Yoga Sutra 14.2 Consciousness Is Light

ON ATTAINING THE UTMOST PURITY OF THE NIRVICHARA STAGE OF SAMADHI, THERE IS A DAWNING OF THE SPIRITUAL LIGHT.

… and your innermost being is of the nature of light. Consciousness is light, consciousness is the only light. You are existing very unconsciously: doing things, not knowing why; desiring things, not knowing why; asking things, not knowing why; drifting in an unconscious sleep. You are all sleepwalkers. Somnambulism is the only spiritual disease – walking and living in sleep.

Become more conscious. Start being conscious with objects. Look at things with more alertness. You pass by a tree; look at the tree with more alertness. Stop for a while, look at the tree; rub your eyes, look at the tree with more alertness. Collect your awareness, look at the tree, and watch the difference. Suddenly when you are alert, the tree is different: it is more green, it is more alive, it is more beautiful. The tree is the same, only you have changed. Look at a flower as if your whole existence depends on this look. Bring all your awareness to the flower and suddenly the flower is transfigured – it is more radiant, it is more luminous. It has something of the glory of the eternal, as if the eternal has come into the temporal in the shape of a flower.

Look at the face of your husband, your wife, your friend, your beloved, with alertness; meditate on it, and suddenly you see not only the body, but that which is beyond the body, which is coming out of the body. There is an aura around the body, of the spiritual. The face of the beloved is no more the face of your beloved; the face of the beloved has become the face of the divine. Look at your child. Watch him playing with full alertness, awareness, and suddenly the object is transfigured.

First start working with objects. That’s why Patanjali talks about other samadhis before he talks about nirvichara samadhi, the samadhi without seed. Start with objects and move towards more subtle objects.

For example, a bird sings in the tree: be alert, as if in that moment you exist and the song of the bird-the whole doesn’t exist, doesn’t matter. Focus your being towards the song of the bird and you will see the difference. The traffic noise no more exists, or exists at the very periphery of existence, far away, distant, and the small bird and its song fills your being completely – only you and the bird exist. And then when the song has stopped, listen to the absence of the song. Then the object becomes subtle, because…

Remember always: when a song stops it leaves a certain quality to the atmosphere – of the absence. It is no more the same. The atmosphere has changed completely because the song existed and then the song disappears… now the absence of the song. Watch it – the whole existence is filled by the absence of the song. And it is more beautiful than any song because it is the song of silence. A song uses sound, and when the sound disappears the absence uses the silence. And after a bird has sung, the silence is deeper. If you can watch it, if you can be alert, you are now meditating on a very subtle object, a very subtle object. A person moves, a beautiful person moves – watch the person. And when he has left, now watch the absence; he has left something. His energy has changed the room; it is no more the same room.

When Buddha was dying, Ananda asked him… he was crying and weeping, and he said, “What will happen to us now? You were here and we couldn’t attain. Now you will be no more here; what will we do?” Buddha is reported to have said, “Now love my absence, be attentive to my absence.” For five hundred years no statues were made so that the absence can be felt. And instead of statues only the bodhi tree was depicted. Temples exist, but not with a Buddha statue; just a bodhi tree, a stone bodhi tree, an absent Buddha underneath, and people will go and sit and watch the tree, and try to watch the absence of the Buddha under the tree. And many attained to very deep silence and meditation. Then, by and by, the subtle object was lost and people started talking: “What is there to meditate? Only a tree is there, but where is Buddha?” Because to feel a Buddha in his absence needs very, very deep clarity and attentiveness. Then, feeling that now people cannot meditate on the subtle absence, statues were created.

This you can do with any of your senses because people have different capacities and sensibilities. For example, if you have a musical ear, then it is good to watch and to be attentive to a song of a bird. For few seconds it is there, and then it is gone. Then watch the absence. And you will be thrilled if you can watch the absence. Suddenly the object has become very subtle. It will require more attention and more awareness than the actual song of the bird.

If you have a good nose… very few people have it; almost humanity has lost the nose completely. Animals are better; their smell is far sensitive, capable, than man. Something has happened to man’s nose, something has gone wrong; very few people have a capable nose, but if you have – then be near a flower, let the smell fill you. Then, by and by, you move away from the flower, very slowly, but continue being attentive to the smell, the fragrance. As you move away, the fragrance will become more and more subtle, and you will need more awareness to feel it. Become the nose. Forget about the whole body; bring all your energy to the nose, as if only the nose exists. And by and by, if you lose track of the smell, go few steps further ahead; again catch hold of the smell, then back, move backwards. By and by, you will be able to smell a flower from a very, very great distance – nobody will be able to smell that flower from there. And then you go on moving. In a very simple way you are making the object subtle. And then a moment will come when you will not be able to smell the smell: now smell the absence. Now smell the absence where the fragrance was just a moment before, and it is no more there. That is the other part of its being, the absent part, the dark part. If you can smell the absence of the smell, if you can feel it, that it makes a difference, it makes a difference; then the object has become very subtle. Now it is reaching nearly the nirvichara state, the no-thought state of samadhi.

Mohammed has used – only one enlightened person – perfume as an object of meditation. Islam has made it an object of meditation. It is beautiful.

And why has smell disappeared from man? There are many complex things involved in it, but I would like to tell you just by the way so you can remember them. And if you cross those barriers, suddenly your smell capacity will be back. It is suppressed.

You must be knowing that smell is deeply concerned with sex. Sex suppression has become the suppression of smell. Animals first smell the body before they make love. In fact they smell the sex center before they make love. If the sex center is giving them signals, that “Yes, you are accepted, allowed” – only then they make love, otherwise not.

The human body also gives smells – of invitation, of repulsion, attraction. The body has its own language and symbols, but in a society it will be very difficult if you can smell. If you are talking to a friend and his wife starts smelling and gives you invitation of sex, what you will do? – It will be dangerous. So the only way civilization can cope with it is to destroy smell completely, because it is a sex-related phenomenon. You are passing by the road and a woman passes by: she may not be interested consciously in you, but she gives the smell, the invitation smell. What to do? You want to make love to your wife. She is your wife, so of course when you want to make love she has to make love, but her body gives you the signal of no love, no invitation, repulsion – what you will do? And bodies are uncontrollable; you cannot control them just by mind. Smell became dangerous; it became sexual. It is sexual.

That’s why on perfume the names are all sexual. Go to a store and look at the labels of perfumes-all are sexual. Perfume is sexual, and the nose is completely closed. Because Islam doesn’t suppress sex, accepts it, and Islam doesn’t deny sex, accepts it, and Islam is not for renouncing the world of sex, that’s why Islam could give a little freedom to the sensibility of smell. No other religion in the world could do that.

But smell can become very, very beautiful if you make it an object of meditation. And it is a very subtle phenomenon, and, by and by, you can go to the subtlest.

Hindus have also used certain types of perfumes, particularly incense in the temples, but their incense is different. Just as there are sexual smells, there are spiritual, and both are related together. After a very long search Hindus discovered particular smells which are not sexual. Rather on the contrary, the energy moves upwards not downwards. Incense became very, very significant. In the temple they have been using it; it helps, just as there are musics which can make you sexual, and there are musics which can make you spiritual. Particularly modern music is very sexual; classical music is very spiritual. The same exists about all senses: there are paintings which can be spiritual, sexual; sounds, smells, which can be sexual, spiritual. Each sense has two possibilities: if the energy falls through it, downwards, then it is sexual; if the energy rises upwards, then it is spiritual.

You can do it with incense. Burn incense, meditate on it, feel it, smell it, be filled with it, and then move backwards, away from it. And go on, go on meditating on it; let it become more and more subtle. A moment comes when you can feel the absence of a certain thing. Then you have come to a very deep awareness.

ON ATTAINING THE UTMOST PURITY OF THE NIRVICHARA STAGE OF SAMADHI, THERE IS A DAWNING OF THE SPIRITUAL LIGHT.

But when the object completely disappears, the presence of the object disappears and the absence of the object disappears, thought disappears and no-thought disappears, mind disappears and the idea of no-mind disappears, only then you have attained to the utmost. Now this is the moment when suddenly grace descends on you. This is the moment when flowers shower. This is the moment when you are connected with the source of life and being. This is the moment when you are no more a beggar; you have become the emperor. This is the moment when you are crowned. Before it you were on a cross; this is the moment the cross disappears and you are crowned.