Yoga Sutra 6.1 Samprajnata Samadhi

SAMPRAJNATA SAMADHI IS THE SAMADHI THAT IS ACCOMPANIED BY REASONING, REFLECTION, BLISS AND A SENSE OF PURE BEING.

This is the first step; many are misguided – they think this is the last because it is so pure and you feel so blissful and so happy that you think that now nothing is there to be achieved more. If you ask Patanjali, he will say the satori of the Zen is just the first samadhi. It is not the final, the ultimate; ultimate is still far away.

The words that he uses cannot be exactly translated into English because Sanskrit is the most perfect language; no language comes even near to it. So I would have to explain to you. The word used is vitarka: in English it is translated as reasoning. It is a poor translation. Vitarka has to be understood. Tarka means logic reasoning: then Patanjali says there are three types of logic. One he calls Kutarka – reasoning oriented towards the negative: always thinking in terms of no, denying, doubting, nihilistic.

Whatsoever you say, the man who lives in Kutarka – negative logic – always thinks how to deny it, how to say no to it. He looks to the negative. He is always complaining, grumbling. He always feels that something somewhere is wrong – always You cannot put him right because this is his orientation. If you tell him to see the sun, he will not see the sun. He will see the sunspots; he will always find the darker side of things: that is kutarka. That is Kutarka – wrong reasoning – but it looks like reasoning.

It leads finally to atheism. Then you deny God, because if you cannot see the good, you cannot see the lighter side of life, how can you see God? You simply deny. Then the whole existence becomes dark. Then everything is wrong, and you can create a hell around you. If everything is wrong, how can you be happy? And it is your creation, and you can always find something wrong because life consists of a duality.

In the rose bush there are beautiful flowers, but thorns also. A man of Kutarka will count the thorns, and then he will come to an understanding that this rose must be illusory; it cannot exist. Amidst so many thorns, millions of thorns, how can a rose exist? It is impossible; very possibility is denied. Somebody is deceiving.

Mulla Nasrudin was very, very sad. He went to the priest and said, “What to do? My crop is destroyed again. No rains.” The priest said, “Don’t be so sad, Nasrudin. Look at the lighter side of life. You can be happy because you still have much. And always believe in God who is the provider. He even provides for birds of the air, so why are you worried?” Nasrudin said, “Yes!” very bitterly, “Off my corn! God provides the birds of the air off my corn.”

He cannot see the point. His crop is destroyed by these birds, and God is providing them…”and my crop is destroyed.” This type of mind will always find something or other, and he will always be tense. Anxiety will follow him like a shadow. This Patanjali is called Kutarka – negative logic, negative reasoning.

Then there is Tarka – simple reasoning. Simple reasoning leads nowhere. It is moving in a circle because it has no goal. You can go on reasoning and reasoning and reasoning, but you will not come to any conclusion because reasoning can come to a conclusion only when there is a goal from the very beginning. You are moving in a direction, then you reach somewhere. If you move in all directions – sometimes to the south, sometimes to the east, sometimes to the west – you waste energy.

Reasoning without a goal is called Tarka; reasoning with a negative attitude is called Kutarka; reasoning with a positive grounding is called Vitarka. Vitarka means special reasoning. So Vitarka is the first element of samprajnata samadhi. A man who wants to attain inner peace has to be trained into Vitarka – special reasoning. He always looks to the lighter side, the positive. He counts the flowers and forgets the thorns – not that there are not thorns, but he is not concerned with them. If you love the flowers and count the flowers, a moment comes when you cannot believe in the thorns, because how is it possible where so beautiful flowers exist, how can thorns exist? There must be something illusory.

The man of Kutarka counts thorns; then flowers become illusory. The man of Vitarka counts flowers; then thorns become illusory. That’s why Patanjali says: Vitarka is the first element. Only then bliss is possible. Through Vitarka one attains to heaven. One creates one’s own heaven all around.

Your standpoint counts. Whatsoever you found around you is your own creation – heaven or hell. And Patanjali says you can go beyond logic and reasoning only through the positive reasoning. Through the negative you can never go beyond, because the more you say no, the more you find things to be sad – no, denied. Then, by and by, you become a constant no inside – a dark night, only thorns and no flowers can flower in you – a desert…

When you say yes, you find more and more things to be said yes. When you say yes, you become a yea-sayer. Life is affirmed, and you absorb through your yes all that is good, beautiful, all that is true.

“Yes” becomes the door in you for the divine to enter; “no” becomes a closed door. Door closed, you are a hell: doors open, all doors open, existence flows in you. You are fresh, young, alive; you become a flower.

Vitarka, Vichar, Ananda: Patanjali says if you are attuned with Vitarka – a positive reasoning – then you can be a thinker, never before it. Then thinking arises. He has a very different meaning of thinking. You also think that you think. Patanjali will not agree. He says you have thoughts, but no thinking. That’s why I say it is difficult to translate him.

He says you have thoughts, vagrant thoughts like a crowd, but no thinking. Between your two thoughts there is no inner current. They are uprooted things; there is no inner planning. Your thinking is a chaos. It is not a cosmos; it has no inner discipline. It is just like you see a rosary. There are beads; they are held together by an invisible thread running through them. Thoughts are beads; thinking is the thread. You have beads – too many, in fact, more than you need – but no inner running thread through them. That inner thread is called, by Patanjali thinking – Vichar. You have thoughts, but no thinking. And if this goes on and on, you will become mad. A madman is a man who has millions of thoughts and no thinking, and Samprajnata samadhi is the state in which there are no thoughts, but thinking is perfect. This distinction has to be understood.

Your thoughts, in the first place, are not yours. You have gathered them. Just in a dark room, sometimes a beam of light comes from the roof and you see millions of dust particles floating in the beam. When the Master looks into you, he sees the same phenomenon: millions of dust particles. You call them thoughts. They are moving in you and out of you. From one head they enter another, and they go on. They have their own life.

A thought is a thing; it has its own existence. When a person dies, all his mad thoughts are released immediately and they start finding shelter somewhere or other. Immediately those who are around they enter. They are like germs: they have their own life. Even when you are alive, you go on dispersing your thoughts all around you. When you talk, then, of course, you throw your thoughts into others. But when you are silent, then also you are throwing thoughts all around. They are not yours, the first thing.