We will have a few questions from Yoga Sutra 23.
One seeker asked Osho – IS IT POSSIBLE TO CLIMB ON TO HIGHER STAGES WHILE ONE IS SUPPRESSING OR EXCLUDING PARTS OF HIS BEING BY OUTSIDE CONDITIONS AND ILLUSIONS?
Osho replied – No, it is impossible. You are asking me, “Is it possible to go up the ladder only in part?” Some part of you is left down, some part of you is left somewhere on the ladder, and only a part of you reaches to the very end – how is it possible? You are a unity. You are an organic unity; you cannot be divided. That is the meaning of the word “individual”: that which cannot be divided. You are an individual.
You have to go to the divine door in your totality, into nothing can be left.
That’s why my insistence, again and again, that if you suppress your anger you will not be able to enter the divine temple – because that is what you are doing: you are trying to leave the anger outside the temple and enter the temple. How can you enter? Because who will be left with the anger outside? – It is you. If you are trying to suppress sex, then you will not be able to enter the divine temple, because who is sex? – It is you, your energy. Nothing can be left outside. If you leave something outside, your totality will be left outside; then there is only one possibility: you will remain outside and you will dream that you have entered.
That’s what your so many “mahatmas” are doing. They are outside the temple dreaming that they have entered and they are seeing God, they are in heaven or moksha.
Only total will you enter – not even a single part can be left behind. Then what to do? There are ugly parts, I know; and I understand your embarrassing situation. You would not like to bring those ugly parts to the divine; you would not like to present those ugly parts to the divine. I understand your trouble, your problem. You would like to drop all sex, all anger, all jealousy, hatred – you would like to become a pure virgin, innocence. Good. Your thinking is good, but the way you are trying to do it is not possible. The only way is: transform. Don’t cut your parts; transform them. The ugliness can become beauty.
Have you watched what happens in the garden? You bring cow dung – smelling – fertilizers, manure – smelling badly – but within months, the manure has disappeared in the earth; now it has come as beautiful flowers with such a divine fragrance around them. This is transformation. The bad smell has become fragrance; the ugly shape of manure has become beautiful flowers. Life needs transformation. You will enter into the divine’s temple total – transformed. Don’t suppress anything; rather, try to find the key to transform it.
Anger becomes compassion. A person who has no anger can never be compassionate – never. It is not a coincidence that all the twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jains were born kshatriyas, warriors, men of anger, and they became the preachers of nonviolence and compassion. Buddha is a warrior, comes from a kshatriya family, a samurai; and he became the greatest flower of compassion ever. Why? They had much more anger than you have. When the anger was converted and transformed, of course, it became a tremendous energy.
You need anger. You need it as you are right now because it is a protective shell, and you will need it when you are transformed because then it becomes fuel, energy. It is pure energy. Have you seen a small child, sometimes, really in anger? How beautiful the small child looks – radiant, vital, as if he can explode and destroy the whole world. Just a small, tiny child, looks like atomic energy – red in the face, jumping and crying – just energy, pure energy. If you don’t suppress the child, and teach him how to understand this energy, there will be no need for any suppression: the same energy can be transformed.
You watch: clouds gather in the sky, and then there is great lightning and thunder. This lightning, just a few hundred years before, was a terrifying factor in the life of humanity. Man became so afraid of the lightning – you cannot imagine now, because now that same lightning has become electricity. It has become a servant in the home: it runs your air conditioner; it runs your fridge. It works continuously day and night – no slave can work that way. The same lightning was a great, terrific fact in humanity’s life.
The first god was born because of lightning – the fear. Indra was born. the god of thunder and lightning, and people started worshipping him because people thought this lightning comes as a punishment. But now nobody bothers about it, now you know the secret – you have found the key. Now the same electricity, Indra’s punishment, now functions as a slave: Indra is working behind your air conditioner, Indra is running your fridge, Indra is working in your fan. Now Indra is no longer a god, but a servant. And such a docile servant – that never strikes, never asks for any raise of the pay, nothing – a complete, total slave.
The same happens in the inner sky of man – anger is lightning. In Buddha it has become compassion. Now see Buddha’s face, so radiant. From where comes this radiancy? It is anger transformed. You are afraid of sex, but have you ever heard of any impotent man becoming enlightened? Tell me. Have you heard of any impotent man, who had no sexual energy in him, that he has become a prophet – a Mahavir, a Mohammed, a Buddha, a Christ? Have you heard about it? It never happens – it cannot happen – because the very energy is lacking. It is sex energy that rises high. It is sex energy that comes to a moment of transformation: where it becomes samadhi.
Sex energy becomes samadhi, superconsciousness. I tell you: the more sexual you are, the more is the possibility; so don’t be afraid. More sexuality only shows that you have too much energy. Very good. You should be thankful to God, and you are not thankful – rather, you feel guilty; rather, you feel like complaining against God that, “Why have you given this energy to me?” You don’t know what is possible with this energy in the future. A Buddha is not impotent. He lived a very, very fulfilling sexual life – not an ordinary sexual life. His father had called all the beautiful women in the kingdom to serve him; all the beautiful young girls were serving him.
Energy is needed, and energy is always beautiful. If you don’t know how to use it, it becomes ugly; then it goes on running astray. The energy has to go higher.
Sex is the lowest center of your being – but that is not all: you have seven centers of your being. As the energy moves upwards, if you know the key how to release it upwards, as it moves from one center to another, you feel so many transformations. When the energy comes to the heart chakra, to the center of the heart, you become so full of love you become love. When the energy comes to the third-eye center you become consciousness, awareness. When the energy comes to the last chakra, sahasrara, you bloom, you flower, your tree of life has come to a fulfillment: you become a Buddha. But the energy is the same.
Don’t condemn; don’t suppress. Transform. Be more understanding, alert; only then will you be able to enter in totality. And there is no other way; the other way is just to dream and imagine.
FOR ZEN IT IS: “EAT WHEN YOU ARE HUNGRY AND DRINK WHEN YOU ARE THIRSTY.” FOR PATANJALI IT IS: “REGULARITY – NIYAM.” HOW TO RECONCILE SPONTANEITY AND REGULARITY?
There is no need to synthesize. If you are really spontaneous you will become regular. If you are really regular you will become spontaneous. There is no need to reconcile. If you try to reconcile you will become a mess, so choose one and forget about the other. If you choose Zen forget about Patanjali, as if he never existed; then he is not for you. And one day you will suddenly see that the regularity has come following spontaneity.
How does it happen? If you are spontaneous, if you eat when you feel hungry – and if you only eat when you feel hungry and you never eat against your desire, you never eat more than your desire, you always follow your need – by and by you will settle to a regularity, because the body is a mechanism, a very, very beautiful bio-mechanism. Then every day at the same time you will find you are hungry again; every day at the same time you will find you are sleepy again. Life will become regular.
But if you are afraid of spontaneity…. As people are afraid. because culture, civilization, religion – all the poisoners of the world – they have poisoned your mind and they have made you afraid of spontaneity; they say you are hiding an animal within you and if you are spontaneous you may go astray. If you are too afraid of spontaneity, then listen to Patanjali.
Patanjali is always a second choice to me, never the first. It is for ill people, corrupted by culture, unnatural, poisoned by civilization and religion, destroyed by priests and preachers. Then Patanjali. Patanjali is a therapy. That’s why I say Patanjali is useful for ninety-nine percent of the people, because ninety-nine percent of the people are ill. This earth is a great hospital. Patanjali is a physician, a scientist.
Zen is for natural people, uncorrupted, for innocent children. If there is going to come some day a beautiful world, Patanjali will be forgotten; Zen will remain. If the world is going to be becoming more and more ill, Zen will be forgotten; only Patanjali will be there. Zen says be natural. Do you watch nature? Have you seen nature’s spontaneity and regularity both? Rains come, summer comes, winter comes – they follow in a regular pattern.
And if you see some disturbance it is because of you, because man has disturbed the climate, man has disturbed the ecology. Otherwise nature was so predictable – and so spontaneous – you could always see when spring has come. You could have heard the first steps of spring all over: in the songs of the birds, in the trees, the happiness that spreads. It was absolutely certain, regular, but now everything is disturbed. That is not because of nature. Man has not only poisoned man, man has started to poison nature also. Now everything is irregular: you don’t know when the rains are coming, you don’t know whether it is going to rain less or more this year, you don’t know how hot this summer is going to be. Nature’s regularity is disturbed by you, because you have broken the circle. Otherwise nature is absolutely spontaneous – and nature does not need any Patanjali. Now it will be needed. Now, to set the ecology right, a Patanjali is needed.
So you have to choose. If you choose Zen forget Patanjali; otherwise you will be very much confused. And I tell you that Patanjali will come automatically – you need not worry. But if you feel that you are very ill and you cannot trust in yourself and you cannot be spontaneous, forget about Zen; it is not for you. It is just like there exists a book of exercises for a healthy man, hmm?… Who is going to take part in a world olympic: you can read it if you like. but don’t try it – you will be in danger. You are lying in the hospital; you don’t ask how to reconcile this book and your situation. You don’t ask. You listen to the physician: you follow. Someday when you are healthy, back to your natural spontaneous being, you may use this book, but right now it is not for you.
Patanjali is for unhealthy people, but almost everybody is unhealthy. Zen is for very natural people. You have to decide about yourself. Nobody else can decide it for you; you have to feel your own energy. But remember, you are not to reconcile – never do that. Choose one, the other follows. If you feel you are ill, already corrupted, you cannot be spontaneous; try to be regular. Regularity will bring you, by and by, to health and spontaneity.
THE EIGHT STAGES OF YOGIC ACHIEVEMENT AND EMPHASIZED THAT YOU MOVE FROM NUMBER ONE TO NUMBER EIGHT, IN THAT ORDER. IS IT NOT POSSIBLE, IN INDIVIDUAL CASES, THAT AN INDIVIDUAL COULD REACH ONE OR THE OTHER STATES FIRST AND THEN MOVE IN HIS OR HER OWN ORDER TO ACHIEVE ALL EIGHT OF THEM?
It is possible, but when I say possible I mean only rarely, very rarely. Exceptions are always there with every rule, but when Patanjali talks, he talks about the rule, not about the exception. Exceptions need not be talked about. The greater mass of humanity cannot reach from anywhere in any other way. They will have to follow step by step – from one to two, from two to three. They move in an organic unity. But there are freaks who can go and jump – but then they too will have to come back and absorb the left-behind part. Their arrangement can be different, that’s possible.
You can start with pranayam, but then you will have to come to asan, you will have to come to YAM…. You can start by meditation, but then you will have to move to other parts which are left behind. But all the eight have to be developed, and a unison between all the eight, so you become an organic unity.
It happens sometimes, even a person can reach up to the seventh without completing all the steps, but nobody has reached the eighth without completion. Up to seven there is the possibility: you can leave some steps and you can do some and reach up to the seventh – but then you will hang there. Up to meditation you can reach but not up to samadhi, because SAMADHI needs your total being fulfilled. Nothing left behind, nothing left incomplete – everything complete. Then you will have to hang around the seventh for long, and you will have to go back and do things which need to be done. Only when you have completed everything up to the seventh, the eighth, samadhi, becomes possible.
Tags: Patanjali Transform
