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‌CHAPTER 1

17 October 1970 am in Poona, India

[Note: This is a translation from the Hindi Neo-Yoga Sutras, which is in the process of being edited. It is for research only.]

My Beloved Ones,

Last year, in a world conference of biologists, the president of the British Biological Association, Badkun(?), gave a statement. I want to begin today’s talk with that statement. He said a very significant thing in that statement. He said that the evolution of human life is not the addition of anything new to it, but the falling down of some old hindrances. In the evolution of man, nothing gets added, only what is hidden in man becomes manifest. Only the hindrances, in between, get put aside. If you compare man and animal, the man has nothing more than the animal; rather he has less. The hindrances that animals have, have fallen off in the man and what is dormant in animals has manifested in the man.

Between a seed and its flower, the flower does not have anything more than the seed, rather it has less. It appears very contradictory but this is the truth. The hindrances that were in the seed, have dropped and the flower has manifested.

Compared to the animals, the plants have more hindrances in them. If they fall away, the plants will become animals. If the hindrances of animals fall away, the animals will become man. If the hindrances of man drop, then whatever is left, is called God. If all hindrances drop, all that is dormant becomes manifest completely, then whatever name we want to give to that energy soul, God or anything or even if we do not want to give it a name, that will do. Man has yet hindrances in him and hence there is possibility of his growth. Badkun has nothing to do with spirituality but his statement is exactly like that; that twenty five centuries ago Buddha gave after his enlightenment.

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The day Buddha was enlightened, people asked him,“What have you attained?” Buddha said, “I have attained nothing, what was already within me has become manifest, has become known to me. I have attained nothing, what I was already and I was asleep to it I have awakened to it.” Buddha also said,“I want to say to you even this that there was ignorance and it is lost, there was nonsense and it is lost and what I have attained, now I can say that I already had it, only I was unaware of it.

There is no difference in the statements of Badkun and Buddha. But Badkun’s statement is given in reference to species that are behind man, and Buddha’s statement has been given in reference to the Individual who has gone ahead of man. The process of meditation does not take you to some new world it only introduces you to the world where you have been for lives upon lives. The process of meditation does not add anything to you, it only takes away what is wrong; cuts it away, sheds it off.

Someone was saying to a sculptor that you have made this statue very beautiful. The sculptor said, “I have not made it. I was only passing through that way and the statue in this stone called me. I have only cut away the unwanted parts of the stone that were there and the statue has appeared. I have not added anything, I have only lessened something.

If one cuts away the wrong which is in man, becomes what is hidden in him manifests. God is nothing different from to man. It is the name of the energy hidden in the man. But as we are, there is a lot of clay mixed with the gold. If the clay is removed, the gold becomes manifest.

So about meditation, the first thing that I have to say to you is that what you will be in the last moments of your growth in meditation, that you already are, here and now. Meditation will not add anything to you but it will remove some things. It will cut away some wrong from you. It will destroy somethings that are not wanted and what is significant, that will get the opportunity to manifest totally. Nothing new will be added, only old hindrances will be dropped. The experiments that we are going to do in these four days in order to drop these hindrances, they are very vital, very alive experiments. And all those who will be ready to do it honestly, for them results are certain to happen. It will be good to understand what I mean by the word “honesty”.

What I mean by “honesty” is that those who will really experiment; for them the result is certain. Only those will have no results who would not do it. And the results cannot be expected of them either. I am not asking of you any other ability. No, no other qualification is needed. Only one qualification is required, that what I am going to say to you during these four days, you will do it. And what I am going to say for you to do, it is not difficult, it is simple. Even small children can do it. Hence you need not think that it may be so difficult that you are unable to do it. No, if there will be any difficulty, that can be only in being insincere to yourself, it cannot be in the technique itself. Even a small child who understands language can do it. So I explain to you the experiment. It’s very simple.

All significant things are simple. It is the insignificant things that are complex and difficult. All truths are simple, it is the untruth that is complex.

But we are strange people! If something seems very complex and difficult we think it must be some very profound truth, some very deep truth. It is not so. All truths of life are as simple as two and two make four. Only untruths are difficult. The untruth has to be difficult, because if it is simple it will be caught that it is untrue. The untruth has to move into circles and through cunningness so that

it cannot be found to be untruth. Truth stands just straight and naked. As it is, so it is. There’s no need for it to hide or change faces. This is why all the difficult things that have been said in the world are generally untruths. All the true things that have been said in the world, are generally simple and straightforward. Be it Upanishads, be it Geeta, be it Koran, be it Bible or be it the words of Buddha or Mahavira, they are simple like two and two making four.

This experiment that I am to tell you is very simple. It brings amazing results. In this experiment there are four stages of ten minutes each. In the first three stages, you are to do something and in the fourth stage, you do not have to do anything. You have only to wait for God’s energy to do something. In the first stage, the experiment involves ten minutes of fast breathing. For ten minutes you have to breathe in such a manner as a blacksmith’s bellows blows. You have to breathe as fast as you can, the breathing has to hit as deeply as possible. Breathing has to be used like bellows. Firstly, the life-energy dormant within us awakens when breathing hits hard. Perhaps you may not be knowing that in our bodies not only in our body, the energy which is dormant in all forms of life, is nothing but a form of electricity. The energy with which our bodies are functioning is also a form of electricity. This organic electricity is the life-energy. The more oxygen this electricity gets, the more intensely it awakens. This is why people have died without oxygen, but even if one is just on the verge of death and oxygen is given to him he can be kept alive for some time at least.

In these ten minutes, you have to inhale with such force that all the air inside your body goes out and fresh air of the outside goes in. The proportion of oxygen in your body has to be changed. It changes on its own. And the hit of the breathing has to be so forceful that energy which is asleep in the body starts awakening. Within five minutes of this experiment, in the bodies of at least sixty percent people vibrations will begin. You will feel it very clearly that something has begun vibrating and rising upwards. Yoga has called it Kundalini. If we ask science it will call it body-electricity. It will say this is the electricity of body.

There is a man in America with whose body-electricity very amazing experiments have been done. His body electricity is more than what is usual. He did some special experiments on breathing and then he took a five watt bulb in his hand which became lit. In Sweden, there is one woman still alive, no one can touch her. She could not be married because in touching her, one gets the same shock as one gets from the electricity. These few people have specially extra electricity in their bodies and there may be some chemical differences, hence the results are so strong. But there is electricity in everyone’s body. Now on the very first day you will see the results on sixty percent people. It can happen to hundred percent people there is no reason why it cannot. But forty percent people, generally, do not participate and keep standing behind. This has been my observation and therefore I am talking of sixty percent. But I will say to each of you to be amongst the sixty percent and not amongst forty percent.

Only after five minutes, you will feel something in your body has begun vibrating and rising up. You will feel that the body is getting filled with a new energy. By the time you have completed ten minutes of this experiment, you will be in an electrified state. The whole body will become a flow of energy. Naturally it will have its effects. When there will be forceful vibrations in the body, the body will start shaking, moving, dancing.

The second stage of the experiment is also of ten minutes in which one has to allow the body totally to shake, dance or do anything that it wants to do. Its results are cathartic. We have suppressed

our bodies in a thousand and one ways. We have also suppressed our minds in many many ways. The person who wants to go in meditation, has first to be free of these suppressions. We have suppressed anger. We have suppressed desires. We have suppressed worries. There are thousand and one things we have suppressed in our minds. When we wanted to weep, we have not wept; when we wanted to laugh, we have not laughed; when we wanted to shout, we have not shouted; when we wanted to dance, we have not danced. All that we have kept suppressed. There are thousand and one kinds of suppressions in the mind as well as in the body. Unless those repressions are dropped, mind cannot be light enough to be in meditation. Hence in the second ten minutes, you have to cooperate fully with the body and allow it total freedom. If the body wants to dance, allow it to dance totally; if the body wants to shout, allow it to shout totally; if the body wants to cry, allow it to cry totally. Whatever the body wants to do – only with your body, not with others’ bodies - whatever it wants to do, allow it total freedom and cooperation.

About sixty percent people will suddenly find a lot happening within themselves. To most of the people it will happen on its own, no problem for them; but the friends who feel that nothing is happening to them on its own, it is only because they are so strong in their suppressions that the layer in between is not allowing them to reach inside. I will say to them not to bother about it. It is not happening to them, even then whatever they can do, they should do for the ten minutes. If they can manage to dance, they should keep dancing. It is not a question of any method, rhythm or technique. If they can shout, they should remain shouting. Tomorrow itself, they will find that there is a breakthrough and from there has started to come out all bitterness spontaneously. The effects of these ten minutes are very deep. After these ten minutes of dancing, shanting, shaking, laughing you will become so light as perhaps you have never been before in your life.

The electricity that awakens in your body in the first stage will help you in dancing, shouting, crying and laughing. You also have to cooperate from your side and whatever comes from within has to be totally allowed to happen. If your hands are shaking even a little bit, you make them shake totally so that whatever impulses are suppressed in them get released, catharted. Through this experiment so much can happen in these four days which cannot happen even in four years through any other common experiment.

After the second stage your body will feel weightless, as if it has become absolutely light, as if it can fly. Twofold things will be felt. After the first stage, the body will be felt to be full of energy. After the second stage, energy will be full there but the body would have become weightless and light. After the second stage, you will clearly feel it that there is no body but only an energy.

In this second stage, an amazing phenomenon will be experienced by those who have really been total with the experiment and that is, for the first time they will start feeling that body is separate and I am separate. If you let go of your body totally, your identity [with the body] will be broken. This can happen today. The only condition is that you cooperate with it totally, that you prevent nothing on your part. You are not to think that when you will dance or shout what will someone else say. Whatever is happening from inside you, you let it happen, you do not worry about it. And then in this ten minutes, what you have always heard and read that body and you are separate will become part of your experience. You will see the dancing body separate from you, you will become a witness that the body is weeping. You will be able to see very clearly that someone else is laughing and I am witnessing. This realization is a necessary door for taking one deep into meditation. Without this, no one can be in meditation.

In the third stage when this experience would have happened in the second stage that the body is separate and I am separate, there will arise a natural question then as to who am I? Up til now I thought that I was the body, I was the breathing, now body and breathing are appearing separate from me – then who am I? In this third stage we will ask within ourselves - who am I?

In the first ten minutes fast and wild breathing, in the second ten minutes absolute cooperation with the body, and in the third ten minutes, the intense query: ‘Who am I?’ You have to ask within yourselves so vigorously that from toe to head, only one question starts echoing:‘Who am I?’ And the waves of electricity that must have been awakened by now, will catch your question and will start echoing in the vibrations of the whole body -’ who am I?’ You have to ask so quickly that there is no space between two ’who am I?’s. You have to ask it with such force that there is no time, energy or convenience left for thinking anything else. So, for ten minutes only one question remains. After five minutes of intense questioning inside, to many friends it would have taken over loudly on the outside. There is nothing to be worried about it.

In the beginning, ‘who am I?’ is to be asked within. If it starts coming outside, as a shouting, let it come out. Nothing to worry about. In thirty minutes your body will be tired, your vitality will be tired, your mind-energy will be tired. These three stages will make the three forces tired. And in the thirty minutes you have to reach to such a climax of tension, you have to do all this in thirty minutes so vigorously that now even if you want to shout, you would not be able to, you would remain silent. If you go on asking ‘who am I?’ slowly like a dead man then that momentum would not be created which is essential. The water has to be boiled to 100 degrees to evaporate into vapor. It does not evaporate at 98 degrees, nor at 99 degrees. You cannot say to God that just for one degree why this stubbornness. It has come to 99 degrees, please make it vapor, it is a matter of only one degree. It has come upto 99 degrees, why are you being so miserly just for one degree? But such things make no difference. The water will evaporate into vapor only at 100 degrees. If you stop even at 99 degrees, evaporating into vapor is a far away thing, the water will gradually become cold again.

Exactly like this, in each individual there is a point of climax from where the upward movement of life energies begins, from where the revolution begins, from where the mutation begins. If you do not reach to that 100 degrees point, where man dissolves and God begins, you will fall back to zero and the whole effort will be wasted. It will have no meaning. Hence I will ask you that whatever I am saying, do it honestly and see. See what it can do. Experiment for four days and see it for yourself. Those who will experiment honestly, will attain to trust. Trust is not required beforehand. You need not believe that what I am saying will surely happen. You accept only this much that this man is saying something, let us experiment and see. If something happens, fine, if nothing happens, know that it was wrong. But if you did, the happening is as certain as the water evaporating at 100 degrees. Nobody needs to believe in it; water does not boil by any belief; you may be a non-believer, an atheist, it makes no difference; you boil the water and it will turn into vapor at 100 degrees.

The meditation I am talking about, is totally a scientific phenomenon. You may be an atheist, you may be a non-believer, you may be denying soul, you may be denying religion – no problem, there is no need to believe anything. You experiment and you will find inner changes happening through that experiment.

Trust is the outcome of meditation, not a pre-requirement to it.

Let me say a few things more before you stand up for the experiment. Those who may be sick or

weak, they are to do the experiment sitting, all the rest will do the experiment standing. Standing, the results are quicker, sitting, the results are not that quick. All will stand up leaving enough space around. There is plenty of space here. So that if you are dancing, you do not collide with anybody. But if one may collide, do not be bothered by it.

There are two more things. Before the experiment begins, I will ask you to close your eyes and they are to remain closed for forty minutes. This will be your first firm resolve. This has to be fulfilled honestly. Even if you open the eyes once, you lose. The energy that would have accumulated within you, will be wasted. The Major part of our inner energy dissipates through our eyes. Hence eyes have to be kept completely closed for forty minutes. Until not give the suggestion, you are not to open your eyes. There will be shouting, crying, dancing around you and within you, you need not bother. There may arise a desire to look, because the child within us does not die so soon. This inside child does not die as fast as one’s body changes; he may desire to know what the next man is doing. For that purpose, I have called for a film crew. It will be ready today only, so we will show it at night and you can see completely who is doing what. So your curiosity will be satisfied. Hence you will not worry right now as to who is doing what. That you will be able to see in the film.

Onlookers are not allowed to be here. If someone is here only to see, he should go outside the campus, or he may go far in the back, but no one will be here as a onlooker. Anyone who is not participating in the meditation experiment, has to leave. His presence will be a disturbance to all our friends. He has to leave. When you are meditating, the whole atmosphere is charged, and even one non-participant standing in the middle harms and breaks the chain of energy. Such a person is not needed here. Hence those who do not want to participate, will not stand here, they will leave quietly. Remove all the chairs from here, because someone may stumble on them and fall over. You get off the chairs and put them away.

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