< Previous | Contents | Next >
CHAPTER 4
19 October 1970 pm 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,
I said to you in one sutra that life is energy and there are two dimensions of this energy – existence and nonexistence. Then I said to you in another sutra that existence also has two dimensions – unconscious and conscious. Now the seventh sutra... consciousness also has dimensions – self conscious and self unconscious; a consciousness that is aware of its being and a consciousness that is not aware of its being.
If we think of life as an immense tree, the life energy of the tree is one. Then the tree divides into two branches: existence and non existence. We have left out nonexistence, we have not discussed it, because it has no concern with yoga. Then existence also branches into two: conscious and unconscious. We have also left the unconscious out of the discussion because this too has no concern with you. Consciousness also branches into two; self conscious, and self unconscious. It is very important to understand the difference between the two in this seventh sutra. What I have said up to now was preparatory for the understanding of this seventh sutra on which I will talk to you today. From this sutra the process of yoga’s discipline begins. Hence it is helpful to understand this sutra rightly.
There are plants, birds, animals; they are all conscious but they do not have the awareness of their consciousness. They are conscious and yet unconscious. They are there, life is there, consciousness is there, but they are not aware of their being. Then there is man, he too is the same as the animals, birds and plants but he is aware of his being. One more new dimension gets added to his consciousness, that he is self conscious too. He also knows that he is conscious. Only
being conscious is not enough to be a man. This is a condition to be a man, that one is aware that one is conscious. This is the only difference between man and animal. Animals are also conscious but not aware of their consciousness.
If you try to remember your past you will only be able to remember upto the age of four or five years. Before that everything is dark for you. Nothing is remembered before the age of four. Certainly you were there up to the age of four also, but it seems you were not self conscious. This is why small children and animals seem to have a similar simplicity. There is no tension. Naturalness is seen in small children, in birds and in plants and trees. Perhaps up to the age four we also were not conscious that we are.
Then every day seven to eight hours are spent in sleep, in unconsciousness. If a man lives for sixty years, he sleeps away twenty years. So twenty years of life go in unconsciousness; there too you are not conscious. So many times you have slept, but can you tell how sleep comes, when it comes, and what it is? You cannot tell. As long as you keep awake at night, till then the sleep has not come and when it comes, you are already unconscious. Sleep always finds you unconscious. You are unconscious until the moment sleep leaves you. When in the morning sleep leaves you, consciousness comes.
When you say, “I slept for eight hours in the night,” it does not mean that you are aware that you slept for eight hours. It only means that there is a gap of eight hours between the last moment when you were awake and the moment when you woke up again in the morning. This is how you know, otherwise in sleep you have gone back to the world of animals and plants. During the rest of the day when you think you are full of consciousness, even then you are full of consciousness only sometimes. One day just stand by and watch the people passing on the road – you will feel that many of them are walking in sleep. Someone is talking to someone who is not there, someone is gesturing with his hands, someone is moving his lips. To whom are they talking? They are in some dream. Are they awake? Nobody seems to be there. With whom is this talk going on then? If you can abserve yourself, you will find that the whole time you are not aware. Awareness comes only sometimes. Suppose someone puts a knife on your chest, in those moments there is self awareness in you. In those moments you are full of awareness, otherwise not.
Try to understand with some examples. These are the roofs of these two houses. If a one foot wide wooden board is put across the roof of both the houses and you are asked to pass over it, perhaps none of you will be ready to walk over it. If the same wooden board is put on the ground and you are asked to pass over it, all of you – the old, the children, the women – all will pass over it and perhaps none will fall. The wooden board is the same, you are the same, then why do you refuse to walk over it when it is put across the roofs? And so many people walked over it when it was on the ground and no one had fallen, so where is the possibility of falling off it now? But no, what is the real difficulty? The difficulty is somewhere else. The difficulty is that while walking over it on the ground there is no need to be aware. You can walk in unawareness. But to pass over the roofs you will have to be aware. We know we have no awareness, hence the fear of falling which may kill us. On the ground we are not going to be killed even if we fall off.
Sometimes in moments of danger there is awareness; the rest of the time we are asleep. When death is close by, there is awareness. Normally we are not aware. That is why we do not like to change our habits because one has to become aware if habits are changed. Old habits do not need your awareness.
Look at a man, how he takes out the cigarette packet from his pocket, puts a cigarette in his lips and lights it with the match. If you watch with attention, you will find that he is completely unaware and doing all these things almost in sleep. He has no idea when he took the cigarette packet out, when he lit the cigarette and when he began puffing in and out.
If the world is full of enough consciousness, it will be difficult to find such stupid people who do the work of inhaling and exhaling smoke for hours. And if you ask someone for a cigarette he will say, I am not so mad that I inhale and exhale smoke. Not only that they are inhaling and exhaling smoke; the whole world protests, explains that it is harmful, it causes sickness, it will shorten your life. But they are so unconscious, their ears do not hear it.
America recently decided that on each cigarette packet should be written in red in capital letters: ‘This is harmful to health.’ The shopkeepers who sold cigarettes, the owners of the companies, the manufacturers, all raised so much hue and cry that they would run into a loss of billions. When I read all this, I said that these cigarette manufacturers do not know that people are so unconscious. How many days do they think they will read this warning written in red ink? And the same happened. For six months the sale of cigarettes decreased, but after six months it went back to the same level as before. And the warning is written on the packet in red... but the reader has to be there to read it. Once or twice someone reads it and then falls asleep again. That cigarette packet arrives, the warning is written on it but no one reads it. The sale of cigarettes has become normal again.
If it is written on something in red ink that it is poison, it is dangerous to drink it, will someone with consciousness drink it? It’s difficult. It is clear what poison is. It is clear about everything that is bad. How many times have you decided that now you won’t be possessed by anger! How many times have you decided? How many times have you not been able to fulfill it? Not even once has it been fulfilled, because then there would have been no need to decide again.
I was a guest in a house. The old man of the house told me that he took a vow of celibacy thrice. I was amazed. How could he take the vow of celibacy thrice? I asked him why he did not take it a fourth time. The old man said, “By taking it three times I experienced that it cannot be fulfilled and hence I did not take the vow a fourth time”. It was not fulfilled the third time.
Everyday you get angry, everyday you take oath, and then next day, what happens when anger comes? Then there is not even a trace of oath left because there is no trace of you yourself as to where you are. One who had taken the oath is asleep. In the evening one man goes to sleep with the determination that he has to wake up at 4 o’clock the next day. The alarm bell rings in the morning and this same man turns over in his bed and says, “Leave it. I will do it from tomorrow.” The same man gets up at seven o’clock and asks, “How did it happen? I had taken a certain oath to get up at four o’clock.” But the one who had taken the oath is asleep. In the morning at seven o’clock he may again take the oath, but thew next day at four o’clock he will again miss it. Our whole life passes in this kind of sleepiness. If we look at our acts, we would not be able to say that we did them because if we were the doer, many of them could not possibly have been done.
All the courts of the world know that hundreds of criminals have stated in the courts, “I have not committed this murder,” or “I have not done this theft.” But the judges take it as a lie, the court takes it as a lie because there are witnesses, there is evidence, that the crime has happened. But I say to you that those criminals are not telling lies. When they stole, at that moment they were not in their
senses. When they murdered, they were not in their senses. It is very difficult to commit a murder consciously. It is very difficult to steal consciously. According to me and according to yoga, a sin is that act of doing for which unconsciousness is a must. Sin means such an act which cannot be done without being unconscious. When you are unconscious then only you can sin. It is a compulsory condition.
Hence when we say to someone that he has acted like an animal, it does not mean that animals do such things. No animal does acts like man. No, acting like an animal has a very different meaning. It means just as the animals are self unconscious, as they are unaware of themselves, similarly man is also unaware of himself. It is in this sense, that the phrase ‘animal-like act’ is used. Otherwise no dog has ever acted like Hitler, nor any snake has ever behaved like a Genghis Khan. Has any animal done such bad things as the animal called man has done? No, no animal ever has. ‘Animal-like’ means only one thing – that a man is doing something in self forgetfulness; that he is unconscious. That is why the courts do not agree to penalize small children who are below seven years like criminals because we assume that a child is not conscious yet. But can the court guarantee that a seventy year old man has become conscious? No, even a seventy year old man does not become conscious, we just presume that he has become. Because if we watch the actions of a seventy year old man, we will know that he too walks in his sleep in an unconscious state. In this life of seventy years, if someone is conscious for even seven minutes, this too is a high figure. Even seven minutes are too much. If in a man’s lifetime of seventy years, there are even a few moments of consciousness, it is enough to make that man a Mahavira, a Buddha, a Krishna. But even a few moments are not there. We go on living unconsciously.
But I told you that ‘man’ begins only on that day when self consciousness begins. So, we are only potentialities to become man, we are not man; we are only opportunities to become man, we are not man. It is only the possibility in the seed form that we can become self conscious, but we have not become. This is why it has always been our difficulty that if there is a man like Buddha or Mahavira, how are we to call him ‘man’ – we call him Bhagwan. The whole reason for calling him Bhagwan is that we call ourselves man whereas we are not man in the right sense. So now where to place these people? If we call them man, we will have to place them with us. So we find a new category: Bhagwan. It would be better if we call them man and call ourselves sub-human. We are on the way to become man, we have not yet become man. That will be right – and this is true. But even in our lives sometimes we become conscious for a few moments. Those moments alone are the moments of bliss in our lives, because they give us a glimpse of our being; as if of a flash of lightning.
Yoga divides consciousness into two parts: self conscious and self unconscious. Those who are unconscious from the point of view of having a soul are self unconscious, all right, but even we who ought to be self conscious are animals in many ways – trees and stones in many ways. A small proportion of us have become man; a very small portion. It is like putting a piece of ice in the water and only one tenth of it sticks out of the water, its nine parts remain drowned. We are like this. Our nine parts are drowned at the bottom, in the dark. Only one small part has come to the surface and become man.
Hence man has tremendous restlessness. Animals are not restless. No animal commits suicide. The day any animal commits suicide, know it well that that species will not remain animal for too long, it has already started becoming man. No animal commits suicide. That much anxiety does not get created that suicide becomes necessary. No animal laughs except man. If on the way you come across a buffalo laughing, you will never pass by that way again.
No animal laughs. What is the matter? No animal is so unhappy that he needs laughter to forget the unhappiness. Laughter is an arrangement to forget unhappiness.
That is why the more unhappiness increases in the world, the more types of recreation have to be invented. There is cinema, television, radio, dance, song. When they are all finished, man says, bring something more, because now he is much more bored. At present fifty percent energy of the whole world is busy only in providing means of recreation for humanity. And in this age those who are able to provide recreation for human beings have become the most important – like actors. There is no other reason for their becoming important except that they are able to provide recreation for you sometimes. You are so miserable that if someone can provide you with a little recreation, he becomes important.
No animal laughs, because an animal is not so miserable that he needs laughter. Laughter is a safety valve – just as any steam mechanism is provided with safety valves so that if steam becomes excessive the valve gives way to release the steam. Otherwise lives of everyone around will be in danger. So, laughter is a safety valve for man. When trouble gathers within, the laughter is a means to be free of it. This is why no animal laughs because there is not so much tension, because there is not so much anxiety, so much worry.
What is the anxiety of man?
Man’s anxiety is that a part of him has become self conscious and the remaining part is lying in unconsciousness. His difficulty is the same as it would have been for Narsimhavatar, Hindu’s man- lion incarnation of god whose body was half animal and half man. The difficulty in which a man-lion incarnation might have been is the same difficulty that we are all in. People ask me how such a thing as a man-lion incarnation is possible. I tell them that all human beings are man-lion incarnations. And if the division was half man, half lion, then also some sort of balance would have happened. But a very tiny part of the head – not even the complete head – has become man; the other part is still of animal. The whole of life is animal, of unconsciousness, just a little corner of the intellect has become conscious. It is like an enormous area being in darkness, and a tiny lamp burning in a corner around which we pass our lives. That tiny lamp also does not burn all the time, it is extinguished during sleep. And if there is someone whose lamp is not extinguished, then he extinguishes it by drinking alcohol, or through a thousand and one other intoxications. This is the reason one feels relief in drinking alcohol because the part that was causing a little restlessness because it had become man, gets also thown back below man. Thus the whole piece of ice is drowned in the water. Now you have moved back to the world of animals – now there is nothing to worry about. This is why sleep gives you relief; in sleep you get drowned one hundred per cent. This is why you get up fresh in the morning. You are just coming back from the world of the animal, where there was no anxiety, where there was no difficulty. Now again man’s world will begin. Twenty four hours this goes on happening.
So, when I say that man is self conscious all that I mean is that there is a possibility of becoming self conscious. With man, a small part has become self conscious. Yoga says if the whole of man becomes self conscious, he attains to meditation. If all his dark corners become full of light, man attains to Samadhi, enlightenment.
Self-knowledge will happen only when the entire house of your life becomes full of light. A little wick of a lamp is not going to do, the whole house needs the light of the sun so that its each and every
corner becomes full of light. Otherwise you will always remain broken in two parts. The part that is full of light will decide that it will not let any snake come into the house, but what will it do about those dark parts where snakes are already living? And sooner or later when the snakes come out in the open in the lamp light, you will shout loudly that your vow has been broken, the oath that you had taken not to let any snake into the house has been broken.
When you swear that now you will not get angry again, you are swearing with that small part which is illuminated. You are not bothered about the nine parts that are still dark, that are drowned in darkness, where anger is even now brewing, getting ready. When you are taking an oath, even at that time in some corner in you, anger is brewing and your whole inner part must be feeling surprised at your vow. It is like a peon sitting outside a house who has no knowledge of the whole house but who goes on making decisions about the whole house. He has no idea at all of what is going on inside. In the dark parts, all the preparations are going on. You have taken an oath of celibacy but your sex centers are all drowned in darkness, no ray of your intelligence has reached up to them. So you have decided in a corner of your head that you are taking an oath of celibacy but your sex centers know nothing of this oath, they go on continuing their work. Sex will arise from there and it will overpower your intelligence because it is nine times stronger. Then you will weep and cry, take an oath again but will never understand that swearing an oath is useless. The real question is not that you take oaths from this small part, the real question is that you expand this small part so that your whole being becomes conscious. Then you will not need to take oaths.
This is why I say to you that Yoga does not ask anyone to take oaths, to take vows. Except ignorant and stupid persons, no one has taken vows in the world. There is no sense in vows. The real issue is something else. The real issue is that if your whole being becomes illuminated, then you will not need to take vows. But we go on taking vows! Against whom do you take vows? You take vows against your own dark parts, and you have no access at all to those dark parts. You cannot reach there. All your decisions remain in a corner of your skull. Even the whole skull is not illuminated.
Now scientists agree with this vision of Yoga that not even the whole brain of man is conscious. Now science supports it. This is why I am repeating again and again that Yoga is science, because the more present day science goes on discovering, the more the experiences and the insights of Yoga go on getting proved. Now scientists also say that half of man’s brain is lying inactive; no work happens there, it is lying unused. This too is not about all – it is about those who work the most with the brain. Those who work less with the brain, three quarters of their brain is lying unused, only one quarter of it is used. Even the most talented man uses only half his brain; half remains unused. In the case of the majority, even half of the brain is not in use, just one part of the half. And this quarter or half, this too is not used at it fullest capacity. Even the most talented person uses only fifteen percent of his capacity, the remaining eighty-five percent is unused. But leave that half, I am not talking about that. Of the part which is active, only fifteen percent of it is being used.
Now scientific data, evidence, research, all support the fact that only a tiny part of the human mind is active. And this part generally after eighteen years of age also becomes silent, does not work. Hence you have only as much intelligence as you have developed up to the age eighteen. There is no need to be under this illusion that when you become eighty years of age you may have more intelligence. There are very few people who develop their intelligence after eighteen years. Most of the people go on accumulating experience through the intelligence they had developed up to the age eighteen. The collection of experiences grow but not the intelligence. People go on experiencing
through the limitation of that much intelligence. So an eighty year old man has many experiences, but his intelligence remains the same as when he was eighteen.
In the last world war, there has been an amazing experience in America. America can be said to be the most educated, the most developed country on the earth and that it uses intelligence more than any other country. In the last world war it was a great surprise when they made arrangements to recruit soldiers after measuring their intelligence. The results derived from the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of soldiers were that none of those soldiers had the mental age of more than thirteen years. Their average intelligence was that of thirteen years of age – as if everything had stopped for them at the age thirteen. Yoga has been saying it for very long that the total mind of man is not illuminated. If the complete mind of man becomes illuminated, amazing things start happening, what you call supernatural powers. Yoga calls them functions of those parts of the mind which are inactive – nothing more than that.
For this also, now scientific evidences are gradually becoming available. In America there is a man called Ted Cerio. Some of those parts of the mind are active in him which generally are inactive. Now there are instruments to investigate which part of the mind is functioning. Different parts of mind function for different things. When you read, one part of the mind functions; when you weep, another part functions. When you laugh, yet another part functions. Similarily there are different parts activated when you sing a song or when you the play the veena or when you love. Even up to the extent that when you speak the Hindi language, it is another part that functions, and when you speak Marathi it is another part and yet another when you speak English. There are hundreds of thousands of centers in the brain which function for different things.
So some parts of Ted Cerio’s mind are functioning which generally do not function. If he closes his eyes in America and is asked what is happening here in Poona in the grounds of Sanghavi’s factory tonight, he will go on sitting with closed eyes for some fifteen minutes, then he will open his eyes – he will not tell, he will only open his eyes and a camera will take a photograph of his eye and a picture of this gathering will be caught on the camera. Now if this was described in some two thousand year old book, we would say it was gossip. But this man is alive and all the universities of America have examined him, he demonstrates from place to place. The only difference between our photograph taken here and the one taken from his eyes will be as if one was a fainter copy of the other, that’s all. The difference is not going to be more than this – just a slightly fainter copy, that is all. His eye is catching our pictures though we are sitting at such a distance. So if Mahabharata says that Sanjaya was giving a running commentary to the blind Dhritrashtra of a battle in Kurnkshathra a hundred miles distant, there seems no problem in it. Eyes can see so far away. Eyes can see any distance, but for that some other areas of the mind need to be illuminated.
Take one example from Russia. Fyadov is a scientist in Russia. Leave aside America, Russia is an atheist country and is not prepared to accept soul or God up till now, but Fyadov has done great experiments sending telepathic messages up to one thousand miles – not through any instrument but only by sending thought messages. Sitting in Moscow with closed eyes, he has sent messages up to Tiflis. Sitting in Moscow, he will think a message and it will be caught in Tiflis.
One day an experiment was done in Tiflis. In a garden in Tiflis a man came and took a seat on bench number 10. This man knew nothing, he was a traveller; tired, he had taken a seat to take a little rest in the noon time. He knew nothing of the experiment. The people hiding in the bushes
informed Fyadov on wireless that a man was sitting on seat number 10. They said, “If you can make him sleep within five minutes by sending messages, then we will be convinced.” Now Fyadov, sitting in Moscow, remained thinking in his mind for five minutes that the man sitting on seat number 10 should go to sleep. In five minutes the man went into deep sleep and started snoring. Naturally these hiding friends thought that he may be tired and weary, he may have slept on his own. Coincidence is possible. So they sent a message back that the man is sleeping, but if you can make him get up exactly in seven minutes times, then we will be convinced. Exactly after seven minutes, the man woke up from sleep. He looked around as if someone had called him. They came out of the bushes and asked the man “Who are you looking for?” The man said, “Someone has been constantly saying to me, ‘Get up, wake up, now do not remain asleep. Exactly after seven minutes you have to get up.’” Now who was saying that? There was nobody there. The man was sitting thousands of miles away in Moscow.
If mind becomes fully awake, man becomes a discoverer of great powers. There are hundreds of other such potentialities in man’s mind. Yoga used to call them: siddhis, spiritual powers. We may give them any name, it makes no difference. Our whole brain is also not awake. We look miserable and helpless; this is because of our remaining asleep. And this restlessness that remains in our lives is the restlessness of not being able to fully use the wealth that we have come with. Yoga says all these centers of the mind can be activated and this brain hidden in your skull is not your whole personality. Exactly such a big mind is hiding within the heart. The very information about it has ceased coming to us. Only once in a while there is a little glimpse of love in someone’s life, then he remembers the centers that the heart has, otherwise there is no rememberance. And love goes on disappearing from our lives day by day. In the name of love, we have introduced many kinds of false coins which go on circulating in life. Even if the whole brain is developed, the heart has a its own brain, which remains completely untouched, because all our education is only for the mind. So, a little bit of the brain develops, but for the heart there is no education, it does not develop at all. It remains undeveloped and man becomes too full of inner tension. Even heart and mind together do not constitute the whole man; man has more centers. Yoga divides man into seven centers. It says that man has the potential to develop his individuality at seven levels. These are gross levels, it is a gross division, there can be even more divisions.
Buddha has made nine divisions. He is one of the greatest yogis who ever walked on the earth. Patanjali has made seven divisions. Someone may make even more divisions, because there are hundreds of centers in man and each of them has its own capacities. And if all those capacities unfold completely and the whole man becomes conscious, then if in that state, man declares, AHIM BRAMASMI “I am the Brahma”, there is no exaggeration in his statement. But sitting with books in their houses near a kerosine oil lamp, people have picked out phrases from the Brahma sutra, have found out great statements from the Upanishads and are saying: “Aham Brahmasmi!”
Kerosene oil won’t do and the scriptures read with outside lamps can’t be of any help. When the inner lamp burns and the inner light illuminates all the seven centers, then the scriptures that are revealed at that time, the Vedas that are experienced at that time, are not the Vedas written in any book, and the declaration of Aham Bramasmi that happens in that moment is not something that has come from any scripture. It is something arising from the entire being of oneself.
So, Yoga takes man as a scripture and in him lie many unread chapters – unknown, unacquainted which we have never approached with light, about which we had no idea. It is like an emperor asleep
in his palace who may have forgotten his treasures, his riches, and may be dreaming that he has become a beggar, that he is begging on the roads and no one is giving him even a piasa. And he is weeping and suffering and crying. We are almost in the state of such an emperor who does not know of all his wealth. If someone tells us we will not be able to trust. How can we trust that we have so much treasure? No, no! If someone asks that emperor in his dream, “How come you are begging? You are an emperor! That emperor will say,”Do not joke, give me a piasa and that will make sense to me.”
Our condition is exactly like that.
Yoga says there are vast expansions of infinite treasures in us but all these treasures will become avaliable only by becoming self conscious. Except this, there is no other way.
Now let us understand this. All centers of our being awaken, become active through consciousness. The more consciousness reaches them, the more active they become. On whatsoever part consciousness gathers, that part becomes active. Small children are not aware of the sex center because it has not become active yet. After fourteen years of age, nature activates that center, then one starts becoming aware of it. When one starts becoming aware of it, the center starts becoming active. That is done by nature. So, if nature does not activate the sex center, you will never know that there is something like sex in your personality. The center will remain dormant, you will not notice it. How can you notice! But nature has to take work from that center for the continuation of life, hence it activates that center on its own, it does not leave it to you. It activates it in animals also, in plants also, in all forms of life, it activates it on its own.
It is the society who activates the mind center through education, through explanation, because otherwise it will be difficult to get life going. So it teaches mathematics, it teaches geography – society teaches that much which makes life easy to carry on. Society gets some of your mind center activated, nature gets your sex center activated. All the other centers in between remain dormant, they never become active They are not needed by anybody. Society not only does not need them, rather it will not like that certain centers become active. For example, if somebody’s love becomes very active, the society will not like it. The society will want the center of love not to become very active. The family will want the same. The wife will want her husband’s love center not to become very active; the husband will want his wife’s love center not to become very active. The mother will want this, the father will want this. There is reason for it. If the love center becomes completely active, then the barriers between whom to love, whom not to love start falling down. Then a mother cannot say, “Love only me.” If the love center becomes very active, the child will start loving everybody. Then the mother’s jealousy will try to stop him. A wife will not like it if her husband starts looking with love at anybody else – her jealousy will prevent him. The whole society will try to prevent the love center from becoming active because the love center may become dangerous. Hence it will try to suppress it, to cut it. And there are other centers which the society will tolerate even less, for example this man Ted Cerio... if there are many people like that around in the world, the society will try to make laws against them.
Recently one such thing happend. There is a man called Tony in Indonesia. And one of the most important happenings of this century is happening in the life of Tony in Indonesia, Asia. But the whole society, courts, law, all have stood up against him. Tony has done an experiment which is one of the deepest experiments – that is of spiritual surgery. Everyone’s mind cannot grasp these
methods. Tony does surgery without any kind of instrument. For example, you have an appendix in your belly, he will put his both naked hands on your belly, close his eyes, pray to the divine and both his hands will enter your belly. The skin will give way without any instruments and both his hands will enter into your belly. And this has happened in front of dozens of medical scientists, doctors and surgeons. It has been filmed and shown around the world.
His hands will reach inside, his eyes will remain closed, he will catch hold of your appendix in your belly and will pull it out with his hands, snap it and put it outside. He will move both his hands over your stomach and your cut skin will be joined again. And after two days there will not be even a mark seen that the stomach was cut. Now such a man should be valued, but the government of Indonesia has filed a law suit against him and the medical association has filed a law suit in the Supreme Court there that this man has no license for surgery – how can he be allowed to do surgery?
Is there any limit to human madness? Because he has no certificate from any medical college, no degree in surgery, they say, how can he be allowed to do surgery? And the courts are bound to give judgment against him because laws have always been blind. The government has prohibited that man from doing any surgery anywhere. This man has a group of twenty-five friends with him. They are all worshippers and meditators. When they are asked, they are unable to explain anything – they say that they do not know anything: “We leave ourselves in the hands of the divine,.then whatsoever he makes us do, we do that; but we do nothing.” But if this man is allowed to operate, what will happen to the medical profession? What will happen to surgeons? They are bound to make trouble against this man. They are bound to entrap this man for cheating; he is a poor man, a simple man. Being harrased by their trouble he will give up easily, saying, “I will not do anything – I will ask for their forgiveness.”
In this world, many times many miracles have happened and we have stopped them. We have always made arrangements that such things do not happen, because due to such things our whole establishment, all our institutions get into trouble. They are bound to get into trouble, because what will happen to them all? In the light of such things, what we call scientific outlook also becomes mediocre and meaningless because these things bring the news of even farther beyond. We become against people like Ted Cireo or Tony because we say that these things will shatter all our ?? If Ted Cireo can see the things inside another’s house, then if not today, tomorrow we are going to worry. He can see our iron safe also. We will try to stop it. The society has been trying to suppress very valuable achievements of yoga. And naturally anything which is suppressed completely stops manifesting itself because we stop the opportunities and circumstances for them to manifest.
Right in front of me an incident happened and I felt how suprising it was! One friend used to come to me to meditate. His son who was studying Hindi in the third grade, also used to come with him. He asked me if it would be all right if the child sat near him. I told him it was all right – it would be good. That friend was meditating and the child sitting near him also started meditating. The father could not go very deep but that small child went very deep. He was supposed to come four days later but he did not, he came after fifteen days very puzzled and he asked, “What have you done to the child? Please, change him back, we do not want that him to go into meditation.” I asked him what had happened. He said many strange things had started happening. Leaving the child at home, he and his wife had locked the house from the outside and asked the child to play inside the house. They told him they were just going to visit a friend in the neighborhood. When they returned, the child was standing on the window sill and he said, “You told me a lie. You are coming from a movie.
You have been to a matinee show.” They had been to the matinee show of a movie but had bluffied the child. They were surprised. They asked, “How did you know?” The boy said, “When I was alone and there was nothing to do in the house, I sat in meditation and I saw you both seated in a cinema hall.” So they said, “We do not want such things to develop in the child. We do not want him to learn meditation, that will create trouble.” This is a dishonest father’s mind.
It feels strange but it is so. If in your house also a child starts seeing such things, you will also say, “Enough. Stop all this.” Because you too ask the child not to smoke and you smoke yourself. Tomorrow that child is bound to say, “What are you saying, dad? You ask me not to go to the cinema and you go yourself.” Tomorrow that boy is bound to ask, “What are you saying? You have been doing everything that you prevented me from doing.” So you will not allow talents to grow in the child. This is why the whole humanity has been conspiring against Yogic growth, which we are not aware of. We will try to suppress all these things and when the whole society suppresses it and will not give the opportunity for it to develop.…
Just think a little, if all universities, all colleges and all schools are closed down, how many people in the world would know mathematics? If all education and teaching was stopped for two thousand years, after that one will start doubting that there can be so much intelligence in man that he could have aeroplanes flying – that there can be so much intelligence that he could reach the moon! People will say, “How is it possible?” Even to build a bullock cart would be difficult – building an aeroplane is a far away thing. The fact that man has reached to the moon today is the result of educating the mind for the past ten or twenty thousand years. If we had worked for ten or twenty thousand years on the centers mentioned by Yoga, it is not possible to even imagine where man could have reached. Sometimes someone reaches to those hights, but then we make him an object of worship and forget. But it is possible for all. There are many planes in man but they are drowned in the unconscious, hence, we have no idea of them.
Yoga divides man into seven planes, into seven centers. Infinite energy is dormant in these seven centers, just as the flower is closed in a bud. Seeing the bud we have no idea that there will be such a flower in it, that such a lotus will bloom – a lotus with so many petals will manifest. The bud also remains closed. If someone has seen only the buds of the lotus and has never seen the flower, he cannot ever imagine that this bud can become a flower. All the centers that we have are closed like buds. If they blossom completely, we do not know all that could be hidden in them, how much fragrance, how much beauty, how much energy! Infinite energy is dormant at each center. If the buds blossom then it can manifest; if the buds do not blossom, it cannot manifest.
Have you ever observed the blossoming of lotus buds? When do they blossom? In the morning when the sun rises and the light has spread. The buds are closed in the darkness of night, they blossom in the morning along with the sun. Exactly like this, the day our sun of consciousness manifests on each center, each center’s bud starts unfolding.
There is a sun inside also,.the sun of our consciousness.
After reaching it we may give it the name meditation or something else – that does not matter, but there is a sun of consciousness within us. On whichever center its light falls, the bud of that center bursts forth into blossom and becomes a flower. And as soon as it becomes a flower, we find that the infinite energies that were dormant in us, start manifesting.
There are seven centers and each one can be unfolded, and each center has its own capabilities. And when all the seven centres unfold, man’s doors and windows, of which I was talking yesterday, become open to the infinite. The individual becomes one with the infinite.
Consciousness, how is it that only consciousness can open up these centers? I would like to tell you some scientific facts about this too.
Until twenty or twenty-five years ago, scientists had no idea that consciousness can bring any change to anything. We do not see such things happening either. We have heard the stories of fakirs, of yogis, but they have become just stories. When the art of doing certain things is forgotten, they become stories – it is natural. If the third world war happens and if a few great scientists of the world die it will be impossible to make atom bombs. At present only a dozen or two, not more than that, know the formula. If you killed the twenty-five scientists, atom bombs could not be made any more. Now there are twenty-five who know how to make it; ten years ago only fifteen knew. When Hiroshima was bombed, before that there were hardly four people in the world who knew. If these four persons had been killed, the atom bomb would become only a story, and if someone said it is not just a story it is true, we would say, make the atom bomb and show us. Then it would be difficult.
If the third world war happens, then as it has happened many times before, all science would be destroyed. Mahabharata happened and all the science and all the culture of that time was destroyed, only their stories have remained. We say they are all stories. They are stories now. If the third world war happens and the whole world gets destroyed, as is probable, then whenever the world is destroyed in wars, the most developed people of that world get destroyed first. If bombs are dropped in the third world war, Poona will not survive, Bombay will not survive, Delhi will not survive, London or New York will not survive. If anybody survives it may be some aboriginals hidden in the hills of Bastar, some people living in the mountains of Himachal Pradesh. Nobody will try to drop atom bombs there. It will be costlier also to search and locate these people and then drop atom bombs there. But all the developed centers of the world, universities, science centers, will all be destroyed. These will be destroyed first. And those who survive, these aboriginals, they too have seen railway trains, so they will go on telling stories to their children that there used to be railway trains. After two or three generations, the children will say that it cannot be. How can it be? Where is the proof? And there would be no proof left.
The same has happened with the art of Yoga. Many times the art develops, but then for many reasons it gets lost. The biggest reason of all is that we ourselves cannot tolerate it, because there are dangers in it. I was saying to you that consciousness makes a difference to things. It has always been a simple experiment in yoga to conclude that consciousness makes a difference to things. By becoming conscious it makes a difference. But science agrees with it now. If we look at a pebble, it makes no difference. What difference does it make? A pebble remains a pebble. No matter how much we concentrate our consciousness on it, the pebble remains a pebble. But since the discovery of electrons, scientists have come to know that when we try to look at electrons through microscopes, the movement of electrons wavers. In the same way as when you are taking a shower in your bathroom and you are in your most relaxed state, making faces and laughing in the mirror, oblivious of your age, then suddenly you realise that someone is peeping through the key hole and you become alert and you stop. If you were singing a film song, you start singing a devotional hymn, or start doing something else.
So, we can agree with this, that if you are looked at through the key hole, you change, but when
scientists say that when electrons are looked at through a microscope their movement changes, then it is very surprising. It means observation brings change.
Yesterday I had talked to you about a Christian saint who blessed some seeds in a laboratory of Oxford Uiversity. One even more amazing thing happened while the saint was blessing one seed. He was wearing a cross around his neck when he bent over that seed with folded hands and prayed. When the seed was photographed, we were in for a great surprise. Inside the seed the photo of the cross also appeared. It is very surprising. When the saint bent to pray, the cross also reached near to the seed, but a picture of that cross inside the seed! How is this possible? Could his prayers, his attention over the seed, also convey the picture of the cross inside the seed? Is it that the seed also responded to the prayer? Is it that the seed accepted that monk whole heartedly?
Yoga has known for long that on whichever center we meditate inwardly, that center becomes active immediately. Its activity opens its buds which were closed, just as the morning sun wakes up the birds. And remember, you may have noticed it or you may not have, the birds start singing hours before the sun has actually arisen. As yet, the sun has only turned its face to come this way, it has not as yet come, it is only about to come, and the birds start singing, buds start blossoming. The sun is about to come – it has not as yet come and the flowers started blossoming, the buds started smiling and the birds started singing. Your attention begins to go inside and your centers are activated. Just going inside, unique experiences start happening.
Now in these three days so many friends have come and told me of so many experiences. These experiences have always happened to meditators. Someone starts experiencing intense light within, some center releasing the light; someone starts experiencing some fragrance from within – some center is releasing the fragrance. Someone starts hearing music. It is the sound of music emanating from some center. Different experiences start manifesting from within. The universe inside us is not smaller than the universe outside of us. Until now we have paid attention only to the outer, hence only outer things have become active. Until now we have not paid attention to the inner, otherwise in the inner everything also becomes active. I can tell you a few small experiments you can do so that you can understand that it can happen. You are going on a road, someone is walking ahead of you. Go on looking at the backside of his neck for a minute or two without blinking your eyes .It won’t be more than two minutes before that man will have to turn and look at you. His center becomes activated; feeling uneasy he will immediately turn back to see what is happening. What is happening behind? You cannot find a man who does not look back if you gaze for two minutes like this, and if you may find such a person who does not, know well that you have come across a very valuable man.
Today choose some center in your own body and start bringing a little consciousness to it. If we are asked how would we feel if one of our hands is taken away, we would all say, “It won’t be nice, it would be painful, but it won’t be much of me taken away.” But if we ask, “What if the head is taken away?” then we would say, “All would be gone.” Because our whole identity is only with our head and that has become our whole being. Whatever is our wealth, our thought, our knowledge, whatever we have known about ourselves, all that is at the small center of our mind, it is not spread over the whole body.
You start meditating on any center within you. As I was telling you the experiment for outside, in the same way, only for five or six days, with closed eyes, bring your attention to your heart – nothing
more is to be done. Five minutes everyday and you will find that love has started increasing in your being. You will feel it, your neighbors will feel it, your family members will feel it. No need to tellanybody, you just go on giving your attention quietly to it and you will find that people have started noticing the change in you and mention it to you. You have never been so loving.
On whichever center your consciousness goes to, that center becomes active. We have seven centers. Your consciousness can be taken to all these seven centres. If you take your consciousness there only then it goes there. This is the advantage of being self conscious and this is the danger also. If you do not take it there, it will not go there. And if you do not take it there, then there is no difference between a self unconscious animal and a man. If I say it this way that Yoga is a science of making man from animal, this definition is not an exaggeration. In Yoga, the meaning of animal is also very interesting. According to yoga, an animal is one who is in tied up – like when a cow or a buffalow is tied with a rope. The rope is called pash, a tie, and the one who is tied with it is pashu, an animal.
Yoga says a man who is tied in the chains of unconsciousness is animal and one who has broken the chains of unconsciousness is man. Manushya, a man, means one who has completely become man, mind. And mind is the name of consciousness. Mind means consciousness, that which has become completely conscious. The English word man also comes from the man of Sanskrit. That which has completely become ‘man’, which means ‘consciousness’ is man. This is the seventh sutra of Yoga. A few more things in this connection and then I will talk to you tomorrow on the remaining sutras. It is essential to keep in mind a few things more.
As I said that man is conscious only sometimes, the rest of the time he is unconscious. The contrary also happens. What we consider to be unconscious all the time, also become conscious in some moments. For example, a plant also becomes conscious in some moments, a stone also becomes conscious in some moments, animals also become conscious in some moments. As man is conscious in some moments, similarly the backward species than man are conscious in some moments of life. But such incidents hardly happen and they are very rare. In the time of Buddha, it happened with the Bodhi tree.
For five hundred years after Buddha’s death his statue was not made because Buddha had asked not to make statues. He said this Bodhi tree will do, and for five hundred years only the Bodhi tree was worshipped. After five hundred years Buddha’s statues were made. There were many reasons – one reason was that the moment Buddha became enlightened the tree under which he was sitting got resonated with enlightenment, became awake. It became a witness, it alone was the witness, no one else was present there, only the tree was present as as witness.
You will ask, “How did that tree became conscious?” A great sun like Buddha arose under that tree. No matter how much the tree might be asleep in its unconsciousness, a part of it also got awakened. It also witnessed the happening watchfully. Hence Buddha said, “This tree is my witness. Worship it and that’s enough. It alone is a witness.” This is the whole reason why buddhists have been trying to protect this Bodhi tree up until now, though they also do not know why they go on protecting it. Ashoka had sent one branch of this tree to Sri Lanka with his son and his daughter. That branch had taken roots in Sri Lanka. So when the Bodhi tree in India died, one branch of the tree in Shilanka was planted again in india. But that tree has been alive for twenty-five hundred years, it is a witness. The happening that took place in Buddha’s consciousness also overwhelmed the tree, and waking from its deep sleep, it also saw what had happened.
It will be easy to understand it like this. If you ask some great musician, he will be able to explain it easily. If in an empty room we keep a veena and in the other corner some skilled musician plays on another veena, the first veena will begin to resonate with the music being played. The other veena’s strings also begin to vibrate and dance.
A similar thing happened with the tree. It was such a great phenomenon that happened to Buddha that under the influence, the strings of the tree’s inner veena also started vibrating. The tree also danced. The tree became a witness.
You may have heard the name of the physican called Lukman. In Lukman’s life, there is an amazing reference and that is connected to the deeper roots of yoga. There is a story about Lukman; I say it’s a story, though in fact it is history. The story is that Lukman would go and ask the trees, “What is your use?” He would go and ask the medicinal herbs, “What is your use?” And even now the people who do medical research are puzzled about how people discovered hundreds of thousands of medicinal herbs and their uses – Ayuvedic, Greek and others – because there is no evidence of any such big labs in old medical books. Even today we have not been able to find out about all the herbs and for which diseases they are useful, the work continues. But Lukman singlehandedly created the whole science. How could one man find out so much in one life?
The story of Lukman tells us something else. It tells us that Lukman used to go to each and every kind of plant and tree, and sit near it in meditation. He would pray to the plant to tell him what its uses were and he would receive from the plant the answer in his heart and would start using that plant for that particular disease. And the plants that Lukman used, even now in labs they are proving to be right. Even plants can become awake near some Lukman, near some Buddha; even stones can become awake near some Yogi. But we human beings remain asleep. It is a very sad thing that near Buddha even a tree became awakened but thousands of people who came near him did not wake up, and returned back asleep. Perhaps trees are very innocent and that is why it resonated.
Man is very complicated, clever and cunning, does not resonate so soon. He investigates and checks everything before taking it. In this checking and testing he sometimes does succeed in getting the right price for an earthen pot which costs two pence but often loses cheques for millions of dollars.
People who are too clever sometimes fall into great deception. And if there is someone who takes every single step too cautiously... one thing is certain, that he cannot go on the pilgrimage to the divine, because that journey is of insecurity; the journey is so unknown, so unfamiliar and unaquainted with that people who are too clever will not manage. Many times, even ignorant people do enter the door and clever ones remain standing and thinking in front of it.
Tomorrow I will talk to you on the next sutra. If there are any related questions, you may ask them. Whatever questions were asked until now, slowly, slowly I have talked about them. A few may have been left, I will talk about them tomorrow. The friends who want to come in the morning for meditation should be freshly bathed, should come on time and sit silently. Tomorrow is the last day, no one should come just to watch, only those who want to experiment are invited.
You listened to my talks with such love and peace – I am grateful for that. Now I pay my respects to the divine sitting in each of you, please accept my respects.
< Previous | Contents | Next >