There are three types of men who belong to the category of mumuksha. The first type of man who belongs to mumuksha puts his one-third, being into the effort. Putting one-third of your being into the effort you will attain something. What you will attain will be a negative achievement: you will not be tense – this has to be understood very deeply – but, you will not be calm. You will not be tense; the tensions will drop. But you will not be tranquil, calm, and cool. The attainment will be negative. You will not be ill, but you will not be healthy also. Illness will disappear. You will not feel irritated, you will not feel frustrated. But you will not feel fulfilled also. The negative will drop, the thorns will drop, but the flower has not come.
This is the first degree of mumuksha. You can find many people who are stuck there. You will feel a certain quality in them: they don’t react, they don’t get irritated, you cannot make them angry, you cannot put them in anxiety. They have attained something, but still you feel something is lacking. They are not at ease. Even non-angry, they don’t have compassion. They may not be angry at you, but they cannot forgive. Subtle is the difference. They are not angry, that is right. But even in their being non-angry there is no forgiveness. They are stuck.
They don’t bother about you, your insult, but they are, in a way, cut off from the relationship. They can’t share. Trying to not be angry, they have moved out of all relationships. They have become like islands – closed. And when you are an island, closed, you are uprooted. You cannot flower, you cannot be happy, you cannot have well-being. It is a negative achievement. Something has been thrown, but nothing has been attained. The path is clear, of course. Even to throw something is very good because now the possibility comes into existence: you can attain something.
Patanjali calls them mridu: soft. The first degree of attainment, negative. You will find many sannyasins in India, many monks in Catholic monasteries, who are stuck at the first degree. They are good people, but you will find them dull. It is very good not to be angry, but it is not enough. Something is missing; nothing positive has happened. They are empty vessels. They have emptied themselves, but somehow they have not been refilled. The higher has not descended, but the lower has been thrown.
Then there is a second degree of mumuksha – the second degree of the right seeker – who puts himself two-thirds into the effort. Not yet total, just in the middle. Because of the middle, Patanjali calls him madhya – the middle man. He attains something. The first-degree man is in him, but something more is added. He is at peace – silent, cool, collected. Whatsoever happens in the world does not affect him. He remains unaffected, detached. He becomes like a peak: very peaceful.
If you come near him you will feel his peace surrounding you; just as you go in a garden and the cool air and the fragrance of the flowers and the singing of the birds all surround you, they touch you, you can feel. With the first-degree man, the mridu, you will not feel anything. You will feel only an emptiness – a desert-like being. And the first type of man will suck you. If you go near him you will feel that you have been emptied – somebody has been sucking you because he is a desert. With him you will feel, being dried, and you will be afraid.
You will feel this with many sannyasins. If you go near them, you will feel they are sucking you, not knowingly. They have attained the first degree. They have become empty, and that very emptiness becomes like a hole and you are sucked by it automatically.
It is said in Tibet that this first-degree man, if he is anywhere, should not be allowed to move in the town. When lamas in Tibet attain the first degree, they are prohibited to go out of the monasteries – because if this man comes near anybody, he sucks. That sucking is beyond his control; he cannot do anything about it. He is like a desert. Anything that comes near becomes sucked, exploited.
It is not allowed for first-degree llamas to touch a tree because it has been observed that the tree dies. Even in the Himalayas, a Hindu sannyasin is not allowed to touch trees – they will die. He is a sucking phenomenon. This first-degree llama is not allowed to attend anybody’s marriage because he will become a destructive force. He is not allowed to bless anybody because he cannot bless. Even when he is blessing, he is sucking. You may not have known it, for these first-degree lamas, sannyasins, sadhus, monasteries were created, so they can live in an enclosed world of their own, not allowed to move out. Unless they attain to the second degree, they are not allowed to bless anybody.
The second-degree seeker who has put his two-third being becomes peaceful, calm. If you go near him, he flows in you, he shares. Now he is no more a desert; now he is a green forest. Many things are coming up in him – silent, calm, tranquil. You will feel it. But this is also not the goal; many are stuck there. Just to be silent is not enough. What type of achievement is this? Just to be silent? It is like death, no movement, no activity. You are at peace of course, at home of course, but no celebration, no bliss.
Third-degree seeker who puts his totality into it; attains to bliss. Bliss is a positive phenomenon; peace is just on the way. When bliss comes nearer, you become peaceful. It is a distant influence of the bliss that is reaching near you. It is just like coming near a river: from a long distance you start feeling that the air is cooling, the quality of the greenery is changing. Trees are greener with more foliage. The air is cool. The river you have not seen yet, but the river is somewhere near, the source of water is somewhere near. When the source of life is somewhere near, you become peaceful, but you have not yet attained – just on the way. Patanjali calls this man the madhya: the middle man.
He is also not the goal. Unless you can dance with ecstasy… This man cannot dance, this man cannot sing, because singing will look like disturbing the peace, dancing will look foolish – what are you doing? This man can only sit like a dead statue – silent, of course, but not flowering; green, but the flowers have not happened yet: the final has not descended. Then there is the third-degree man who can dance, who will look mad because he has so much. He cannot contain and because he cannot contain he will sing and he will dance and he will move and he will share, and he will throw wherever he can the seeds that are showering on him endlessly. This is the third-degree man.
Tags: Mumuksha Patanjali
