Yoga Sutra 13.1 Look Without Interpretation

Now the Sutras:

NIRVITARKA SAMADHI IS ATTAINED WHEN THE MEMORY IS PURIFIED, AND THE MIND IS ABLE TO SEE THE TRUE NATURE OF THINGS WITHOUT OBSTRUCTION.

Interpretation is the obstruction. Interpret, and the reality is lost. Look without interpretation and the reality is there, and always has been there. The reality is every moment there. How can it be otherwise? Reality means that which is real. It has not moved from its place even for a single moment. Just you live in your interpretations and you create a world of your own. The reality is common, illusion is private.

You must have heard the story, a very old, ancient Indian story. Five blind men came to see an elephant. They had never seen it; it was absolutely new in the town. Elephants didn’t exist in their part of the country. They all touched, they all felt the elephant, and they all interpreted whatsoever they felt. They interpreted through their experience. One man said, “An elephant is like a pillar,” because he was touching the legs of the elephant – and he was true. He touched, himself, by his own hands, and then he remembered the pillars – and exactly like the pillars. And so on, so forth, they all interpreted.

It happened in a primary school in America: a teacher told this story to the boys and girls without telling them that the five persons who came to the elephant were blind. And the story is so well known, and she expected that the children would understand. Then she asked, “Now tell me, who were those five persons who came to see the elephant?” One small boy raised his hand and said, “Experts.”

Experts are always blind. That boy was really a discoverer. This is the essence of the whole story. In fact, they were experts because an expert knows too much about too little. He becomes more and more narrow, narrow, narrow – almost blind to the whole world. Only in a particular direction he is with eyes; otherwise, he is blind. His vision becomes narrower and narrower and narrower. The greater an expert, narrower the vision. An absolute expert must be completely blind. They say that an expert is a man who knows more and more about little and little.

Few centuries before there were physicians, doctors, who knew everything about the body. There were no experts. Now, if you have something wrong with your heart then you go to an expert, something wrong with your teeth, you go to another expert. And I have heard a story that a man came to a doctor and he said that “I am in much difficulty. I cannot see properly. Everything seems to be misty.” The doctor said, “First things first. First you tell me which eye is in difficulty, because I am the expert only of the right eye. If your left eye is in trouble, you go to another expert just in front of me.” Soon, the left eye experts and the right eye experts will be separate. It has to be so because expertise becomes narrower, and narrower, and narrower. All experts are blind, and experience makes you an expert.

To know reality you don’t have to be an expert. To know reality you don’t have to be narrow, exclusive. To be in tune with reality you have to put down all your knowledge, put it aside and look at it with the eyes of a child, not with the eyes of an expert-because those eyes are always blind. Only a child has real eyes wide looking, looking everywhere, all around in all directions – because he doesn’t know anything. He is moving in all directions all the time. The moment you know, and you are hooked somewhere. If you can become a child again and can look at reality without any obstruction, interpretation, experience, knowledge, expertise, then Patanjali says, nirvitarka samadhi is attained. Because when there is no interpretation, memory is purified and the mind is able to see the true nature of things.

Patanjali divides samadhi into many layers. First he talks about savitarka samadhi. It means samadhi with reasoning. You are still a reasoning person, logical. Then he calls the second samadhi nirvitarka, samadhi without reasoning. Now, you are not arguing about reality. You are not even looking at reality with your knowledge. You are simply looking at reality.

The man who looks at reality with logic, reasoning never looks at reality. He projects his own mind on reality. The reality works like a screen for him to project himself. And whatsoever you project, you will find it there. First you put it there, and then you find it there. It is a deception because you yourself put it there, and then you find it there. It is not real.

Nasrudin once told me that “My wife is the most beautiful woman in the world.” I asked him, “Mulla, how did you come to know about it?” He said, “How? – Simple. My wife told me!” This is how it goes on in the mind: you put it in reality, and then you find it there. This is the attitude of the savitarka mind. Nirvikalpa mind, nirvitarka mind, puts nothing; it simply looks at whatsoever is the case.

Why do you go on putting into reality something from your mind? – Because you are afraid of reality. A deep fear of reality is there. It may be that it is not of your liking. It may be that it is against you, your mind. Because the reality is natural; it doesn’t bother who you are. You are afraid: the reality may not be your wish-fulfillment, so it is better not to see it; go on seeing whatsoever you desire. This is how you have lost many lives – fooling around. And you are not fooling anybody else, you are fooling yourself, because by your interpretations and projections the reality cannot be changed. Only you suffer unnecessarily. You think there is a door and there is no door; it is a wall and you try to pass through it. Then you suffer, then you are shocked.

Unless you see the reality, you will never be able to find the door out of the prison in which you are. The door exists, but the door cannot exist according to your desires. The door exists; if you drop the desires you will be able to see it. And this is the trouble: you go on wish-fulfilling; you just go on believing and projecting, and every time, a belief is shattered and a projection falls. Because it will happen many times, because your daydreams cannot be fulfilled by reality. Whenever a dream is shattered, a rainbow falls down, a desire dies, you suffer. But immediately you start creating another desire, another rainbow of your wishes. Again you start making a new rainbow bridge between you and reality.

Nobody can walk on a rainbow bridge. It looks like a bridge; it is not a bridge. In fact, a rainbow doesn’t exist; it only appears. If you go there you will not find any rainbow. It is a dream- like phenomenon. The maturity consists in having come to the realization that “Now no more projections, interpretations. Now I am ready to see whatsoever is the case.”

Wittgenstein, one of the very keen intellects of this age, starts his tremendously valuable book TRACTATUS with the sentence, “The world is all that is the case. You can go on dreaming around it; it will not help. You stop dreaming and see. The world is all that is the case.” You unnecessarily don’t waste your life and time and energy in trying to see something that is not there. Stop dreaming and look at reality.

That is the meaning of nirvitarka samadhi, samadhi without any reasoning. It is just a pure look. You don’t reason about it, you simply look at it. You don’t do anything about it, you simply allow it to be there and penetrate you. In savitarka samadhi you try to penetrate into reality. In nirvichara samadhi, you allow reality to penetrate you. In savitarka samadhi you try the reality to be according to you. In nirvichara samadhi, you try yourself to be according to reality.