Shraddha, trust, is the first door, second is virya. That too is difficult. It is translated as effort. No, effort is simply a part of it. The word virya means many things, but deep down it means bio-energy. One of the meanings of virya is semen, the sexual potency. If you really want to translate it exactly, virya is bio-energy, your total energy phenomenon – you as energy. Of course, this energy can be brought only through effort; hence, one of the meanings is “effort”.
But that is poor – not so rich as the word virya. Virya means that your total energy has to be brought into it. Only the mind won’t do. You can say yes from the mind that will not be enough. Your totality, without holding anything back: that is the meaning of VIRYA. And that is possible only when there is trust. Otherwise you will hold something, just to be secure, safe, because, “This man may be leading somewhere wrong, so we can step back any moment. In a moment we can say ‘Enough is enough; now no more.’”
You hold back a part of you just to be watchful, where this man is leading. People go to master and they say, “We are watching. Let us first watch what is happening.” They are very clever – clever fools – because these things cannot be watched from the outside. What is happening is an inner phenomenon. Even you cannot see to whom it is happening many times. Many times only master can see what is happening. You become aware only later on, what has happened.
Others cannot watch. From the outside there is no possibility to watch it. How can you watch from the outside? Gestures you can see; people doing meditation you can see. But what is happening inside, that is meditation. What they are doing outside is just creating a situation.
It happened: there was a very great Sufi Master, Jalaludin. He had a small school of rare pupils, rare, because he was a very choosy one. He would not allow anybody unless he had chosen. For very few he worked, but people passing sometimes would come to see what was happening there. Once a group of people came, professors. They are always very alert people, very clever, and they looked. In the Master’s house, just in the compound, a group of fifty people were sitting, and they were doing mad gestures – somebody laughing, somebody crying, somebody jumping. The professors watched.
They said, “What is going on? This man is leading them toward madness. They are already mad, and they are fools – because once you become mad it will be difficult to come back. And this is nonsense; we have never heard. People when they meditate, they sit silently.”
And there was much discussion between them. A group of them said, “Because we don’t know what is happening, it is not good to take any judgment.” Then there was a third group among them who said, “Whatsoever it is, it is worth enjoying. We would like to watch. It is beautiful. Why can’t we enjoy it? Why be bothered what they are doing? But just to watch them is a beautiful thing.”
Then after a few months, again, the same group came to the school to watch. Now what was happening? Now everybody was silent. The fifty persons were there, the Master was there – they were sitting silently, so silently, as if there was no one, like statues. Again there was discussion.
There was a group who said, “Now they are useless. What to see? Nothing! The first time we had come it was beautiful. We enjoyed it. But now they are just boring.” The other group said, “But now we think they are meditating. The first time they were simply mad. This is the right thing to do; this is how meditation is done. It is written in the scriptures, described in this way.”
But there was still a third group who said, “We don’t know anything about meditation. How can we judge?”
Then, again, after a few months, the group came. Now there was nobody. Only the Master was sitting, smiling. All the disciples had disappeared. So they asked, “What is happening? The first time we came there was a mad crowd, and we thought this is useless, you are driving people crazy. The next time we came it was very good. People were meditating. Where have they all gone?”
The Master said, “The work done, the disciples have disappeared. And I am smiling happily because the thing happened. And you are the fools, I know! I have also been watching – not only you. I know what discussions were going on, and what you were thinking the first time and the second time.” Said Jalaludin, “The effort that you have taken to come here for three times would have been enough for you to become meditators. And the discussion that you have been in, that much energy was enough to make you silent. And in the same period, those disciples have disappeared, and you are standing at the same place. Come in! Don’t watch from the outside.” They said, “Yes! That is why we are coming again and again, to watch what is happening. When we are certain, then… Otherwise we don’t want to be committed.”
Clever people never want to be committed, but is there any life without commitment? But clever people think commitment is a bondage. But is there any freedom without bondage? First you have to move in a relationship, only then you can go beyond it. First you have to move in a deep commitment, depth to depth, heart to heart, and only then you can transcend it. There is no other way. If you just move out and watch, you can never enter into the shrine – the shrine is commitment. And then there can be no relationship.
A Master and disciple is a love relationship, the highest love that is possible. Unless the relationship is there, you cannot grow. Says Patanjali, “The first is trust – shraddha – and second is energy – effort.” Your whole energy has to be brought in; part won’t do. It may even be destructive if you come only partially in and remain partially out, because that will become a rift within you. It will create a tension within you; it will become an anxiety rather than bliss.
Bliss is where you are in your totality; anxiety is where you are only in part, because then you are divided and there is a tension, and the two parts are going separate ways. Then you are in difficulty.
“OTHERS WHO ATTAIN ASAMPRAJNATA SAMADHI ATTAIN THROUGH FAITH, TRUST, EFFORT, ENERGY, RECOLLECTION.”
This word recollection is smriti: it is remembrance – what Gurdjieff calls self-remembering. That is smriti.
You don’t remember yourself. You may remember millions of things, but you go on continuously forgetting yourself, that you are. Gurdjieff had a technique. He got it from Patanjali. And, in fact, all techniques come from Patanjali. He is the past Master of techniques. Smriti, remembrance – self-remembering – whatsoever you do. You are walking: remember deep down that “I am walking, I am.” Don’t be lost in walking. Walking is there – the movement, the activity – and the inner center is there, just aware, watching, witnessing.
You need not repeat it in the mind, “I am walking.” If you repeat, that is not remembrance. You have to be non-verbally aware that “I am walking, I am eating, I am talking, I am listening.” Whatsoever you do, the “I” inside should not be forgotten; it should remain. It is not self-consciousness. It is consciousness of the self. Self-consciousness is ego; consciousness of the self is asmita – purity, just being aware that “I am.”
Ordinarily, your consciousness is arrowed towards the object. You look at me: your whole consciousness is moving towards me like an arrow. But you are arrowed towards me. Self-remembering means you must have a double-arrowed arrow, one side of it showing to me, another side showing to you. A double-arrowed arrow is smriti – self-remembrance.
Very difficult, because it is easy to remember the object and forget yourself. The opposite is also easy – to remember yourself and forget the object. Both are easy; that’s why those who are in the market, in the world, and those who are in the monastery, out of the world, are the same. Both are single-arrowed. In the market they are looking at things, objects. In the monastery they are looking at themselves.
Smriti is neither in the market nor in the monastery. Smriti is a phenomenon of self-remembering, when subject and object both are together in consciousness. That is the most difficult thing in the world. Even if you can attain for – a single moment, a split moment, you will have the glimpse of satori immediately. Immediately you have moved out of the body, somewhere else.
Try it. But, remember, if you don’t have trust it will become a tension. These are the problems involved. It will become such a tension you can go mad, because it is a very tense state. That’s why it is difficult to remember both – the object and the subject, the outer and the inner. To remember both is very, very arduous. If there is trust, that trust will bring the tension down because trust is love. It will soothe you; it will be a soothing force around you. Otherwise the tension can become so much, you will not be able to sleep. You will not be able to be at peace any moment because it will be a constant problem. And you will be just in anxiety continuously.
That’s why we can do one: that’s easy. Go to the monastery, close your eyes, remember yourself, forget the world. But what are you doing? You have simply reversed the whole process, nothing else. No change. Or, forget these monasteries and these temples and these Masters, and be in the world, enjoy the world. That too is easy. The difficult thing is to be conscious of both. And when you are conscious of the both and the energy is simultaneously aware, arrowed in the diametrically opposite dimensions, there is a transcendence. You simply become the third: you become the witness of both. And when the third enters, first you try to see the object and yourself. But if you try to see both, by and by, by and by, you feel something is happening within you – because you are becoming a third: you are between the two, the object and the subject. You are neither the object nor the subject now.
Tags: Patanjali Shraddha
