Yoga Sutra 21 Liberation To The Seer

Now, try to understand these sutras of Patanjali.

THE SEEN WHICH IS COMPOSED OF THE ELEMENTS AND THE SENSE ORGANS IS OF THE NATURE OF STABILITY, ACTION, AND INERTIA, AND IS FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROVIDING EXPERIENCE AND THUS LIBERATION TO THE SEER.

The first thing to be understood is that the world exists for you to be liberated.

Many a time the question has arisen in your mind: “Why does this world exist? Why is there so much suffering? For what? What is the purpose of it?” Many people come to me and they say, “This is the ultimate question – ‘Why are we at all?’ And if life is such a suffering, what is the purpose of it? If there exists a God, why can’t he destroy all this chaos? Why can’t he destroy this whole suffering life, this hell? Why does he go on forcing people to live in it?” Yoga has the answer: Patanjali says, “… for the purpose of providing experience and thus liberation to the seer.”

It is a training, suffering is a training – because there is no possibility of becoming mature without suffering. It is like fire: the gold, to be pure, has to pass through it. If the gold says. “Why!” then the gold remains impure, worthless.

Only by passing through the fire will all that is not gold be burned, and only the purest gold will remain. That’s what liberation is all about: a maturity, a growth so ultimate that only purity, only the innocence remains, and all that was useless has been burned.

There is no other way to realize it. There cannot be any other way to realize it. If you want to know what satiety is, you will have to know hunger. If you want to avoid hunger, you will avoid satiety also. If you want to know what deep quenching is, you will have to know thirst, deep thirst. If you say, “I don’t want to be thirsty,” then you will miss that beautiful moment of deep quenching of the thirst. If you want to know what light is, you will have to pass through a dark night; a dark night prepares you to realize what light is. If you want to know what life is, you will have to pass through death; death creates the sensitivity in you to know life. They are not opposites; they are complementary.

There is nothing which is opposite in the world; everything is complementary.

“This” world exists so that you can know “that” world; “this” exists to know “that.” The material exists to know the spiritual; the hell exists to come to heaven.

This is the purpose. And if you want to avoid one you avoid both, because they are two aspects of the same thing. Once you understand, there is no suffering: you know this is training, a discipline. Discipline is to be hard. It has to be hard because only then will real maturity come out of it.

Yoga says this world exists as a training school, a learning school – don’t avoid it and don’t try to escape from it. Rather live it, and live it so totally that you need not be forced again to live it. That’s the meaning when we say that an enlightened person never comes back – there is no need. He has passed all the examinations that life provides. He need not come back. You have to be forced again and again to the same life pattern because you don’t learn. You go on repeating the experience without learning. The same experience you repeat again and again – the same anger. How many, how many thousand times have you been angry? Count it. What have you learned out of it? Nothing. Whenever the situation arises, you will be angry again – the same, as if it is for the first time that you are getting into anger.

How many times has greed, lust possessed you? Again it will possess. And again you will react in the old way – as if you have decided not to learn. And to be ready to learn is to be ready to become a yogi. If you have decided not to learn, if you want to remain blindfolded, if you want to repeat the same nonsense again and again; then you will have to be thrown back: you will have to be sent back to the same class – unless you pass.

Don’t take life in any other way. It is a vast training school, the only university there is. The word “university” comes from “universe.” In fact no university should call itself “university”; the name is too big. The whole universe is the only university. But you have created small universities and you think that when you pass through them you have become entitled, as if you have become a knower.

No, these small, man-made universities won’t do. You will have to pass through this university your whole life.

Says Patanjali, “… for the purpose of providing experience and thus liberation….”

Experience is liberating. Jesus has said, “Know the truth and the truth will liberate you.” Whenever you experience a thing, alert, aware, fully watching what is happening – participating and watching together – it is liberating.

Immediately, something arises out of it: an experience which becomes true. You have not borrowed it from scriptures; you have not borrowed it from somebody else.

Experience cannot be borrowed; only theories can be borrowed. That’s why all theories are dirty, because they have been passing through so many hands, so many millions of hands. They are just like dirty currency notes. Experience is ever fresh – fresh like the dew in the morning, fresh like this morning’s rose.

Experience is always innocent and virgin – nobody has ever touched it. You come upon it for the first time. Your experience is yours, it is nobody else’s, and nobody Can give it to you.

Buddhas can indicate the way, but you have to walk. No Buddha can walk for you; there is no possibility. A Buddha cannot give his eyes to you so that you can look through them. Even if the Buddha gives you the eyes, you will change the eyes – the eyes will not be able to change you. When the eyes will be fitted into your mechanism, your mechanism will change the eyes themselves, but the eyes cannot change you. They are parts; you are a very big phenomenon.

I cannot lend my hand to you. Even if I do, the touch will not be mine, it will be yours. When you will go and feel something – even from my hand – it will be you who will feel, not my hand. There is no possibility of borrowing reality.

Experience liberates. Every day I come across people who say, “How is one to get free from anger? How is one to get free from sex, lust? How is one to get free from this and that?” And when I say, “Live it through,” they are shocked. They had come to me in search of a method to repress themselves. And if they had gone to another guru in India they would have found some method to repress themselves with. But repression can never be liberating, because repression means repressing experience. Repression means cutting all the roots of experience. It can never be liberating. Repression is the greatest bondage that you can find anywhere.

You live in a cage. One new sannyasin told Osho, “I feel like an animal in a cage.” There is every possibility that he meant that he wanted me to help him so that the animal is killed, because we say “animal” only when we condemn. The very word carries condemnation. But when Osho told the sannyasin, “Yes, I will help you. I will break the cage and make the animal completely free,” he was a little shocked; because when you say “animal” you have already valued it, condemned it – it is not a simple fact. In the very word “animal” or “animality” you have said everything that you wanted to say. You don’t accept it. You don’t want to live it. That’s why you have created the cage.

Cage is a character. All characters are cages, imprisonments, chains around you.

And men of character are imprisoned men. A really awakened man is not a man of character. He is alive. He is fully alive, but he has no character, because he has no cage. He lives spontaneously, he lives through awareness – so nothing can go wrong – but he has no cage around him to protect him.

The cage is a substitute for awareness. If you want to live a sleepy life you need character, so the character gives you guidelines. Then you need not be alert. You are going to steal something – the character just hinders you: it says, “No! This is wrong! This is sin! You will suffer in hell! Have you forgotten the whole Bible? Have you forgotten all the punishment that a man has to go through?” This is character. This is just hindering you. You want to steal; character is just a hindrance.

A man of awareness will not steal, but he has no character; and that is the miracle and the beauty. He has no character and he will not steal, because he understands. Not that he is afraid of sin – there is nothing like sin; at the most, errors – nothing like sin. He is not afraid of being punished, because punishment is not in the future – it is not that sins are punished, in fact: sins are the punishment. It is not that you are angry today and tomorrow you will be punished or in the next life – sheer nonsense. When you put your hand in the fire today, do you think it will be burned in the next life? When you put your hand in the fire today it burns today; immediately it burns. Putting the hand in and the burning of it – all simultaneous. Not even a single moment’s gap. Life never believes in the future because life is only present.