Yoga Sutra 7.1 Intense And Sincere

SUCCESS IS NEAREST TO THOSE WHOSE EFFORTS ARE INTENSE AND SINCERE.

SUCCESS IS NEAREST TO THOSE WHOSE EFFORTS ARE INTENSE AND SINCERE. Your totality is needed. Remember, sincerity is a quality that happens whenever you are totally in something, but people are almost wrong in their idea of sincerity. They think; to be serious is sincere. To be serious is not to be sincere. Sincerity is a quality which happens whenever you are totally in something. A child playing with his toys is sincere, totally in it, absorbed, nothing left behind, no holding back; he is not there really, only the play goes on.

Because if you don’t hold anything, where are you? You have become completely one with the activity. The actor is no more there, the doer is no more there. When the doer is not, there is sincerity. How can you be serious? – Because seriousness belongs to the doer. So in mosques, temples, churches, you will find two types of people – sincere and serious. Serious will be with long faces, as if they are doing a very great thing – something sacred, something of the other world. This too is ego, as if you are doing something great, as if you are obliging the whole world because you are praying.

Look at the religious people – so-called, of course: they walk in such a way as if they are obliging the whole world. They are the salt of the earth. If they disappear, the whole existence will disappear. They are supporting it. It is because of them life exists – because of their prayers. You will find them serious.

Seriousness belongs to the ego, the doer. Look at a father working in the shop, in the office somewhere. If he doesn’t love his wife and children, he will be serious because it is a duty. He is doing it, and he is obliging everybody around. He will always say, “I am doing it for my wife, I am doing it for my children.” And this man by his seriousness will become a dead stone hanging around the necks of his children, and they will never be able to forgive this father because he never loved.

If you love, you never say such words. If you love your children, you go dancing to your office. You love them; it is not something that you are obliging. You are not fulfilling a duty; it is your love. You are happy that you are allowed to do something for your children. You are happy and blissful that you can do something for your wife because love feels so helpless; love wants to do so many things and cannot do. Love always feels that “Whatsoever I am doing is less than should be done.” And duty? Duty always feels, “I am doing more than is needed.” Duty becomes serious; love is sincere. And love is to be totally with a person, so totally to be with a person that the duality disappears – even for moments – there is no duality, one exists in two, a bridge comes in. Love is sincere, never serious. And wherever you can put your total being in anything, it becomes love. If you are a gardener and you love, you bring your total being into it. Then sincerity happens.

Sincerity you cannot cultivate. Seriousness you can cultivate, but sincerity – no. Sincerity is a shadow of being total in something. Says Patanjali: SUCCESS IS NEAREST TO THOSE WHOSE EFFORTS ARE INTENSE AND SINCERE.

Of course, there is no need to say intense and sincere. Sincerity is always intense. But why does Patanjali say intense and sincere? For a certain reason. Sincerity is always intense, but intensity is not necessarily always sincere. You can be intense in something but not sincere, may not be sincere. Hence, he adds the qualification, intense and sincere, because you can be intense even in your seriousness. You can be intense even with your part being, you can be intense in a certain mood, you can be intense in your anger, you can be intense in your lust, you can be intense in millions of things and may not be sincere, because sincerity belongs when you are totally in it.

You can be intense in sex and you may not be sincere, because sex is not necessarily love. You may be very, very intense in your sexuality – but once sexuality is fulfilled, it is finished, the intensity gone. Love may not look so intense, but it is sincere – and because it is sincere, the intensity continues. In fact, if you are really in love it becomes timeless-ness. It is always intense. And make a clear distinction: if you are intense without sincerity, you cannot be forever intense. Only momentarily you can be intense; when the desire arises you are intense. It is not really your intensity. It is enforced by desire.

Sex arises. You feel starvation, hunger. The whole body, the whole bio-energy, needs a release; you become intense. But this intensity is not yours; it is nothing coming from your being. It is just enforced by the biological crust around you: it is a bodily enforcement on your being. It is not coming from the center. It is being forced from the periphery. You will be intense, and then sex fulfilled, the intensity gone, then you don’t care about the woman.

Many women have told me that they feel cheated, they feel deceived, they feel used because whenever their husbands make love to them, in the beginning they feel so loving, so intense; they feel so happy. But the moment sex is finished they turn over and go to sleep. They didn’t care at all what was happening to the woman. After you have made love, you even don’t say goodbye. You don’t thank; the woman feels used.

Your intensity is biological, bodily; it is nothing coming from you. In sex intensity there is a foreplay, but no afterplay. The word doesn’t really exist. I have seen thousands of books written on sex; the word “afterplay” doesn’t exist. What type of love is this? Bodily needs fulfilled, finished. The woman has been used; now you can throw her just as you use something and throw it – a plastic container – you use it and you throw it. Finished! When the desire will arise, then again you will look at the woman, and at that woman you are very intense.

No, Patanjali doesn’t mean that type of intensity. I have taken sex to explain to you, because that is the only intensity that is left with you. There is no other example possible. You have become so lukewarm in your life, you exist on such a low level of energy, that there is no intensity. Somehow you go to the office. Just stand by the corner of the road when the people are rushing toward their offices; just watch their faces – sleepy.

Where is he going? Why is he going? It seems as if they don’t have anywhere else to go, so they are going to the office. They cannot help it; because what will they do at home? So they are going to the office, bored, automata, robot-like, going because everybody is going to the office and it is time to go. And what to do if you don’t want to go? Holidays become such a suffering, no intensity. Coming back – look at people in the evening, coming back to the house, not knowing why they are going again, but nowhere else to go, somehow, dragging life. Lukewarm, a low-energy phenomenon.

That is why I have taken the example of sex – because I cannot find any other intensity in you. You don’t sing, you don’t dance, you don’t have any intensity. You don’t laugh, you don’t weep. All intensity is gone. In sex, a little intensity exists; that too because of nature – not because of you.

Patanjali says “intense and sincere”. Religion is really like sex – deeper than sex, higher than sex, holier than sex, but like sex. It is one individual meeting with the whole: it is a deep orgasm. You melt into the whole, you completely disappear. Prayer is like love. Yoga – in fact, the very word “yoga” means meeting, communion, meeting of the two – and such a deep and intense and sincere meeting that the two disappear. The boundaries become blurred and one exists. It cannot be in any other way. If you are not sincere and intense, bring your total being. Only then the ultimate is possible. You have to risk yourself completely; less than that won’t do.