Yoga is transcending this slavery and becoming a master. Now, try to follow the sutras.
LACK OF AWARENESS IS TAKING THE TRANSIENT FOR THE ETERNAL, THE IMPURE FOR THE PURE, THE PAINFUL AS PLEASURABLE AND THE NON-SELF FOR THE SELF.
EGOISM IS THE IDENTIFICATION OF THE SEER WITH THE SEEN.
ATTRACTION, AND THROUGH IT, ATTACHMENT, IS TOWARDS ANYTHING THAT BRINGS PLEASURE.
REPULSION IS FROM ANYTHING THAT CAUSES PAIN.
A sutra means a seed. It has to be worked from many, many dimensions, then it will become a tree of understanding in you. A sutra is a very condensed message. It had to be so in those days because when Patanjali created Yoga Sutras, there was no writing. They had to be memorized. In those days you could not write big books, just sutras. Sutra means an aphorism, just a seed-like thing which can be memorized easily. And for thousands of years the sutras were memorized by disciples, and then their disciples. Only after thousands of years were they written, when writing came into existence. A sutra has to be telegraphic; you cannot use many words, you have to use the minimum. So whenever you want to understand a sutra, you have to magnify it. You have to use a magnifying glass to move into the details of it.
LACK OF AWARENESS IS TAKING THE TRANSIENT FOR THE ETERNAL, THE IMPURE FOR THE PURE, THE PAINFUL AS PLEASURABLE AND THE NON-SELF FOR THE SELF.
Says Patanjali, ‘What is avidya? – Lack of awareness. And what is lack of awareness? How do you know it? What are the symptoms? These are the symptoms: taking the transient for the eternal.’
Look around – life is a flux, everything is moving. Everything is moving continuously, changing continuously. Revolution is the nature of things all around. Change seems to be the only permanent thing. Accept change and everything changes. It is just like the waves in an ocean: they are born, for a little while they exist, and then they dissolve and die. It is just like waves.
You go to the sea. What do you see? You see the waves, just the surface. And then you come back and you say that you have been to the sea and the sea was beautiful. Your report is absolutely wrong. You have not seen the sea at all; just the surface, the waving surface. You were just standing on the shore. You looked at the sea, but it was not really the sea. It was just the outermost layer, just the boundary where winds were meeting with the waves.
It is like when you come to see me, and you just see my clothes. Then you go back and you say that you have seen me. It is just like coming to see me, and just going around the house and looking at the outer walls, then going back and saying that you have seen me. Waves are in the sea, the sea is in the waves, but waves are not the sea. They are just the outermost, the most distant phenomenon from the center of the sea, from the depth.
Life is a flux; everything moving, changing into another. Patanjali says, ‘To believe that this is life is a lack of awareness.’ You are very, very distant, away from life, from the center, the depth of it. On the surface there is change, on the periphery there is movement, but at the center nothing moves. There is no movement, no change.
It is just like the wheel of a cart. The wheel goes on moving and moving and moving, but at the center something remains unmoving. On that unmoving pole, the wheel moves. The wheel may go on moving on the whole earth, but it moved on something which was not moving. All movement depends on the eternal, the non-moving.
If you have seen only the movement of life, Patanjali says, ‘This is lack of awareness, avidya.’ Then you have not seen enough. If you think that somebody is a child, then he becomes a young man, then an old man, then he dies – you have seen only the wheel. You have seen the movement: the child, the young man, the old man, the dead, the corpse. Have you seen that which was unmoving within all these movements? Have you seen that which was not a child, not a young man, and not an old man? Have you seen that on which all these stages depend? Have you seen that which holds all, and always remains the same, and the same, and the same, which is neither born nor dies? If you have not seen that, if you have not felt that, Patanjali says, ‘You are in avidya, lack of awareness.’
You are not alert enough because you cannot see enough. You don’t have eyes enough because you cannot penetrate enough. Once you have eyes, the vision, the perception, the clarity, and the penetrating force of it, you will immediately see that change is there, but it is not all. In fact, it is just the periphery which changes, which moves. Deep down in the foundation is the eternal. Have you seen the eternal? If you have not seen, this is avidya; you are hypnotized by the periphery. The changing scenes have hypnotized you. You have become too involved in them. You need a little detachment, you need a little distance, you need a little more observation. Taking the transient for the eternal is avidya; taking the impure for the pure is avidya.
What is pure and what is impure? Patanjali has nothing to do with your ordinary morality. Ordinary morality differs. Something may be pure in India and impure in China. Something may be impure in India and pure in England. Or, even here, something may be pure to Hindus and impure to Jains. Morality differs. In fact, if you start penetrating the layers of morality, they differ with each individual. Patanjali is not talking about morality. Morality is just a convention; it has utility, but it has no truth in it. And when a man like Patanjali talks, he talks about eternal things, not local things. Thousands of moralities exist in the world, and they go on changing every day. Circumstances change, then morality has to change. When Patanjali says ‘pure’ and ‘impure’, he means something absolutely different.
By ‘purity’ he means natural; by ‘impurity’ he means unnatural. And something may be natural to you or unnatural to you, so there cannot be any criterion. To take the impure for the pure means to take the unnatural for the natural. That’s what you have done, what the whole of humanity has done. And that’s why you have become more and more impure. Always remain true to nature. Just think of what is natural, find it. Because with the unnatural, you will always remain tense, uneasy, uncomfortable. Nobody can be comfortable in an unnatural situation, and you create unnatural things around you. Then they become a burden and they destroy you. When I say ‘unnatural’, I mean something foreign to your nature.
For example: a milkman comes, you take the milk and you say that it is impure.
Why do you say that it is impure? You say it is because he has poured water into it. But if the water were pure and milk were also pure, then two purities would make double purity. How can two purities meet and the thing become impure?
But they become impure. Pure water and pure milk meet, and both will become impure. Water will be impure, milk will also be impure, because something foreign, something from the outside has entered in.
When Patanjali says, ‘Taking the impure for the pure is avidya,’ he is saying, ‘Taking the unnatural for the natural is avidya.’ And you have taken many unnatural things to be natural. You may have completely forgotten what is natural. You will have to go deep within yourself to find the natural. The whole society makes you impure; it goes on forcing things on you which are not natural, it goes on conditioning you, it goes on giving you ideologies, prejudices, and all sorts of nonsense. You have to find what is natural to you on your own.
A young man went to Osho. He asked, ‘Is it good for me to get married? Because I have a spiritual inclination, I don’t want to get married.’ Osho asked him, ‘Have you read Vivekananda?’ He said, ‘Yes, Vivekananda is my guru.’ Then Osho asked him, ‘What other books have you been reading?’ He said, ‘Sivananda, Vivekananda and other teachers.’ Osho asked him, ‘This idea of not getting married, is it coming from you or from Vivekananda and Sivananda and company? If it is coming from you, it is absolutely okay.’ He said, ‘No, because my mind goes on thinking about sex, but Vivekananda must be right that one has to fight with sex. Otherwise, how will one improve? One has to attain spirituality.’
This is the trouble. Now this Vivekananda is water in the milk. It may have been right for Vivekananda to remain celibate; that is for him to decide. But if he was impressed by Buddha and Ramakrishna, then he is also impure.
One has to follow one’s own being and nature, and one has to be very true and authentic, because the net is vast and the pit. falls are millions. The road forks on many, many dimensions and directions. You can be lost. Your mind thinks of sex; Vivekananda’s teaching says, ‘No!’ Then you have to decide. You have to move according to your mind. Osho told the young man, ‘It is better that you get married.’ Then Osho told him an anecdote.
Socrates was one of the greatest suffering husbands ever born. His wife, Xanthippe, was one of the most dangerous of women. Women are dangerous, but she was the most dangerous woman. She would beat Socrates. Once she poured the whole teapot on his head. Half his face remained burned for his whole life. To ask such a man what to do!… One young man asked, ‘Should I get married or not?’ Of course, he expected that Socrates would say, ‘No’ – he had suffered so much for it. But he said, ‘Yes, you should get married.’ The young man said, ‘But how can you say that? I have heard so many rumors about you and your wife.’ He said, ‘Yes, I say to you that you should get married. If you get a good wife you will be happy, and through happiness many things grow because happiness is natural. If you get a bad wife, then non attachment, renunciation will grow. You will become a great philosopher like me. In either case you will be profited. When you come to ask me whether to get married or not, the idea to marry is in you, otherwise why should you come to me?’ Osho told the young man, ‘You have come to ask me. That shows that Vivekananda has not been enough; still your nature persists. You should get married. Suffer it, enjoy it, the pain and the pleasure. Move through both and become mature through experience. Once you become mature, not because Vivekanand or anybody else says so, but because you have become mature and ripe, the foolishness of sexuality drops; it drops. Then brahmacharya arises; the real celibacy arises, the pure celibacy arises, but that is different.’
Always remember that you are you. You are neither Vivekananda nor Buddha nor me. Don’t get too impressed; impression is an impurity. Don’t get too influenced; influence is an impurity. Be alert, watch, observe, and unless something fits with your nature, never take it. It is not for you or you are not ready for it. Whatsoever the case, at this moment it is not for you. You have to move through your own experience. Suffering also is needed for you to come to a ripeness, a maturity. You cannot do anything in a hurry.
Life is eternal, there is no hurry in it. Time is not lacking. Life is absolutely patient; there is no impatience in it. You can move at your own pace. No need to take shortcuts; nobody has ever been successful through shortcuts. If you take the shortcut, who will give you the experience of the long, long journey? You will miss it. And there is every possibility that you will come back to it, and the whole thing will have been a wastage of time and energy. Shortcuts are always an illusion. Never choose the shortcut; always choose the natural. Maybe it will take a long time – let it. That’s how life grows; it cannot be forced.
When Patanjali says, ‘Lack of awareness is taking the impure for the pure,’ purity means your ‘naturality’, as you are, uncontaminated by others. Don’t make an ideal of anybody. Don’t try to become like a Buddha; you can become only yourself. Even if a Buddha tried to become like you, it would not be possible.
Nobody can become like anybody else. Everybody has his own unique way of being, and that is purity. To follow your own being, to be yourself, is purity. It is very difficult because you get impressed, because you get hypnotized. It is very difficult because there are logical people who convince you. It is very difficult.
They are beautiful people; their beauty impresses you. There are wonderful people around; they are magnetic, they have a charisma. When you are around them you are simply pulled; they have a gravitation.
You have to be alert, more alert of great persons, more alert of those who have magnetism, more alert of those who can impress, influence and transform you, because they can give you impurity. Not that they want to give it to you; no Buddha has ever tried to make anybody like himself. Not that they want it, but your own foolish mind will try to imitate, make the ideal of somebody else and strive to become like that. That is the greatest impurity that can happen to a man.
Love Buddha, Jesus, Ramakrishna, be enriched by their experiences, but don’t be impressed. It is very difficult because the difference is very subtle. Love, listen, imbibe, but don’t imitate. Take whatsoever you can take but always take it according to your nature. If something fits your nature, take it – but not because Buddha says to.
Buddha insists again and again to his disciples, ‘Don’t take anything because I say it. Take it only if you need it, if you have come to the point where it will be natural for you.’ Buddha becomes a Buddha through millions of lives, millions of experiences of good and bad, sin and virtue, morality and immorality, pain and pleasure. Buddha himself has to pass through millions of lives and millions of experiences. And what do you want? Just listening to Buddha, being impressed by him, you immediately jump and start following him. That is not possible. You will have to go your own way. Take whatsoever you can take but always move on your own way.
When Zarathustra was taking leave of his disciples, the last thing that he said to them was very beautiful. It was the last message; he had said everything. He had given his whole heart to them and the last thing he said was, ‘Now listen to me and listen as deeply as you have never listened. My last message is, “Beware of Zarathustra! Beware of me!”’ This is the last message of all enlightened people, because they are so attractive; you can fall a victim. And once something outside of you enters your nature, you are on a wrong path.
Tags: Patanjali Yoga Sutra 17 Unmoving Pole
