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Chapter 3: Five Modifications of Mind
The modifications of the mind are five.
They can be either a source of misery or of non-misery.
They are right knowledge, wrong knowledge, imagination, sleep and memory.
Mind can be either the source of bondage or the source of freedom. Mind becomes the gate for this world, the entry; it can also become the exit. Mind leads you to hell, mind can also lead you to heaven. So it all depends on how the mind is used. Right use of mind becomes meditation; wrong use of the mind becomes madness.
Mind is there, with everyone. The possibility of darkness and light are both implied in it. Mind itself is neither the enemy nor the friend. You can make it a friend, you can make it an enemy; it depends on you, on the you who is hidden behind the mind. If you can make the mind your instrument, your slave, the mind becomes the passage through which you can reach the ultimate. If you become the slave and the mind is allowed to be the master, then this mind which has become the master will lead you to ultimate anguish and darkness.
All the techniques, all the methods, all the paths of Yoga, are really deeply concerned only with one problem: how to use the mind. Rightly used, mind comes to a point where it becomes no-mind. Wrongly used, mind comes to a point where it is just a chaos, many voices antagonistic to each other, contradictory, confusing, insane.
The madman in the madhouse and Buddha under his bodhi tree have both used the mind, both have passed through the mind. Buddha has come to a point where mind disappears. Rightly used, it goes on disappearing; a moment comes when it is not. The madman has also used the mind. Wrongly used, mind becomes divided; wrongly used, mind becomes many; wrongly used, it becomes a multitude. And finally the mad mind is there, you are absolutely absent.
Buddha’s mind has disappeared and Buddha is present in his totality. A madman’s mind has become total and he himself has disappeared completely. These are the two different poles. You and your mind: if they exist together then you will be in misery. Either you will have to disappear or the mind will have to disappear. If the mind disappears then you achieve truth; if you disappear you achieve insanity. And this is the struggle: who is going to disappear? Are you going to disappear, or the mind? This is the conflict, the
root of all struggle.
These sutras of Patanjali will lead you step by step towards this understanding of the mind: what it is, what types of modes it takes, what types of modifications come into it, how you can use it and go beyond it. And remember, you have nothing else right now except the mind, you have to use it. Wrongly used you will go on falling into more and more misery.
You are in misery. That is because for many lives you have used your mind wrongly and the mind has become the master; you are just a slave, a shadow following the mind. You cannot say to the mind, “Stop!” You cannot order your own mind; your mind goes on ordering you and you have to follow it. Your being has become the shadow and the slave, an instrument.
Mind is nothing but an instrument, just like your hands or your feet. You order your feet and your legs to move and they move. When you say stop, they stop. You are the master. If I want to move my hand, I move it. If I don’t want it to move, I don’t move it. The hand cannot say to me, “Now I want to be moved.” The hand cannot say to me, “Now I will move. Whatsoever you do, I am not going to listen to you.” And if my hand starts moving in spite of me, then it will be a chaos in the body. The same has happened in the mind.
You don’t want to think and the mind goes on thinking. You want to sleep – you are lying down on your bed, changing sides; you want to go to sleep and the mind continues. The mind says, “No, I am going to think about something”; you go on saying, “Stop!” and it never listens to you. And you cannot do anything. Mind is also an instrument but you have given it too much power. It has become dictatorial, and it will struggle hard if you try to put it in its right place.
Buddha also uses the mind, but his mind is just like your legs. People come to me and they ask, “What happens to the mind of an enlightened one? Does it simply disappear? He cannot use it?”
It disappears as a master, it remains as a slave. It remains as a passive instrument. If a Buddha wants to use it, he can use it. When Buddha speaks to you he will have to use it, because there is no possibility of speech without the mind. The mind has to be used. If you go to Buddha and he recognizes you – that you have also been before – he has to use the mind: without mind there can be no recognition, without mind there is no memory. But he uses the mind, remember – this is the distinction – and you are being used by the mind. Whenever he wants to use it, he uses it. Whenever he doesn’t want to use it, he doesn’t use it. It is a passive instrument that has no hold upon him.
So Buddha remains like a mirror. If you come before the mirror, the mirror reflects you. When you move the reflection is gone, the mirror is vacant. You
are not like a mirror. You see somebody: the man has gone but the thinking continues, the reflection continues. You go on thinking about him, and even if you want to stop, the mind won’t listen.
Mastery of the mind is Yoga. And when Patanjali says, “Cessation of the mind,” he means cessation as a master. Mind ceases as a master. Then it is not active, then it is a passive instrument. You order, it works; you don’t order, it remains still. It is just waiting, it cannot assert by itself. The assertion is lost, the violence is lost. It will not try to control you: now just the reverse is the case.
How to become masters? And how to put mind in its right place where you can use it, where if you don’t want to use it you can put it aside and it remains silent? So the whole mechanism of the mind will have to be understood. Now we should enter the sutra.
The first sutra:
The modifications of the mind are five.
They can be either a source of misery or of non-misery.
The first thing to be understood: mind is not something different from the body, remember. Mind is part of the body. It is body, but deeply subtle; a state of body, but very delicate, very refined. You cannot catch it, but through the body you can influence it. If you take a drug, if you take LSD or marijuana or alcohol or something else, the mind is suddenly affected. The alcohol goes into the body, not into the mind, but the mind is affected. Mind is the subtlest part of the body.
The reverse is also true: influence the mind and the body is affected. That happens in hypnosis. A person who cannot walk, who says that he has a paralysis, can walk under hypnosis. You don’t have paralysis, but if under hypnosis it is said, “Now your body is paralyzed, you cannot walk,” you cannot walk. A paralyzed man can walk under hypnosis. What is happening? Hypnosis goes into the mind, the suggestion goes into the mind then the body follows.
So the first thing to be understood: mind and body are not two. This is one of the deepest discoveries of Patanjali. Now modern science recognizes it, it is very recent in the West. Now they say body-and-mind, but to talk in this dichotomy is not right. Now they say it is “psychosoma,” it is mind-body. These two terms are just two functions of one phenomenon. One pole is mind, the other pole is body, so you can work from either and change the other.
The body has five organs of activity, five indriyas, five instruments of activity. The mind has five modifications, five modes of function. Mind and body are one. Body is divided into five functions, mind is also divided into five
functions. We will go into each function in detail.
The second thing about this sutra is:
They can be either a source of misery or of non-misery.
These five modifications of the mind, this totality of the mind, can lead you into deep anguish, in dukkha, in misery. Or if you rightly use this mind, its functioning, it can lead you into non-misery.
That word non-misery is very significant. Patanjali doesn’t say that it will lead you into ananda, into bliss, no; at the most it can lead you into non- misery. The mind can lead you into misery if you wrongly use it, if you become a slave to it. If you become the master the mind can lead you into non-misery – not into bliss, because bliss is your nature; the mind cannot lead you to it. But if you are in non-misery then the inner bliss starts flowing.
The bliss is always there inside, it is your intrinsic nature. It is nothing to be achieved and earned, it is nothing to be reached somewhere. You are born with it, you have it already, it is already the case. That’s why Patanjali doesn’t say that the mind can lead you into misery and can lead you into bliss, no. He is very scientific, very accurate. He will not use even a single word which can give you any untrue information. He simply says either misery or non-misery.
Buddha also says many times, whenever seekers will come to him – and seekers are after bliss, so they will ask Buddha, “How can we attain to the bliss, the ultimate bliss?” He will say, “I don’t know. I can show you the path which leads to non-misery, just the absence of misery. I don’t say anything about the positive, bliss, just the negative. I can show you how to move into the world of non-misery.”
That’s all that methods can do. Once you are in the state of non-misery the inner bliss starts flowing. But that doesn’t come from the mind, that comes from your inner being. So mind has nothing to do with it, mind cannot create it. If mind is in misery then mind becomes a hindrance; if mind is in non-misery then mind becomes an opening, but it is not creative, it is not doing anything.
You open the windows and the rays of the sun enter: by opening the windows you are not creating the sun, the sun was already there. If it were not there then just by opening the windows, rays wouldn’t enter. Your window can become a hindrance: the sunrays may be outside and the window is closed. The window can hinder or it can give way. It can become a passage but it cannot be creative. It cannot create the rays, the rays are there.
Your mind, if it is in misery, becomes closed. Remember, one of the characteristics of misery is closedness. Whenever you are in misery you become closed. Observe – whenever you feel some anguish you are closed to
the world. Even to your dearest friend you are closed. Even to your wife, your children, your beloved, you are closed when you are in misery, because misery gives you a shrinking inside. You shrink. From everywhere you have closed your doors.
That’s why in misery people start thinking of suicide. Suicide means total closure, no possibility of any communication, no possibility of any door. Even a closed door is dangerous, someone can open it. So destroy the door, destroy all possibilities. Suicide means, “Now I am going to destroy all possibility of any opening. Now I am closing myself totally.”
Whenever you are in misery you start thinking of suicide. Whenever you are happy you cannot think of suicide, you cannot imagine, you cannot even think that people would commit suicide. “Why? Life is such joy, life is such a deep music, why do people destroy life?” It appears impossible.
Why, when you are happy, does it look impossible? Because you are open, life is flowing in you. When you are happy you have a bigger soul, it expands; when you are unhappy you have a smaller soul, it shrinks.
When someone is unhappy touch him, take his hand into your hand, and you will feel the hand is dead; nothing is flowing through it, no love, no warmth. It is just cold, as if it belonged to a corpse. When someone is happy touch his hand: there is communication, energy is flowing. His hand is not just a dead end; his hand has become a bridge. Through his hand something comes to you, communicates, relates, a warmth flows. He reaches to you; he makes every effort to flow into you and he allows you also to flow within him.
When two persons are happy they become one. That’s why oneness happens in love and lovers start feeling that they are not two. They are two, but they start feeling they are not two because in love they are so happy that a melting happens. They melt into each other, they flow into each other. Boundaries dissolve, definitions are blurred and they don’t know who is who. In that moment they become one.
When you are happy you can flow into others and you can allow others to flow into you: this is what celebration means. When you allow everybody to flow in and you flow into everybody, you are celebrating life. And celebration is the greatest prayerfulness, the highest peak of meditation.
In misery you start thinking of committing suicide; in misery you start thinking of destruction. In misery you are at just the opposite pole of celebration. You blame, you cannot celebrate, you have a grudge against everything. Everything is wrong and you are negative and you cannot flow. You cannot relate and you cannot allow anybody to flow into you. You have become an island, closed completely. This is a living death. Life is only when
you are open and flowing, when you are unafraid, fearless, open, vulnerable, celebrating.
Patanjali says mind can do two things. It can create misery. You can use it in such a way that you can become miserable, and you have used it this way, you are past masters of it. There is no need to talk about it, you know it already. You know the art of creating misery. You may not be aware, but that is what you are doing continuously. Whatsoever you touch becomes a source of misery; I say, whatsoever!
I see poor men, they are miserable, obviously, they are poor, the basic needs of life are not fulfilled. But then I see rich men who are also miserable, and these rich men think that wealth leads nowhere. That is not right. Wealth can lead to celebration, but you don’t have the mind to celebrate. If you are poor you are miserable, if you become rich you are more miserable. The moment you touch the riches you have destroyed them.
You have heard the Greek story of the king Midas? Whatsoever he would touch would turn into gold. You touch gold, immediately it becomes mud. It is turned into dust and then you think that there is nothing in this world, even riches are useless. They are not useless, but your mind cannot celebrate, your mind cannot participate in any non-misery. If you are invited into heaven you will not find a heaven there, you will create a hell. As you are, wherever you go you will take your hell with you.
There is one Arabic proverb: that hell and heaven are not geographical places, they are attitudes. And no one enters heaven or hell – everybody enters with heaven or hell. Wherever you go you have your hell projection or the heaven projection with you. You have a projector inside: immediately you project.
But Patanjali is careful: he says misery or non-misery – positive misery or negative misery – but not bliss. Mind cannot give you bliss; no one can give it. It is hidden in you. When mind is in a non-miserable state, that bliss starts flowing. It is not coming from the mind, it is coming from beyond. That’s why he says they can be either a source of anguish or of non-anguish.
The second sutra:
The modifications of the mind are five….
They are right-knowledge, wrong-knowledge, imagination, sleep and memory.
The first is praman, right-knowledge. The Sanskrit word praman is very deep and really cannot be translated. Right-knowledge is just a shadow, not the
exact meaning, because there is no word which can translate praman. Praman
comes from the root prama. Many things have to be understood about it.
Patanjali says that the mind has a capacity: if that capacity is directed rightly then whatsoever is known is true, it is self-evidently true. We are not aware about it because we have never used it. That faculty has remained unused. It is just as if you come into a dark room, you have a torch, but you are not using it so the room remains dark. You go on stumbling onto this table, onto that chair, and you have a torch but the torch has to be switched on. Once you put the torch on, immediately darkness disappears, and wherever the torch is focused at least you know that spot becomes evident, self-evidently clear.
Mind has a capacity of praman, of right-knowledge, of wisdom. Once you know it, how to put it on, then wherever you move that light, only right- knowledge is revealed. Without knowing it, whatsoever you know will be wrong.
Mind has the capacity of wrong-knowledge also. In Sanskrit that wrong- knowledge is called viparyaya, false, mithya. And you have that capacity also. You take alcohol, what happens? – the whole world becomes a viparyaya, the whole world becomes false. You start seeing things which are not there. What has happened? Alcohol cannot create things. Alcohol is doing something within your body and brain. The alcohol starts working the center Patanjali calls viparyaya. The mind has a center which can pervert anything. Once that center starts functioning everything is perverted.
I am reminded…
Once it happened that Mulla Nasruddin and his friend were drinking in a pub. They came out, completely drunk. Nasruddin was an old, experienced drinker; the other was new, so the other was affected more. The other asked, “Now I cannot see, I cannot hear, I cannot even walk rightly. How will I reach my home? Tell me, Nasruddin. Please direct me. How should I reach my home?”
Nasruddin said, “First you go. After so many steps you will come to a point where there are two ways: one goes to the right, the other goes to the left. You go to the left, because that which goes to the right doesn’t exist. I have been many times on that right path also, but now I am an experienced man. You will see two paths – choose the left one, don’t choose the right. That right one doesn’t exist. Many times I have gone on it and then you never reach, you never reach your home.”
Nasruddin was teaching his son the first lesson of drinking. The son was
asking, he was curious; he asked, “When is one to stop?”
Nasruddin said, “Look at that table. Four persons are sitting there. When you start seeing eight, stop!”
The boy said, “But father, there are only two persons sitting there!”
Mind has a faculty. That faculty functions when you are under the influence of any drug, any intoxicant. Patanjali calls that faculty viparyaya, wrong- knowledge, the center of perversion.
Exactly opposite to it there is a center which you don’t know. Exactly opposite to it there is another center: if you meditate deeply, silently, that other center will start functioning. That center is called praman, right-knowledge. Through the functioning of that center, whatsoever is known is right. So it is not a question of what you know; from where you know is the question.
That’s why all the religions have been against alcohol. It is not on any moralistic grounds, no. It is because alcohol influences the center of perversion. And every religion is for meditation because meditation means creating more and more stillness, becoming more and more silent.
Alcohol does quite the opposite. It makes you more and more agitated, excited, disturbed; a trembling enters within you. The drunkard cannot even walk rightly; his balance is lost. Balance is lost not only in the body, but in the mind also.
Meditation means gaining the inner balance. When you gain the inner balance and there is no trembling, the whole body-mind has become still – then the center of right-knowledge starts functioning. Through that center, whatsoever is known is true.
Where are you? You are not alcoholics, you are not meditators; you must be somewhere between the two. You are not in any center. You are between these two centers of wrong-knowledge and right-knowledge. That’s why you are confused.
Sometimes you have glimpses. You lean a little towards the right-knowledge center, then certain glimpses come to you. You lean toward the center which is of perversion, then perversion enters in you. And everything is mixed, you are in chaos. That’s why either you will have to become meditators or you will have to become alcoholics, because confusion is too much and these are the two ways.
Either you lose yourself into intoxication: then you are at ease because at least you have gained a center, maybe of wrong-knowledge, but you are centered. The whole world may say you are wrong, you don’t think so; you think the whole world is wrong. At least in those moments of unconsciousness
you are centered, centered in the wrong center, but you are happy because even centering in the wrong center gives a certain happiness. You enjoy it, hence, the great appeal of alcohol.
Governments have been fighting alcohol for centuries. Laws have been made, prohibition and everything, but nothing helps. Unless humanity becomes meditative, nothing can help. People will go on finding new ways and new means to get intoxicated. They cannot be prevented, and the more you try to prevent them, the more prohibition laws, the more appeal.
America did it and had to fall back. They tried their best, but when alcohol was prohibited more alcohol was used. They tried, they failed. India has been trying since Independence. It has failed, and many states have started again. It seems useless.
Unless man changes inwardly, you cannot force man by any prohibition; it is impossible, because then man will go mad. This is his way of remaining sane. For a few hours he becomes drugged, “stoned,” then he is okay. Then there is no misery, then there is no anguish. The misery will come, the anguish will come, but at least it is postponed. Tomorrow morning the misery will be there, the anguish will be there, and he will have to face it. But by the evening he can hope again; he will drink and be at ease.
These are the two alternatives. If you are not meditative then sooner or later you will have to find some drug. And there are subtle drugs. Alcohol is not very subtle, it is very gross. There are subtle drugs. Sex may become a drug for you, and through sex you may be just losing your consciousness. You can use anything as a drug. Only meditation can help. Why? – because meditation gives you centering on the center which Patanjali calls praman.
Why does every religion put so much emphasis on meditation? Meditation must be doing some inner miracle. This is the miracle: that meditation helps you to put on the light of right-knowledge. Then wherever you move, then wherever your focus moves, whatsoever is known is true.
Buddha has been asked thousands and thousands of questions. One day somebody asked him, “We come with new questions. We have not even put the question before you and you start answering. You never think about it. How does it happen?”
So Buddha said, “It is not a question of thinking. You put the question and I simply look at it, and whatsoever is true is revealed. It is not a question of thinking and brooding about it. The answer is not coming as a logical syllogism. It is just a focusing of the right center.”
Buddha is like a torch. Wherever the torch moves, it reveals. Whatsoever the question, that is not the point. Buddha has the light, and whenever that light
will come on any question the answer will be revealed. The answer will come out of that light. It is a simple phenomenon, a revelation.
When somebody asks you, you have to think about it. But how can you think if you don’t know? If you know there is no need to think. If you don’t know what will you do? You will search in the memory, you will find many clues. You will just do a patchwork. You don’t really know, otherwise the response would have been immediate.
I have heard…
A woman teacher in a primary school asked the children, “Have you any questions?”
One small boy stood and said, “I have one question and I have been waiting…whenever you ask I will ask it: what is the weight of the whole earth?”
She became disturbed because she had never thought about it, never read about it. What is the weight of the whole earth? So she played a trick teachers know. They have to play tricks. She said, “Yes, the question is significant. Now tomorrow, everybody has to find the answer.” She needed time. “Tomorrow I will ask the question, and for whoever brings the right answer there will be a present for him.”
All the children searched and searched, but they couldn’t find the answer. And the teacher ran to the library. The whole night she searched, and only just by the morning could she find out the weight of the earth. She was very happy. She came back to school and the children were there. They were exhausted. They said they couldn’t find the answer. “We asked Mom and we asked Dad and we asked everybody. Nobody knows. This question seems to be so difficult.”
The teacher laughed and she said, “This is not difficult. I know the answer, but I was just trying to see whether you could find it out or not. This is the weight of the earth…”
That small child who had raised the question, he stood again and he asked, “With people or without?” Now the same situation…
You cannot put Buddha in such a situation. It is not a question of finding somewhere; it is not really a question of answering you. Your question is just an excuse. When you put a question to Buddha, he simply moves his light towards that question and whatsoever is revealed is revealed. He answers you, that is a deep response of his right-center, praman.
Patanjali says there are five modifications of the mind. Right-knowledge: if
this center of right-knowledge starts functioning in you, you will become a sage, a saint. You will become religious. Before that you cannot become religious.
That’s why Jesus and Mohammed look mad – because they don’t argue; they don’t put their case logically, they simply assert. You ask Jesus, “Are you really the only son of God?” He says, “Yes.” And if you ask him, “Prove it,” he will laugh. He will say, “There is no need to prove it. I know. This is the case, this is self-evident.” To us it looks illogical. This man seems to be neurotic, claiming something without any proof.
If this praman, this center of prama, this center of right-knowledge starts functioning, you will be the same: you can assert but you cannot prove. How can you prove? If you are in love how can you prove that you are in love? You can simply assert. You have a pain in your leg: how can you prove that you have pain? You simply assert, “I have pain.” You know somewhere inside; that knowing is enough.
Ramakrishna was asked, “Is there a God?” He said “Yes.”
He was asked, “Then prove it.”
He said, “There is no need – I know. For me there is no need. For you there is a need, so you search. Nobody could prove it for me, I cannot prove it for you. I had to seek, I had to find. And I have found God is!”
This is the functioning of the right center. So Ramakrishna or Jesus look absurd: they are claiming certain things without giving any proof. They are not claiming, they are not claiming anything. Certain things are revealed to them because they have a new center functioning which you don’t have – and because you don’t have it you need proof.
Remember, proving proves that you don’t have an inner feeling of anything, everything has to be proved; even love has to be proved. And people go on…
I know many couples: the husband goes on proving that he loves and he has not convinced the wife, and the wife goes on proving that she loves and she has not convinced the husband. They remain unconvinced and that remains the conflict. They keep feeling that the other has not yet proved it. Lovers go on searching. They create situations in which you have to prove that you love. And by and by both get bored – this futile effort to prove and nothing can be proved.
How can you prove love? You can give presents, but nothing is proved. You can kiss and hug and you can sing, you can dance, but nothing is proved. You
may be just pretending.
This first modification of the mind is right-knowledge. Meditation leads to this modification. And when you can know rightly and there is no need to prove, only then can mind be dropped, not before it. When there is no need to prove, mind is not needed because mind is a logical instrument. You need it every moment. You have to think, find what is wrong and what is right. Every moment there are choices and alternatives; you have to choose.
Only when praman functions, when right-knowledge functions, can you drop the mind, because now choosing has no meaning. You move choicelessly; whatsoever is right is revealed to you.
The definition of a sage is one who never chooses. He never chooses good against bad. He simply moves towards the direction which is that of good. It is just like sunflowers: when the sun is in the east the flower turns to the east, it never chooses; when the sun moves to the west the flower turns to the west. It simply moves with the sun. It has not chosen to move, it has not decided; it has not taken a decision, “Now I should move because the sun has moved to the west.”
A sage is just like a sunflower – he simply moves wherever good is. So whatsoever he does is good. The Upanishads say, “Don’t judge sages. Your ordinary measurements won’t do.” You have to choose good against bad. He has nothing to choose, he simply moves; whatsoever he does is good. And you cannot change him because it is not a question of alternatives. If you say, “This is bad,” he will say, “Okay, it may be bad, but this is how I move, this is how my being flows.”
Those who knew – and people in the days of the Upanishads knew – had decided that, “We will not judge a sage.” Once a person has come to be centered in himself, when a person has achieved meditation, has become silent and the mind has been dropped, he is beyond our morality, beyond tradition. He is beyond our limitations. If we can follow we can follow him, if we cannot follow we are helpless. But nothing can be done and we should not judge.
If right-knowledge functions, if your mind has taken the modification of right-knowledge, you will become religious. Look, it is totally different. Patanjali doesn’t say if you go to the mosque, to the gurudwara, to the temple, if you do some ritual, you pray… No, that’s not religion. You have to make your right-knowledge center function, so whether you go to the temple or not is immaterial; it doesn’t matter. If your right-knowledge center functions, whatsoever you do is prayerfulness and wherever you go is a temple.
Kabir has said, “Wherever I go I find you, my God. Wherever I move, I move into you, I stumble upon you. And whatsoever I do, even walking,
eating, it is prayer.” Kabir says, “This spontaneity is my samadhi. Just to be spontaneous is my meditation.”
Second is wrong-knowledge: if your center of wrong-knowledge is functioning, then whatsoever you do you will do wrongly, and whatsoever you choose you will choose wrongly. Whatsoever you decide will be wrong because you are not deciding, the wrong center is functioning.
There are people who feel very unfortunate because whatsoever they do goes wrong. And they try not to do wrong again, but that’s not going to help because their center has to be changed. Their mind functions in a wrong way. They may think that they are doing good but they will do bad. With all their good wishes they cannot help it; they are helpless.
Mulla Nasruddin used to visit a saint. He visited for many, many days. And the saint was a silent one, he would not say anything. Then Mulla Nasruddin had to ask; he said, “I have been coming again and again, waiting that you will say something. And you have not said anything. And unless you speak I cannot understand. So just give me a message for my life, a direction so I can move in that direction.”
So that Sufi sage said, “Neki kar kuyen may dal”: Do good, and throw it in the well. It is one of the oldest Sufi sayings: “Do good, and throw it in the well.” It means do good and forget it immediately; don’t carry the thought, “I have done good.”
So next day Mulla Nasruddin helped one old woman to cross the road, and then he pushed her into the well.
Neki kar kuyen may dal: Do good, and throw it in the well.
If your wrong center is functioning, whatsoever you do – you can read the Koran, you can read the Gita, and you will find such meanings that Krishna would be shocked, Mohammed would be shocked to see that you could find such meanings.
Mahatma Gandhi wrote his autobiography with the intention of helping people. Then many letters came to him because he describes his sex life. He was honest, one of the most honest men, so he wrote everything, whatsoever had happened in his past: how he was too indulgent the day his father was dying; he couldn’t sit by his father’s side even that day, he had to go with his wife to bed.
The doctors had told him, “This is the last night. Your father cannot survive till the morning. He will be dead by the morning.” But just about twelve or one in the night Gandhi started feeling desire, sexual desire. The father was feeling
sleepy so Gandhi slipped away, went to his wife and indulged in sex. And the wife was pregnant, it was the ninth month. The father was dying, he died in the night, and the child also died at the moment of birth. So his whole life Gandhi had a deep repentance that he couldn’t be with his dying father because sex was so obsessive.
So he wrote everything, he was honest – and just to help others. But many letters started coming to him, and those letters were such that he was shocked. Many people wrote to him, “Your autobiography is such that we have become more sexual than before reading it. Just reading through your autobiography we have become more sexual and indulgent. It is erotic.”
If the wrong center is functioning then nothing can be done. Whatsoever you do, read, behave, it will be wrong. You will move to the wrong. You have a center which is forcing you to move towards the wrong. You can go to Buddha, but you will see something wrong in him immediately. You cannot meet Buddha – immediately you will see something wrong. You have a focusing for the wrong, a deep urge to find wrong anywhere, everywhere.
Patanjali calls this modification of the mind viparyaya. Viparyaya means perversion. You pervert everything; you interpret everything in such a way that it becomes a perversion.
Omar Khayyam writes, “I have heard that God is compassionate.” This is beautiful. Mohammedans go on repeating, “God is rahman, compassion; rahim, compassion.” They go on repeating, continuously. So Omar Khayyam says, “If he is really compassionate, if he is compassion, then there is no need to be afraid. I can go on committing sin. If he is compassion then what is the fear? I can commit whatsoever sin I want and he is compassion – so whenever I stand before him I will say, ‘Rahim, rahman: Oh God of compassion, I have sinned… But you are compassion; if you are really compassion then have compassion on me.’” So he goes on drinking, he goes on committing whatsoever he thinks is sin. He has interpreted in a very perverted way.
All over the world people have done that. In India we say, “If you go to the Ganges, if you bathe in the Ganges, your sins will dissolve.” It was a beautiful concept in itself. It shows many things. It shows that sin is not something very deep, it is just like dust on you. So don’t get too obsessed by it, don’t feel guilty; it is just dust and inside you remain pure. Even bathing in the Ganges can help. This is just to show you not to become so obsessed with sin the way Christianity has become. Guilt has become so burdensome, so even just taking a bath in the Ganges will help. Don’t be so afraid. But how have we interpreted it? We say, “Then it is okay – go on committing sin.” And after a while, when you feel that now you have committed many sins, so give a chance to the
Ganges to purify them and then come back and commit again. This is the center of perversion.
Third is imagination: mind has the faculty to imagine. It is good, it is beautiful. All that is beautiful has come through imagination. Paintings, art, dance, music, everything that is beautiful has come through the imagination. But everything that is ugly has also come through the imagination. Hitler, Mao, Mussolini, have all come through imagination.
Hitler imagined a world of supermen. And he believed in Friedrich Nietzsche who had said, “Destroy all those who are weak. Destroy all those who are not super; leave only supermen on the earth.” So he destroyed. Just imagination, just utopian imagination – that just by destroying the weak, just by destroying the ugly, just by destroying the physically crippled you will have a beautiful world. But the very destruction is the ugliest thing possible in the world – the verydestruction.
But he was working through imagination. He had an imagination, a utopian imagination; he was the most imaginative man! Hitler is one of the most imaginative men ever, and his imagination became so fantastic and so mad that for his imagined world he tried to destroy this world completely. His imagination had gone mad.
Imagination can give you poetry and painting and art, and imagination can also give you madness. It depends on how you use it. All the great scientific discoveries have been through imagination – people who could imagine, who could imagine the impossible. Now we can fly into the air, now we can go to the moon. These are deep imaginings.
Man has been imagining for centuries, millennia, how to fly, how to go to the moon. Every child is born with the desire to go to the moon, to catch the moon. But we reached it! Through imagination creativity comes, but through imagination destruction also comes.
Patanjali says imagination is the third mode of mind. You can use it in a wrong way and then it will destroy you. You can also use it in a right way. And then there are imaginative meditations: they start with imagination, but by and by imagination becomes subtler and subtler and subtler. And then imagination is ultimately dropped and you are face to face with the truth.
All Christian and Mohammedan meditations are basically through imagination. First you have to imagine something, then you go on imagining it and then through imagination you create an atmosphere around you. Try it; try what is possible through imagination. Even the impossible is possible.
If you think you are beautiful, if you imagine you are beautiful, a certain beauty will start happening to your body. So whenever a man says to a woman,
“You are beautiful,” the woman changes immediately. She may not have been beautiful before this moment. She may not have been beautiful, just homely, ordinary, but this man has given imagination to her.
So every woman who is loved becomes more beautiful, every man who is loved becomes more beautiful. A person who is not loved may be beautiful, but becomes ugly because he cannot imagine, she cannot imagine. And if imagination is not there, you shrink.
Coué, one of the great psychologists of the West, helped millions of people to be cured of many, many diseases just through imagination. His formula was very simple. He would say, “Just start feeling that you are okay. Just go on repeating inside the mind, ‘I am getting better and better. Every day I am getting better.’ In the night, while you fall asleep, go on thinking you are healthy, and you are getting healthier every moment, and by the morning you will be the healthiest person in the world. Go on imagining.”
And he helped millions of people. Even incurable diseases were cured. It looked like a miracle. It is nothing but a basic law: your mind follows imagination.
Now psychologists say that if you say to children, “You are duffers, dull,” they become dull. You force them to be dull. You give their imagination the suggestion that they are dull.
Many experiments have been done. Say to a child, “You are dull. You cannot do anything; you cannot solve this mathematical problem,” and give him the problem and tell him, “Now try” – he will not be able to solve it. You have closed the door. Say to the child, “You are intelligent and I have not seen any boy as intelligent as you; for your stage, for your age you are over- intelligent. You show many potentialities, you can solve any problem. Now try this” – and he will be able to solve it. You have given imagination to him.
Now these things are scientifically proven, scientifically discovered, that whatsoever imagination catches becomes a seed. Whole generations have been changed, whole ages; whole countries have been changed just through imagination.
Go to the Punjab…
I was traveling once from Delhi to Manali. My driver was a Sikh, a sardar. The way, the road, was dangerous, and the car was very big. And many times the driver became afraid. Many times he would say, “Now I cannot go ahead. We will have to go back.”
We tried in every way to persuade him. At one point he became so afraid he stopped the car, got out of the car and said, “No! Now I cannot move from
here. It is dangerous.” He said. “It may not be dangerous for you, you may be ready to die. But I am not, I want to go back.”
By chance one of my friends who is also a sardar and a big police official was also coming. He was following me to attend the camp in Manali. His car arrived and I told him, “Do something! The man has got out of the car.”
That police official came and he said, “You are a sardar, a Sikh, and a coward? Get into the car!”
The man immediately got into the car and started it. So I asked him, “What is the matter?”
He said, “Now he has touched my ego. He says, ‘You are a sardar?’ – Sardar means leader of men – ‘a Sikh and a coward?!’ He has touched my imagination. He has touched my pride. Now we can go. Dead or alive, we will reach Manali!”
And this has not only happened with one man. In the Punjab it has happened with millions. Look at the Hindus of the Punjab and at the Sikhs of the Punjab. Their blood is the same, they belong to the same race, just five hundred years ago all were Hindus. And then a different type of race, a military race, was born. Just by growing a beard, just by changing your face, you cannot become brave. But you can with imagination. Nanak gave them the imagination that, “You are a different type of race. You are unconquerable.” And once they believed, once that imagination started to work, within five hundred years a new race, totally different from Punjabi Hindus, came into being in the Punjab. Nothing is different, but in India no one is braver than they. These two world wars have proved that on the whole of the earth, Sikhs have no comparison. They can fight fearlessly.
What has happened? Just their imagination has created a milieu around them. They feel that just by being Sikhs they are different. Imagination works! It can make a brave man out of you, it can make you a coward.
I have heard…
Mulla Nasruddin was sitting in a pub, drinking. He was not a brave man, one of the most cowardly, but alcohol gave him courage. And then a man, a giant of a man, entered the pub. He was ferocious looking, dangerous, looked like a murderer. At any other time, in his senses, Mulla Nasruddin would have been afraid, but now he was drunk so he was not afraid at all.
That ferocious looking man went near to Mulla, and seeing that he was not afraid at all he stomped on his feet. Mulla got angry, furious, and he said, “What are you doing? Are you doing it on purpose or is it just a sort of joke?”
But by this time, by stomping on his feet, Mulla was brought back from his alcohol. He was brought back, he came to his senses. But he had said, “What are you doing? Is it on purpose or is it just a sort of joke?”
The man said, “On purpose.”
Mulla Nasruddin said, “Then thank you. On purpose it is okay, because I don’t like those types of jokes”
Patanjali says imagination is the third faculty. You go on imagining… If you wrongly imagine you can create delusions around you, illusions, dreams, and you can be lost in them. LSD and other drugs help and work on this center. So whatsoever potentiality you have inside, your LSD trip will help you develop it. So nothing is certain. If you have happy imaginations, the drug trip will be a happy trip, a high. If you have miserable imaginations, nightmarish imaginations, the trip is going to be bad.
That’s why many people make contradictory reports. Huxley says it can become a key to the door of heaven, and Rheiner says it is ultimate hell. It depends on you; LSD cannot do anything. It simply jumps on your center of imagination and starts functioning there chemically. If you have an imagination of the nightmarish type then you will develop that, and you will pass through hell. And if you are addicted to beautiful dreams you may reach heaven.
This imagination can function either as a hell or as heaven. You can use it to go completely insane. What has happened to madmen in the madhouses? They have used their imagination, and they have used it in such a way that they are engulfed by it. A madman may be sitting alone and he is talking loudly to someone. He not only talks, he answers also. He questions, he answers, he speaks for the other who is absent also. You may think that he is mad, but he is talking to a real person. In his imagination the person is real, and he cannot judge what is imaginary and what is real.
Children cannot judge. So many times children may lose their toy in a dream, and then they will weep in the morning, “Where is my toy?” They cannot judge that a dream is a dream and reality is reality. And they have not lost anything, they were just dreaming. The boundaries are blurred; they don’t know where the dream ends and where reality starts.
A madman is also blurred. He doesn’t know what is real, what is unreal. If imagination is used rightly then you will know that this is imagination, and you will remain alert that this is imagination. You can enjoy it, but this is not real.
So when people meditate, many things happen through their imagination. They start seeing lights, colors, visions, talking to God himself, or moving with Jesus or dancing with Krishna. These are imaginative things, and a meditator
has to remember that these are functions of the imagination. You can enjoy it, nothing is wrong in them, they are fun, but don’t think that they are real.
Remember that only the witnessing consciousness is real, nothing else is real. Whatsoever happens may be beautiful – enjoy, enjoy it. It is beautiful to dance with Krishna, nothing is wrong in it. Dance, enjoy, but remember continuously that this is imagination, a beautiful dream. Don’t get lost in it. If you are lost in it then imagination has become dangerous. Many religious people are just in imagination and they move into imagination and waste their life.
The fourth faculty is sleep. Sleep means unconsciousness as far as your outward-moving consciousness is concerned. It has gone deep into itself. Activity has stopped, conscious activity has stopped. Mind is not functioning. Sleep is a non-functioning of the mind. If you are dreaming then it is not sleep. You are just in the middle between waking and sleep. You have left waking and you have not entered sleep; you are just in the middle.
Sleep means a totally contentless state – no activity, no movement in the mind. Mind has been completely absorbed, relaxed. This sleep is beautiful, it is life-giving. You can use it. And this sleep, if you know how to use it, can become samadhi. Samadhi and sleep are not very different. There is only one difference: in samadhi you will be aware; everything else will be the same.
In sleep everything is the same, only you are not aware. You are in the same bliss into which Buddha entered, in which Ramakrishna lives, in which Jesus has made his home. In deep sleep you are in the same blissful state, but you are not aware. So in the morning you feel the night has been good, in the morning you feel refreshed, vital, rejuvenated. In the morning you feel that the night was just beautiful, but this is just an afterglow. You don’t know what has happened, what really happened. You were not aware.
Sleep can be used in two ways. Just as a natural rest… You have even lost that. People are not really going into sleep – they go on dreaming continuously. Sometimes, for a very few seconds, they touch deep sleep, and they again start dreaming. The silence of sleep, the blissful music of sleep, has become unknown, you have destroyed it. Even natural sleep is destroyed. You are so agitated and excited that the mind cannot fall completely into oblivion.
But Patanjali says natural sleep is good for the body’s health, and if you can become alert in sleep it can become samadhi, it can become a spiritual phenomenon. So there are techniques – we will discuss them later on – of how sleep can become an awakening. The Gita says that the yogi doesn’t sleep even while he is asleep. He remains alert, something inside goes on being aware. The whole body falls into sleep, the mind falls into sleep, but the witnessing
remains. Someone is watching – a watcher on the tower goes on. Then sleep becomes samadhi; it becomes the ultimate ecstasy.
And the fifth modification of the mind is memory. That too can be used or misused. If memory is misused it creates confusion. Really, you may remember something, but you cannot be certain whether it happened that way or not. Your memory is not reliable. You may add many things to it; imagination may enter into it. You may delete many things from it, you may do many things to it. And when you say, “This is my memory,” it is a very refined and changed thing. It is not real.
Everybody says, “My childhood was just paradise” – and look at children. These children will also say later on that their childhood was paradise, and they are suffering. And every child hankers to grow up soon, to become an adult. Every child thinks that adults are enjoying, they are enjoying all that is worth enjoying. They are powerful, they can do everything; he is helpless. Children think they are suffering. But these children will grow as you have grown, and then later on they will say that childhood was beautiful, just a paradise.
Your memory is not reliable. You are imagining. You are just creating your past. You are not true to it. And you drop many things from it – you drop all that was ugly, all that was sad, all that was painful; all that was beautiful you continue. You remember all that was a support to your ego, and all that was not a support you drop, you forget.
So everybody has a great storehouse of dropped memories. And whatsoever you say is not true because you cannot remember truly. All your centers are confused and they enter into each other and disturb.
Right-memory… Buddha has used the words right-memory for meditation. Patanjali says, if memory is right, that means one has to be totally honest with oneself. Then, only then, can memory be right. Whatsoever has happened, bad or good, don’t change it. Know it as it is. It is very hard, it is arduous. You choose and change. Knowing one’s past as it is will change your whole life. If you rightly know your past as it is, you will not like to repeat it in the future. Right now everybody is thinking of how to repeat it in a modified form, but if you know your past exactly as it was, you will not like to repeat it.
Right-memory will give you the impetus of how to be free from all lives. And if memory is right then you can even go into past lives. If you are honest then you can go into past lives. And then you have only one desire: to transcend all this nonsense. But you think the past was beautiful, and you think the future is going to be beautiful, only this present is wrong. But the past was present a few days before, and the future will become present a few days after. And each time each present is wrong and all past is beautiful and all future is
beautiful. This is wrong memory. Look directly at the past, don’t change it; look at the past as it was. But we are very dishonest.
Every man hates his father, but if you ask anybody he will say, “I love my father. I honor my father as no one else.” Every woman hates her mother, but ask and every woman will say, “My mother is just divine.” This is wrong- memory.
Gibran has a story. He says one night a mother and daughter were awakened suddenly by a noise. They both were sleepwalkers, and at the time the sudden noise happened in the neighborhood, they were both walking in the garden, asleep. They were sleepwalkers.
It must have been a shock, because in sleep the old woman, the mother, was saying to the daughter, “Because of you, you bitch – because of you my youth is lost. You destroyed me. And now anybody who comes to the house looks at you. Nobody looks at me.” A deep jealousy that comes to every mother when the daughter becomes young and beautiful: it happens to every mother, but it is inside.
And the daughter was saying, “You old rotten… Because of you I cannot enjoy life. You are the hindrance. Everywhere you are the hindrance, the obstacle. I cannot love, I cannot enjoy.”
And suddenly, because of the noise, they were both awakened. And the old woman said, “My child, what are you doing here? You may catch cold. Come inside.”
And the daughter said, “But what are you doing here? You were not feeling well and this is a cold night. Come, mother. Come to bed.”
The first thing that was happening was coming from the unconscious. Now they are again pretending. They have become awake. Now the unconscious has gone back and the conscious mind has come in. Now they are hypocrites. Your conscious mind is hypocrisy.
To be truly honest with one’s own memories one will have to really pass through arduous effort. And you have to be true, whatsoever it is. You have to be nakedly true. You have to know what you really think about your father, about your mother, about your brother, about your sister – really. And don’t mix, don’t change, don’t polish what you have in the past; let it be as it is. If this happens, then, Patanjali says, this will be a freedom. You will drop it. The whole thing is nonsense and you will not want to project it again into the future.
Then you will not be a hypocrite. You will be real, true, sincere. You will
become authentic. And when you become authentic you become like a rock: nothing can change you, nothing can create confusion.
You become like a sword: you can always cut whatsoever is wrong, you can divide whatsoever is right from the wrong. And then a clarity of mind is achieved. That clarity can lead you towards meditation. That clarity can become the basic ground to grow – to grow beyond.
Enough for today.
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