Yoga Sutra 36 Yoga Terminology

BY PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON THE STRENGTH OF AN ELEPHANT, THE STRENGTH OF AN ELEPHANT IS OBTAINED.

Whatsoever you want, you bring your samyama to it and it will happen – because you are infinite.

Whatsoever form you want to take you can take after samyama. All miracles are possible; it depends on you. If you want to become so powerful like an elephant, you can become. Just by keeping the idea as a seed inside you and showering it with samyama, you will become that. Because of this sutra, many people have done many wrong things. This is a key, but if you want to become something devilish, you can become. You can misuse yoga as much as you can misuse science.

Science has released the atomic energy. Now you can use it by dropping it on cities and killing people. You can create more Hiroshimas and Nagasakis – you can make the whole earth a dead, burned place, a cemetery.

The same atomic energy can be used creatively. All the poverty that exists on earth can disappear within minutes. All the food that is needed can be created, and all the luxuries that are available only to a very few can become part of the normal life of everybody. Nobody is barring the path, but somehow man does not have that creative understanding.

Yoga has been misused in the same way.

All knowledge brings power, and power can be used positively or negatively.

I have heard an anecdote: A drunk shuffled up to a rich banker and asked for sixpence for a cup of coffee. Being an extremely generous man, the banker handed him a ten-shilling note.

“Here,” he said, “you can buy yourself twenty cups of coffee with that.” Next evening the banker saw the drunken tramp again.

“How are you today?” he asked cheerfully.

The tramp glared at him. “Why don’t you get lost,” he said rudely. “You and your twenty cups of coffee. They kept me awake all last night.” It depends. A blessing can become a curse. What Patanjali is saying is pure white magic; it is a magical formula. You can make it into a devilish black magic. Then you will be destructive to others – and destructive to yourself. Remember that. That’s why first he says become friendly; then he talks about power.

People like Patanjali are so cautious. They have to be cautious because of you. They watch their every step. First he tells how to attain samyama; immediately he talks about compassion and friendliness; then he talks about power. Because when you have compassion then power cannot be misused.

BY DIRECTING THE LIGHT OF THE SUPERPHYSICAL FACULTY, KNOWLEDGE IS GAINED OF THE SUBTLE, THE HIDDEN, AND THE DISTANT.

Every dimension becomes available – “of the subtle, the hidden, the distant” – once you know how not to be. Once you know how to be without any ego, once you know how to be a pure consciousness with no subject and no object, everything becomes possible. You can know it all. By knowing one all is known.

BY PERFORMING SAMYAMA ON THE SUN, KNOWLEDGE OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM IS GAINED.

This sutra is a little complicated – not in itself, but because of the commentators. All the commentators of Patanjali talk about this sutra as if Patanjali is talking about the sun out there.

He is not talking about that sun; he cannot talk about that. He is not an astrologer, and he is not interested in astrology. He is interested in men. He is interested in mapping man’s consciousness.

And the sun is not – of the out.

In yoga terminology man is a microcosm. Man is in a subtle way a small universe, condensed into a small existence. The existence, the whole existence, is nothing but man expanded. This is yoga terminology: microcosm and macrocosm. Whatsoever exists outside also exists exactly inside man.

Just like the sun, man has a sun inside; and just like the moon, man has a moon inside. And Patanjali is interested in giving you the whole geography of the inner world, of inner man. So when he says, “Bhuwan gyanam surya samyamat” – “By performing samyama on the sun, knowledge of the solar system is gained,” he does not mean the sun that is without. He means the sun that is within.

Where is your inner sun? Where is your center of the inner solar system? It is exactly hidden deep in the reproductive system. That’s why sex is hot; it is a sort of heat. We have the expression for animals: whenever a female is ready to be impregnated, we say she is in heat. That phrase is exactly accurate. The sex center is the sun. That’s why sex makes you hot and feverish. When you move in a sex act, you become hotter and hotter and hotter. You touch an almost feverish peak; you perspire; your breathing is disturbed. And after it you feel exhausted. Then you fall into a sleep.

When sex is exhausted, immediately the moon starts functioning. When the sun sets the moon comes up. That’s why after the sex act you immediately fall into sleep. The function of the sun is gone; the function of the moon starts.

Sun is the sex center. By performing samyama on it, you will be able to know the whole solar system inside. By performing samyama on the sex center you will become capable of going beyond it. You will know all the secrets of it; but it has nothing to do with the outer sun.

But if you know the inner sun, by reflection you can understand the outer sun also. This sun is the sex center of the solar system. That’s why everything alive needs sun. Trees go higher and higher.

In Africa they go higher than anywhere else because the forests are so dense and there is much competition; because if you don’t go high you will die. You will not be able to reach the sun. You will not be available to the sun and the sun will not be available to you. You will not be showered by the energy of life.

Sun is life; sex is life. All life arises out of sun; all life arises out of sex. All life.

Trees try to reach higher so that they can become available to the sun and the sun becomes available to them. Just watch. The same trees are on this side. These pine-type trees, the same trees are on this side – they have remained small. This side they are throbbing high. Sun is more available on this side; on that side sun is not available.

Sex is the inside sun; the sun is the sex organ of the solar system. By reflection you will be able to understand the outer solar system also, but the basic thing is to understand the inner solar system.

So I will insist on this, remember, that Patanjali is mapping the inner ground. And of course it can be started only from the sun because the sun is the center. Not the goal, but the center. Not the ultimate, but the center. One has to rise above it, one has to move above it, but it is the beginning. It is not the omega, but it is the alpha.

Once Patanjali has said how to attain to samyama, how to transform into compassion, love, and friendship, how to become powerful for compassion, for love; he comes to the inner territory, the inner topography: “By performing samyama on the sun, knowledge of the solar system is gained.” The whole world can be divided between two types of people: the sun people and the moon people, or you can call them yang and yin. The sun is the male; the moon is the female. The sun is a aggression, the positive; the moon is receptive, the passive. You can divide the whole existence between the sun and moon. And you can divide your body also between sun and moon; yoga has divided.

It has divided so minutely that it has divided even your breath, your breathing. One nostril is sun breath, another is moon breath. If you become angry you will breathe from the sun-side. If you want to become silent, you will breathe from the moon side. The whole body is divided: one of your sides is male, another side is female. The mind is divided: one part of the mind is male, another part of the mind is female.

And one has to move from the sun towards the moon, and then beyond both.