We will have a few question related to Yoga Sutra 24.
BEING MORE ALERT AND AWARE IS TURNING OUT TO BE ANOTHER SUBTLE DOING, AND I AM BACK IN THE SAME RUT.
THIS is good, that you are becoming aware that neither doing can help nor nondoing, because your not doing is a subtle doing. With this awareness a new door will open any day, any moment. When you neither do nor not-do, when you are simply there, when you are a being – not a doer or a non doer, because a non doer is also a doer – the duality disappears. Then suddenly you find you have always been in the home, you have never left it – you had never gone out anywhere else. Then the dog realizes there is no need to chase the tail, the tail belongs to him already. There is no need to chase the tail because the tail follows the dog already. But one has to do, to reach to non doing. Then one has to do the non doing to reach being. And everything helps. Even failures, frustrations – everything helps. Finally, when you reach, you understand that everything helped – going astray, falling into old ruts and traps – everything helped; nothing goes useless. And everything becomes a step to another.
Just yesterday I was reading an article from Swami Agehananda Bharati. He relates that once he asked Ravishankar how well George Harrison plays the sitar.
Ravishankar thought for a while and then said, “Well, he holds it alright.” But that too is a great beginning. If you want to learn to play sitar, holding the sitar absolutely as it should be is a good beginning; it is already something. So don’t laugh. Ravishankar has appreciated George Harrison, that he holds it well.
First you will become a doer. Do it well, that’s the whole thing. If you don’t do it well you will have to come back again and again, because nothing can be left incomplete; it has to be completed. In fact you have to be frustrated so totally that you never come back to doing, again. Then do the non doing, and do it so totally that that too is finished. And then there is no way to go back. You cannot fall back if everything has been complete; only incomplete experiences go on calling you back.
Incomplete experiences have a magnetic force in them; they demand fulfillment.
That’s why you again and again fall in the rut. You move immaturely. One experience has not ripened – intellectually you start understanding it but not totally – and you move. That won’t help. Your whole being should understand that, “this is futile.” Not because I say – that is not going to help – but because your whole being says, “This is futile. What are you doing? It is nonsense.”
Then do non doing. It is a doing, that’s why I say, “do.” Very subtle. Gross is the first, the part when you do. Second is the subtle; soon you will realize that this, again, is what you are doing – you are trying not to do, but the trying is there and that is effort. Your effortlessness is also effort. But you can understand it right now, what I am saying. That is not the point: you have to feel it, pass through it, realize it. Maturity is needed – through experiencing – then one day gross and subtle both disappear. Suddenly you are sitting there – nothing to do and nothing not to do.
Then what will you do? You will simply be. There is no need to chase the tail.
Now, the dog knows that the tail belongs to him; now, the dog has become a Buddha. This is enlightenment.
IS ALL MIND MADE OUT OF THE SAME MATERIAL – STUPIDITY?
Yes. Mind is stupid. There is no mind which is intelligent. Mind cannot be intelligent; the mind is stupidity. To say, “stupid mind” is not right; it is repetitive because “stupidity” and “mind” both mean the same thing.
Why is mind stupidity? Because the mind is nothing but the past. The collected dust that you have gathered on the way – layers and layers of dust. That hinders your intelligence. It is just like a mirror covered with dust: mind is dust; mirror is consciousness. When all dust is washed away, intelligence arises: when there is no mind you are intelligent; when there is mind you are stupid.
Of course, there are two types of “stupid” – ignorant stupids, knowledgeable stupids: people who don’t know anything that are stupid and people who know too much and are stupid. And remember, the second type is more dangerous than the first because the second type has more dust on the mirror than the first.
An ignorant man can evolve more easily than a pundit, the man who thinks he knows. The very thinking that he knows becomes the hindrance. Mind is not intelligence; intelligence is of the no-mind. Mind is a block.
Try to understand this. Mind is all that you have experienced, all that you have gone through, all that is already dead – mind is the dead part of your being.
Then you go on carrying it. It does not allow you to be here; it does not allow you to be present. It does not allow you to be intelligent. Before you respond, it starts reacting.
For example, if I ask a person, “Is there God? Does God exist?” – If he answers from the mind he will be stupid. If he says, “Yes, God exists,” because he has been brought up in such a way – taught, cultivated, conditioned, that God exists – he says, “Yes, God exists”; but this is not an intelligent response. He does not know; somebody else, others, have told him. They also didn’t know; somebody else, others, had told them. He has heard a rumor, and he believes in the rumor.
No, he is not intelligent. He is not even intelligent enough to understand what he is saying. Or the man can say, “No, God doesn’t exist,” because he was brought up in a communist family or in Russia or China. That too is the same stupid mind – conditioning changed, but the stupidity is the same: he knows that God doesn’t exist, without knowing. He has not searched; he has not investigated. He has not gone into the matter at all.
But if an intelligent person is asked…. Intelligent person: I mean a man who does not look through the mind, puts aside the mind. You ask him, “Does God exist?” – there will be no answer. At the most an intelligent man can say, “I don’t know.”
When you say, “I don’t know,” you show a certain intelligence, the possibility. It is very small, but it can grow and can become a big phenomenon. Or the person will say, “I have not investigated. I have heard people saying this and that, but I don’t know. As far as I am concerned I am not aware either this way or that, yes or no. Both are impossible; I cannot say.”
This is intelligence, and this man can know someday because with this intelligence discovery is possible. If you are clogged with theories, burdened with scriptures, you will never be intelligent; you will always remain stupid.
Mind is the past – the dead hovering over the living. It is like a cloud surrounding you: through it you cannot see, the vision is not clear, everything is distorted. Let this cloud disappear. Remain with no answers, no conclusions, no philosophies, no religions. Remain open, just open; remain vulnerable, and the truth can happen to you. To be vulnerable is to be intelligent. To know that you don’t know is to be intelligent. To know that through mind you miss is to be intelligent. To know that through no-mind the door opens is to be intelligent.
Otherwise, the mind is stupidity.
WHAT DO PATANJALI MEAN BY SAYING TO US, “LISTEN TO YOUR INNER VOICE AND ACT ACCORDINGLY,” KNOWING WELL THAT WE HAVE ONLY THE VOICE OF THE MIND? DOES EMPTINESS HAVE ANY VOICE?
Yes. Emptiness has its own voice. Literally, it is not a voice; it is an urge. It is not a sound, it is silence. Nobody says something to do; you simply feel like doing.
Listening to the inner voice means leaving everything to the inner emptiness.
Then it guides you. You always move right if you move empty. If you have the inner emptiness nothing will be wrong, nothing can go wrong. In emptiness nothing ever goes wrong – that is the very criterion of being right, always right.
Yes, emptiness has its own voice, silence has its own music, no-movements has its own dance; but you will have to reach; to it.
Patanjali is not saying listen to the mind. In fact, the mind is not yours. When he says, “Listen to your voice,” he means drop all that society has given to you – your mind is given by the society. Your mind is not yours. It is a society, a conditioning; it is social.
Emptiness is yours; mind is not yours. Mind is Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian; mind is communist, anti-communist, capitalist. Emptiness is none, nobody; it is sunya. In that sunya, nothingness, is the virginity of your being. Listen to it.
When he says listen to it, he doesn’t mean there is somebody speaking to you. When he says listen to it he means be available to it, give your ears and your being to it; and it will guide you. And it never misguides anybody. Out of nothingness whatsoever comes is beautiful, is true, is good, is a benediction.
Tags: No Mind Is Intelligent Patanjali
