

Practice and desirelessness

THE FIRST STATE OF VAIRAGYA, DESIRELESSNESS - CESSATION FROM SELF- INDULGENCE IN THE THIRST FOR SENSUOUS PLEASURES, WITH CONSCIOUS EFFORT. 

THE LAST STATE OF VAIRAGYA, DESIRELESSNESS - CESSATION OF ALL DESIRING BY KNOWING THE INNERMOST NATURE OF PURUSHA, THE SUPREME SELF. 

Abhyasa and vairagya - constant inner practice and desirelessness: these are the two foundation stones of Patanjali's yoga. Constant inner effort is needed not because something has to be achieved, but because of wrong habits. The fight is not against nature, the fight is against habits. The nature is there, every moment available to flow in, to become one with it, but you have got a wrong pattern of habits. Those habits create barriers. The fight is against these habits, and unless they are destroyed, the nature, your inherent nature, cannot flow, cannot move, cannot reach to the destiny for which it is meant to be.

So remember the first thing: the struggle is not against nature. The struggle is against wrong nurture, wrong habits. You are not fighting yourself; you are fighting something else which has become fixed with you. If this is not understood rightly, then your whole effort can go in a wrong direction. You may start fighting with yourself, and if once you start fighting with yourself you are fighting a losing battle. You can never be victorious. Who will be victorious and who will be defeated? - because you are both. The one who is fighting and the one with whom you are fighting is the same.

If my both hands start fighting, who is going to win? Once you start fighting with yourself you are lost. And so many persons, in their endeavors, in their seeking for spiritual truth, fall into that error. They become victims of this error; they start fighting with themselves. If you fight with yourself, you will go more and more insane. You will be more and more divided, split. You will become schizophrenic. This is what is happening in the West.

Yoga : The Alpha and the Omega Volume - 1 Chapter-08

Stop, and it is here!

The first question:

PATANJALI HAS STRESSED THE IMPORTANCE OF NON-ATTACHMENT, THAT IS, CESSATION OF DESIRES, FOR BEING ROOTED IN ONESELF. BUT IS NON-ATTACHMENT REALLY AT THE BEGINNING OF THE JOURNEY, OR AT THE VERY END? 

The beginning and the end are not two things. The beginning is the end, so don't divide them and don't think in terms of duality. If you want to be silent in the end, you will have to be in silence from the very beginning. In the beginning the silence will be like a seed; in the end it will become a tree. But the tree is hidden in the seed, so the beginning is just the seed.

Whatsoever the ultimate goal, it must be hidden here and now, just in you, in the very beginning. If it is not there in the beginning, you cannot achieve it in the end. Of course, there will be a difference - in the beginning it can only be a seed; in the end it will be the total flowering. You may not be able to recognize it when it is a seed, but it is there whether you recognize it or not. So when Patanjali says non-attachment is needed in the very beginning of the journey, he is not saying that it will not be needed in the end.

Non-attachment in the beginning will be with effort; non-attachment in the end will be spontaneous. In the beginning you will have to be conscious about it; in the end there will be no need to be conscious about it. It will be just your natural flow.

In the beginning you have to practice it. Constant alertness will be needed. A struggle will be there with your past, with your patterns of attachment; fight will be there. In the end there will be no fight, no alternative no choice. You will simply flow in the direction of desirelessness. That would have become your nature.

Yoga : The Alpha and the Omega Volume - 1 Chapter-07

Constant inner practice

THEIR CESSATION IS BROUGHT ABOUT BY PERSISTENT INNER EFFORT AND NON- ATTACHMENT. 

OF THESE TWO, ABHYASA THE INNER PRACTICE IS THE EFFORT FOR BEING FIRMLY ESTABLISHED IN ONESELF. 

IT BECOMES FIRMLY GROUNDED ON BEING CONTINUED FOR A LONG TIME, WITHOUT INTERRUPTION AND WITH REVERENT DEVOTION. 

Man is not only his conscious mind. He has also nine times more than the conscious, the unconscious layer of the mind. Not only that, man has the body, the soma, in which this mind exists. The body is absolutely unconscious. Its working is almost non-voluntary. Only the surface of the body is voluntary. The inner sources are non-voluntary; you cannot do anything about them. Your will is not effective.

This pattern of man's existence has to be understood before one can enter into oneself. And the understanding should not remain only intellectual. It must go deeper. It must penetrate the unconscious layers; it must reach to the very body itself.

Hence, the importance of abhyasa - constant inner practice. These two words are very significant: abhyasa and vairagya. Abhyasa means constant inner practice, and vairagya means non- attachment, desirelessness. The coming sutras of Patanjali are concerned with these two most significant concepts, but before we enter the sutras, that this, the pattern of human personality, is not totally intellectual, has to be firmly grasped.

Yoga : The Alpha and the Omega Volume - 1 Chapter-06

The purity of yoga

The first question:

YOU SAID THAT PATANJALI'S YOGA IS AN EXACT SCIENCE, ABSOLUTELY LOGICAL, IN WHICH THE RESULT IS AS CERTAIN AS TWO PLUS TWO MAKE FOUR. IF THE ATTAINMENT OF THE UNKNOWN AND INFINITE, CAN BE REDUCED TO MERE LOGIC, IS IT NOT TRUE AND AT THE SAME TIME ABSURD THAT THE INFINITE PHENOMENON IS WITHIN THE ORBIT OF THE FINITE MIND? 

It looks absurd, it looks illogical, but existence is absurd and existence is illogical. The sky is infinite, but it can be reflected in a very tiny pool; the infinite sky can be reflected in a small mirror. Of course the whole of it will not be reflected; it cannot be reflected. But the part is also the whole and the part also belongs to the sky.

Human mind is just a mirror. If it is pure then the infinite can have the reflection in it. The reflection will not be the infinite, it will be just a part, a glimpse. But that glimpse becomes the door. Then by and by, you can leave the mirror behind and enter into the infinite, leave the reflection behind and enter into the real.

Out of your window, a small frame of the window, the infinite sky is there. You can look through the window, you will not see the whole sky, of course, but whatsoever you see is the sky. So the only thing to remember is don't think that whatsoever you have seen is the infinite. It may be of the infinite, it is not the infinite. So whatsoever human mind can conceive may be divine, but it is just a part of it, a glimpse. If you continuously remember that, then there is no fallacy. Then by and by, destroy the frame; by and by, destroy the mind completely so the mirror is no more there and you are freed from the reflection and you enter the reality.

Yoga : The Alpha and the Omega Volume - 1 Chapter-05

Right and wrong knowledge

RIGHT KNOWLEDGE HAS THREE SOURCES: DIRECT COGNITION, INFERENCE AND THE WORDS OF THE AWAKENED ONES. 

WRONG KNOWLEDGE IS A FALSE CONCEPTION NOT CORRESPONDING TO THE THING AS IT IS. 

AN IMAGE CONJURED UP BY WORDS WITHOUT ANY SUBSTANCE BEHIND IT IS VIKALPA - IMAGINATION. 

THE MODIFICATION OF THE MIND WHICH IS BASED ON THE ABSENCE OF ANY CONTENT IN IT IS SLEEP. 

MEMORY IS THE CALLING UP OF PAST EXPERIENCES. 

The first sutra:

RIGHT KNOWLEDGE HAS THREE SOURCES: DIRECT COGNITION, INFERENCE AND THE WORDS OF THE AWAKENED ONES. 

Pratyaksha, direct cognition, is the first source of right knowledge. Direct cognition means a face- to-face encounter without any mediator, without any medium, without any agent. When you know directly something, the knower faces the known immediately There is no one to relate it, no bridge. Then it is right knowledge. But then many problems arise.

Ordinarily, pratyaksha, direct cognition, has been translated, interpreted, commented, in a very wrong way. The very word pratyaksha means before the eyes, in front of the eyes. But eyes themselves are a mediation, the knower is hidden behind. Eyes are the mediums. You are hearing me, but this is not direct; this is not immediate. You are hearing me through the senses, through the ears. You are seeing me through the eyes.

Yoga : The Alpha and the Omega Volume - 1 Chapter-04

Beyond mind to awareness

The first question:

YOU SAID THAT THERE ARE ONLY TWO ALTERNATIVES FOR MEN, EITHER MADNESS OR MEDITATION, BUT MILLIONS OF PEOPLE ON THE EARTH HAVE NOT REACHED TO EITHER OF THE TWO. DO YOU THINK THEY WILL? 

They have reached! They have not reached to meditation, but they have reached to madness! And the difference between the mad who are in the madhouses and the mad who are outside is only of degrees. There is no qualitative difference, the difference is only of quantity. You may be less mad, they may be more mad, but man as he is, is mad.

Why I call man as he is, mad? Madness means many things. One, you are not centered. If you are not centered you will be insane. Not centered, many voices in you - you are many, you are a multitude. And no one is a master in the house, and every servant of the house claims to be the master. There is confusion, conflict, and a continuous struggle. You are in a continuous civil war. If this civil war is not going on, then you will be in meditation. It continues day and night, twenty-four hours. Write down whatsoever goes on in your mind for a few minutes, and be honest. Write down exactly whatsoever goes on, and you yourself will feel that this is mad.

I have a particular technique I use with many persons. I say to them that, sit in a closed room and then start talking loudly, whatsoever comes in the mind. Talk it loudly so that you can listen. Just fifteen minutes of talking, and you will feel you are listening to a madman. Absurd, inconsistent, unrelated fragments floating in the mind. And that is your mind! So you may be ninety-nine percent mad and someone has crossed the boundary, he has gone beyond one hundred percent. Those who have gone beyond the hundred percent we put into madhouses. We cannot put you into madhouses because there are not so many madhouses. And there cannot be - then the whole earth has to be a madhouse.

Yoga : The Alpha and the Omega Volume - 1 Chapter-03

Five modifications of mind

THE MODIFICATIONS OF THE MIND ARE FIVE. THEY CAN BE EITHER A SOURCE OF ANGUISH OR OF NON-ANGUISH. 

THEY ARE RIGHT KNOWLEDGE, WRONG KNOWLEDGE, IMAGINATION, SLEEP AND MEMORY. 

Mind can be either the source of bondage or the source of freedom. Mind becomes the gate for this world, the entry; it can also become the exit. Mind leads you to the hell; mind can lead you also to the heaven. So it depends how the mind is used. Right use of mind becomes meditation, wrong use of the mind becomes madness

Mind is there with everyone. The possibility of darkness and light both are implied in it. Mind itself is neither the enemy nor the friend. You can make it a friend you can make it an enemy. It depends on you - on you who is hidden behind the mind. If you can make the mind your instrument, your slave, the mind becomes the passage through which you can reach the ultimate If you become the slave and the mind is allowed to be the master, then this mind which has become master will lead you to ultimate anguish and darkness.

All the techniques, all the methods, all the paths of yoga, are really concerned deeply only with one problem: how to use the mind. Rightly used, mind comes to a point where it becomes no-mind. Wrongly used, mind comes to a point where it is just a chaos, many voices antagonistic to each other - contradictory, confusing, insane.

Yoga : The Alpha and the Omega Volume - 1 Chapter-02

The desireless path of yoga

The first question:

YOU SAID LAST NIGHT THAT TOTAL DESPAIR, FRUSTRATION AND HOPELESSNESS IS THE BEGINNING GROUND FOR YOGA. THIS GIVES YOGA A PESSIMISTIC LOOK. IS THIS PESSIMISTIC STATE REALLY NECESSARY TO BEGIN THE PATH OF YOGA? DOES AN OPTIMIST ALSO BEGIN WITH THE PATH OF YOGA? 

It is neither. It is not pessimistic, it is not optimistic, because pessimism and optimism are two aspects of the same coin. A pessimist means one who was optimist in the past; an optimist means one who will be pessimist in the future. All optimism leads to pessimism, because every hope leads to hopelessness.

If you are still hoping, then yoga is not for you. The desire is there; hope is there; the samsar is there, the world is there. Your desire is the world, your hope is the bondage, because hope will not allow you to be in the present. It will go on forcing you towards the future; it will not allow you to be centered. It will pull and push, but it will not allow you to remain in a restful moment, in a state of stillness. It will not allow you

So when I say total hopelessness, I mean that hope has failed and hopelessness also has become futile. Then it is total hopelessness. Total hopelessness means even hopelessness is not there, because when you feel hopeless a subtle hope is there. Otherwise, why you should feel hopeless? Hope is there, you are still clinging to it; hence, the hopelessness.

Yoga : The Alpha and the Omega Volume - 1 Chapter-01

Introduction to the path of Yoga

NOW THE DISCIPLINE OF YOGA.

YOGA IS THE CESSATION OF MIND.

THEN THE WITNESS IS ESTABLISHED IN ITSELF.

IN THE OTHER STATES THERE IS IDENTIFICATION WITH THE MODIFICATIONS OF THE MIND.

We live in a deep illusion - the illusion of hope, of future, of tomorrow. As man is, man cannot exist without self-deceptions. Nietzsche says somewhere that man cannot live with the true: he needs dreams, he needs illusions, he needs lies to exist. And Nietzsche is true. As man is he cannot exist with the truth. This has to be understood very deeply because without understanding it, there can be no entry into the inquiry which is called yoga.

The mind has to be understood deeply - the mind which needs lies, the mind which needs illusions, the mind which cannot exist with the real, the mind which needs dreams. You are not dreaming only in the night. Even while awake, you are dreaming continuously. You may be looking at me, you may be listening to me, but a dream current goes on within you. Continuously, the mind is creating dreams, images, fantasies.

Now scientists say that a man can live without sleep, but he cannot live without dreams. In old days it was understood that sleep is a necessity, but now modern research says sleep is not really a necessity. Sleep is needed only so that you can dream. Dream is the necessity. If you are not allowed to dream and allowed to sleep, you will not feel in the morning fresh, alive. You will feel tired, as if you have not been able to sleep at all.