EKAGRATA PARINAM, ONE-POINTED TRANSFORMATION, IS THE CONDITION OF THE MIND IN WHICH THE OBJECT OF THE MIND THAT IS SUBSIDING IS REPLACED IN THE NEXT MOMENT BY AN EXACTLY SIMILAR OBJECT.
Ordinarily, one thought goes, another comes of a totally different character.
Sadness goes/happiness comes. Happiness goes/frustration comes. Frustration goes/anger comes. Anger goes/sadness comes. The climate around you goes on changing, and with the climate you. Every moment you have a different color to your being. Hence, no wonder that you don’t know who you are – because in the morning you were angry, by lunchtime you were happy, in the afternoon you were sad, by the evening you were frustrated. You don’t know who you are.
You change so much because each color that passes you becomes your identity for a few moments.
Ekagrata Parinam, is a state of your consciousness where this change stops. You become one-pointed. And not only that, if you want to retain one state of affairs you become capable of retaining it. If you want to remain happy, happiness is replaced by happiness, again by happiness, again by happiness. If you want to remain happy you remain happy. If you want to remain sad it is up to you. But then you are the master. Otherwise, everything goes on changing.
I go on observing you. It seems almost unbelievable how you manage. One day a couple comes to me and they say, “We are in deep love. Bless us.” And the next day they are back and they say, “We have been fighting, and we have separated.”
Which is true? The love, or the fight? Nothing seems to be true with you.
Everything seems to be just a flux. Nothing seems to stay. Nothing seems to be a part of your being. Everything seems to be just a part of your thinking process – with one thought, one color; with another thought, another color.
It happened: A nearsighted girl too vain to wear glasses was determined to get married. She finally found herself a husband and went off to honeymoon at Niagara Falls with him. When she returned, her mother gave a shriek, ran to the telephone and called an oculist.
“Doctor,” she gasped, “you have got to come over here right away. It is an emergency. My daughter has always refused to wear glasses, and now she is back from her honeymoon, and — .”
“Madam,” interrupted the doctor, “please control yourself. Have your daughter come to my office. No matter how bad her eyes are, it can’t possibly be that much of an emergency.”
“Oh no?” said the mother, “Well, this fellow she has got with her is not the same one she left for Niagara Falls.” But this is the situation of everybody. The man you love in the morning you hate in the evening. The man you hate in the morning you fall in love with by the evening. The man or the woman who looked beautiful just the other day, today has become ugly.
And it is an emergency case.
And this way you go on, like a driftwood, just at the mercy of the winds. The wind changes its course, and your course is changed. You don’t have any soul yet.
Gurdjieff used to say to his disciples, “First be, because right now you are not. Let this be your only Goal in life – to be.” Somebody will ask him, “How can we love?” He will say, “Don’t ask nonsense. First be, because unless you are, how can you love?”
Unless you are, how can you be happy? Unless you are, how can you do something? The being is needed in the first place, then everything becomes possible.
Jesus says, “Seek first ye the kingdom of God, and then all shall be added unto you.” I would like to change it a little – Seek first ye the being, the kingdom of being, and then all shall be added unto you. And that is the meaning of Jesus.
The kingdom of God is an old term for the kingdom of being. First be, then everything is possible, but right now when I look into you, you are not there.
Many guests are there, but the host is missing.
Ekagrata Parinam, one-pointedness in consciousness, is a basic necessity so that your being can arise. In a flux the being will not be possible. At the most, you can go on becoming this and that and that, but you will never be a being.
BY WHAT HAS BEEN SAID IN THE LAST FOUR SUTRAS, THE PROPERTY, CHARACTER, AND CONDITION TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE ELEMENTS AND SENSE ORGANS ARE ALSO EXPLAINED.
And Patanjali says this is the situation: the world is changing around you, the body is changing, the senses are changing, the mind is changing – everything is changing – and if you are also changing, then there is no possibility of finding the eternal, the unchanging one. These are changing, that is true. The world is changing continuously. It is a process: it has no being. It is a flux. Let it be so.
There is only one thing permanent in the world, and that is change. Everything else changes – except change. Only change remains as a permanent character.
The body is changing, continuously, every moment. Every single moment it is flowing and changing; otherwise how will you become old, how will you become a youth, how will a child become a youth? Can you say on what day the child becomes a youth? Can you say on what date the young man becomes old?
Difficult. In fact, if you ask physiologists they are not yet clear at exactly what moment one says that the man was alive and now he is dead. It is impossible to decide. The definition is still unclear because life is a process. In fact when you have died, almost, and your friends have abandoned you, a few processes still continue in the body – nails go on growing, hairs go on growing. A part of you still seems to be alive and functioning.
When exactly a man dies, it is still undefined. In fact, life and death cannot be defined; it is a flux phenomenon. Body goes on changing, the mind goes on changing – every moment the mind is changing.
If you are looking into this changing world in these distractions of your being, and searching for truth, God, bliss, then you will be frustrated. Move within. Go into the gaps where neither the world exists nor the body nor the mind. There, for the first time, you come face to face with eternity, which has no beginning and no end, which has no change in it.
WHETHER THEY BE LATENT, ACTIVE, OR UNMANIFEST, ALL PROPERTIES INHERE IN THE SUBSTRATUM.
Patanjali says whether a flower has died or whether a flower is in bloom makes no difference. When a flower is in bloom he is dying, and when a flower has died he is again trying to come back up. Creation goes on through a process of uncreation and creation, uncreation and creation. This is what Patanjali calls prakriti. prakriti, again, is a word which cannot be translated. It is not creation only: it is the very process of creation and uncreation.
Everything becomes manifest, disappears, becomes unmanifest: but it remains in the substratum, the prakriti. Again it will come back. Summer comes and then goes: again the summer is back, coming. Winter is there, going: again it will come. It goes on moving. Flowers appear, disappear. Clouds come, disappear.
The world goes on moving in a cycle.
Things have two states: manifest and unmanifest. You are beyond them. You are neither manifest nor unmanifest. You are the witness. Through nirodh parinam, through the gap between two thoughts, you will have the first glimpse of it. Then go on gathering those gaps, go on piling up those gaps. And always remember, whenever two gaps are there they become one. Two gaps cannot be two. They are not like two things; they are two emptinesses. They cannot be two. You bring two zeros near, they become one. They jump into each other because two zeros cannot be two zeros. Zero is always one. You bring a thousand and one zeros home – they will jump into each other and become one.
So go on piling up those gaps, zeros of being, and by and by what Patanjali first calls nirodh becomes samadhi. In samadhi distractions disappear, go distant and distant, and distant… and then disappear; and one-pointedness arises in your being. That is the first glimpse of who you are beyond prakriti, beyond this game of creation and uncreation, beyond this game of waves and no waves, flowers and no flowers, of change, movement, momentariness. You become a witness.
That witness is your being.
And to attain that is the whole goal of yoga.
Yoga means: UNIO MYSTICA. It means the union, the mystic union with oneself. And if you are one with yourself, suddenly you realize you have become one with the whole, with God, because when you move into your being, it is an emptiness again, a silence, a tremendous non-ending silence… and God is also a silence. Two silences cannot be two – they jump into each other and become one.
You withdraw in yourself, and God is returning. You meet on the way; you become one. This oneness is the meaning of the word “yoga.” Yoga means to become one.
Tags: Patanjali Yoga Sutra 33 Kingdom Of Being
