[I]
What is called raja yoga is really called yoga by the author of the Yoga Sutras. Somewhere I read a rather interesting suggestion that it is called raja yoga because this is the yoga to be practised only by the rajas, or by the kings, by the princely ones. It may also be that someone wanted to exalt it above all and so called it raja yoga.
A similar expression occurs in the Bhagavad Gita:
rajavidya rajaguhyam pavitram idam uttamam
pratyaksavagamam dharmyam ausukhornkartum avyayam (IX.2)
This is the kingly science, the kingly secret, the supreme purifier, realisable by direct intuitional knowledge, according to righteousness, very easy to perform and imperishable.
Instead of raja yoga, Krishna calls it raja vidya. Giving his reason why his teaching deserved that self proclaimed title of raja vidya, he says it is pure, supreme, and you do not have to depend upon someone else's description for what it is all about - you can experience it. "Pratyaksavagamam” is a bit more complicated than experience. You can see it, it is something that will stand in front of you and say here it is, this is what you have been looking for - dharmyam, and it is not contrary to dharma. What is dharma? One's nature, fundamental nature. Dharma is not adhering to a set of doctrines, dogmas or principles, as it is often translated to mean, but it is being what one is by nature. By this is mean: if the grass is green, it preserves its dharma, it adheres to its dharma; if a human being is human, he is established in his dharma. “Susukham”. In the practice of this yoga there is no pain and therefore there is no gain either. You are just what you are! What do you want to gain? "Kartum avyayam". It is an inexhaustible infinite path. The last bit is important to remember.
When the question arises in the mind, "Why do I practise yoga?", the obvious answer is that that mind is immature, that that mind is still seeking something outside itself, and therefore it will never look within. Such a mind is immature and such a mind will probably not comprehend what yoga is about. You can pick up this little text and if you wish to, you may interpret some of the sutras as suggesting a goal. The ‘goal’ is always distant and you pursue the goal. The goal behaves like any of us. When you pursue me with a gun in your hand, I run away from you. The goal does exactly the same thing. The hotter you run in pursuit of the goal, the faster it runs away from you. Happiness one of those things. You try harder and harder with all your might and sweat to gain that happiness; it seems to be just beyond your reach.
The sutras themselves do not suggest any goal at all. For one who is interested in a goal there are other things. You can practise hatha yoga, yoga asanas , pranayama - I am not saying they are useless. Goal oriented practices suggest a goal which you pursue, till one day you realise that the goal is not exactly what you sought or what you thought was good. One has to arrive at even this by oneself, not because someone else says a goal is useless. In Hindi goal means a circle, and that is precisely what happens to people who seek a goal. They run round in circles.
The danger in running after or pursuing a goal is twofold. One, immediately you are asking for frustration. If I do not reach that goal, I am frustrated. Take for instance light and sounds which people experience in meditation.
She goes into samadhi and says, "Ah, I saw a brilliant light." You do not see anything. Then what do you do? Either you get frustrated, or which is worse, you ‘think’ you see something. Thought being a thing, it itself creates the hallucination that you are also seeing some kind of a light. I am not saying that the lights are dangerous, that the experiences are non-existent, but then one imagines within oneself that one is also seeing that, and that is the danger.
Raja yoga also has a whole chapter devoted to these psychic experiences, and at the end of that chapter at lost the author says these are all distractions - better avoid them. These are not suggested as goals but as wayside experiences which may not even be a signpost or encouraging signs, but may just be distractions. A wise man in India was once asked a question by a member of the audience he was addressing. "'What is the goal of life?" He simply shrugged his shoulders and said "death". He was Mr. Rajagopalachori, a very wise man and also a political leader. What is the goal of life? Everybody is going in the same direction, towards the grove. One who understands this inexhorable law, this inevitable sequence of life does not entertain desires for attainments and achievements here - they seem to be meaningless, useless, silly. When death stares what we call life in the face, material possessions, psychic achievements and spiritual goals seem to be absolutely, totally meaningless. And so, the wise sage, when he was asked the question, "What is the goal, why must I practise yoga?”, suggested something very smart. Instead of slapping the question back on you, saying, "Nonsense, drop that question", he says, "The goal of yoga is self-knowledge." Self-knowledge. What is self-knowledge? He merely said, "Self-knowledge, know thy self, know thy self and be free." Free from what? Free from the self or goals.
Our master used to sing, "Inquire who am I, know the self and be free. Free from what he did not say. Freedom is ... a third word is not necessary - freedom ‘is’. It is not freedom from something or freedom to do something. Freedom is. Immediately you realise that freedom is freedom from a goal, freedom from seeking anything else. That is self knowledge. Know the self. But unfortunately, once again having committed ourselves to a thing called a goal, we tend to make even the self an object of the self and say ,"I am meditating upon the self.”
What do I mean when I say, “I am meditating upon myself”? If that is not understood, it leads to all sorts of other complications. You have heard this - a selfish man is one who loves himself. I love myself, or I hate myself, or I pity myself, or I destroy myself. Which one is me? When I hate myself, is the hater the me or the hated the me? What do I mean by saying, “I hate myself”, “I know myself. “ Which one is me, which one is the real me in that? Am I one or two or multiples like a beehive? So all that confusion arises when I think I know how to meditate upon myself. Having created this split within myself , within that one self , this dichotomy is then spread to all departments of my life. Everything is chopped up, and in this vivisection we try to find a whole. So when the sage said, "Inquire, know thy self and be free - it is not know ‘thy’ self. It is not as though he has a self and I have an other self.
What happens when there is a goal which is necessarily external to the self, an object? If I am going to pursue that goal, either I get frustrated or go mad - mad in the sense that I create the goal and, having created the goal, I experience it. Hallucination, Or cannabilasation. You know what cannibalism is I think. You produce your own experience, you conjure up your own vision and start chewing it! “Ah, I have attained enlightenment.” That is pure and simple cannibalilsation, hallucination. Probably you have heard that both of these are dangerous. Once again, if I look at the inevitability of death, I refuse to believe that these things are dangerous; hallucination is not dangerous, frustration is net dangerous, anxiety is net dangerous, schizophrenia is not dangerous, madness is not dangerous, nothing is dangerous. When death is ready to put an end to all these, what is dangerous? So please do not let us worry ourselves too much about the dangers of yoga, the dangers of pranayama, the dangers of kundalini getting awakened. All the danger will pass. The only thing that can be said is it is a waste of time and we need not regret it. As we waste our time in so many other ways, wasting a little more time in so-called spiritual practices is no danger at all.
Whatever I may do, whether I practise hatha yoga, raja yoga, jnana yoga, bhakti yoga or karma yoga, the self is still there in all that, serving as the bed for all these desires and cravings to come up, and serving at the same time as the fulfillment of those cravings and desires. It is a lovely game that goes on inside me all the time, whether I am a business man or a swami, or a yogi, or a jnani, or whatever I may wish to call myself. The whole time this thing goes on, the desires or cravings seem to arise, and they seem to be painful at times. And then the mind invents its own fields of satisfaction and the craving seems to flow towards that satisfaction, so that a satisfaction is also imagined. We go round and round and round. In all that the self is there unaffected, totally unaffected, whether we play the game of a yogi, or a bhogi or a rogi, whether you are a yogi - you know what a yogi means I hope, or a bhogi, that is one who thinks he enjoys life - it is not "eat, drink and be merry", but it is "eat, drink and be sorry” -or a rogi, a sick man.
Is that self knowable? Which means, is it an object of my knowledge? No, And yet since the mind keeps functioning, it treats even self as an object of knowledge. It's a mystery, it's a puzzle, or it's a paradox - paradox in the literal sense of the word, something which is beyond the teaching, but something which may arise in oneself as a possible result of a teaching. The self is there all the time, it is the self that thinks it is a yogi, it is the self that thinks it is a bhogi, it is the self that thinks it is a rogi. It does not matter what the condition is. Swami Sivananda sang beautifully: "In all conditions I am knowledge, bliss absolute.” If it is the absolute, how can it say "I am the absolute", as if it is different. That is the puzzle, that is the paradox which each one has to unravel within himself. Something that is beyond words. When words are used, a sort of dichotomy is apparently created, not really created.
Self-knowledge implies the self that ‘is’ knowledge, not as a goal. The self itself is knowledge, the self knows its self. Why is it so?' Because the self is knowledge. The self is the experiencer of all experiences. However , in that experience, in that experiencer - there is no division. "I am experiencing ‘’this”, and therefore holy men, yogis have resorted to deep sleep as the aptest illustration. You can neither begin to sleep, nor wake yourself out of sleep when you want. You have to have an alarm clock or something else, or wait till sleep leaves you. You cannot even say during sleep, “Oh,I am fast asleep, do not disturb me.“ If you say so, you are not sleeping. You do not even know during sleep, "Oh , it is quite marvelous." Once again it becomes clear that the inner division arises when there is a desire to experience whatever be the condition in which I am. If I become totally one with that condition, the experience is lost. The experiencer is born and the experience, as a division, arises when there is desire for the experience, for the conscious experience. So that, vaguely, I am sleeping or I am sleep - there is no difference between me, the sleeping person and the sleep itself as an experience. We are one, totally one.
One can imagine a process like this: I experience the peace. I am one with that peace. I am one with that great inner quiet and silence. There is great joy, great delight. Ah, it's so nice, it's so beautiful, I wish I could experience this, I wish I could experience this peace, I wish I could become conscious of this joy. When this desire arises, you wake up, and the peace is gone, the happiness is gone, the joy is gone. All the worries are also awakened in you. So it is actually the desire to experience even peace that creates the division and the confusion. So, the self is knowledge, the self is pure experiencing.
The pain that is experienced before falling asleep is also absorbed in that unity of sleep. What happened to the pain otherwise? I had a toothache but then I fell asleep, not because I take sleeping pills. Sleeping pills are pills that sleep; if you take sleeping pills, the pills sleep and you are left wide awake and so you wake up fatigued and worn out. During sleep, the sleep took me over along with the pain. And in that homogeneity there is no division at all, and therefore there is no experience of the pain nor the experience of pleasure. However, in sleep there is ignorance. The self is ‘knowledge’ in which there is no division at all. And that self is now whatever we call ourselves, whether we call ourselves yogis, bhogis or yogis. Yet this self does not undergo any of those experiences as a subject-object relationship. The self does not suffer illness, the self does not enjoy the pleasures, and the self is not involved in all your yoga practice. The self is the self all the time as pure uncontaminated knowledge and therefore it is not the object of anybody's quest nor a goal to be reached.
Hence, if you search for the goals of yoga in the Yoga Sutras, you will find that they are non-existent. The Yoga sutras do not suggest any goal at all.
tado drastuh svarupe 'vasthanam
It merely means: you are yourself all the time. When all the goals drop away, then I am myself. I was myself even when the goals were there. It is just like whether you wear these clothes or those clothes, these robes or those robes. Whatever you wear, your body is still the same, exactly the same. So, whether you call yourself a yogi, whether you call yourself a bhogi, whether you call yourself a rogi, the self is totally uncontaminated by any of these - it is ever the same. At one time the mind thinks it is miserable and therefore it is miserable. At another time the mind thinks it is happy and therefore it seems to be happy.
When I am pursuing happiness there is an unacknowledged unhappiness which alone is true, and therefore I am experiencing unhappiness created by myself; and I am pursuing happiness which is ever beyond my reach and therefore I am miserable all the time. There is a quotation from the Yoga Sutras:
eva sarvah vivekinah (II.15)
I am unhappy all the time because I am pursuing something, I am pursuing a goal which is fleeting, impermanent, What is permanent? The pursuer of all this, the pursuer of all these goals, the experiencer of all these experiences, the knowledge that forever knows remains as knowledge. It does not pursue any goals thereafter, it is ever there, not static, not asleep but awake, wide awake, undivided, uncontaminated.
Hence it is not a goal. Yoga has no goal at all. The pursuit of the goal is the root cause of all our troubles and difficulties. When the goal is dropped, then life flows on smoothly, life seems to know which way to flow, how to flow - and in that flow there is no problem, there is no bother, there is no worry, there is no anxiety, there is no mental distress, there is no unhappiness. But the avoidance of unhappiness is not necessarily the goal of yoga. When the self remains the self without pursuing a goal outside itself, without pursuing an object created by itself, there ‘is’ bliss - bliss is not the goal. Once the bliss is taken to be a goal outside the self, the division is made and trouble starts. Can we practice yoga, can we understand yoga, can we assimilate yoga, can we live in the spirit of yoga without creating a goal, constantly inquiring, looking within? That is the object, or rather the non-object of yoga. When the object is outside, consciousness seems to flow in a stream, externally. When the quest is for self knowledge, there is the flow of consciousness, the flow of attention within oneself. That’s all, nothing more can really be said. The flow of consciousness, your awareness, seems to be within, What do we mean by this, from where did it arise? We do not know. It is everywhere. The only thing that can be said is that there is no pursuit of an object.
We will see if we can study the Yoga Sutras in that spirit: without making anything a goal, without suggesting to ourselves that because we practise yoga we are going to be happy. If I am telling myself by practising yoga I am going to be happy, I am merely asserting that I am not happy now. Can we drop all this and merely look at yoga as if it is without psychological pollution?
[II]
I heard a remark last night that some friend felt that what was referred to as the self was not quite clear. I can appreciate the difficulty for the simple reason that we have accustomed ourselves to consider only that clear which shines as an object in front of us. It is quite reasonable, understandable and natural that the self is not clear. The self is not an object, it is the subject. And it is the very framer of that question. That which threw up that question is the self, that which asks that question is the self. What is the self? It does not become clear because of the constant endeavour to objectify the self. It can never be made an object. The self is the self, the self is ... We should divest ourselves of this bad habit of considering only that as knowledge in which there is awareness of an object. When this has dropped away it is possible that what is called self-knowledge or self which is knowledge, or knowledge which is self, becomes clear in its own way - not in the way in which I see you, not in the manner in which you hear me, but in another completely different type of knowledge. That knowledge which enables you and me, without verification, to know that "I am alive”. Isn't that marvelous. If someone says, "Oh, Swami, you are dead", it does not mean a thing. And if someone asks: "Are you sure you are alive?", the question is meaningless. How do I know I am alive? In Sanskrit they call it "svatasiddha” - self-existent, self-evident. I hope you are also listening to the word ‘self’ being repeated all the time. Self-evident, self-luminous. When it is considered an object of knowledge, it is destroyed; and hence one of the greatest sages of the Upanishads Yajnavalkya poses this question while instructing his wife Maitreyi, "How do you know the knower?” This quest for an object which is the goal must be dropped at the very first step, at the door. Not merely your hats, and your shoes, but that which is inside your skull also has to go. That which you call your soul must be exposed like the sales are exposed if the shoes are taken off.
Let us turn to the sutras themselves. We will take a few sutras each day for examination; and if you have a translation at home, please do have a look.
atha yoga 'anusasanam (I.1)
This is the first Sutra. We have no commandments here, there are no do's and don'ts. "Let us consider what this yoga means”. “Sasanam” means an edict, a commandment; "anusasanam” is advice. Advice is something very easy to give. When advice is very easily given, it merely adds vice. It makes no sense at all. Here I am not advising you, for I would only be adding to the vices that you may already have. What is being said must be immediately relevant to the me, to the self, to myself. If it is not so relevant, if the brain is always busy creating more concepts, we shall be drawing further away from the centre and the self.
We are merely discussing what this yoga may be about. "Anusasanam” may mean a discussion, an inquiry.
The second Sutra is the most concise definition of yoga:
yogas citta vrtti nirodhah (I.2.)
The literal translation is "yoga is nirodhah of the vrtti in the citta". That is no translation at all, is it! If we get hooked onto this idea that "nirodhah " means suppression, it leads to difficulties, and then we imagine that all thoughts must be suppressed. How do you suppress something which you do not even see? I am not quarreling with that idea or concept of suppression at all. If you must translate this Sutra into “yoga is suppression of mental modifications'', then look at your own mental modifications and then suppress them. Can you look at them, are they clear to you, are they as clear to you as this scarf is? I can touch this scarf. But how do I touch my mind - where is it? In any case we will all reach the same point. But I suggest it may not mean suppression of thought. For, if you discover that to suppress the thoughts is a difficult task, what do you do? You think that the yogis were very clever - they took hashish and the thoughts were suppressed. So the whole line of approach of suppressing thoughts, or suppressing mental modifications is erroneous in the first place, and inevitably leads to unpleasant consequences such as drugs and all kinds of depravity. So we leave that word "nirodhah” as it is, and we will see if we can become aware of the meaning.
There are two other words - "citta" and “vrtti”. What is "citta"? That which is able to generate vrttis. What are vrttis? Vrttis are those things which are generated by the citta. If that is not clear let us go onto the roof of some building and look at a garden. What do you see? A garden. What is a garden? Well, I see many trees. Now do you see many trees or do you see one garden? How is it possible for you to see many trees and one garden at the same time? Are they the same or different? You can play this trick: you look at it, you see one garden and you blink a couple of times - many trees. You may even use the expression ‘there are many trees in that one garden’. But that is absurd. There are many tablets in this one container, but the container is not a tablet. When all these tablets have been taken away, the container is empty and I throw it away. In a similar manner, get hold of a garden. There are many trees in this garden. Cut down the trees. Do I still have the garden? No. So it is not true to say there are many trees in that garden. You are talking about one thing. You blink once you see the garden, you blink once again, you see many trees. Now, you realise that from one point of view it is a garden, and from another point of view it is many trees. From one point of view it is ‘one’, from another point of view it is ‘many’. Is the one true or is the many true. Or perhaps neither is true, and something else is true.
The many in relation to this sutra is the vrttis: the many thoughts, the many concepts, the many notions, the many perceptions that seem to come up in the mind all the time. Is there a mind devoid of that? Perhaps not. I do not know. At one moment it looks as though it is one citta, one mind, and the next moment, from another point of view, it looks as though it is a mere supermarket of innumerable thoughts, innumerable concepts, innumerable notions - the same thing, This is from one point of view, this is from another point of view, and there may be a third point of view - that is called nirodhah. You blink and you see the garden, you blink again and you see the many trees. Which is real? This or that? Maybe neither. The question "what is truth?” is nirodhah.
Now is it somewhat clear? It cannot be absolutely clear, because we are using words. My mind is full of thoughts. Is there a mind apart from those thoughts or are there thoughts apart from the mind? If you take the classic example of the ocean and the waves, perhaps it may be clearer. Are there waves apart from the ocean? Can you take those waves away and clear the ocean of all waves? No. Or, is it even reasonable to say that as long as there are waves, there is no ocean, ocean must be without waves? There is no ocean without waves. Can we say then that the ocean has got waves, just as you can say that the swami has got a nice scarf? Is it therefore possible to stand on the beach and look at the ocean: “Ah, they are waves", then to blink again and see that it is all one ocean, just one mass of water. That is one point of view, this is another point of view. But, what is truth? What happens to you when this question arises? That is called nirodhah. It is something inexpressible which goes on. You see the several points of view and you merely question what is the truth?
That is nirodhah. Then it may be relevant to mention here that therefore the yogi does not suppress anything, the yogi is not interested in expressing anything. The yogi does not say that this alone is the truth, that that alone is the truth. Something profound, something tremendous takes place within you. It is some thing inexpressable, but of tremendous importance. It is not possible to make it an object of understanding, but it is something - and that is called yoga.
Without suggesting that the next step is a consequence, a result, or a reward, the author goes on to say:
tada drastuh svarupe 'vasthanam (I. 3)
When yoga happens in that manner, the seer, the observer of all this, the experiencer of all experiences, rests unmodified by points of view. The seer or the experiencer rests as the self without any modification, though these modifications may keep playing. The waves may be breaking on the shore, but the ocean is not diminished thereby. The waves may be rolling bock into the sea, but the ocean is not increased. The ocean remains the ocean, constant. The Sutra does not even say that when yoga happens in this manner, when the nirodhah, which is yoga, happens in this manner, you gain something or you lose something. It does not say that you gain self-knowledge, enlightenment. Nor does it say, as is often suggested here and there, that what is unreal is lost. What does it mean? There is an illusory feeling that I have got half a dozen spiders on my back and you are telling me, "When you get rid of this illusion, the spiders will be gone and your back will remain behind you.” There were no spiders in the first place, and the back was behind me all the time. Once again, I am not being critical, but these wise men realised that we are somehow committed to profit and loss business. If a thing is not explained in terms of profit and loss, we are not interested in it. That is why the whole teaching, as you can readily see, is couched in commercial terms: I gain self knowledge, I lose ignorance.
Without mentioning any of these things, Patanjali merely drops the next Sutra:
tada drastuh svarupe 'vasthanam. (I.3)
When yoga happens in this manner, the totality is, and by transcending all points of view, this totality is immediately realised as their substratum. The totality is not one point of view or the other point of view. The totality is neither this nor that - it transcends the whole and therefore blends all points of view into it. That is the beauty of what is called self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is not the absolute negation of any point of view, but the subtle transcendence of all individual points of view so that the total may be realised. That is the beauty, and therefore there is no repression, no suppression, nothing that you and I can discuss. There is nothing that the mind can grasp, and hold. The Self-knowledge is like a fish! When you wish to catch that fish with greasy hands, it slips through your fingers. If it so happens that you are so powerful and you have such huge hands that you can catch that fish and take it out, then it is dead. Either way it is a dead loss. Because it is total, it is cosmic in its dimension. It is the infinite. One has to surrender oneself and not look for any profit or loss in all this. It is not this point of view, it is not that point of view. You are still standing at the seashore on the beach looking at the sea. One moment you see the sea, the next moment you see the waves, and the third moment you are asking what is the truth concerning this.
Now the enquiry begins: what is the truth? Immediately you realise something of extraordinary importance. The self. That point of view was rooted in the self, this point of view was rooted in the self, and the enquiry springs from the self. In all these three conditions the self remained constant. Let us use the word “I”. Do not get worked up over what we mean by this word “I”. I saw the waves and I thought it a very limited vision. I saw the ocean which seemed to mean ‘minus the waves’, which appeared to be absurd, and I enquire into the nature of truth. The "I” seems to be constant, the subject is constant in all this. That is the seer, that is the experiencer of all experiences. That is the seer of all sights. That is, and therefore all else is. It is because it exists that everything else shines. And yet strangely enough, even though that self continues to exist in all these states, and continues to be the substratum for all these points of view, the observer remains for ever unmodified. The self itself does not undergo modification.
When this state of yoga or nirodhah does not prevail - please remember in this yoga text there is neither a temptation nor a threat, but a mere statement of fact - then:
vrtti sarupyam itaratra (I.4)
That is "there seems to be an apparent modification in the citta or in the mind.” It is obvious I think. We can see this very clearly in the three major states we experience every day - sleep, dream and waking. If you have ever reflected on these three, it is possible you get confused, it is possible you get demented, it is possible you get enlightened. I sleep without even knowing I sleep, I dream - it is even possible to know during the dream that I dream, creating things within myself, or I do not know what the world is in which I roam during dreams. Then I wake up, I come back to this hall, the shadows, the microphone, the light and so on. The person who was fast asleep possessed no intelligence at all. He remembered nothing. He could produce neither a single good thought, nor a single bad thought. He was neither a good person nor a vicious person, but completely covered by a blanket of ignorance, darkness, sleep. Is he the same person who sits in front of me now? He seems to be different. And once again in dream! The king dreams that he is a beggar and the beggar dreams that he is a king. Which is true?
For our discussion now, it may be relevant to ask, “Which is me?” Am I the stupid person that I seem to be when I am fast asleep, dreaming now that I am a very clever man. Or, is this personality real? Which one is true? The self itself seems to undergo modification. I seem to undergo modification. Now I think I am a swami. When I am dreaming of a lion or a tiger, I am a frightened man, and when I sleep, I am stupid. How come I can be all these three rolled into one? I am a very clever men, I am a very stupid man, and I am a frightened men, It does not seem to make any sense at all. In other words, experience seems to modify the self or the experiencer. Is that true? In the same way, when we were small children, we were playing with toys, and now that we are grown up we play with other toys called memories.
Do I also undergo all these changes? And then still more interesting is that it is possible that I was a dog in my previous birth. And in this birth I am so and so. Do I remember that I was a dog, so that now I must congratulate myself that I practise yoga?
vrtti sarupyam itaratra (I.4)
That dog is so completely and totally transformed in accordance with the experience it is undergoing now. Is that true? Is it true therefore that the experience that I am undergoing at the moment brings about a complete and irreversible transformation in the self? Is that so?
There are two types of changes. One is irreversible change. You take some milk and put some culture into it and it becomes yoghurt. You can do what you like, it will never become milk again. The other type of change you see in the case of water. Boil it and it becomes vapour; you condense it and it becomes water again. You put it in the fridge, it becomes ice. There is only an apparent modification here, not a real modification, real transformation. Why is it so? Because the element - the H20, is constant. The molecules are constant. When I go to sleep, when I dream, there is not an irreversible change because I wake up. When I wake up, even that does not seem to be an irreversible change, because again I go to sleep and dream. So it seems as though these modifications are not irreversible, which means they are apparent. That is what they mean when they call it illusion, maya. They are not saying that that which is in front of you is unreal. There is something; something has undergone some kind of modification. Your consciousness seems to have undergone some modification. It clings to one little point of view, thinking that that is real. The yogi does not say that it is unreal. He merely says that that is not the totality; it is a mere passing mood, not the totality. So what is regarded as an illusion is the feeling I am angry, I am an adult, I am an old man, I am a young child, I am a dog, I love, I hate. There is illusion in this. Not the hate, the adulthood, the old age - that is not considered illusory, but to regard that as the total reality - that is obviously unreal It is only a point of view, a small fragment. If you say that that is a fragment, you are absolutely right. If you say, "For the moment I am in a bad mood,” that is not considered illusion at all. Illusion arises when that little fragment is taken to be the total reality. One step more, and this is something marvelous. If all these are fragments, what is the totality? When that question is asked, immediately the distinction, the labels that we have stuck on all these seem to coalesce into truth. What I called love, fear, hate, jealousy, greed, were nothing but waves arising on the ocean or in the ocean, on top of the ocean, on the bottom of the ocean, we do not know - yet made of this same water of the ocean. What you call love is the same as what you call hate. The labels are different, but the stuff, the reality, the content of these is the same. When that is seen, a tremendous inner transformation takes place. That is worth experiencing. That is called Yoga.
You realise that the content of all these, the content of all concepts, the content of all experiences, is the same. By the same token, pain and pleasure are also the same. By the same token, honour and dishonour are the same, success and failure are the same. Is there something other than the self, is there something other than the mind - citta, we will call it the mind; never mind what your idea of mind is? If the mind did not entertain a notion called greed, would there be greed? No. If the mind did not entertain a notion called charity, would there be charity?
No. You would still do something. And so unfortunately we have been using the word love as being the antithesis of hate, that is I love one and therefore I hate another. I love my children and therefore I hate anybody who threatens the safety of my children. We have unfortunately used it as pairs of opposites. The pairs of opposites drop away in the sense that one sees that the content of all these pairs of opposites is nothing but pure mind-stuff. When these pairs of opposites have dropped, then and then alone true love appears in one's life. The rest is merely a game. One realises that the pairs of opposites are all mode of the same substance. There is an experience which the mind, the vrtti, somehow calls pleasure, there is an experience which the vrttis somehow call pain. If these words did not exist, if these labels were all burnt away, experience is experience and expression is expression, whether that expression is called love or hate, like or dislike, greed or charity. It is all the same. In exactly the some way the experiences are all the same, whether the experience is called pain or pleasure, life or death; the whole thing is one. Only the labels are different.
It is still not quite clear to the mind, because the mind loves to label. The Bible says Adam was told to name everything. So you were handed a rubber stomp and you started using it right from there. You can see how labeling and naming can become quite perverse. I do not like meat, but right from my childhood somebody says it is good for you, so that even though my whole being rebels against it, rejects it, or keeps on sticking the word good, it becomes good. It is terrible. We are ruled almost entirely by labels.
Someone may ask, 'Without labels how does one distinguish?’ Is a label needed to say fire is hot? Why do you need to describe it? You go near it and it describes you. Fire is hot and ice is cold, and anyone who is not totally paralyzed would recognise it. If you must use that word "distinguish”, he would be able to distinguish that. His system is equipped with sufficient intelligence to deal with all these problems. The psychological labeling of this as a good thing and that as not good, is nothing but total perversion, the distortion of truth. So one merely asks, "What is it that considers it good?" That it is good is merely an idea; that it is not good, is another idea, another point of view. What is the content of this point of view? What is the content of that idea? Nothing but mind again. When this unified field is realised, then a completely different awareness arises; and in that awareness there is pure intelligence, there is pure experiencing. This is pure love, not as the antithesis of hate - but pure awareness, pure intelligence, pure love, undivided and whole.
This intelligence is capable of making all these fine distinctions. You would still know that this is your nose; and if you want to blow your nose, you will not rub your tissue against the ear; that is not the action of an intelligent yogi.
You may ask: “We are conditioned by duality - good and bad - how can we become unconditioned?" That is what all this yoga is about. The realization that I am conditioned is itself the unconditioning process. I can see the conditioning. That which sees this conditioning is obviously not involved in it. What is the seer, what is that which is becoming aware of that limitation, of that conditioning? Is that also limited? No. If that was also limited it would not be aware of anything other than conditioning, and therefore it would not be aware of the conditioning either. That which becomes aware of being conditioned is unconditioned already. As a matter of fact, that is almost the first verse in the Yoga Vasistha: one who feels I am bound and I want to be freed from this is fit for the practice of yoga.
[III]
One important word is "drastuh". The truth that this word denotes we shall leave for later discussion. When one is in a state of yoga, in the "citta vrtti nirodhah” state, the "drastuh” - the seer, or the experiencer, or the expresser or the self remains in its svarupa”:
tada drastuh svarupe 'vasthanam (I.3.)
When this state of yoga does not prevail, then there is a distortion: "vrtti sarupyam”. Now, if we can devote a little time to understand this, I think the rest of the discussion will become very simple to understand. On the one hand there is this svarupa which literally means sva: "one's own', rupa “form” - the self in its own form. When the state of yoga does not prevail, then there is confusion, distortion, and in that distorted vision, a vrtti, fragment is mistakenly identified as the self. Even this word svarupa, when it is translated into “its own form” is an error. We do not know what the svarupa of the self means, but if we look at what this distortion could be and if you eliminate that distortion, what remains must be the svarupa.
There is a distortion, and in that distortion, a fragment, an idea, a vrtti that arises is mistaken as the self, to be the self. Watch carefully: now I tell you that I am a swami. Three hours later, when the swami has gone off to deep sleep, there is not even an answer to your question, "who are you?" Since those two responses are contradictions, neither of them is the reality, but merely a fragment. Thirty years ago I would have given you some other answer to the question, “Who are you?” What is the truth? What is the reality? Can we put all these fragments together and form a whole? In other words, can we assemble all the spare parts and call it Swami? Is the totality merely the aggregate of its own different parts?
The river Ganges is supposed to be extremely holy and Sankaracharya sang that if you sip one spoonful of Ganges water, you get moksha straight away. Very good. Having heard this I want to go to the Ganges and take one spoonful of Ganges water so that I may get moksha. I stand on the bank of the river which is pointed out to me as the river Ganges and I ask myself a very simple question: “What is Ganges here?" Is it the bed of the river that is referred to as Ganges? If the river had been diverted, would I still call that Ganges? Is the river bed Ganges, or is the water Ganges? If that water is Ganges, then that gutter water also becomes Ganges a little while later, so why not drink from the gutter before it joins the main stream? Is the aggregate of these things Ganges? It is very difficult to answer that question. So there are these two fragmentary experiences - one of which is called the many, the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, the other is the supposed whole, which again the mind conceives of as the conglomeration of the many. The master suggests that both of these are fragments. That which you call many is obviously a fragment, but that which you call one is also fragmentary.
Just to make it a bit more comprehensible one can make use of an illustration. Let us take a nice little golden statue of Krishna. It is Krishna, isn't it? You take it to a jeweller and he says, “Ah, it is not worth very much." Your Krishna is not worth very much to the jeweller. To him it is gold, but not very pure gold. Is it Krishna? It looks like it, but in essence it is gold. "Krishna" is just an idea that is formed in our own mind when we look at that thing made in a funny shape. But still it is gold. Does it mean that in order to remain in a state of yoga I must negate all this and remain in a state of oneness? That is exactly like looking for gold without any form whatsoever. That is not possible. You can melt all the gold ornaments in the world, but it will still have some shape. So the mind that says this is many is caught in one type of vrtti and the mind that says this is oneness is caught in another kind of vrtti. Therefore the yogi adopted a very beautiful attitude of neti-neti. Do not look for the self outside yourself - whether you consider it one, whether you consider it many, whether you consider it infinite, finite, or infinite finite objects put together. None of these things constitutes the self.
yan manasa na manute yenahur mano matam
tadeva brahma tvam viddhi nedam yadida mu pasate
"That which cannot be - seen by the eyes , that which cannot be grasped - understood by the mind, but that which thinks through the mind is the reality” - is a tremendously important mantra in the Upanishads. The yogi is not one who suppresses ideas and concepts, and cleans the mind of all those notions and so on. But he endeavours to find the content, the source of those ideas, those notions and those thoughts. It is a completely different effort. What is meant by nirodhah here, and what is meant by svarupa, is neither suppressing nor expressing, neither calling it thought nor calling it non-thought. Just as gold is never without some form, the citta is never without some concept, some percept. When the eyes are open, they see, and that is why we repeat in the universal prayer: "Let us behold thee in all these names and forms. “ These names and forms do exist or they are seen, they are experienced, but can they be experienced as thee? A beautiful statement! I do not want them to disappear, but while these appearances appear to exist, can the reality be experienced? While these thoughts and notions do prevail in what is called the mind, can the self be realised, can the self be made manifest? That is called nirodhah , that is called yoga.
Swami Sivananda often used to say that the yogi is not an unusual, super-natural, subnormal, supernormal being, but that everyone has knowingly or unknowingly experienced this state of "citta vrtti nirodhah”, this state of yoga, some time or other - everyone without exception. In the case of most of us, this state of yoga or state of "citta vrtti nirodhah" happens; and we do not taste it, we do not enjoy it and therefore we are not established in it. The yogi consciously and deliberately moves towards it. One must be very careful here. You cannot consciously and deliberately bring on the state of yoga. It has to happen. But you can consciously and deliberately move towards it, so that you have an indirect experience of it in the penultimate state and in the state after wards, when you return to what is called normal consciousness. In other words - when you want to fall asleep, you arrange the pillows properly, you switch off the lights, you lie down and you observe yourself falling asleep. As long as you are observing, you are not going to sleep. When you have fallen asleep, you stop observing; a couple of minutes before you are destined to sleep, the observation is switched off. But having deliberately moved towards that sleep, you remember, "This is what I wanted. I wanted to sleep.” And when you wake up in the morning, once again, you say, "Oh , that was beautiful.” So if you have learned to enjoy that state of sleep, to enjoy that state of yoga, to enjoy that state of meditation, then you cherish it, you value it, and then it is possible for you to be established in it. Otherwise, this state may slip through your fingers and go away.
You cannot will yourself into samadhi, you cannot will yourself into the state of yoga. As long as the will is there, the state of yoga is stant. But in this repeated exercising and experiencing of the state of yoga - not in itself, but just before and just after - something within tastes that peace, tastes that bliss. Then, you come out of your meditation room and someone says something that you do not like. You are still in that blissful mood. Something seems to come up, the old habit seems to raise its head, but you do not react now. It is neither an impotent resignation, nor a violent outburst. But you value the inner peace more than anything else. Therefore you are asked to meditate in the morning immediately after getting up from bed, coming out of sleep. It is so beautiful, so blissful , You wake up in the morning and you realise that you have been sleeping for six or seven hours at night. The world went on without you. Probably it went on better, without your meddling. Even the body was alive, functioning. So once again, just like the tortoise withdraws its limbs into its shell, you bring yourself back into it and try to taste that peace. ‘Taste’ that peace this time.
You spend half an hour or an hour in meditation; then you get up and come out, making sure every now and then that that peace is still there, that you have not dropped it anywhere. If I do not drop that which I have in my pocket, it is bound to be there. I have not dropped that peace that I enjoyed in meditation, therefore it is bound to be there. When in this fashion, you constantly repeat that taste, that experience of the inner peace, then you are established in it. Then the yogis tell us that at that time there is a sort of double, consciousness - that expression is very dangerous so please take it very carefully, which is hinted at in the universal prayer: "Let us behold thee in all these names and forms.” One becomes aware within oneself of a consciousness , an intelligence that is essentially indivisible. But it is not like shapeless gold, not a dull nothingless, not a dull void, but it is the content of all the thought, of all the concepts, of all the notions, of all the emotions, of all the feelings that arise, of all the experiences that arise.
The yogi is tremendously alert. In the Yoga Vasistha there is even a specific instruction that a yogi should live as if he were an ordinary human being, weeping with the sorrowful, and laughing with the joyous. In everything he is exactly the same as we are. But he knows that whether those experiences seem to be pleasant or unpleasant, happy or unhappy, the content of those experiences is the same pure experiencing that arises in one undivided, indivisible intelligence. Krishna specifically mentions this in the Bhagavad Gita:
saktah karmany avidvamso yatha kurvanti bharata
kuryad vidvams tatha ‘saktas cikirsur lokasamgraham (III.25)
As the ignorant men act from attachment to action, O Arjuna, so should the wise act without attachment, wishing the welfare of the world.
nai 'va kimcit karomi 'ti yukto manyeta tattvavit
pasyan srnvan sprsan jighrann asnan gacchan svapan svasan (V.8)
“I do nothing at all", thus would the harmonised knower of Truth think - seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, going, sleeping, breathing.
The yogi behaves in exactly the same way as you and I do - seeing, touching, hearing, smelling, tasting, etc. But he knows that all these actions or expressions of his own senses, of the mind, of the intellect arise in that intelligence, and the content of these expressions is nothing but that pure intelligence which is in itself indivisible. That is the self. And the svarupa of the self is distorted by that little sentence, "That is the self”, the moment you express that , the moment you describe that and say, "Oh , I see it is there." That intelligence is undivided, indivisible.
yo vai bhu ma tat sukham na alpe sukhamasti
"The awareness of this indivisibility is bliss. Do not look for any happiness in that which is fragmented, whether you call it a finite being or a finite experience, or whether you call it the infinite.” That is important to remember. I am meditating upon what I call the form of my guru, or the form or Krishna or the form of Buddha, and I am meditating upon what I call the infinite. The meditator is the infinite.
Can all these not be eliminated? This is another trick. The Buddhists often talk of what they call sunya. Sunya is a grossly misunderstood concept.
Sunya means void, nothingness. It is not void in the sense of the "formless " gold. But it is void in the sense that is void of an observer, I, of the subject that throws everything out as the object. These two, the subject and the object, are words. That which is beyond all this is the content of all this. That which is beyond all this, not in the sense that all these things must disappear, that all my thoughts and all my notions must be destroyed, is the content of all these at all times - it is the self. The content of all that we have so for called the object is also the self. The self is therefore indivisible intelligence. Again, that is what we repeat in the universal prayer: "You are omnipresent, omniscient". The you that is omnipresent is also the self, the very self of the me, the very self of all these. That is the svarupam of the self, which cannot be grasped by the mind - so let us never attempt it. But what can be realised, what can be seen by the buddhi or the awakened intelligence, is that elsewhere, where this yoga does not prevail, where this ‘citta vrtti nirodhah" does not prevail, vrttis prevail.
There is limitation. For instance, thirty years ago you thought, "I am a young boy"; now the same person says, "I am a middle-aged men." Even that limitation need not necessarily be the cause of unhappiness; but when that limitation is considered in itself to be real and therefore permanent, then unhappiness arises. In other words, when that limitation is mistaken to be the sole reality, then there is confusion. If I am able to enquire into the nature of that fragmentary experience, and I discover that the content of that fragmentary experience is itself the self or the intelligence, then there is no unhappiness at all.
Would you like your life to be completely free from pain? Any doctor could administer some type of drug into your spine and paralyze the whole of your being. In a state of paralysis you do not feel any pain at all. One does not want that. But a painful experience is still an experience. What is the content of that experience? Life, intelligence. So, essentially what is called a painful experience is experienced, "painful" being an interpretation of a mind that hates that experience, that longs for a different experience. What is the content of that experience? It is pure experiencing, it is an operation of pure intelligence. Is it possible to see that? Then one is constantly established in the self. When this does not happen, one identifies oneself with this pain, one feels that this pain is reality, that a thought is the total thing. I am not aware of the substratum of the whole thing which is pure intelligence. I experience each little bit as if it were the whole world. Patanjali very beautifully and scientifically declares that your entire life and all the experiences that you undergo in life, whether you call them painful or you call them not painful, can all be included in these five groups. What are they?
pramana viparyaya vikalpa nidra smrtaya (I.6)
"Pramana” - absolutely intelligent, logical, reasonable, correct. This is the correct view, this is right knowledge, truthful, honest, all that. "Vipayaya" is false knowledge, wrong knowledge. "Vikalpa" - imagination. “Smrti” - memory. “Nidra” - sleep. These are the five types of mental modifications which are all subject and these are the facts, whether they are regarded as painful or not painful.
Pramana is what you and I call right knowledge, but please do not forget one very important factor that all these are vrttis, fragments - and the fragment is not the total truth. What is fragmentary is false - false, not in the sense that these do not exist. You cannot say that the true ocean is waveless ocean. Something is there, but the mind says it is a wave apart from the ocean - that is the mistake. So all these five are vrttis or fragmentary experiences, and are not the truth or the svarupa or self. But it is possible, just for the sake of understanding, to classify them into these five categories.
First there is right knowledge; we are all familiar with this. When we say that this is right and that is wrong, what we actually mean is, "I think it is right”, or if I do not want to appear so arrogant, I say, “Oh, no, what I think is right is not my opinion at all - it is the opinion of my guru, the founder of my cult. He is my authority and what he has laid down is right, and therefore I am humbly following him." Very good. But then you ask me one more question, "How does he become your authority?" I say, "I like him and so I have appointed him as my authority. I have chosen him to be my authority and therefore I am following him." That is called right knowledge. Most of our right knowledge can be easily brought into this category. What is truth and what is right, without raising any doubt within you, is that which is unconditioned. That is right and there is no question about it. But that is not included here. When we use the word pramana or right knowledge in the context of yoga or vedanta, it is the right knowledge according to tradition, according to custom, according to one's own belief and so on.
Then we have wrong knowledge. An example of wrong knowledge can be given, where a description does not tally with any existent substance: the son-in-law of a barren woman. Another example of wrong knowledge which you may be able to understand more easily is an expression I often hear when I fly over seas. When they demonstrate the life jacket exercise, they use a formula which always intrigues me: "In the unlikely event of the plane landing on the sea ...” I almost want to yell at them: “It cannot land, there is no land on the sea!” This is wrong knowledge, knowledge that suggests that there is some land on the sea. It is more academic than truth.
The third one is imagination. We are all ruled by imagination because we live in this one single cosmic nation - imagination. Right? Imagination as imagination is alright. For instance, if I am sitting in what is called a meditation exercise, I may visualize , I may imagine a figure of Buddha, or Swami Sivananda or Krishna - that's alright. I know that it is imagination, that it is an object of my imagination. But when I imagine something and then go about as if that imaginary object itself is real, then I am caught, trapped. This happens to us all the time. I think he is my friend, but this is only my imagination. Then I give this imagination more value than the imagination need have, more reality than the imagination need have. I think he is my enemy, so I carry a gun around all the time. That is what the imagination does when the imagination ceases to be regarded as mere imagination, and is given the value of truth .
Smrti is memory. We are used to thinking that memory is the non-abandonment of a past experience but there is one statement in the Yoga Vasistha which I am merely transmitting to you: the guru says that memory can even be related to a non-experienced experience and you imagine having passed through that experience. It is a confusion between imagination and memory and that imagination forms an impression on the mind, so that later you regard this imaginary experience as if it were a real experience.
Then another fragmentary experience, which is also a mental modification, is sleep.
These are the five forms of the vrtti state within us. All these are vrttis and the proper content of all these vrttis is pure intelligence, indivisible and undivided. When that pure intelligence is ignored and these vrttis begin to rule and you are ruled by the vrttis, there is no state of yoga.'
[IV]
The author of the text we are looking into, known as the Yoga Sutras, suggests that yoga is that in which there is nirodhah, a kind of restraint of vrttis or forms of metal activity in the citta, which is the undivided intelligence - that alone is true. The term vrtti is often translated as "mental modifications" or "thought ripples." on the surface of the mind-lake. All these are well meant but inadequate expressions of an inexpressible truth. It is nobody's fault. Man has never really and truly endeavoured to express the truth and make it popular. This is how language is born: first you conceive of something and find that it is beautiful and good; then you find a name for it, an expression for it, with the help of which it is possible for you to describe what you have experienced or discovered; then you want to make it popular and so you coin a word or a phrase for it. In the absence of these two, there is no need for a word, there is no need for an expression; more often than not, those who were enlightened found that experience, if one may call it so, inexpressible. While they are in it, they are completely lost to what is called the outer world. Even when they emerged from that experience, the enlightened ones saw light everywhere, so that there was no darkness to be dispelled. It is only a fool who lives in a fool's paradise, because he thinks all the others around him are fools. By the same token, the enlightened person finds no darkness anywhere, like the light of a little candle. You cannot possibly convince this little candle that there is such a thing as darkness. If you can talk to this candle, please try to tell it that it is dark in the next room. Take the candle into the next room and it will ask, "Where is the darkness?" Even so with the enlightened person. Therefore a proper expression for what these wonderful sages have tried to express has hever been found. All expressions are inadequate and all expressions are dualistic. Unity cannot be expressed. When you utter the word "one", you have divided that one into two; one mouth has become two lips! That is the difficulty.
Language is dualistic. Communication - the word commune means "like one", somehow gets distorted.
What is this citta or indivisible intelligence? Can it be known? Perhaps it can be experienced in the sense in which you and I experience the fact or truth that "I am alive". This does not need clinical evidence or explanation. It is an experience which is beyond words. This indivisible intelligence which alone is the truth, being non-dual and expressible, all descriptions of experience concerning it and all forms of expression that arise in it are vrttis. Therefore all forms of expression, all forms of description of any experience, are vrttis. I have an idea - in that there are four vrttis. When I formulate, express, utter the sentence "I have an idea", there are at least four vrttis: "I” is the first, “have" or the sense of possession is the second, "an" or one or not many is the third, and "idea" is the fourth. Everything concerning anything that you express or any experience that you wish to describe , is a vrtti. I hope it is vaguely clear - sorry for the contradictory expression. It should not be too vague and it should not be too clear. If it is too clear, it is another vrtti. When I am tempted to say that it is very clear, it is another vrtti. When you use the expression that "God is one", it is another vrtti - and hence the sages even invented an expression called "vrtti of the infinite" - brahmakara vrtti. The infinite is not a vrtti. But then, one who is in the infinite consciousness does not even say those words, just as one who is really and truly fast asleep does not say, "I am sleeping". The men who says, "I am sleeping, do not disturb me", only hopes to sleep and probably he is unable to sleep. In exactly the same way, one who says, "God is infinite," knows nothing. For one who is in it, no expression is possible.
Since all this communication, all this dialogue, all this conversation, all this thinking implies the play of vrttis, the author of the Yoga sutras suggests that these vrttis can all be classified into the five categories we discussed yesterday. Some you call right knowledge, whenever you are tempted to say,
"That is right", that is also a vrtti, which is as good or as bad as another statement which you are tempted to characterise as wrong. They are two sides of the same coin. I have been taught to regard something as right knowledge and I cling to it; or I have decided to call something right and I continue to call it right for as tong as it suits me. If it does not suit me, I change it. What is right knowledge?
pratyaksa numana gamah pramanani (I.7)
"Pratyakso" is what seems to be obvious. What seems to be obvious keeps changing all the time, in your own mind, in your own thoughts. You look at somebody and you think it is obvious that he is a good man; but a few days later you yourself change your opinion and say, "Well, I thought he was a good man, but it is obvious he is not go good; he was very clever." What is obvious is obvious, only because you think it is obvious for the time being. It is a mere play of words, which has no sense at all. You have decided that this shall be called the truth, that this shall be called right, whatever it is - righteousness, non-righteousness, good, not so good, wonderful, not so wonderful.
“Anumana" is inference. I think I am clever and therefore from ‘A’ I infer ‘B’, and because I have already decided that A is right, B must also be right.
This is what newspaper reporters do. They say, "We learn from reliable sources." How do you know that they are reliable? "Because we know that they are reliable and therefore we get this news from them, and because we get this from them, we rely upon them. We regard them as correct.” That is called anumana. Then you have scriptural testimony. I am sure some of you have come across these kind of polemics. I hold a copy of the Bible, he holds a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, and he holds o copy of the Koran. I say this is true, he says that is true and he says that is true. I quote my scripture, he quotes his scripture, and he quotes his scripture; they are all at variance. As far as he is concerned, both of us are devils quoting scripture, and as for as I am concerned both of them are devils quoting scripture. This game goes on.
Anything that does not fit into this "right knowledge" is called wrong. Why? Because I consider it wrong knowledge - viparyaya. Then there is vikalpa - imagination, pure imagination; but then please remember you do not regard it as imagination. You think it is true , real. Then memory. Then sleep. It is very interesting that even sleep is considered to be an isolated activity of the mind based on the same intelligence; it is an extraordinarily admirable statement by the yogi. You think that during sleep mental activity has ceased or been suspended. He says, ‘It is the mind that thinks it does not think.”
abhava pratyaya lambana vrttir nidra
“Sleep is the holding onto of one single vrtti, and that vrtti is I do not think."
You are awake now and you think we also are awake and that we are all assembled in this school hall. We think we are seeing each other and we think there is some talking going on, that we are all listening to these words. This is one state of mind. It is possible that this child is about to fall asleep, lying here in his mother' s lap. It is possible that he will start dreaming that he is a helicopter pilot hovering over Johannesburg, looking down on all of us. After a little while even that comes to an end. He sleeps, apparently thinking that he is not thinking, seeing that he is not seeing, experiencing nothing. This is the trick: it is not non-experience, but it is experiencing a thing called nothing. Normally you think, "Now I am wide awake, and when I am tired I go to bed, I dream, and then I sleep, without even dreaming, without seeing anything, without thinking of anything, except thinking. “I do not think.” Normally we are taught that these three are distinct and different states, one following the other; that is, when the waking state comes to an end, dreaming starts and when dreaming ends, sleep starts and when sleep comes to an end, dream starts again. But there is a commentary written on the Mandukya Upanishad where the author makes a very innocent and terribly interesting statement. He says that these three exist all the time, at all times. When you think you are awake, you are already dreaming and sleeping at the same time, and when you are dreaming, you are also awake in a thing called dream - only the objects seen are different, only the experiences experienced are different, but the thing is the same. Similarly, when you are fast asleep, you are also in another world, in a third world called the sleep world, where you are experiencing another type of experience comparable to the dream state and to the experience of the waking. It is a beautiful thought. When that becomes a realisation, you are free. When that becomes a realisation, that is what is called enlightenment, samadhi, satori, etc. All these words denote but one thing: a direct awareness of this simple and fundamental truth, that there is no division between what is called waking and dream, and between these two and sleep. How does one arrive at this understanding - not realisation - merely understanding? If you have been listening fairly attentively for the past ten minutes, you will have temporarily forgotten that you are in this school, in this building, and that there is a carpet under you. Therefore you have been asleep to those factors. You do not pay attention to the fact that you are sitting here, that your wife, or your husband or your child, or your friend, or your enemy or whoever it is, is sitting next to you or behind you. You have forgotten all that, for the time being. It is as if you have been asleep to all those around you. That seems to be fairly clear.
Then, in what way have I also been dreaming? Every word that you heard stirred up on image within you. As you are listening, as these words enter your ear, the mind is also displaying its own pictures. That is already a dream. You are dreaming all the time. So, right now there are the three worlds: the world of ignorance, the world of dream and the world of the waking state. The three together is the reality. In and through all these, there is something which remains undivided and indivisible - that is the reality, that is the truth. I suppose you have all seen the earth and that on that bit of earth there is a mountain, then a valley, and then the ocean-bed under the sea. Is that mountain placed on the earth as a foreign body? Is that mountain not also the earth? That which you call the mountain that rises above the ground is also the ground. That which you call the ocean-bed that seems to be below the ground, is also the ground, the earth. You give different names, you stick different labels on all these. But there is just one earth. This earth seems to rise somewhere, dip somewhere else and collect some water somewhere else. The surface of the earth is one, indivisible, undivided. It is not possible to divide it.
In studying this phenomenon called oneness, the mind often creates division, because mental activity is incapable of arriving at the realisation of the totality, at the realisation of the infinite. In whatever we have done, we have always resorted to mental activity, to thought, to feeling, in order to experience this world, and even to forget this world, When we apply thought processes to the experience of the world, we get this diversity in which we find ourselves think this is right, we think that is wrong, we think this is pleasant, we think that is unpleasant, we think this is success, we think that is failure, we think this is happiness, we think that is unhappiness. How do I know this is unhappiness? Because I think it is unhappiness, I am unhappy in that state. Why am I unhappy in that state? Because I am subjected to unhappiness. It is a circular argument with no sense in it. How do I know that I am happy? Because I think I am happy. What makes me think I am happy? Because I am happy. It goes round and round and round. Therefore this whole world is nothing but the crystalisation of such mental activity. Sometimes it hurts, and when it hurts you begin to wonder what is meant by hurt. When you begin to analyse the mind with the help of the mind itself, that is when you create all these famous categories - this is right knowledge, this is wrong knowledge, this is memory, this is imagination, this is sleep. How do I know all these to be true? This enquiry can lead me nowhere! Why? Because the fundamental mischief-maker in this equation is "I". It has not been looked into at all. Analysing this mental activity in life or keeping this "I" or the ego-sense unexamined, untouched, leads us nowhere at all.
With what shall I examine the ego-sense; with what shall I examine the ego-sense? Once again you are trapped. The yogi suggests a very simple approach to this and that is called nirodhah. This does not mean merely thinking about thinking about thinking, nor merely suppressing all thoughts - either with the help of some yoga practices, or drugs, or hypnosis or self hypnosis. Neither of these really produces nirodhah or enlightenment. There must be another way and that is called direct observation. Again it is possible that in this direct observation one uses the mind to study the mind. I may use the mind to study the mind and while studying the mind in that manner it is possible for the observing intelligence, which is also part of the mind, for the observer, for the observing intelligence, for the subject to identify a thought arising. One thought arises. I have considered that to be a fact, but I am still looking within, I am still trying to see what the truth is. When I have slapped down that thought, I realise that that which slaps the other thought down is also mental conditioning. An other thought jumps up and says that according to Keno Upanishad, truth cannot be intellectualised. This is a piece of memory. Though it pretends to be aware of the truth, it is nothing but memory. The observing intelligence can recognise this game that the yogis play. That observing intelligence, if it is alert , can recognise that this is right knowledge, knowledge which I have considered to be right because of prejudice; it can recognise that this is wrong knowledge, which again is born of a reaction to prejudice; and it can recognise that this is pure and simple memory, a revival of some memory. Then there is imagination. Or, I can consider that mind cannot study mind, that it is a hopeless task. This is called giving up, which is equated with sleep, a kind of spiritual sleep. It is too hard and so I give up, I live in accordance with God's Will and imagine everything will come right.
These are the five states we are aware of, and the observing intelligence keeps observing all these. It is possible - until one day the observing intelligence begins to question: I have a sense of what is right and what is not right. I have a sense of “I remember this”, "I imagined something else!” All these come in a sort of procession, like waking, dream and sleep? For instance, take love, anger, anxiety, or fear. There is a young couple. They wake up in the morning, they look at each other and their hearts are singing the song of love. A little later they suddenly remember they still have to go to work. With that heart full of love they get out of bed, press a wrong switch and find that the kettle does not work. Now there are flying saucers in the kitchen! "You did that”, and "You did this.” With all this they are getting more and more delayed in going to work. Suddenly there is anxiety, fear. Now, did all these happen one after the other? That is, when love came to an end, did anger start? When that came to an end, did fear start? Is that so, or were all those there together in the same personality? If they were all there together, am I a kind of supermarket of emotions? So I pull out this one, and then I pull out that one. I realise or discover that it is not possible for me to get angry now, at this moment, however hard I try. Try now. Can you yell at me? It is not there. Now there is a kind of peaceful joy.
Therefore the yogi or the observing intelligence looks directly within to see what this is, not merely labelling it: "This is good emotion, this is bad emotion, this is right action, this is wrong action, this is memory, this is imagination.” The observing intelligence goes directly to the root of the matter: “What is it?” Whether you call it love, whether you call it anger, fear, or anything else - because you are not labeling it, you are not anxious either to keep it or to throw it out. If you call it love, you are going to hug it and then forget all about it. If you call it anger, you are going to look away. If you call it fear, you are going to pretend it is not there. But you do not call it anything at all, and so you see it as an experience. You look straight at it, straight into it. What happens at that moment is called nirodhah. What happens at that moment is called yoga.
[V]
Please let us remember that words can only indicate the truth. Words are not truth and when words are regarded as descriptions, they are veils which, if not destructive of truth, are at least distracting the attention from the truth. Words can merely indicate, and so it is the attention that follows these words that discovers the truth. One or these invocatory verses, with which these talks are commenced, indicates a marvelous truth:
isvaro gururatmeti murtibheda vibhagine
vyomavd vyaptadehaya sri daksnamurtaye namah
A seeker (I) goes to the enlightened guru, seeking instruction concerning God. But what is the truth? Is there a division between the guru and God? This (I) is a word, and that (guru) is a word and that (God) is word - each one is a concept, "I", "guru" and "God”. The author of the Guru Gita says that it is almost like this: You have a little jar in this room in space - the jar is small, the room is big, and the room is small, space is big. But is there a real division of space into the space enclosed by the jar, the space enclosed by the room, and the space enclosed by what is called "outside"? Space is indivisible and yet we describe space as if it were divisible. If even space is indivisible, when consciousness or intelligence is even more so, if one can use such expressions as more perfect than perfect, more truthful than truth, more divine than God. Space can be comprehended (in a manner of speaking) by the mind. If even that is indivisible, that which comprehends space, the intelligence is even more so.
Just as we speak of the space enclosed in a jar, of the space which constitutes the room and of the space outside, we speak of the vrttis, we speak of awaking consciousness, or we speak of a world that you and I perceive now, we speak of the world of the dream and we speak of the state called sleep. These are illusory phenomenon; not illusory in the sense that they are not real, not illusory in the sense that you are perceiving something which does not exist, but illusory in a different sense. That which is, is constant, is undivided; you may keep a hundred jars in this hall but the space is not divided into one hundred. You can have thousands of buildings here but the space is not divided, it is indivisible. And yet there is a description of a division who creates this division? He who describes the division. That which describes the division creates the division.
Consciousness or intelligence or citta is indivisible and therefore undivided. In that undivided intelligence something imagines now, "I am seeing all of you".
A little later when I am dreaming in the room in Jyotsnamata's house, I "see” all of you. You are not there; but how do I know you are not there? You are there so far as I am concerned! But we say that factually the world of the dream is within me. How do I know that this physical world is not also within me? The difference is arbitrary. Now there is a thought, a vrtti, a concept, or a notion that these objects that are perceived, are outside. In a manner of speaking, in dream, the same objects are perceived as if inside. They are also "outside" my consciousness in dream. Even so, all these may be within my consciousness even now. And then there comes another state called sleep when that which is awake dreams the single dream, "I am sleeping". These three states are found all the time. Why is it so? Because the intelligence is indivisible. That indivisible intelligence is called self, or atma, or, turya, or wherever you wish to call it. Therefore - now comes the crunch - it is not as though you and I have to cancel one or other of these states in order to become enlightened. You are already enlightened - the light is there, shining constantly. At this moment that light seems to be spread out and there is perception of the so-called outside world. In dream the same "wakefulness" continues, but the wakefulness is on a different level, or so we think. In sleep the same wakefullness continues, the same dream continues, but the dream is different. When this understanding arises , there is a tremendous inner change or transformation. Nothing really needs to be transformed, but something which misunderstood these to be separate states disappears. The notion that one is different from the other disappears. That's all.
It is because that state of ignorance or sleep prevails now that we are thinking that the world is outside of me, that I am the subject, and you are all the object. When that ignorance, or spiritual sleep or self-ignorance disappears, nothing goes away. The reality can never be erased. The self or the truth can never, never be canceled out, can never, never "not be". What disappears - in the ignorant man's language, upon reaching enlightenment, is what did not exist in the first place. Only the ignorance that was never there, went. In darkness you do not see the city, you do not see your own house, you do not see your room, you do not see the furniture in your room, but when the sun rises, all those things which were not visible become visible. The truh is seen, the reality is seen, but nothing whatsoever went away. What went away was the darkness that was not there. That is not a loss, but a gain. But then something went away; the darkness that was not there in the first place went away. You ‘thought’ it was dark.
Since there is this notion that this darkness exists in some indescribable manner, there is this self-ignorance which is terribly upsetting. Some of the greatest saints and sages of India have consistently and constantly declared that this self ignorance exists so long as you continue to affirm it. So long as you go on saying, “I am ignorant, I am ignorant,” for so long you go on being ignorant. Somehow there seems to be this self-ignorance in which the true nature of the self is forgotten. Whatever knowledge, whatever mental activity takes place in the shadow of that self-ignorance is called vrtti. Nidra, this sleep state , this ignorant state, continues throughout our life even when the mind functioning in this darkness of ignorance affirms it to be real; this is a book and this is a tape recorder - that, of course, is correct. This is the Bhagavad Gita, a very holy scripture - we think this is also right knowledge. Someone else says that it is wrong knowledge, it is the teaching of the devil! At the very moment you call something right knowledge, the mind is at the some time rejecting something else as wrong knowledge. So these three co-exist: sleep or self-ignorance, plus what is called right knowledge and the other side of the same coin which is wrong knowledge. How do you know that this is right and that is wrong? How do you know that this is virtue and that is vice? Because the memory is revived - that I read so in a book, or I remember somebody telling me so. It is the memory that jumps up all the time - deciding, defining, describing. This memory is inextricably bound up with imagination, for it is hardly ever pure memory. By pure memory I am referring to the tape recorder. If you are convinced, as soon as this session is over go away and write down what you heard. You will be amazed to find that the tape recorder is a much better student than any of us. Our memory is not pure, our memory is never uncontaminated by imagination - never. When we recall the past, it is never as it really was, but always twisted.
So what was described as the five-fold vrttis operates constantly. All of these vrttis are activities of the mind in the shadow of self-ignorance. All empirical knowledge is ignorance, all knowledge that you and I possess is sheer ignorance. As a matter of fact , this statement occurs in two marvellous scriptures, the Yoga Vasitha and the Mandukya Karika, where the authors say, “How can you accept that as truth which is pronounced to be true by that which is itself untrue?" You have not examined the source of your own facts. So how can you accept them as fact? The truth of the source or the wisdom of the source of the statement has not been proved, but we are ready to accept the statements that issue from that source to be true. It is absurd. We often base our opinions, judgments and conclusions on what we call scriptures and texts. If you have been involved in any form of printing or publicity work, you would appreciate what I am saying. One little error, such as the word ‘now’ typed as ‘not’ can change the entire meaning. "Immortality" is a beautiful word and if someone makes the slightest error, it becomes" immorality”. If one such printing or typing error creeps in to a book, it goes from there to eternity as the authority.
Therefore, without rejecting scriptures and teaching, one has to investigate the source, the source of understanding itself. When that is not there, in that shadow of ignorance, the designator arises. When I do not know the truth, when I do not know the reality, I need to identify. When I do not see the surface of the earth, I begin to see something and I call it a mountain, and I call this a valley. I wonder if you have ever bothered to inquire at what exact point does the earth come to an end and a mountain spring up? At what exact point does a valley begin? It is like the seasons; at what exact moment does winter end and spring begin? The seasons creep into one another, just like the growth of our bodies. It is something constant and yet the mind that is ignorant of this truth creates a division, and simultaneously the division brings about a subject-object relationship . The first division that is made is “I" and "you". As soon as the subject "I" arises, the object arises; or it may also be the other way round, as soon as the object crises, the subject arises.
And so this old Adam began to distinguish, to describe, to divide and to label. It is the I, the ego-principle, that divides the single earth into plains and mountains. If I have pure vision, that division does not arise. Your eyes do not divide. It is a marvelous lesson that one can learn from one's own anatomy: two eyes see one person. You are not even aware that you have two eyes because there is no division in the so-called objects that are perceived by the eyes. It is something else that divides. It is the mind that divides or, to put it bluntly, it is the self-ignorance that divides and, having created this division, starts labeling and identifying. The subject does not remain satisfied with identifying things and so begins to form a relationship with the object. All these are mentioned in the Yoga Sutras:
avidya 'smita raga dvesa bhinivesah klesah (II.3)
These five are bugbears throughout your life. There is this ignorance - avidya, which projects the subject and object, asmita, the “I am”. How do I know I am? Because I see you, I think there must be "I" to see you. Because I am, you are also there. If I do not exist, you won’t exist. In sleep I don't exist; therefore you also don't exist. When I wake up, you also wakes up.
Not content with having labeled that as Mary and this as so and so, the activity of the mind begins to distinguish, "This is beautiful, this is not so beautiful, this is true, this is false, this is pleasant, this is unpleasant.” If you watch this activity of the mind, you will realise it is fantastic. There is just one mass, one ingot of gold and in that is created all manner of things; one little gold piece carved in a certain way is called a god, another gold piece carved in a certain way is called a devil. The thing is the same. Also I love this, I like this. Why do I like this? Because it gives me pleasure. How do I know it gives me pleasure? Because I like it. It is a vicious circle, constantly torturing us on this rack, stretching and pulling in two directions at the same time, without ever revealing the truth that all this is nothing but mind, activity of the mind.
Then there is this lovely expression "blind faith". Blind faith is no faith at all, it is only blindness. Whether that blind faith is called positive and therefore devotion, or whether it is called negative and therefore prejudice, blind faith is pure blindness, with no faith in it at all. Likes and dislikes are just blindness. One becomes so insecure, so uncertain about life, that one madly clings to what one thinks one possesses, to what one thinks provides security. There is blindness of ignorance, avidya. In that shadow of ignorance the I-you relationship continues to play, and in this mad dance of the I-you relationship we begin to like somebody and dislike somebody else, thereby getting into miserable situations. Both these can cause misery. You have seen this in your own lives. When you do not like something and that something comes into view, you are unhappy. When you like something and you lose that something or you are afraid of losing it, you are also unhappy. However, since I am caught up in this limitation and because of this dreadful ignorance, I am unaware of the totality of whatever is. I am frightened to lose the misery that I cling to - that is a terrible thing. Even an old man of ninety-five years old still wants to continue to liva in his miserable old body. He will spend a fortune trying to prolong life for another three days. Why is it so? Nobody knows. Even the author of the Yoga Sutras says it is indeed a mystery. This love for one's limited life seems to carry on under its own steam.
One more consideration is what is called samskara. As I go on living such an ignorant, stupid and conditioned existence, every action that proceeds from me and every experience that is experienced by me creates an impression in what I have come to regard as "my mind" - a nice little space in the jar with which I have identified myself. Every action that proceeds from me and every experience that flows toward me leaves a mark there. This is the yogi’s bug bear, this samskara. It is a Sanskrit word which means what it sounds like to English-speaking people: “some scar". Samskara only means some scar left by all your actions and all your experiences, nothing more. Do not get terribly frightened. Some scar, a little scar is left by what you did or experienced and that scar begins to itch now end then. You enjoyed something very nice two years ago and it has left a scar in your mind and that scar begins to itch; therefore you ask for a repetition of that enjoyment now. As long as the scar remains, the desire for the past enjoyment or the desire to avoid the past pain will also continue. By repetition the same scar becomes a tendency. What does that word "tendency" mean? Where is it? Why is a tendency or a habit so hard to overcome? If you examine and see where the tendency lies, you might discover that there is a difficulty here. The tendency is not in your mind, the tendency is not in your heart or the emotional part of your personality, but it is what your "tendons see". This tendency is built into every muscle of your body, every joint of your body, wherever there are tendons. That is why you find it so difficult to change a bad habit. The tendon has to see that the habit is bad and then it drops it. On account of these samskaras or mental impressions produced by the expressions and the experiences of the so-called individual, life continues to run along its limited, miserable, dreadful groove; because of ignorance, since a state other than this conditioned existence is not known, one clings madly to it.
These are the five-fold sources of unhappiness that we love so intensely. The yogi merely points them out. Drop this conditioning and you are immediately happy, here and now, not later when you go to heaven. Even in India there are these ascetics who caution that you must torture yourself and that if you do all this for the next twenty or thirty years, you will go to heaven and enjoy bliss for ever and ever. It is a good bargain! You suffer for ten years in exchange for happiness for ever and ever. But it may not be very truthful. I often wonder that if I torture myself, if I become accustomed to suffering here for so many years and then suddenly you take me to heaven, in the midst of heavenly enjoyment, I may find myself miserable there. I may wonder, "Where has all my self-torture gone?” The person who regards that self-torture as pleasure may not find heaven so palatable. Therefore I am not so fond of a heaven that is promised at the end of a period of self-torture and suffering, Yoga points out that if you get rid of this mental conditioning here and now, “here and now” you are free from sorrow.
[VI]
The statement that the unconditioned is bliss, and the conditioned existence is sorrow, is found in one of the Upanishads. Even there it is merely a statement, with no demand that we should therefore seek the unconditioned. The unconditioned must be understood. In the Sutras it is even more beautifully stated. The unconditioned is yoga, the unconditioned is citta vrtti nirodhah and therefore, when this nirodhah or self-understanding or self-knowledge is absent, there is vrtti sarupyam, that is - when you identify your self with fragments of existence, though that is not wrong in itself, and when that fragment is mistaken for the whole. To see a wave as a wave is truth; to see one thought as one thought is alight; to see one concept as one concept is alright, to realise that "this is my opinion" is again right. But when this vrtti, when this opinion, when this concept, when this thought is accorded the value and the dignity of the total truth, then there is trouble.
To understand an opinion to be an opinion, that is the business of living, But our error consists in giving that opinion the value, the glory and the dignity of the whole truth. This is vrtti, and the vrtti nirodhah is when that is dismissed and the truth remains truth, uncontaminated by the opinions being called the total truth. Even this is not a goal; we are not trying to be happy by doing this. Bliss is not a product, the subject is not a product, the unconditioned state of being is not a product. In order to make her happy, in order to make her smile, I cannot stretch her mouth, but if I tickle the foot, the mouth smiles. I do not know if you have thought about this. When I tickle her foot, it should not even be my goal or my desire that her mouth should smile; my whole attention should be in tickling her foot. Otherwise I may be scratching the chair, not her foot. More often than not we do this in life. Instead of being attentive to what I am supposed to be doing now, I am looking to see if the result is happening there or not; the result will not happen because I am "tickling the wrong spot". That is the danger of having a goal. Krishna points it out in the Gita very simply and bluntly: "Do your job, the results will take care of themselves."
So, happiness is not even the goal of yoga. Yoga has no goal whatsoever. When the goal is suggested, your attention is already diverted. Where is attention, where is meditation, if I am not paying attention to what I am doing now? Otherwise, we create a thing called the unconditioned, we create a thing called God-consciousness. There is another beautiful expression that is not found in the Yoga Sutras but in some other texts; in English it is translated as "witness consciousness" - saksi-caitanya. I have heard the most ludicrous interpretations of this by very well-meaning people - "Oh , you know, I am not involved in all this, I am beyond all this, I am merely a witness of all these." That is still the ego speaking: "I am beyond all this." My guru, Swami Sivananda used to say when somebody pretended to be established in this witness consciousness, "Take a bunch of nettles and rub him and see if he can remain a witness to that stinging pain!” That witness consciousness is the truth, is the subject, is the unconditioned being and saksi-caitanya suggests that consciousness is not involved in anyone of these concepts. Be very careful here. That unconditioned being, that infinite being, that consciousness is not confined to anyone of these concepts. The content of each one of these concepts, of each one of these opinions, of each one of these thoughts, of each one of these emotions, of each one of these experiences, no doubt is consciousness, but that infinite, that subject, that unconditioned being is not limited, is not contained and is not confined to anyone of these. If you want a figure of speech, the yogis said that the citta or the unconditioned witness consciousness is like the total ocean, and these ripples and waves are merely being witnessed by it. But to pretend that I have understood that is to throw it out of its place and create an object, a vrtti, called witness consciousness.
How does one arrive at this unconditioned state? I hope the absurdity of the question at least becomes clear. How can the subject be known? The schools and colleges create this confusion. You go there and study many "subjects", but they should be called "objects ". Nobody studies a "subject" by going to the school or university. The book is an object! You come to the school of yoga in order to study the subject, the self! Can this subject be known? Can this subject be seen? Can one arrive at a knowledge of the self? For that is nirodhah. The words are imperfect, the words are inadequate, but that is nirodhah.
abhyasa vairagyabhyam tan nirodhah (I.12)
Keep on trying - that is abhyasa.
tatra sthitau yatno 'bhyasah (I.13)
I am sure most of you who practice meditation, most of you who have experienced moments of deep love, have for one split second glimpsed this state. It is not that the unconditioned state is foreign, or strange, or something which belongs to a certain special type of being. Everyone has had a glimpse of it. But it goes away. When does it go away? When you want to possess it. Is it possible for you - watch the formulation of the question - is it possible for you to stay with it, to remain established in it, without holding onto it? Obviously there is only one way of achieving this. In the case of all other experiences of pleasure you want to grasp it, hold it and preserve it. That is why you get into trouble; when it slips through your fingers, you will never get it back. Now realising that it is not possible to hold onto the bliss-experience, you still yearn to be established in it without holding onto it. There is only one way and that is to surrender yourself, to let yourself go and not even ask for a repetition of that experience; then it is there and you see something remarkable happening within yourself. That momentary experience of delight is so marvelous that the ego comes up again, “I” wish it could last forever". It is gone before you finish the wish. The wish is the relationship to that experience, and so that experience is already turned into an object, a limited experience, an opinion. If the “I" did not arise at all, the truth would continue to be truth, to be the unconditioned. But it seems a pity that nobody is there to experience this wonderful state. It is not so important that I should experience God! What is so tremendously important about me that Swami Venkatesananda should attain self-realisation? So when this wish or craving, or whatever you wish to call it, arises, it is recognised. Please remember carefully that it is not "I recognise" - there is a recognition, there is an attention, there is an observation, without an observer. You are meditating and there is this ... You remain there without an observer, steady, without disturbing it, without wanting to hold it, without the wish arising to continue it. If and when the two arise together, "I" and “the experience of bliss", the observing consciousness looks and questions: '''What is I? Where is the desire, where is the craving to hold onto it?" The following answer may occur: "Why should one hold onto something which is eternal, which is infinite?" If the whole world were made of chocolates, nobody would want chocolate, because you are also made of chocolate.
When that experience is infinite, why do you want to hold onto it? The observing consciousness that is called witness consciousness or transcendental experience, which has no observer, which has no subject, and therefore no object, becomes alert at once and realises that the desire to hold onto that experience is the action of the ego, is the ego. The desire for repetition of it is the ego, and when this powerful searchlight turns to that formation of the ego - if one may call it so, it is at once dissipated. That is called abhyasah.
tatra sthitau yatno 'bhyasah (I.13)
It looks like an effort, but it is not an effort. It looks like an attempt, but it is not an attempt. This is practice, and it may take time, or it may not take time.
Why does it take time? You remember that we discussed the problem of samskras. A very beautiful story is told in the Yoga Vasistha. Someone was praying to God for an alchemical substance with the help of which he could turn all stone into gold. Within a few weeks an angel stood in front of him and gave him the stone. He wondered: "Is that the thing I want? I have heard that it might take ten thousand years of meditation and I have it within two weeks! Perhaps it is some kind of a devil coming to cheat me. He threw it away and once again started meditating. After five thousand years he picked up a piece of glass and walked away, rubbing it everywhere but nothing happened. The poor fellow had it in the first place after two weeks, but on account of these samskaras he was doubtful.
Some of you must have had this experience. You sit down to meditate or do japa and you have heard it said that if you are totally merged in your mantra, you will not hear external noises. Now you are sitting with closed eyes, deeply contemplating the mantra. Of course you do not listen to any of the external noises, but after ten minutes or so, a question arises within you, "Have I really been concentrating deeply or was there no truck passing along the road for the past ten minutes? Probably there was no sound for me to hear. Immediately you hear the noises. Your meditation is ruined. Never mind about all that. If you want peace and quiet, go ahead.
tatra sthitau yatna ' bhyasah (I.13)
The yatna or the repeated practice becomes necessary when the practice is interrupted by samskaras, the tendencies, doubts, physical and psychological habits. When they come and interfere, there seems to be a need for repeating the exercise all over again, otherwise there is no need.
If one is very careful , the true meaning becomes very clear. Patanjali says one becomes well established in it when one is devoted to this truth, to this unconditioned state, to this infinite consciousness, over a long period of time.
sa tu dirgha kala nairantarya satkara ‘sevito drdhabhumih (I. 14)
He does not say that it can manifest itself only after a long period of time. Many have criticised this and said that if yoga is a process which can be perfected only over a long period of time, it is useless, because you are going on acquiring new samskaras, new doubts and new obstacles as you go along. Then some body else comes along and says, "Yoga only promises you infinite consciousness after a long period of time. Join our cult and you will have instant samadhi.” Yoga also promises instant samadhi! But here is a statement which has to be very carefully understood. "You are well established in it if you have been able to sustain this consciousness, this unconditioned consciousness for a long period of time." That is obvious, isn't it? Or are you going to say, "Come and join our school and we will give you instant samadhi which will instantly come to an end.”
In the Yoga Sutras the master says that you can enter into samadhi, you can enter into this unconditioned state instantly, but you may not really be established in it until you can prove that you have been in it for a long time. Otherwise it is another of those momentary experiences which leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
The taste was good for those few moments; but then the memory that survives that good taste has a bad taste. Patanjali merely suggests that you have this delight and remain in it, totally devoted to it, with your heart and soul completely surrendered to it for a long period of time, without losing it. Then you are firmly established in it, and it is not possible to disturb it.
sa tu dirgha kala nairantarya satkara 'sevito drdhabhumih (I.14)
This is only half the story - or it is the full story, depending upon which way you look at it, because the earlier sutra (I.12) suggested that nirodhah is attained, or meditation is obtained, or self knowledge is gained - all these expressions are inadequate, with the help of two things: the one is abhyasa - practice, the other is vairagya.
Vairagya has also been tremendously misunderstood. Vairagya has usually been translated as dispassion and expanded into a dislike for pleasure. It is usually explained as a rejection of the world, as running away. Such a rejection is usually counter-productive. A story is often told of a sick man who had consulted all the doctors in the world and eventually went to a medicine man who just gave him a glass of water, pronounced some blessing on it and said, "Take it home, drink it first thing tomorrow morning and you will be alright! That's easy, but there is one restriction. When you put the glass to your lips, you should not think of a monkey. If you think of a monkey it will be totally ineffective.” Saying that spoiled it. Whatever I am told I should not remember is exactly what I remember! We have the same problem. If I am to avoid passion, either I must go to the root of it or I must turn my complete attention to something totally different. That was the method my guru Swami Sivananda suggested. Do not battle with your problem. For instance, if you have a craving for a cigarette, do not keep on saying, “I should not smoke, it is bad,” then you are smoking all the time, only that kind of smoke is not seen! Apply your energy, your attention, to something else, perhaps totally unrelated to this problem. When your attention is totally directed to something else, when the energy flows in one full stream towards some constructive activity, the cigarette just drops away, or rather it is not even picked up.
This is one method. Another - if you want a bit more zest, is to turn the attention within and see what it is that gives this habit a value, a value that it does not possess. It is worth 20 cents, nothing more, whether you smoke it thinking, "It is a pleasure,” or throw it in the dustbin thinking, “It is terrible, it is dangerous, it will cause lung cancer.” It has no such value. It gives you neither pleasure nor displeasure - it is worth twenty cents, that's all. What is it that gives this thing a psychological value, that it is a pleasure or that it is a danger?
drsta ‘nusravika visaya vitrsnasya vasikara samjna varagyam (I.15)
I heard somebody say it is pleasure and it is that hearsay that has so colored the mind, that the mind looks upon that as pleasure. Otherwise there is no pleasure; it does not have pleasure in itself - neither smoking, nor drinking, nor any habit you may have. It is the mind that has been conditioned by what has been heard or seen in the movies or on television. You hear and from what you hear and from what you see, the brain or the mind is colored. Your consciousness or intelligence looks through that colored glass and from there on regards that as pleasure.
Now, if you can dramatize the whole thing within yourself, your consciousness or intelligence is here and you are looking at that object, thinking "That is a beautiful thing, that is pleasure,” so that the whole attention seems to be moving outwards from this intelligence towards the object. The master of yoga merely suggests one thing: as your attention is flowing outwards, outside yourself, can you ask yourself a very simple question: what is it in me that bestows this value upon this object, that makes this value judgment? When you do that, what happens? The attention that was flowing out, suddenly begins to reverse. Immediately the direction of the flow of that attention is changed. Now it begins to flow towards yourself. That is called vasikara. Vasikara means that it comes under your control. Once again, this is a very tricky thing to understand; it is not as though I am looking at this thing and I say, "No, I won't look.” That is not control. Nor, “I am looking outside”, pretending I am not looking outside.” No. Without any pretension whatsoever, can I ask myself, “Where does this feeling arise that this is an object of pleasure or that it is on object of pain, or that it is something which threatens my very life?”t At that very moment the attention that was flowing externally, suddenly turns upon itself. That is control of a very different kind. There is neither an expression nor a suppression. There is not even an attempt to do either of these, but there is intense self-awareness. In the light of that self-awareness, the mental coloring is seen. You suddenly realise, "This is merely an advertisement, brain-contamination.” Do not use the word brain washing in this context. Brain-washing is good, just as washing your clothes every day is good. It should be called brain-contamination, brain-pollution. You suddenly become aware that the brain has been polluted by what you see and what you hear. In that moment this contamination is washed away.
Life goes on. In the Bhagavatam and also in the Yoga Vasistha, the masters have said something very simple and beautiful. Life is full of joy; there are very sweet things in life and you can enjoy yourself. You do not run after them and you do not run into disappointment. But natural enjoyments of life will still continue and they will be pure, fresh and uncontaminated by hopes and fears. We should not go to the other extreme of asceticism. That is not what was meant, because such an attitude first of all might mean pure suppression, which might lead to some kind of reaction, and even more then that, at the same time, might give a tremendous boost to the ego. That is not yoga, because you are getting so dreadfully committed to this vrtti called control. Yoga has slipped through your fingers.
The control that is called vairagya is of a quite different nature, where there is constant study, discipline - in the sense of study, and self-study. The craving arises because of a value judgment and the value arose because the mind was colored by what was heard or seen. The object is seen not to have that value, and simultaneously the craving disappears. What is most wonderful in this practice is that self-awareness is inherent. Therefore abhyasa and vairagya are not seen as two completely different endeavours, but one is connected with the other. If I am constantly aware of the play of the mind and the ego, then there is no craving, craving does not arise. And if I constantly observe every moment that this craving arises and observe the craving, self-awareness also increases.
[VII]
The words "yoga" and “nirodhah" may both mean what the word "meditation" really means, not in the sense of an exercise, but as something that is constant and not restricted to one day of the week or one hour a day. Therefore meditation cannot even be considered a state; nirodhah is not a state, yoga is not a state. It is not a mood; it is not something that has a beginning and therefore an end, it is not something that can be described and therefore limited, defined and therefore finite; it is not something that the mind can conceive of and is therefore conditioned. The master suggests that this can be attained - the words are defective, with the help of abhyasa and vairagya.
abhyasa vairagyabhyam tan nirodhah (I.12)
The vrtti can be understood in a certain inner stillness, in a certain inner light which is called meditation, which is called yoga, which is called nirodhah.
Abhyasa means practice and practice implies a certain repetition. Why must a thing be repeated? After having one piece of toast for breakfast, why do I have another piece of toast? Because the first piece was not adequate, was not satisfying. If that first piece of toast was adequate, I do not have to repeat it. In a manner of speaking, abhyasa means both repetition and not repetition. My hunger is not satisfied with the first piece of toast, but only the third piece of toast really satisfies my hunger. You may say, with sufficient reasoning and logic, that it was because the first two lay in the stomach that the third one was satisfying. But you can see that there may be at least two points of view to this argument. Does abhyasa mean that every time I attempt to meditate I am making some progress, or does it mean that no progress is made until actual progress is made? If you want to jump over a well ten feet in diameter, the ability to jump six feet and the ability to jump eight are of precisely the same value. Anything less than ten is useless.
That is one way of looking at it. There are others who say that, as you go on with your abhyasa, with your practice, you are gradually rubbing out the impurities little by little , as long as you refrain from adding further impurities to those that existed already. Very often you apply grease to protect something from other impurities; but the grease remains. This is also true of the human personality. I go on shedding all my weaknesses: I stop smoking, I stop drinking, I stop eating meat, I renounce my family and I give up my wealth. For everyone of these, a little more grease is being added up. This thing called "I” has replaced all the other impurities that you have been trying to get rid of. So one can look at this phenomenon called abhyasa or practice from different sides. But abhyasa does imply repeated practice.
The other word used was “vairagya” - which has two essential meanings, one being the absence of all attraction, the absence of passion, the absence of infatuation, the other being the absence of mental coloring, which inevitably goes with attraction. First the mind considers something as pleasure and that object or experience is thence forward colored with that evaluation; then you go on seeking, looking. The absence of such coloring is vairagya. I remember what a very holy man in the Himalayas once said when some of us went to have his darshan. Somehow this abhyasa and vairagya was mentioned in his presence. He did not want to waste words! He said: "Abhyasa and vairagya. It is very simple. Abhyasa means to remain established in God. Vairagya means never to let the thought of the world arise in your mind. Marvelous isn't it? Try it and if you succeed, I will worship you every morning!
There is another interesting feature. It looks as though abhyasa is one thing and vairagya an other. In the original text of the Yoga Sutras, the dual number is used - abhyasavairagyabhyam, and so it is usual to consider these two as independent factors. Based on this concept, there are many great teachers of yoga who insist that you must first acquire vairagya and then come to abhyasa or the practice of yoga. My guru used to say, "If you want to be firmly established in vairagya before beginning to practise yoga, you can postpone it for at least the next three lifetimes! Gurudev used to add, "Try both these side by side.”
It is possible to see, in spite of the fact that the dual number is used in the sutras, that abhyasa and vairagya are one and not two. In spiritual, religious or yoga literature, there are often descriptions which suggest dualism - good and evil, the real and the unreal, right and wrong, virtue and vice. I am not suggesting that these things are not correct; but it is possible to look at them afresh and maybe have a glimpse of the truth concerning all this. Scriptural descriptions of duality were perhaps intended to bring us onto the right track. You and I are not functioning in a mental world of only two objects. We are not functioning in a dualistic world, we are functioning in a pluralistic world, within ourselves and out side ourselves. You do not only have what is good and what is not good, but you have a hundred other things in between. In order to lead us on to the understanding of the essential truth, the yogis wanted to cut through the whole thing to see if you can become aware of these two fundamentals: something you can call good, something you can call evil; something you can call right, something you can call wrong. As the Zen masters would say, there are a million things and slowly you get rid of those million things and come to a few and from those few, perhaps three and from those three, perhaps one. This way they are focusing our attention in ever decreasing concentric circles. Again we find a statement in the Bhagavad Gita - I have not come across such a bold declaration in any other scripture. Krishna says:
amrtam cai f va mrtyus ca sad asac ham arjuna (IX.19)
I am immortality and also death, existence and non-existence, O Arjuna.
It's thrilling, fantastic. Krishna also says:
mattah smrtir jnanam apohanam ca (XV.15)
from Me are memory, knowledge, as well as their absence.
The supreme wisdom, the supreme knowledge, as also its absence and its veiling come from God.. Nothing exists in the universe apart from God. That is a very bold statement.
Now we come to the two sides of the coin. Eventually we are told good and evil, right and wrong etc. are all two sides of the same coin. We always use the word coin and I think this coin can teach us something. First is the tossing of the coin, where we say. "Heads I win, tails I lose." That is an important lesson to learn from this silly little coin: one side spells gain, the other side spells loss. For apparently no valid reason but by sheer tradition, we have come to divide life into two - good and evil, right and wrong, success and failure. Having divided it, we have labeled them ourselves: this shall be called success, that shall be called failure; this shall be called pain, that shall be called pleasure. Why, I do not know. Because it is tradition we do not question it at all.
That is how life goes on, whether you believe it or not. This wonderful philosophy can be a terrible thing if you contemplate all its ramifications. However, to be generous to the yogis, they probably suggested all this in order to eliminate the plurality of our thinking, and narrow it down to just the two sides of the coin. One day you will look at this with a little greater attention, with a more awakened attention, and see, “My god, I look at this from this side, what is this?” Silver. “I look at it from the other side; it is silver again," Why did you call one side good and the other side evil? Whichever way you look at it, the stuff is the same. So whether I call it abhyasa, striving, practice or I call it vairagya, dispassion , the content is the same. Suddenly you realise that in this universe there is nothing that is opposed to anything else. There are no true opposites in this world. Heat is one thing, cold is an other. Right is one thing, left is an other. In life and in work there is nothing that is the opposite of the other. Pain is one thing, and pleasure is another. Honor is one thing, dishonor is another. Hatred is one thing, love is another. One does not oppose the other, one does not cancel the other.
When one has zeroed in on this truth, after having examined the duality, abhyasa and vairagya, you get a little closer and realise that they are complementary. There is nothing contradictory in this world. Life or death, night or day, are not contradictory, but complementary, because the content is one.
tat param purusakhyater guna vaitrsnyam (I.16)
When that truth is seen, it is called para vairagya. Para vairagya, para abhyasa, supreme jnana, supreme renunciation, supreme delight are all the same - they all merge in the absolute. Then you are looking at the truth of what was previously seen as two sides of the coin; the two sides blend into the one substance of the coin. What were seen as opposites have become complementary, have blended into a whole. One does not exist without the other, simply because there is no other. Then there is supreme non-attraction and there is supreme non-hate; there is love which is not the antithesis of hate, but which is indescribable, a mere “experience-expression-put-together" of oneness. All experiences blend and there is nothing called pleasure and there is nothing called pain. There is pure experiencing, the experiencing consciousness being the same - it is "I" that feels tickled, it is “I” that feels pinched. When the body is subjected to what is called a pleasurable experience, the nerves twitch; when the body is subjected to a painful experience the nerves also twitch - the twitching of the nerves being the common factor. When there is anger, the facial muscles react; when there is love or happiness, the facial muscles react. It is all the same movement of energy.
How does one sustain this? Is there a method by which this supreme dispassion can be reached? The next Sutra gives a few steps to make this possible:
vitarka vicara 'nanda smita hugamat samprajnatah (I.17)
If you take those few steps, it is possible for you to turn all experiences into the one pure experiencing in which this duality of pain and pleasure can be totally avoided. The yogi is not against pain, the yogi is not against pleasure, but he is not content with calling them pleasure and pain. The yogi seeks to find the truth of pleasure, to find the truth of pain. That's all. If you get into this net of avoiding pleasure, you are going to love pain, thereby converting that pain into pleasure. That is not a serious loss or gain. If you get used to eating bitter food, it becomes sweet to your taste and you like it; that is of no great spiritual advantage. The yogi on the other hand merely wants to examine the truth concerning pleasure and pain, without labelling them and without being interested in running after one and avoiding the other.
Again this is specifically pointed out by Patanjali. What makes pleasure pleasurable? When the mind runs after something, it becomes pleasure - pleasure makes the mind run after it. How do I know it is pleasure? Because I am running after it. Now watch very carefully here. You are merely a witness, standing on a balcony and watching me on the road below running after somebody. You think, "Ah, he likes him, so he is running after him." Somebody else is watching me from the other side, and thinks, “My God, this man is chasing him, perhaps to rob him!” My action was exactly the same, only the interpretation is different.
When something chases after something, sometimes it is called pleasure, sometimes it is called pain. Therefore the yogi is not interested in all that. Instead of calling one pain and the other pleasure, he asks, “What is the truth?” Suddenly he realises that both are merely nerve experiences; some nerves are tickled here, some nerves are tickled there. Why do we call this pleasure and call that pain? These are the two things that torment us throughout our life. Pleasure torments us in its own way and pain torments us in its own way. This torment goes on until the truth concerning the two is realised.
When you ask the yogi, "You know, I have heard all this, now what must I do?” He says, "Come on, I will tell you what to do. You have to begin somewhere."
vitarka vicara 'nanda 'smita 'nugamat samprajnatah (I.17)
Sit down; you can close your eyes or you can keep them open. With closed eyes you are seeing another world, with open eyes you are seeing this world. It is all the same. It is possible that you are now being subjected to a physical or psychological experience of pleasure or pain. Or it is possible that you are being subjected to a more subtle experience called memory or imagination, which is also a psychological experience.
First there is reasoning, mental activity. It is of course true that mental activity is not going to take you to the truth, but mental activity is there. That is where you begin. The first thought that arises is, "I see him." It is a thought. I close my eyes: I see Krishna or I see Buddha. I open my eyes, that Buddha is not there. I close my eyes, I see the Buddha again. I open my eyes, I see you. If "this" is true, perhaps "that" is also true; if "that" is false, maybe "this" is also false. Now I have more or less come to the end of logic. That is what is called "logical conclusion" - when I reach the conclusion of logic. Just two steps or you may have to take a few more, if your mind is a bit more complicated. I come to the logical conclusion that what I am seeing, what I am experiencing, may be as real, or as unreal, as something else that I can imagine. How do I see? The eyes may see something, the eyes see, but the eyes do not proclaim, "We are seeing Mr. So and so.” The eyes do not say, “I am seeing Buddha.” The eyes merely see. Where is Mr. So and so? Where is Buddha? When I ask that question, logic comes to its conclusion - logical conclusion.
Then another movement in consciousness begins. It is not mental activity, but it is pure attention. It is not a movement in consciousness which proceeds from what is called “me” towards the other. It is a movement in consciousness which seems to flow towards its own centre and that is called vicara. We use the word "enquiry". It is not mental activity, it is not thought, it is not reasoning. It is inquiry, something that turns within in a kind of quest which is a direct looking within, a direct observation within. Whet is within? What is without? We do not know. For the present it looks like within. Why? Because a moment ago "that'' looked like without. Otherwise there is no within, there is no without. When the inquiry starts, there is a feeling that the attention is moving within towards the center. Otherwise these words have no meaning.
Then I continue this and there is a feeling of pleasure. What is this pleasure? I am now in the second state where this is pure observation - vicara. In that pure observation, the observation itself discovers the true nature of experience. "Discover" is meant in its most literal sense. I had covered the mind, I had covered that pure experiencing with a big label called pleasure; and when this light of observation shines on it, it discovers or peels that label off. That is discovery - "uncovery”. Then immediately pain ceases to be pain, pleasure ceases to be pleasure. Pain ceases to be tormenting, pleasure ceases to be tantalising - and therefore there is an experience of “ananda” - a sort of happiness which is not the absence of unhappiness. There is a peaceful and blissful experience - ananda. "Ah, it is marvellous, it is wonderful," and when I say so, I am still looking within. The attention still asks, "Who is experiencing this?” There is just a vague “feeling”, "I am experiencing this peace, this ananda”. You may like to refer to a scripture called the Yoga Vasistha, where this process is inimitably described. The Supreme Yoga - translated by Swami Venkatesananda, section 5; Chapters 80-81.
[VIII]
Yoga is equated to meditation and meditation to what was described as nirodhah. Nirodhah is that awareness, is that state of consciousness - unfortunately we have to use the word "state", in which the totality is aware of itself , without necessarily wishing to change anything. The totality becomes aware of itself; it is not “I become aware of the infinite" or “I realise God" or "I realise the self.” It is the self that realises itself, without even a wish arising, "Oh , I wish it were otherwise." That is nirodhah, that is meditation, that is yoga.
Here we are in a very tight corner; how does one bring this about? Of course, it is not something which can be brought about. It is the truth, it is the reality. However, that awareness is not there now. The awareness is now conditioned, the awareness is now limited, the awareness is now whirling around the center-piece known as “I". Examining this “I” is not going to take you anywhere. Analysing this conditioned state of mind might make you an expert psychologist, but not a yogi. For the moment it may appear as though the “I", the ego, is accepted as a reality, but is it there or not? Do not assume that "ultimately it is not there" - that is dangerous. Then you are ignoring what is right under your nose and your vision is not ‘on’ the problem. That is the danger of assuming the existence of a goal - you are completely ignoring what is right under your nose and thinking of something else which is not right in front of you, so that the reality is ignored. I wanted to say the imagination that becomes real. It does not become real at all; imagination continues to be imagination. There is a lovely Sanskrit couplet that says that he who runs after the ephemeral or the passing phenomenon, ignoring the reality, loses both. The reality is lost because you deliberately ignored it and you are not going to get what is unreal anyway.
The yogi becomes aware of whatever he is at the moment; and when the light of this awareness is turned on, it is capable of revealing the truth. That is what you heard from the reading of the Yoga Vasistha the other day. Vichara is translated into English as "enquiry", but it is a lot more than enquiry, or rather a lot less than enquiry. There is no mental activity there at all, though it may be preceeded by mental activity. It is just looking straight in. Therefore Vasistha says that to one who is engaged in vichara, there is absolutely no obstacle. If there is an obstacle, that vichara is going to look at it. Only if you are looking at the fifth floor where your office or your goal is, will you find the steps an obstruction. You are not looking in front, you are looking at the fifth floor and therefore you knock your foot against the steps. The steps are not obstacles at all, but they are meant to take you up to the fifth floor. To the yogi who is engaged in vichara, in meditation, there are no obstacles, no difficulties. Swami Sivananda used to say that nothing is difficult to one who has not joined this unfortunate cult - "Diffi-cult". Once you allow the mind to say, "This is difficult”, it is going to say "difficult'' to anything.
There are no obstacles at all as long as one does not become trapped in reasoning. We do this quite often: "I know smoking is a bad habit, but my father used to spank me and I used to become nervous, so my mother used to give me a cigarette.” The blame is always thrown on somebody else, so that I am not responsible for it. It is a very immature way of looking at oneself. The yogi does not do that. As long as I do that, there is no yoga, there is no meditation possible and I find life full of obstacles, full of difficulties, full of pain and sorrow. But if one treads the path of' vichara or direct observation of that which is causing the problem, then there are no obstructions, there are no difficulties. If I am bothered by some habit, I am going to look at it, without calling it good, bad or indifferent, I am merely looking at it enquiring "What are you?” If I call some habits bad and I cannot get rid of them, I rationalise them. If I call some habits very good however much I like them, I am not able to cultivate them. Calling a habit good is not going to make it comeback to me. Calling a habit bad is not going to drive it away from me. So why waste time on all this?
Abhyasa and vairagya are one, the two sides of the one coin. There is a mental coloring which suggests something is pleasant and something else is unpleasant. When one looks deeply within oneself to see what the coloring is, to see what the source of this distraction is, then meditation happens. All the exercises and tricks that we may have learned concerning concentration and meditation are merely aids to this direct inner self-observation. The exercises in themselves are of no use, but as aids to direct self-observation they are very good. But there is a problem here: who is it that is observing, who is it that is engaging in meditation? Me. If you observe very carefully, already something suggests within, “Ah, this is it, previously I was a vicious person and now I am holy, holy. Previously I used to run after one thing and now I am running after some thing else." The "runninq after" is the common factor. Krishna warns in the Bhagavad Gita:
visaya vinivartante niraharasya dehinah rasavarjam raso 'py asya param drstva nivartate (II.59)
The objects of the senses turn away from the abstinent man, leaving the longing behind; but this longing also turns away on seeing the Supreme.
You try with all the means in your power to abstain from the enjoyment of pleasure, but the taste is left. Patanjal also echoes this teaching:
tat param purusakhyater guna vaitrsnyam (I.16)
This vairagya becomes supreme, only when the purusa is seen, the ultimate experiencer is seen. Who is the ultimate experiencer in me? In orde to find this experiencer, one is given a few steps:
vitarka vicara nanda smita 'nugamat samprajnatah (I.17)
I use my mind for a little while, the mental faculties , to reason out why I call this pleasure. It is just because I was taught that this is pleasure. 'Why do I call this good and desirable? Because I was taught that this is good and desirable. If it had not been so, probably I would never have bothered about it. Suddenly, it hits me like a bullet. I see that that goodness is fake, that goodness is a shadow. When virtue has been put there by somebody else and I am being virtuous because I dare not be vicious, there is no virtue. Also when I am thus being virtuous, I am looking at him, not at me! I am not looking where the thought arises, where the feel ings arise, where the self is. So this true vairagya, true dispassion, true uncolouredness of the mind, truly unconditioned consciousness is possible only when the inner attention or awareness is constantly observing the self. Until then be careful, be vigilant.
After having described these four or five steps to meditation, Patanjali goes on to the next step:
varama pratyaya ' bhyasa purvah samskara seso nyah (I.18)
Every time an experience or a feeling or a mental disturbance, or distress arises, it can trigger inner observation or meditation, whether it is painful or pleasurable. So why do the yogis lay so much stress upon not seeking pleasure?
Because pleasure distracts your attention more than pain and prevents the attention from seeking the source. One has to be extremely careful to ensure that pleasure does not draw the mind out, the attention out, the awareness out. But if one is alert and vigilant, all experiences, whether they are called pleasure or pain, can be used to trigger self-observation or meditation. The stream of awareness that flows externally, as it were, begins to flow inwardly, as it were. These are not real; so let us not build images out of all this. The attention which was flowing out, turns upon itself. The rays of the mind which were flowing away from the centre, seem to turn upon their own source. During that process there is a stillness and there is a dropping of effort: virama pratyaya bhyasa (I.18). The mind is still there, the awareness is still there, the attention is still there and there is this sudden movement which is no movement but which is an intense vibration - again for want of a better word, vibration does not mean that something is fluttering, there are no butterflies. There is a tremendous stillness which is dynamic; it is comparable to the flame of the candle which is steady, although we know that every moment millions of sparks flow along that flame. Krishna compares the yogi’s heart, or attention, or consciousness, to the flame of a lamp in a windless room. In that stillness there is very clear observation, clear awareness of observation itself, without an observer. It is not as though I am meditating upon myself, or I am able to see myself, or I see that I am clear, enlightened. That is self-bluff, which is a very interesting pastime but a waste of time. There is a tremendous inner stillness, peace. You may call it bliss, God, or consciousness - whatever you wish. It is pure observation, without an observer, an absolute stillness which is not static, a total peace which is not dull.
In that observation is also seen samskara seso nyah (I.18). You have been battling with this mental colouring or conditioning, these samskaras. The other day I think I said to think of them as "some scars”. I do not know how to translate this word samskara - maybe latent tendencies, maybe past impressions.
All these seem to suggest that some sort of gross substance within yourself receives all these imprints. It may not be; please work on it yourself, for only then will you understand it. When somebody insults me, what is it that responds with annoyance, with anger? When somebody praises me, what is it that responds with pleasure? One has to find the answers to these questions oneself. When the mind is absolutely still and when there is clear observation of the self without an observer, then the colouring is seen, the play of the mind is seen, the latent predispositions are seen. They are samskaras. They have been handed down, if you do not believe in reincarnation - from father to son, if you believe in reincarnation - from birth to birth: samskara seso 'nyah (I.18). And in this there is no effort: virama pratyaya 'bhyasa purvah (I:18) The effort ceases because the moment you make an effort, the effort becomes the doer, and you say, "I practise meditation.” In the state where there is no effort, there is not even the feeling that I am practising meditation.
The "I" does not die, but it is still there as a bed of samskaras. To the question, "When I am insulted, who responds'' there are two answers. First the samskaras respond. I was brought up to respond in this manner - from childhood, I was told that to be called an idiot is a terrible dishonour, and I must respond in a certain way. When I am doing something good, who is doing it? It is this samskara that does good; it is this samskara that reacts in an adverse way. When it is no longer theory, one can see it quite clearly. This is one answer. The other answer to the question, “Who is getting annoyed?" is that I am getting annoyed or "I” is getting annoyed. Who is pleased about it? “I" is pleased about it. Who is doing all this wonderful good work? The "I' that wants to go to heaven. There is basically no difference between these samskaras or latent tendencies or predispositions and what is known as the ego, or the "I". They are the same.
This means something which may not be apparent: the ego is nothing but a composite non-creation of these samskaras, of these tendencies! Right from birth, the mind has been filled with these ideas which have formed some impression upon this mind. Someone told me, "You are a boy", that is: different from a girl; someone told me, "You are a brahmin'', which is different from a non-brahmin; someone told me, "You are an Indian'", which is different from some body else, and so on. All these put together have formed the thing called "me" and this “me" jumps off the diving board called the mind. You must have seen this at swimming pools when you take off from the diving board - the diving board is also agitated. Every time this ego takes off from there, it leaves a deeper impression. So every time I get angry, the anger samskara becomes stronger and deeper; every time I become passionate, the passion samskara becomes stronger and deeper; and every time I am agitated, I am hateful, it makes a deeper and deeper grove. All these grooves put together is "me”.
bhava pratyayo videha prakrtilayanam (I.19)
And so you have learned to observe the self which is the bed of samskaras, of all these tendencies, of all these predispositions put together. Is that moksha? Is that freedom? Is that liberation? Patanjali says no. Because, for a very simple reason, if there is a sweet aroma in this room and you pass through the room, you do not take the aroma with you, but it is left behind. But when these samskaras are formed in the mind, what is it that claims, “I experience this. I am a good man, I am a bad man, I am a brahmin, I am a non-brahmin, I am an Indian, I am a non-Indian"? If these impressions are formed in the mind, why does one say that these impressions belong to “me”, or that “I have these bad habits?” There seems to be a cohesive force that keeps all these latent tendencies together. That is the conditioning, that is the limitation, so that - if you are very attentive probably you will get one little glimpse of it, this infinite consciousness seems some how to think, “These belong to me; I am made up of these," That thought is the kingpin for the whole lot. That single thought that all these ideas and ideologies, all these notions and concepts, all these samskaras and vasanas and what-have-you form part of me, belong to me and I belong to them, is another conditioning. Heaven knows how this conditioning arises in the same infinite consciousness. As long as that lasts, you push all these together.
When the body drops, it is said that this mass of conditioning, this mass of ego-sense travels from one embodiment to another - it may not be right; then and there it creates its own new body. If this body is dropped here and now, the same mass of latent tendencies thinks - for want of a better word, "I am something else, I am a bird", and creates its own space, its own wings and flies in its own world. What determines that? The nature of this conditioning at the time this embodiment is dropped. So it goes on and on until the conditioning is completely abandoned. How long does it go on? However many millions of years it takes, however many seconds it takes, it is anybody's guess. You may ask for how long you should practise. Maybe you can do it in half an hour's time. Go on practising. Maybe it takes a thousand years. But this is it: we have no choice, for as long as this conditioning lasts every time this body falls - videha, and the components are re-absorbed into nature - prakrtilayanam, there is an inner change; a new notion or a new concept is formed. Your soul, or your jiva, or your ego or your internal personality does not have all these as limbs. The inner soul, the inner self has no shape, no form; its form is its own desire, its own concept of itself, its own notion concerning itself. Therefore you have been thinking for a long time that you are a man, so you took on the body of a man. You go on thinking, "From now on I am not a man, I am a bird,” and if this thought is held until it saturates your inner being, your inner consciousness, when these elements of which the present body is composed are returned to nature, whatever be the condition in which that consciousness which thinks it is limited to this body, finds itself, determines the next embodiment and the next world. That world is created here and now, here in this very place. There is no space in that. The space is your mental activity and now at the moment when the body is dropped, it creates its own space, it creates its own world, and it becomes what the nature of that consciousness deserved to become at that moment.
Until all the coloring has dropped away and consciousness has become completely unconditioned and cleared of the various notions and concepts that we have fed into it, including even the notions I am" and "This is my mind, this is my consciousness", then there is freedom. Patanjali even suggests in the next Sutra that it is possible that some are ardent in their devotion to yoga and may be able to reach this soon. Some are not so ardent and so they may take a little more time. Some are a little bit dull; but never mind, even they will eventually reach this point.
tivra samveganam asannah (I.21)
When one's zeal is intense, total, that total intensity brings this unconditioned state of being here and now.
[IX]
When the master of yoga speaks of samskaras, that is: latent tendencies, latent predispositions, or karma. Karma is nothing more than the extension of an action which had already commenced in the past. He is not dogmatic and he is also not interested in finding an excuse for his present behavior. Unfortunately we are using these wonderful concepts or truths - whichever way you look at it, as an excuse for certain behavior. We often say that these samskaras govern our present conduct, but this may not be true. When we use the word ‘karma’, we tend to imply that it is something which is fixed, inflexible, inexorable, and that it somehow involves my present behavior. Then we look around for an easy way to bring about a change in our behavior. It is not possible, for if my samskaras, which are the impressions left in “my mind” - these two words are terribly important, by my own past behavior, are going to govern my present behavior, there is no escape. If my past karma be such that it has already predetermined the course of my life, nothing can be done - so forget it.
Yet man is dissatisfied with his present life and he seeks some way to bring about some change. Then we invent all sorts of remarkable theories and doctrines, one of which is "God's Grace." Do not bring that in. This has its own application in its own place, but not here. When I have misused the doctrine of samskara, or the doctrine of karma, I have no business to bring in God's Grace here. That comes later. The doctrine of grace has a valid application in another sphere, that is: where one egotistically assumes that enlightenment or God-realisation is a matter of sheer brutal self-effort. I go on doing my yoga asanas for eight hours a day and pranayama for the next four hours, then repeat the whole process again for another twelve hours, thinking this will lead me to God-realisation. That is a fallacy. In order to counteract this egotistic notion, the yogis suggest that self-realisation is not a matter of self-effort while the self is still alive and vigorous, but self-realisation is a matter of God's Grace. This is the correct application. Self-realisation is not the logical sequence of some kind of self effort; but it ‘is’ when there is self-surrender. That is grace. And that grace manifests in one's life as love. Love flows from such a person and from the other direction flows grace. There is love from me and there is a flow of grace towards me.
God's Grace has its own place and application, but not when I am stuck in my own samskaras , or accept them as inevitable. It is important to remember that I accept my samskaras as inviolable, inevitable, ineradicable, and then I call upon God's Grace! I am committed to this thing called karma and I believe that what is going to happen to me is going to happen to me, and the way in which I react is also inflexibly fixed. Then I am far away from grace. I continue to be brutal, I continue to be selfish, I continue to be vicious, I continue to be greedy: then there is no God's Grace. We say in the universal prayer, "Free us from lust, anger, greed and egoism.” That means that first of all I must be aware of the presence of all these. The awareness of the presence of these samskaras is itself a tremendous liberating force. When the yogi uses the word samskaras or karma, he merely suggests their presence. It is not meant in a fatalistic sense, suggesting that they are the governing factors in our behavior, but it merely suggests a sort of springboard for all our behavioral patterns which is not to be accepted as inevitable.
When the process of meditation that we have been discussing is applied to these samskaras or psychological predispositions, there is a serious curiosity. What does it mean? Why do I behave in this manner? Why is it that someone else behaves in a different way? What is it that predisposes me to this conduct, whether that conduct is socially acceptable or unacceptable?
In the same way, when the yogi talks of karma, which is supposed to bring pleasure and pain, he is once again inquiring into the nature of all this. If it is merely a continuation of what I have been doing before, the fruition of my own sowing, what is it in me that characterises one as pain and the other as pleasure? That is what I want to know. I am not interested in philosophy , I want to know the truth. When that is directly observed, you are directly observing not only the samskaras, but also the bed of the samskaras, the fountain source of these samskaras , the field in which these samskaras grow, as it were. On just one piece of ground, several different types of vegetable might grow; the ground is still the same, the soil is still the same. And perhaps the elements that constitute the vegetables may also be the same, with a little difference in their molecular structure. So the yogi looks at the field with some sort of wonder. He looks at the thoughts, the feelings and the emotions, and he suddenly realises that they are all composed of one substance. What is the content of any of your thoughts? Thought!
Later our society decided that this thought is a good thought and that thought is a bad thought. What is a thought? What is a good thought and a bad thought? One has to learn to look through these labels and see the content. Something ‘is’. One cannot completely and totally deny the existence of what is, as distinct from what appears to be. The content of a thought appears to be good, the content of another thought appears to be not so good. These labels change, depending upon who you are, what your background is, what your religious belief is, what your culture is. So can I be totally free of these labels, can I observe the content of this thought? When I do so, I am looking through these samskaras, I am looking through these experiences and, in effect, I am looking through behavior itself, instead of merely juggling with them, calling one set of behavior patterns saintly and another set of behavior patterns sinful. It does not mean that these divisions and distinctions have no value; they have psychological value or sociological value. May God bless them! But we are doing something else.
Can this observation, without an observer, which is meditation, see through all this, right down to the bed of the samskaras, down to the content of the thoughts and emotions'? There something ‘is’. At that level, the samskaras cease to be samskaras. At that level the thought ceases to be a thought, emotions cease to be emotions, because you have crossed the level of these labels - that is important to remember. It is only so long as the eyes exist that there is beauty and ugliness. It is only so long as the nose exists that there are sweet fragrances and foul smells. Imagine a place where there is nobody present and a bundle of lighted incense sticks falls there. How does it smell? It is not the samskaras in themselves, or the actions in themselves that matter, but it is the experiencer and the doer of action that mysteriously springs up when these samskaras seem to float around.
It is as if that bundle of incense sticks sprouted a nose of its own and started smelling. Such is the mystery of creation - we are not really discussing that, but we are trying to observe even that. What is this ego-sense that arises and immediately associates itself, identifies itself with this bundle of samskaras? Why is it that a person thinks that he thinks some thoughts? I am not quite sure if I am thinking those thoughts.
Why does "I" think that I am thinking these thoughts? That is the yogi’s question. It is not the samskaras that are to blame, it is not even the I-sense, the ego-sense that is to blame; that is the mystery. Can I observe it without thinking it is good, without thinking it is bad, without thinking it is natural, without thinking it is unnatural, knowing that all these things are thinking, thinking, thinking? There must be another way of understanding, of coming face to face with this truth. Truth is not a matter of thinking. Perhaps even thoughts are not to blame, but only the thinker who thinks "I think." The Holy Bible says that God created heaven and hell and all sorts of things, and found that they were all good. Only when Adam named this as this and that as that, did trouble start.
Once having named things, we have to add on some adjectives. A man, a woman ... that looks rather-bland and prosaic - so we say "a charming man" and "a lovely woman.” Everything has to be qualified, and then the qualification has to be justified; and so then we start some philosophy. It might not be true at all, right from the beginning.
The Indian sages suggest that we are trapped in a twofold creation: one is God's creation, which is always pure and holy and the other is what we do, which is usually unholy. Unholy means unwholesome, not whole and we can only function in a fragmented way.
These teachers suggest that everyone of the fundamental elements created by God are good - earth, water, fire, air , and space. They are all purifying agents. You bury the dirtiest of filth and it is digested by the soil; you throw a dead body into the water and it is digested by the water; you throw a body into the fire and it is digested by the fire, purified by the fire; similarly, air also purifies it. But man's creation does not seem to be so pure. It is this limited mind that creates all sorts of problems. God created the world and saw that it was good. Adam came along and saw good and evil, pleasure and pain. Can I see through this whole drama? In order to do so, it seems to be vital to sacrifice this “Adam." Unfortunately, ever since the day a scapegoat was offered as a sacrifice - scapegoat is the goat that could not escape, we have used the word sacrifice in the sense of cutting somebody's throat, whether it be a human-being or an animal or anything else. But I believe the word sacrifice really means to make something sacred.
Now this observation without an observer is still observing the bed of latent tendencies, the fountain-source of labeling, and in that observation there is the realisation of this simple truth viz, there is an experiencer that arises with every experience. If that experiencer were not there, if the Adam himself were not there to name these, to distinguish these one from the other and then label them, if this Adam were sacrificed, then this vicious drama would come to an end. Sacrificed, not in the sense of destroyed, because what you call your ego-sense cannot be destroyed! When you wish to destroy it, it comes into being. How can you destroy something which does not exist as an independent entity? On the one hand you affirm that god is omnipresent; on the other hand you affirm that there is an undivine force, that there is evil that has to be destroyed. When the desire to destroy evil arises, that is where the evil is born. Why does the consciousness flow in that direction at all? It is the flow of your consciousness in that direction that is evil; there is no other evil. Why must I destroy something that is not? In that effort to destroy arises that same thing that you wish to destroy. Therefore, to sacrifice is not to destroy, but it is to realise the underlying substratum, which is sacred. It is just as simple a solution as that Swami in the Himalayas suggested: close your eyes, see God; open your eyes, see God. God being everywhere, He is within you, He is everywhere around you.
But there is a problem. You say that God is omnipresent and then the moment you open your eyes, you say, "But she, but he ... ". The mind creates and sustains the labeling process. When this observation without an observer - that is meditation, comes face to face with this problem, it becomes aware of this problem of the ego-sense, which in ignorance assumes an independent existence to itself. But the ego-sense is not a problem. Let it be there, this is God's creation. Who is interested in keeping it? Who is interested in destroying it? The ego-sense seems to assume an existence independent of the totality; that is absurd and therefore ignorant. When this observation or meditation becomes aware of this, there is a tremendous inner trembling; there is no way out of this, this ego-sense cannot be destroyed, and as long as this ego-sense remains and functions as it does, it continues to create the same mischief. What does one do? You have come to the end of your tether. That is when this whole thing freezes, utterly freezes. Life goes on; you cannot suppress life, you cannot destroy life. But there is a total dead end. Then what is called self-surrender happens, as stated in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras:
isvara pranidhanad va (I.23)
How do you attain meditation? How do you attain the state of yoga? How do you realise this undivided consciousness? Isvara is nothing to be frightened of. Isvara is not a god who sits beyond the clouds with a carrot in one hand and a stick in the other, treating all of us like donkeys. Isvara is simply what is, what exists, regardless of what you think of it, regardless of whether you call it good or evil, regardless of whether you call it pleasure or pain, regardless of whether you call it God or Satan. In other words, it is what exists when your thought your ego-sense has stopped labeling - ‘that’ ‘is’, undeniably ‘is’, indestructibly ‘is’, eternally ‘is’. When this ego-sense, which has been the source of all this mischief and misery, faces its own shadow that is ignorance, it is unable to function as it had been functioning before. Neither can this ego-sense commit suicide. And so, when it is frozen in that way, God ‘is’. The ego-sense is frozen in the closest embrace possible with its counterpart, ignorance - I do not know who I am, I do not know what I am, I do now know why I am. That's it. Then there is surrender and what remains is Iswara or God.
Isvara pranidhanad va. You can also enter into a state of perpetual meditation - sahaja samadha, meditation which is continuous and unbroken, when the ego is dynamically surrendered in this manner. This is not meant in the sense of "I do not want to do”, or "I am going to surrender myself and let God look after everything else.” That is a rebellion and that is perhaps the worst form of egotism. In true surrender there is tremendous dynamism. If you want to use the word God, from then on your life is what is known as "God’s Will". Perhaps you do not even know that; you are not even going to say, "Oh , I know I am doing God's will." Only one who is in doubt says so. The real saints never say so. We never heard our master, Swami Sivananda say, "I have realised God, I am enlightened, come on, fall at My Feet.” If you know you are enlightened, why do you want to announce it? There is no need for all that.
One who has really and truly surrendered does not even know that he has surrendered himself. Perhaps he has totally surrendered himself and his life has been sacrificed - meaning the whole personality - if there is an ego sense in that person, even that has been made sacred. Then you may understand what seems to us to be mysterious behaviour in the saints like Swami Sivananda. If they had an ego-sense, even that had been made sacred, had been touched by the divine fire. If they were cross with you, that is exactly what God's will was - take it as a blessing! That is total sacrifice, where there is absolutely nothing that is unsacred in that person's personality. That is isvara pranidhana. When this happens, all the labels have dropped away; there is nothing that is called good, there is nothing that is called evil. Krishna hints at this very beautifully in the 15th chapter of the Gita: "These sages are freed from what is commonly known as pain and pleasure". You are merely calling this pain and calling that pleasure, but they have gone right through this and realised the ground which is one pure experience. In what is called pleasure, there is nerve titillation; in what is called pain, there is another type of nerve titillation. That is the exalted state of the yogi.
Who is the isvara?
klesa karma vipako 'sayair aparamrstah purusa visesa isvarah (I.24)
He is a special type of person, a special type of indwelling consciousness - purusa. Who is the ordinary indwelling consciousness, the jiva, the ego-sense, the experiencer who thinks he is subject to pain and pleasure, success and failure? He is the one who is sunk in unhappiness. But beyond this experiencer of experiences, there is a consciousness, there is an inner intelligence which does not so discriminate. That pure experiencing, that consciousness - let's say, in purely anatomical terms, pure brain sensation or neurological sensation, does not discriminate between pain and pleasure. I am putting it crudely! That consciousness, that intelligence that is aware of this pure experiencing, without labeling one pleasure and the other pain, is purusa visesa. That is an extraordinary indwelling consciousness, indwelling awareness, indwelling presence. If you want to call it the over-soul, you are welcome.
That being, that indwelling presence, that God within is not involved in your actions and their consequent reactions and experiences. That which is beyond dualism and which is therefore the undivided intelligence, that is beyond the ordinary personality, is purusa visesa. It is not involved in your karma, it is not involved in your actions and their reactions which are experiences called pain and pleasure. Purusa visesa isvarah. Or there is another meaning of the word visesa; that is, when you have discarded all the unreal clothes of your own personality - the samskaras, the thoughts, the emotions, all of which made you behave in a certain way, when you have seen through them and they don't exist anymore, when they do not seem to matter anymore, when all these have been shed, then there emerges the true purusa, the true self, that which is the substratum, the ground, the ‘is’. This ‘is’ - all else appeared to be, all else came into being and came to an end. I thought this was pleasure; it arose from a certain experience and it came to an end, but the experiencer is still there. I thought that was painful; it arose, it remained for some time and it vanished, but the experiencer is still there. That which remains when all these have been seen through, that end intelligence, that ground intelligence, that is Isvara.
[X]
It is often made to look as if surrender is a simple thing. Someone comes to hit you and you just put your arms up, wave a white handkerchief and that's it. But surrender to God is not such an easy thing. What do I surrender? Almost always we surrender that which does not belong to us. It is a very easy, lovely pastime. I am a business man and I have made a lot of profit, which means I have already robbed somebody. All that profit is in my pocket; someone comes and points a gun at me and I tell him, "Alright, I will give you everything. It does not even belong to me. It belongs to my customers, you can take it."
There is a very beautiful story in the Yoga Vasistha , where it is said that a king wanted to renounce the worlds Eventually his guru points out: "All that you have so for given up does not even belong to you. The kingdom was there before you were born. The palace, existed before you were born. You were born in the palace.” "My” wife may be an imaginary relationship in more ways than one and even so "my" children. "My" money is not my money, just because it is in my pocket for some time. It was not my money a little while ago, and it may not be my money a little while later. All these things do not belong to me; the sages even point to the body and say, “Even that does not belong to you." It came from the groceries and, depending upon what happens to you after the body is abandoned, it belongs to the vultures, or to the worms of the earth, or to the elements, fire or water, not to “me". If it does belong to me, why do I not take it away when I go? We are always ready and eager to surrender or abandon all these. The king asks, “What belongs to me then?” The guru replies , "Nothing but the foolish idea that something belongs to you. Can you give that up?"
What must I surrender? “I”. What must I surrender to God who is omnipresent? To surrender myself is a beautiful idea, but tell me what my self is, so that I can surrender it. There is a very beautiful saying by Ramana Maharshi - you can only enquire into the truth concerning the I, the thought or the feeling that arises within you: “I”, "I am'", Later, because you do not know what "I am", I add something or other to it, such as "I am the body", “I am a man”, etc. You may be able to enquire or observe who says "I am", what says "I am” and what this “I am" is. But do not try to think what that "I am" is, says Ramana Maharshi, do not try to think what this God within may be, what this jiva may be, what this atma may be, what this self may be. Do not try to think, because thinking is ignorance. It is when you begin to visualise the self that you are creating what later shines as the ego. Neither the self nor the God within is an object of thought. An object of thought is another thought; it cannot be the reality.
So now we have come to understand that these two basic factors involved in surrender to God are unknown to me. I do not know what the self is, I do not know what God is, and I am supposed to surrender myself to God. Therefore, with my own thought I merely construct a thing called the self and another thing called God and I offer this to that. That is wonderful! You can go on for a long time.
isvara pranidhanad va (I.23)
The persistent and tremendously active observation - it is not a passive thing at all, direct observation of what the self is, is itself surrender. In the light of that observation, the self is known not to exist , the self is seen not to exist. The trick that it performs and the games that it plays are all observed, in pure observation in which there is no observer. This inner light sees the shadow play. Watch carefully. When light sees your own shadow, what happens to it?
That is surrender. This shadow is what frightens me, repels me, attracts me; and when I am asked what it is, I say "I don't know". The shadow that frightens me all my life, the shadow that chases me all my life, the shadow which I chase all my life - how can I live without knowing that? Then I say, "Let me have a better look at it. Bring me a flashlight, let me illumine that shadow." What happens at that moment is what is called self-surrender to God. When it is translated in terms of your own psychological shadow, can this inner shadow, in which the notion of an ego arises, also be illumined by this observation without an observer, by this pure awareness? Can that pure awareness observe this inner shadow that says, "I do not know what I am?" What happens then is self-surrender. One can play with it externally, but it is probably a lot more difficult to do this within oneself.
When this observation without an observer, which is meditation, becomes aware of the shadow-play within that which is called oneself, that shadow is illumined and it merges into the totality of the light. There is absolutely no withdrawal from there. The shadow does not argue with you, the shadow does not fight with you, the shadow does not say, "I won't go.” Can that be understood, can such self-surrender be done? It is not the ego that does it. If you look at a shadow, that shadow will never convert itself into a flashlight and jump into your hands saying, "Come on, look at me.” In the same way, as long as the ego is functioning, it will never allow you to see isvara, the totality. And yet, side by side with this shadow, or perhaps as its substratum, there is this inner light, even as you see those shadows on the wall - it is an absurd expression, the shadows are not on the wall, the light is on the wall. Where are the shadows? The shadows appear on the wall. It is only an appearance and not the reality. But because we are using the expression "the shadow is on the wall", I have to use another equally absurd expression, and there is a wall behind the shadow. These are all words, inadequate expressions. In a vaguely similar way, there is this self-ignorance, but as its own substratum underneath it, behind it - use any expression you like, as long as we are able to communicate, it is good, somewhere co existent with this shadow of self-ignorance is the light that shines constantly, the light that is even aware of this ignorance. When that shines, in the light of that inner light, in the light of that inner observation or meditation, the shadow - I do not want to use the expression “the shadow is dispelled", the shadow is illumined, enlightened. That is self-realisation. That shadow itself is enlightened; that shadow itself is sacrificed, in the sense that it is made sacred - if there is a mind - the mind, if there is an ego - the ego, if there is a body - the body, if there are the senses - the senses, all of them are made sacred, instantly. When you illumine that wall, you do not see anything dying, nothing is destroyed, not even the shadow. The shadow is enlightened, illumined, sacrificed, made sacred. If that can be made clear, that is total self-surrender.
tatra niratisayam sarvajna bijam (I.25)
"Tatra" - there; “niratisayam" - wonderful, super-wonder-full; “sarvajna bijam” - omniscient. The seed of omniscience - it is up to you to interpret this, is either in that surrender itself or in God; it is the same thing. when the surrender has happened, only God remains. So in that there is omniscience, when the self is surrendered, what is omniscience? “I thought I had my purse here; does anyone have the power of omniscience to try to find out where I have lost my purse?” - that is not omniscience. Omniscience is really the all knowing, the all, as all. Omniscience is not knowledge of the particulars, by an individual. You do not have to practise yoga in order to acquire knowledge of particulars; you go to school or university for that. Knowledge of the all by the all as the all is omniscience. So does the omniscient God or the omniscient being know - watch carefully now - does the omniscient yogi, or God, or whatever it is, know where I lost my purse? The omniscient being, the omniscient yogi, the omniscient consciousness which is ever present at the same time in me, in the purse, in the money that was in the purse, in the person that took the purse, that omniscience which was in all these all the time, perhaps does not have the idea that the purse was stolen. When I take this from one pocket and put it in another pocket of my shirt, I have no idea at all that it has been stolen. Now, if God is omniscient, omnipotent, and if this purse is transferred from this person's pocket to that person's pocket, God does not feel that it has been stolen. He probably thinks - if he thinks at all, that it has simply changed pockets.
Yet in the third chapter of the Yoga Sutras, we are given detailed instructions of how to know certain phenomena. I hope we will not have time to discuss this very much, because it is useless, waste of time. We are supposed to practise dharana, dhyana and samadhi, and then after a lifelong struggle to practise samadhi, to practise meditation, all I am interested in is knowing what is on the other side of the moon! Patanjali says that if you meditate upon the pole star and enter into samadhi during that period, you will have “tara vyuha jnanam” - (III.27); you will have complete knowledge of astromony. You can go to the Johannesburg planetarium to learn all this for ten cents. Patanjali himself, after having described all these practices at great length, says these are distractions. Why? Because in all these your individuality is very firmly sustained. You become more and more egotistic, you become more and more confirmed in your foolishness, in your ignorance. He says you can do it, but these are wasteful pastimes.
tatra niratisayam sarvajna bijam (I.25)
When you enter into that God, you surrender yourself to God, to this isvara, who is omnipresent and omniscient, who is unaffected by sin and suffering, and who is totally unconditioned; who knows neither pain nor pleasure, but who is the pure experiencing in pain and pleasure; who knows neither virtue nor vice, but who is the pure energy that acts all the time, everywhere; the omnipotent, the cit-shakti , cosmic energy, consciousness, the life breath in every atom in the universe. Whether the atom is supposed to be a saint or a sinner, that is isvara when one vigilantly, dynamically - meaning not passively, not resignedly, not with a sour face, surrenders to one in whom there is this direct observation of the activities of the self, in the light of which all activities are sacrificed, made sacred, enlightened and surrendered. In that surrender there is omniscience. I wonder why Patanjali had to say this? Perhaps for the simple reason that he is indirectly pointing out what happens in the state of yoga; that is, that there is absolutely no doubt. Delusion is gone, ignorance is gone, vascillation is gone. That state of consciousness in which there is no shadow of doubt is surely omniscient. This is not meant in the sense that I can read your thoughts. It is supposed to be bad manners to read another person's letter and the person who reads your thoughts reads your letter before it is written. How can that be moral and glorious? And why do we always consider it a tremendous yogic achievement if one can suddenly become invisible and then become visible somewhere else? Then what is the difference between a robber and a yogi? A robber has to break in to your house, while the yogi simply goes through the wall without making a big hole there! I do not know if these achievements are even moral, leave alone yogic.
tatra niratisayam sarvajna bijam (I.25)
In that state of consciousness there is not a shadow of doubt concerning the non-existence of the self. That shadow which had been cast and mistaken for a personality with an independent existence, is enlightened. The shadow has not gone, but has been enlightened and therefore surrendered, sacrificed, made sacred. It has become one with the infinite. This is something supremely wonderful; there is no wonder greater than this; and in that omniscience, not a desire arises, not a craving arises. The Isvasya Upanishad says: "When the oneness is realised, delusion is gone, sorrow is gone." Fear is gone, anxiety is gone, doubt is gone. These are the things that are bothering us; they will all go. In that state of omniscience one sees that these have no existence, apart from the foolish assumption of an individual that "I" am afraid - afraid follows the assertion "I am", and when this "I am" is knocked down, fear has no resting place. I am anxious; anxiety is based on “I am", a falsity that is assumed to be real; and when that "I am" is seen to be non-existent, anxiety ceases to be, because it has no place to rest.
purvesam api guruh kalena 'navacchedat (I.26)
This light that shines in self-surrender, this inner light that shines in total sacrifice of the self, is the enlightening experience - and this enlightening experience itself is the guru. The word "guru" can be easily translated as follows: the word has two syllables, gu-ru; ”gu" is nothing more than the gloom of ignorance, self-ignorance; "ru" is nothing other than the remover. That which removes the darkness of ignorance, the shadow of ignorance, is "gu”. You can do what you like with that shadow on the wall, but it will not go. You can use your vacuum cleaner, you can wipe it with soap and every type of detergent, you can scrape the plaster off the wall, but the shadow will still be there. The only thing that will remove that shadow is light; even the smallest candle-light will remove it. Therefore the guru is that enlightening experience. This enlightening experience has been the same enlightening experience of the seekers, the students of yoga, from time immemorial - “purvesam api guruh”. If you can conceive of one student of yoga one thousand million years ago, even he attained the same enlightening experience. Was there the same guru? You can interpret this Sutra as you like , there is no objection. "Kalena 'navacchedat" - the guru is not conditioned by time; why is it so? Because this inner light is not a product of thought. Time is a product of thought, time is thought, time is a concept of the mind, and so that which is beyond time is also necessarily beyond thought. That which is beyond thought is timeless. This is true even of your sleep. If you go to bed and sleep, when you wake up you feel that you just went to bed, even though eight hours have passed. When thought is suspended, time is also suspended; when thought ceases to be, time ceases to be; when time ceases to be, thought ceases to be - the two are inter-related. This enlightening experience, being beyond thought, is also beyond time.
purvesam api guruh kalena 'navacchedat (I.26)
Time has no relevance to this enlightening experience which is the guru. And so, if one enters into the spirit of this whole argument, suddenly it becomes clear that guru, God and what was considered self seem to be the same. Each of these three words: isvara - God, guru and atma - self, apparently have a meaning of its own. However, they all denote the one essential indivisible consciousness, indivisible truth; the apparent diversity indicated by the different words is fictitious. When you go to what is called a human guru, a wise guru, like our master Swami Sivananda, or Ramana Maharshi, He would probably do exactly what these words imply. Perhaps He would simply indicate that what you have so far considered to be yourself and what you have so for considered to be God, are one and the same - and the guru illumines that oneness. He would probably teach you to spell and pronounce the word guru: "Gee, you are you! " G-U-R-U. That's all. It's simple, isn't it?
purvesam api guruh kalena 'navacchedat (I.26)
That same enlightening experience comes down, uninterrupted by time, and therefore beyond time. It is not bound by time, it is not limited by time; it is eternal, even according to the tradition that emphasises the need for a human guru. Even that tradition is emphatic that it is that light which appears to the human eyes as a human person. What was Swami Sivananda? To us He was a radiant personality, who was able to enlighten our intelligence and lighten our burden, who was able to shine the light of His wisdom on the dark corners of our own ignorance and craving, in whose presence we enjoyed peace, happiness, joy and inexpressible delight. All these are the inseparable characteristics of this enlightening experience which appears in front of us, but being human, I super-impose humanness on that enlightening experience. That which is in front of me, that which listens, that which smiles, that which laughs, that which cries, that which walks in front of us, was this enlightening experience. Being human and endowed with only human faculties, the human vision perceived only the human body, the human ears heard only the human voice. It was my limitation and not his; he was not responsible for that. "Kalena 'navacchedat” - that which is not bound to time or by time, that which is beyond concepts and percepts, that which is beyond description, that is the truth, that is the guru. If he appeared to have taken birth and to have passed on, that is an unreal super-imposition, which on account of my ignorance I super-impose upon this eternal light that appeared to us as Swami Sivananda. That light is unborn and undying, unconcerned about time.
tasya vacakah pranavah (I.27)
This isvora, this God is indicated by "om”. This is rather important to understand. That being eternal, that being omnipresent and infinite, it does not need a name; so "om" is not the name of God, even though we can say so. We say "om" is the name of God, we say Siva is the name of God, we say Krishna is the name ot God. I am not contradicting that. But it does not need a name. I do not say that “om” is not the name of God or that Krishna is not the name of God. I am merely suggesting that it does not need a name. Why is it so? Because it is omnipresent and eternal. That which is everywhere does not need to be called anything - it is there already. "Vacakah" is very difficult to translate. It is a kind of verbal indicator. If you have to say what it is, say "om”. That is what the Sutra means. This word "om" is extremely interesting. Even now, in certain parts of South India, as also in some parts of Ceylon where Tamil is spoken, the word “om" means just "yes", nothing more. "Om" is used in some of the Upanishads in that sense: yes, assent, affirmation. So what is the name of that omnipresent God? “Yes". When you say “no", your ego is born, and when you say "never”, it is well established! That's beautiful. I hope you will go home and think of it. "Om" is the verbal indicator of God. Om means "yes" and that “yes" is the very ‘yes-sence” of surrender, that "yes" is the very essence of surrender!