Yoga Sutra 10 Beyond Desires

WHEN MEDITATION PRODUCES EXTRAORDINARY SENSE PERCEPTIONS, THE MIND GAINS CONFIDENCE AND THIS HELPS PERSEVERANCE.

If you work out your breathing pattern, and you find the secret keys how to change the climate of the mind and how to change the moods… And if you work from both the poles, that will be better. And try to be friendly towards a happy person, indifferent towards evil, and continue the change and transformation of your breathing patterns also. Then there will be extraordinary sense perceptions.

If you have taken LSD, marijuana, hashish, then you know extraordinary sense perceptions happen. You look at ordinary things, and they become extraordinary. Aldous Huxley remembers that when he took for the first time LSD he was sitting before an ordinary chair, and when he became more and more deep with the drug, when he was on, the chair immediately started changing color. Radiant it became: an ordinary chair – he had never paid any attention to it – became so beautiful, many colors coming out of it, as if it is made of diamonds. Such beautiful shapes and nuances that he couldn’t believe his eyes, what was happening. Later on he remembered this must have happened to Van Gogh, because he had painted a chair almost exactly the same.

A poet need not take LSD. He has an inbuilt system of throwing LSD in the body. That is the difference between a poet and an ordinary man. That’s why they say a poet is born, not made: because he has an extra-ordinary body structure. The chemicals in his body have a different quantity and quality to them. That’s why where you don’t see anything he sees miracles. You see an ordinary tree, and he sees something unbelievable. You see ordinary clouds: a poet, if he is really a poet, never sees anything ordinary; everything is extraordinarily beautiful.

The same happens to a yogi: because when you change your breathing and your attitudes, your body chemistry changes its pattern; you are going through a chemical transformation, and then your eyes become clear, a new perceptivity happens. The old same tree becomes absolutely new. You never knew the shade of its green: it becomes radiant. The whole world all around you takes a new shape. It is a paradise now – not the ordinary old rotten earth.

People around you are no more the same. Your ordinary wife becomes a most beautiful woman. Everything changes with your clarity of perception. When your eyes change, everything changes. Says Patanjali, WHEN MEDITATION PRODUCES EXTRAORDINARY SENSE PERCEPTIONS, THE MIND GAINS CONFIDENCE AND THAT HELPS PERSEVERANCE.

Then you become confident that you are on the right path. The world is becoming more and more beautiful and ugliness is disappearing. The world is becoming more and more a harmony; the discord is disappearing. The world is becoming more and more home, you are feeling more and more at ease in it. It is friendly. It is a love affair with you and the universe. You become more confident, and more perseverance comes to your effort.

ALSO, MEDITATE ON THE INNER LIGHT WHICH IS SERENE, BEYOND ALL SORROW.

This can be done only when you have attained a certain quality of perceptivity. Then you can close the eyes and you can find a flame – a beautiful flame near the heart, a blue light. But right now you cannot see it. It is there, it has always been there. When you die, that blue light goes out of your body. But you cannot see it because when you were alive you couldn’t see it.

And others will also not be able to see it, that something is going out; but Kirlian in Soviet Russia, he has taken photographs with very sensitive films. When a person dies, something happens around. Some body-energy, some light-like thing, leaves, goes and disappears into the cosmos. That light is always there: that is your center of being. It is near the heart – with a blue flame.

When you have some perception, you can see the beautiful world all around you – when your eyes are clear. You close them and you move nearer the heart; you try to find what is there. First you will feel darkness. It is just like when you come from the outside on a hot sunny day inside the room, and you feel everything is dark. But wait. Let the eyes be attuned with the darkness, and soon you start seeing things in the house.

You have been outside for millions of lives. When for the first time you come in, nothing is there except darkness, emptiness. But wait It will take a few days – even a few months, but just wait, close your eyes and look down in the heart. Suddenly, one day it happens: you see a light, a flame. Then concentrate on that flame.

Nothing is more blissful than that. Nothing is more dancing, singing, musical, harmonious like that inner blue light within your heart. And the more you concentrate, the more you become tranquil, silent, calm, collected. then there is no darkness for you. When your heart is filled with light, the whole universe is filled with light.

ALSO, MEDITATE ON THE INNER LIGHT WHICH IS SERENE AND BEYOND ALL SORROW.

ALSO, MEDITATE ON ONE WHO HAS ATTAINED DESIRELESSNESS.

That too! All alternatives Patanjali is giving you is A Veetaraga, one who has gone beyond all desires – also meditate on Mahavira, Buddha, Patanjali – your own – Zarathustra, Mohammed, Christ or anybody you feel an affinity and love… Meditate on one who has gone beyond desires. Meditate on your Master, on your guru, who has gone beyond desires. How it will help? It helps, because when you meditate on someone who has gone beyond desires he becomes a magnetic force in you. You allow him to enter within you; he pulls you out of yourself. This becomes your availability to him.

If you meditate on someone who has gone beyond desires, you will become like him sooner or later, because meditation makes you like the object of meditation itself. If you meditate on money, you will become just like money. Go and look at a miser; he has no more a soul. He has only a bank balance; he has nothing inside. If you listen, you will just hear notes, rupees: you will not find any heart there. Whatever you pay attention to, you become like it. So be aware. Don’t pay attention to something you would not like to become. Only pay attention to something you would like to become, because this is the beginning. The seed is sown with the attention, and soon it will become a tree.

You sow the seeds of hell, and when it becomes a tree then you say, “Why am I so miserable?” You always pay attention to the wrong; you always look to that which is negative. You always pay attention to the fault; then you become faulty.

Don’t pay attention to the fault. Pay attention to the beautiful. Why count the thorns? Why not see the flower? Why count the nights? Why not count the days? If you count the nights, then there are two nights and only one day between the two. If you count the days, then there are two days and only one night in between. And it makes a lot of difference. Look at the light side if you want to become light; look at the dark if you want to become dark.

Says Patanjali: ALSO, MEDITATE ON ONE WHO HAS ATTAINED DESIRELESSNESS.

Seek a Master; surrender to a Master. Be attentive to him. Listen, watch, eat and drink him. Let him enter you; allow your heart to be filled with him. Soon you will be on a journey, because the object of attention ultimately becomes the goal of your life. And attention is a secret relationship. Through attention you become the object of your attention.

Krishnamurti goes on saying, “The observer becomes the observed.” He is right: whatsoever you observe, you will become. So be alert Beware Don’t observe something which you would not like to become, because that is your goal; you are sowing the seeds.

Live near a Veetaraga – a man who is beyond desires. Live near a man who has no more to fulfill here, who is fulfilled. His very fulfilled-ness will overflood you, and he will become a catalyst.

He will not do anything, because a man who is beyond desires cannot do anything. Even he cannot help you because help is also a desire. Much help comes through him, but he doesn’t help you. He becomes a catalyst without doing anything, if you allow him; he drops into your heart and his very presence crystallizes you.