Yoga Sutra 18 Prati-Prasav

Patanjali says: THE SOURCES OF THE FIVE AFFLICTIONS, KLESHAS, CAN BE ABOLISHED BY RESOLVING THEM BACKWARDS TO THEIR ORIGIN.

Prati-prasav: this is a very, very significant process, the process of prati-prasav. It is the process of reabsorbing back to the cause, bringing effect back to the cause; the process of involution. You must have heard the name of Janov, the man who has rediscovered Primal Therapy. Primal Therapy is part of prati-prasav. It is one of the oldest techniques of Patanjali. In Primal Therapy, Janov teaches people to go back to their childhood. If there is something, some trouble, some problem, then you go back to the original source from where it started. Because you can go on trying to solve the problem, but unless you go to the roots, it cannot be solved. Effects cannot be solved; they have to be forced back to the cause. It is just as if a tree is there and you don’t want the tree, but you go on cutting the branches, the leaves, and again more branches sprout. You cut one leaf, three leaves come. You have to go to the roots.

For example, a man comes who is afraid of women. Many people come to me.

They say that they are afraid of women, very afraid. Because of that fear, they cannot make a meaningful relationship, they cannot relate; the fear is always there. When you are in fear, the relationship will be contaminated by the fear.

You will not be able to move totally. You will relate halfheartedly, always afraid: the fear of being rejected, the fear that the woman may say no. And there are other fears. If this man goes on trying Emile Coue-type methods, if he goes on repeating, ‘I am not afraid of women, and every day I am getting better,’ if he tries such things he can suppress the fear temporarily, but the fear will be there and will come again and again and again.

In Primal Therapy, he has to be thrown back. A man who is afraid of women shows that he must have had some experience with the mother which has caused fear, because the mother is the first woman. Your whole life you may be related to many women as wife, as mistress, as daughter, as friend, but the image of mother will persist. That is your first experience. Your whole structure of relationship with women will be based on that foundation, and that foundation is your relationship with your mother. So if a man is afraid of women, he has to be led back, he has to step backwards in memory, he has to go back and find the primal source from where the fear started. It may be an ordinary incident, very minor, he may have completely forgotten it. But if he goes back, he will find the wound somewhere.

You wanted to be loved by the mother, as every child wants, but the mother was not interested. She was a busy woman. She had to attend many associations, clubs, this and that. She was not willing to give the breast to you because she wanted a more proportioned body. She wanted her breasts to be intact and not destroyed by you. She wanted her breasts to be always young so she denied the breast to you. Or, there may have been other problems in her mind. You were not an accepted child; like a burden you have come, never wanted in the first place. But the pill didn’t work and you were born. Or, she hated the husband and you had the face of the husband – a deep hatred, or something or other. But you have to go back and you have to become a child again.

Remember, no stage of life is ever lost. Your child is still within you. It is not that the child becomes the young man, no. The child remains inside, the young man is imposed over it, then the old man is superimposed over the young man, layer by layer. The child never becomes the young man. The child remains there, a layer of young man comes over it. The young man never becomes the old; another layer, of old age, comes over it. You become like an onion – many layers – and if you penetrate, all the layers are Still there, intact.

In Primal Therapy Janov helps people to go backwards and become children again. They kick, they cry, they weep, they scream, and the scream is no more of the present. It doesn’t belong to the man right now, it belongs to the child who is hidden behind. When that scream, that primal scream comes, many things are immediately transformed.

This is one part of the method of prati-prasav. Janov may not be aware that Patanjali, almost five thousand years ago, taught a system in which every effect had to be led to the cause. Only the cause can be resolved. You can cut the roots, and then the tree will die. But you cannot cut the branches and hope that the tree will die. The tree will thrive more.

‘Prati-prasav’ is a beautiful word; ‘prasav’ means birth. When a child is born it is prasav. Prati-prasav means you are again born in the memory, you go back to the very birth, the trauma when you were born, and you live it again. Remember, you don’t remember it, you live it, you relive it again.

Remembering is different. You can remember, you can sit silently, but you remain the man you are: you remember that you were a child and your mother hit you hard. That wound is there, but this is remembrance. You are remembering an incident as if it happened to somebody else. To relive it is prati prasav. To relive it means that you become the child again. Not that you remember; you become the child again, you live it again. The mother is hitting you not in your memory, the mother hits you again right now: the wound, the anger, the antagonism, your shrinking back, the rejection, and your reaction, as if the whole thing is happening again. This is prati-prasav. And this is not only as Primal Therapy, but as a methodology for every seeker who is in search of the life abundant, of truth.

These are the five afflictions: avidya, lack of awareness; asmita, the feeling of the ego; rag, attachment; dwais, repulsion; and abhinivesh, lust for life. These are the five miseries.

THE SOURCES OF THE FIVE MISERIES, KLESHAS, CAN BE ABOLISHED BY RESOLVING THEM BACKWARDS TO THEIR ORIGIN.

The last is abhinivesh: lust for life; the first is lack of awareness. The last has to be resolved to the first, the last has to be brought to the first. Now move backwards: you have lust for life, you cling to life. Why? Patanjali says, ‘Go backwards.’ Why do you cling to life? – Because you are miserable. And the misery is created by dwais, repulsion. The misery is created by dwais – violence, jealousy, anger – repulsion. How can you live if you have such negative things around you?

Through these negativities, wherever you look, life seems to be not worth living.

Wherever you look through the negative, everything looks dark, dismal, and hell.

Lust for life has to be resolved backwards, then you will find dwais. If you go downwards, backwards with clinging to life, behind it you will find the layer of repulsion. That’s why you have not been able to live. All the societies, cultures, they force many repulsions on you.

If you read Hindu scriptures or Jain scriptures, they teach repulsion. They say that if you are in love with a woman, first see what the woman is. What is a woman? – Just a structure of bones, flesh, blood, mucus, ugly things. Look inside the woman; the beauty is skin-deep. And behind the skin there is everything ugly, repulsive.

If you are taught by such people, whenever you are in love you will not be able to love the woman because the repulsion will come. You will feel the repulsion arising, and how is love possible with repulsion? And if you have been taught by these foreigners who poison the very sources of life, you will be miserable.

Without love, how can you be happy? You will be miserable. When you are miserable you will cling to life.

So Patanjali says, ‘Clinging to life is the uppermost layer. Go deep; behind it you will find a layer of repulsion, dwais.’ But why are you repelled? Go deeper and you will find attachment. You are attracted towards a thing and if you are attracted, only then can you be repelled. If you are not attracted you cannot be repelled. Attraction can create a repulsion; repulsion is the other pole of attraction. Go deeper – another layer you will find is asmuta, the feeling of ego, ‘I am.’ And this ‘I’ exists through attachment and repulsion. If rag, dwais, attraction and repulsion both fall, ‘I’ cannot stand there. ‘I’ will fall with it.

You, your ego, exists through your ideas of good and bad, ideas of love and hate, ideas of what is beautiful and what is ugly. Duality create the ego. So behind the duality of rag and dwais, you will find the ego. Why does this ego exist?

Patanjali says, ‘Go still deeper and you will find lack of awareness. The root cause of the whole misery of life is lack of awareness. This is the cause, the primal cause of the whole thing. You cannot find it with abhinivesh, lust for life; that is a fruit, a flower, the last phenomenon. In fact, it is not the cause. Go back.

THE SOURCES OF THE FIVE AFFLICTIONS CAN BE ABOLISHED BY RESOLVING THEM BACKWARDS TO THEIR VERY ORIGIN.

Once you know the cause, everything is resolved. And this is the cause.. Lack of awareness. What to do? Don’t fight with your clinging, don’t fight with your attachment and repulsion, don’t even fight with the ego. Just become more and more aware. Just become more and more alert, watchful, mindful. Remember more and more and become alert. That very alertness will dissolve everything.

Once the cause is dissolved, the effects disappear.

Ordinary morality teaches you changes on the surface. So called religions teach you how to fight with effects. Patanjali is giving you the very science of religion: the very root cause can be dissolved. You have to be more aware. Live life with alertness: that is the whole message. Don’t live like a sleepy man, or a drunkard living in a hypnosis. Be conscious of whatsoever you are doing. Do it, but do it with full consciousness. Suddenly you will see many things disappear.

A thief came to Nagarjuna, a Buddhist mystic. The thief said, ‘Listen, I have been to many teachers and many Masters. They all know me because I am a famous thief, in fact, the master thief of this kingdom, so I am known all over. Just the moment I reach them they say, “First you have to leave stealing, robbing people. First drop your way of life and then something can happen.” But that I cannot do.

So the thing stops then and there. Now I have come to you. What do you say?

Nagarjuna said, ‘Then you must have gone to thieves, not to Masters. Why should a Master be worried about your stealing or not stealing? I am not concerned. You do one thing. you go on stealing, robbing people – but rob them with awareness.’ The thief said, ‘This I can do.’ And he was caught, trapped.

After two weeks passed, he came back to Nagarjuna and said, ‘You are a deceiver, you have tricked me. Last night I entered for the first time into the palace of the King, but because of you I tried to be alert. I opened the treasury. Thousands of precious diamonds were there, but because of you I had to come out of the palace empty-handed.’ Nagarjuna said, ‘Tell me what happened.’ The thief said, ‘Whenever I would be alert and I would try to take those diamonds, the hand would not move. If the hand moved, then I was not alert. For two, three hours I struggled. I tried to be alert and take those diamonds, but it was impossible. Many times I took those diamonds, but then I was not alert so I had to put them back. Whenever I was alert, the hand would not move.’ Nagarjuna said, ‘That’s the whole thing. You have understood the point.’

Without alertness you can be angry, violent, possessive, jealous. These are the offshoots but not the roots. With alertness you cannot be angry, you cannot be jealous, you cannot be aggressive, violent, greedy. Ordinary morality teaches you not to be greedy, not to be angry. That is ordinary morality. That doesn’t help much. At the most a little suppressed personality is created. Greed remains, anger remains, but you can have a little social morality. It may help as a lubricant in the society, but nothing much happens.

Patanjali is not teaching ordinary morality. Patanjali is teaching the very root of all religion, the very science of religion. He says, ‘Bring every effect to the cause.’

And the cause is always un-alertness, unawareness, avidya. Become aware, and every. thing disappears.

THE OUTWARD EXPRESSIONS OF THE FIVE AFFLICTIONS DISAPPEAR THROUGH MEDITATION.

You need not be worried about them; you just meditate more, become more aware. First the outward expressions disappear: anger, jealousy, hatred, repulsion, attraction. Their outward expression disappears first, but the seeds remain with you. Then one has to go very, very deep, because you think you are angry only when you are angry – that is not true. An underground current of anger continues even when you are not angry. Otherwise, from where will you get the anger when the time comes? Somebody insults you and suddenly you are angry. Just a second before you were happy, smiling, and the face changes; you have become a murderer. From where did you get this? It must have been there, an underground current available to you always. Whenever need arises, opportunities arise, suddenly the anger flares up.

First, meditation will help you. The outward expressions will disappear. But don’t be satisfied with that because basically, if the underground current remains, then at any time there is a possibility; the flare up can be brought. In a certain situation again the expression can come. Never be satisfied with that outward expression disappearing; the seed has to be burned. The first part of meditation helps you to bring the outward expression to the basic current: on the outside you become silent, but inside, things continue. Then the meditation has to go still deeper.

That is Patanjali’s distinction between samadhi and dhyan. Dhyan is the first stage, meditation is the first stage with which outward expressions disappear; and samadhi is the last stage, the ultimate meditation where the seeds are burned. You have reached the very source of being and life. Then, you don’t cling to anything. Then, you are not afraid of death. Then, in fact, you are not; then you are no more. Then God abides in you, and you can say, ‘aham brahmasmi,’ I am the very divine, the very ground of existence.