Yoga Sutra 28 Purity And Power

Man is confused – more confused than buffaloes. You cannot convince buffaloes to eat ice cream. Try!

A natural food… and when I say “natural” I mean that which your body needs.

The need of a tiger is different; he has to be very violent. If you eat the meat of a tiger you will be violent, but where will your violence be expressed? You have to live in human society, not in a jungle. Then you will have to suppress the violence. Then a vicious circle starts.

When you suppress violence, what happens? When you feel angry, violent, a certain poisonous energy is released, because that poison creates a situation where you can be really violent and kill somebody. The energy moves towards your hands; the energy moves towards your teeth – these are the two places from where animals become violent. Man is part of the animal kingdom.

When you are angry, energy is released – it comes to the hands and to the teeth, to the jaw – but you live in a human society and it is not always profitable to be angry. You live in a civilized world, and you cannot behave like an animal. If you behave like an animal, you will have to pay too much for it – and you are not ready to pay that much. Then what do you do? You suppress the anger in the hand; you suppress the anger in your teeth – you go on smiling a false smile, and your teeth go on accumulating anger.

I have rarely come to see people with a natural jaw. It is not natural – blocked, stiff – because too much anger is there. If you press the jaw of a person, the anger can be released. Hands become ugly. They lose grace, they lose flexibility, because too much anger is suppressed there. People who have been working on deep massage, they have come to know that when you touch the hands deeply, massage the hands, the person starts becoming angry. There is no reason. You are massaging the man and suddenly he starts feeling angry. If you press the jaw, the person becomes angry again. They carry accumulated anger.

These are the impurities in the body: they have to be released. If you don’t release them the body will remain heavy. Yoga exercises exist to release all sorts of accumulated poisons in the body. Yoga movements release them; and a yogi’s body has a suppleness of its own. Yoga exercises are totally different from other exercises. They don’t make your body strong; they make your body more flexible. And when your body is more flexible, you are strong in a very different sense: you are younger. They make your body more liquid, more flowing – no blocks in the body. The whole body exists as an organic unity, in a deep rhythm of its own. It is not Like noise in the market; it is like an orchestra. A deep rhythm inside, no blocks, then the body is pure. Yoga exercises can be tremendously helpful.

Everybody is carrying much rubbish in the stomach, because that is the only space in the body where you can suppress things. There is no other space. If you want to suppress anything it has to be suppressed in the stomach. If you want to cry – your wife has died, your beloved has died, your friend has died – but it doesn’t look good, looks as if you are a weakling, crying for a woman, you suppress it: where will you put that crying? Naturally, you have to suppress it in the stomach. That is the only space available in the body, the only hollow place, where you can force.

If you suppress in the stomach…. And everybody has suppressed many sorts of emotions: of love, of sexuality, of anger, of sadness, of weeping – even of laughter. You cannot laugh a belly laugh. It looks rude, looks vulgar – you are not cultured then. You have suppressed everything. Because of this suppression, you cannot breathe deeply, you have to breathe shallowly. Because if you breathe deeply then those wounds of suppression, they would release their energy. You are afraid. Everybody is afraid to move in the stomach.

Every child, when born, breathes through the belly. Look at a child sleeping: the belly goes up and down – never the chest. No child breathes from the chest; they breathe from the belly. They are completely free now, nothing is suppressed.

Their stomachs are empty, and that emptiness has a beauty in the body.

Once the stomach has too much suppression in it, the body is divided in two parts, the lower and the higher. Then you are not one; you are two. The lower part is the discarded part. The unity is lost; a duality has entered into your being.

Now you cannot be beautiful, you cannot be graceful. You are carrying two bodies instead of one – and there will always remain a gap between the two. You cannot walk beautifully. Somehow you have to carry your legs. In fact if the body is one, your legs will carry you. If the body is divided in two then you have to carry your legs.

You have to drag your body. It is like a burden. You cannot enjoy it. You cannot enjoy a good walk, you cannot enjoy a good swim, you cannot enjoy a fast run – because the body is not one. For all these movements, and to enjoy them, the body needs to be reunited. A unison has to be created again: the stomach will have to be cleansed completely.

For the cleansing of the stomach, very deep breathing is needed, because when you inhale deeply and exhale deeply, the stomach throws all that it is carrying. In exhalations, the stomach releases itself. Hence the importance of pranayam, of deep rhythmic breathing. The emphasis should be on the exhalation so that everything that the stomach has been unnecessarily carrying is released.

And when the stomach is not carrying emotions inside, if you have constipation it will suddenly disappear. When you are suppressing emotions in the stomach there will be constipation because the stomach is not free to have its movements.

You are deeply controlling it; you can’t allow it freedom. So if emotions are suppressed, there will be constipation. Constipation is more a mental disease than a physical one. It belongs to the mind more than it belongs to the body.

But remember, I am not dividing mind and body in two. They are two aspects of the same phenomenon. Mind and body are not two things. In fact, to say “mind and body” is not good: “mind-body” will be the right expression. Your body is a psychosomatic phenomenon. Mind is the subtlest part of the body, and the body is the grossest part of the mind. And they both affect each other; they run parallel.

If you are suppressing something in the mind, the body will start a suppressing journey. If the mind releases everything, the body also releases everything. That’s why Osho emphasizes catharsis very much. Catharsis is a cleansing process.

These are all austerities: fasting; natural eating; deep, rhythmic breathing; yoga exercises; living a more and more natural, flexible, supple life; creating less and less suppressed attitudes; allowing the body to have its own say, following the wisdom of the body. “Austerities destroy impurities….” These I call austerities.

“Austerities” does not mean to torture the body. It means to create a living fire in the body so that the body is cleansed. As if you have thrown gold into the fire – all that was not gold is burned. Only pure gold comes out.

“Austerities destroy impurities, AND WITH THE ENSUING PERFECTION IN THE BODY AND SENSE ORGANS, PHYSICAL AND MENTAL POWERS AWAKEN.”

When the body is pure, you will see tremendous new energies arising, new dimensions opening before you, new doors suddenly opening, new possibilities.

Body has much hidden power. Once it is released, you will not be able to believe it, that the body carried so many things in it, and so close.

And every sense has a hidden sense behind it. Eyes have a hidden eyesight, an insight behind them. When the eyes are pure, clean, then you don’t see things only as they are on the surface. You start seeing their depth. A new dimension opens. Right now when you see a person you don’t see his aura; you just see his physical body. The physical body is surrounded by a very subtle aura. A diffused light surrounds the body. And everybody’s body is surrounded by a different color aura. The moment your eyes are clean you can see the aura; and by seeing the aura you know many things about the man that you cannot know in any other way. And the man cannot deceive you, it is impossible, because his aura reveals his being.

Somebody comes with an aura of dishonesty and he tries to convince you that he is a very honest man: the aura cannot deceive, because that man cannot control the aura. That is not possible. The dishonest aura has a different color. The aura of an honest man has a different color. The aura of a pure man is pure white. The more impure a man, the more white moves towards gray. The more impure, it moves still more towards black. The aura of a man who is absolutely dishonest is absolutely black. The aura of a confused man changes; it is never the same. Even if you go on looking for just a few minutes, you will see the aura is changing. The man is confused. He himself is not settled in what he is. He is a changing aura.

A man who is meditative has a very silent quality to the aura, a calmness, a coolness around him. The man who is in deep anxiety, turmoil, tension, has the same quality to the aura also. The man who is very tense may try smiling, may create a face, may have a mask, but when he comes to you his aura will show the reality.

And the same happens with the ears also. Just as eyes have a deep insight, the ears have a deep hearing quality. Then you don’t hear what the man is saying, but rather, you hear the music. You don’t bother about the words that he is using, but the tone, but the rhythm of his voice… an inner quality of the voice which says many things which words cannot deceive, cannot change. The man may be trying to be very polite, but his rudeness will be in his sound. The man may be trying to be very graceful, but his sound will show his un-gracefulness.

The man may be trying to show his certainty, but his sound will show the… the hesitant quality.

And if you can hear the very sound, and if you can see the aura, and if you can feel the quality of the being that is near you, you become capable of many things.

And these are very simple things. They start happening once the austerity starts.

Then there are deeper powers which yoga calls siddhis – magical powers, miraculous powers. They look like miracles because we don’t understand their mechanism, how they function. Once you know the mechanism they are not miracles. In fact a miracle is not possible. All that happens, happens according to a law. The law may not be known: then you call it a miracle. When the law is known the miracle disappears.

When in India they have introduced television in the villages. For the first time, villagers have watched Indira Gandhi in the television boxes, as the villagers call them – “picture boxes.” They could not believe it. Impossible. They went around the boxes, they looked from everywhere. How is Indira Gandhi hidden in the box? A miracle, unbelievably miraculous, but once you know the law the thing is simple.

All miracles are according to hidden laws. Yoga says there is no miracle in the world because “miracle” means something against the law, which is not possible.

How is there any possibility to go against the universal law? There is no possibility. It may be that people don’t know.

Siddhis become possible as you go deeper into purities and perfection. For example, if you can move your astral body out of the gross body you can do many things which will be miraculous. You can visit people. They can see you but they cannot touch you. You can even talk to them by your astral projection.

You can heal people. If you are really pure, just your touch, laying on of the hands, and there will be a miracle. Just surrounding you will be the healing power – wherever you will move, healing will happen automatically. Not that you do it. The very purity… you have become a vehicle of the infinite forces.

But one has to move inwards, one has to search one’s own innermost core.

“Austerities destroy impurities, and with the ensuing perfection in the body and sense organs, physical and mental powers awaken.” And the greatest power that awakens in you is the feeling of deathlessness. Not that you have a theory, a system, a philosophy that you are immortal, no. Now you have a feeling, now you are grounded in it – now you know it. It is not a question of any theory: it has become your, knowing that there is no death. This body will disappear into its elements, but your consciousness cannot disappear. The mind will disintegrate, the thoughts will be released, the body will go into the elements – but you, the witnessing self, will remain.

You know it because now you can see your body from the far, faraway space.

You can see your body separate from you. You can come out of the body and look at it. You can move around your own body. Now you know that the body will be left when you will die, but not you. Now you can see the mind functioning as a mechanism, as a biocomputer. You are the seer, not the mind.

Now the body and mind go on functioning, but you are not identified.

This is the greatest miracle that can happen to a man: that he comes to know that he is deathless. Then the fear of death disappears, and with the fear of death all fears disappear.

And when fears disappear, love arises. When there is no fear, love arises; only then love arises. How can love arise in a fear ridden mind? You may seek friendship, you may seek a relationship, but you seek it out of fear – to forget yourself, to drown yourself in the relationship. It is not love. Love arises only when you have transcended death. They both cannot exist together: if you are afraid of death, how can you love? Out of this fear you may try to find company, but the relationship will remain of fear.

That’s why ninety nine per cent of religious people pray, but their prayer is not real prayer. It is not out of love; it is out of fear. Their God is out of fear. Only rarely, one percent of religious persons come to realize deathlessness. Then a prayer arises which is not out of fear, which is out of love, sheer gratitude, a thankfulness.