I have heard:
A madman was the guest of a distant relative who put him up in the basement where there was a bed. In the middle of the night the host was awakened to the Sound of his visitor’s laughter coming from upstairs.
“What are you doing there?” he asked. “You are supposed to be sleeping in the basement.”
“I was,” the guest answered. “I rolled off my bed.”
“And how did you fall upstairs?”
“That’s what I am laughing at.”
Yes, it happens. Once the sun and moon meet, then you are like that madman. You fall upwards.
And then you will laugh because it is really something ridiculous. Falling upwards? One has never heard about it.
You have heard the story, Newton was sitting in a garden and one apple fell. This apple seems to be connected with humanity too much – the same apple was there when Adam was trapped by the snake. And again, this poor Newton was sitting and one apple fell, and he discovered the theory of gravitation. But when your sun and moon meet, you go, suddenly, into a different reality, a separate reality: you start falling upwards. You defy Newton – gravitation is meaningless. You gravitate upwards! And of course the whole training has been this: that if you throw a thing it falls downwards – every. thing falls downwards. Then the laughter is reasonable.
It is said about Hotei, a Zen monk, that once he became enlightened he never stopped laughing. He continued, continued, till he died. He moved from one village to another laughing and laughing. It is said about him that even when he was asleep you could hear his laughter. People used to ask, “Why do you laugh?” He would say, “How can I say? But something has happened – something very ridiculous. Something which should not happen – is not supposed to happen – has happened.”
Yes, the madman was doing right. If one day you fall from your bed and suddenly you find yourself upstairs, you will laugh. But this happens, and the madman is no ordinary madman. This is a Sufi story. The madman must have been a Master.
This sutra says: “MURDHA JYOTISHI SIDDHA DARSHANAM.” The moment your consciousness meets with sahasrara, you suddenly become available to the world beyond-to the world of the siddhas.
In yoga symbology the muladhar, the sex center, is thought to be like a red lotus of four petals. The four petals represent four directions; redness represents the heat, because it is the sun center. And sahasrara is represented as a thousand-petaled lotus of all colors. A thousand-petaled – sahasrara padma – a thousand-petaled lotus of all colors because it includes the whole. The sex center is only red. Sahasrara is a rainbow – all colors included, the totality included.
Ordinarily, the sahasrara, the one-thousand-petaled lotus, hangs downward in your head. Once the energy moves through it, the energy makes it upward. It is as if a lotus is hanging without energy, downward – just the very weight of it makes it hang downward – then energy rushes in it, making it alive. It moves upward, opens to the beyond.
When this lotus moves upwards and blooms, it is said in yoga scriptures, “It is as resplendent as ten million suns and ten million moons.” One moon and one sun meet in your being. That becomes the possibility of the meeting of ten million suns and ten million moons. You have found the key of the ultimate orgasm, where ten million moons meet ten million suns – ten million females meet ten million males. You can think of ecstasy.
Shiva must have been in that ecstasy when he was found making love to his consort Devi. He must have been at the sahasrara. His lovemaking cannot be sexual – it cannot be from the muladhara. It must have been from the omega point of his being. That’s why he was completely oblivious of who was watching, who was standing. He was not in time, he was not in space. He was beyond time, beyond space. This is the goal of yoga, of tantra, of all spiritual effort.
Meeting of the male and female energy creates the possibility of the ultimate meeting of Shiva and Shakti, life and death. In this way Hindu gods are tremendously beautiful, and tremendously humane. Hmm?… think of a Christian God – with no consort, with no woman. Looks a little rigid, looks a little alone, looks a little empty, looks a little too male oriented, too sun-oriented, hard. No surprise if the Jewish and Christian concept of God is of a very terrible God.
Jews say, “Be afraid of God. Remember, he is not your uncle.” But Hindus say, “Don’t be worried – he is your mother.” Jews have created a very ferocious God, who is always ready to throw fire and thunder and destroy and kill. And just a small sin, maybe just an innocent sin, and he becomes terribly upset. Seems to be almost neurotic.
And the whole Christian conception of the trinity – God, the Holy Ghost, and the Son – the whole trinity seems to be like a boys’ club. Homosexual. No woman at all. And Christians are so afraid of the moon energy, the woman, so afraid, that they have no conception. Somehow, later on, they improved upon it a little by adding Virgin Mary. Somehow, because it is totally against their ideology.
And then too they insist that she is a virgin.
The meeting of the sun and moon is not allowed at all. Even if they allow Mary to be respected…. Of course it is a secondary status because in the original trinity there is no place for her. Somehow feeling the incompleteness of it all, they have managed to bring in Virgin Mary from the back door.
But then too they insist she is a virgin. Why this insistence? What is wrong in a meeting of male and female energy?
And if you are so afraid of the meeting of male and female energy in the outer world, how will you be ready for the same meeting in the inner world?
Hindu gods are more human, more humane – more down-to-earth – and, of course, more compassion, more love flows through them.
Pratibha va sarvam.
THROUGH PRATIBHA, INTUITION, KNOWLEDGE OF EVERYTHING.
The word pratibha is a difficult word; it cannot be translated into English. “Intuition” is a very, very poor substitute for it, and I will have to explain it to you. It cannot be translated; I can only describe it.
The sun is intellect; the moon is intuition. When you transcend both then comes pratibha – and there is no word for it. The sun is intellect, analysis, logic. The moon is intuition, the hunch, just a flash – suddenly you jump on the conclusion. Intellect moves through method, process, syllogism. Intuition suddenly comes to the conclusion – with no process, no methodology, no syllogism. You cannot ask intuition why. There is no “therefore” in intuition. A sudden revelation – as if lightning has happened and you have come to see something, and then the lightning disappears and you don’t know how it happened and why it happened, but it has happened and you have seen something. All primitive societies are intuitive; all women are intuitive; all children are intuitive; all poets are intuitive.
Pratibha is totally different. It has been translated as “intuition” in all the English translations of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, but I would not like to translate it that way. Pratibha means when the energy has moved beyond the duality of intellect and intuition. It is beyond both. Intuition is beyond intellect; pratibha is beyond both. Now there is no logic in it, no sudden lightning in it – everything is eternally revealed. In pratibha one becomes omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. Everything is revealed simultaneously – the past, the present, the future – all. That is the meaning – “PRATIBHA VA SARVAM” – “Through pratibha, all.”
When your energy moves through sahasrara and ten million moons and ten million suns meet within you and you become an oceanic experience of orgasm – which goes on and on and on, eternally; then there is no end to it – there is pratibha. Then you see – you see all through and through, you know all through and through. Then space and time both disappear, with all their limitations.
So, one psychology is sun-oriented, another is moon-oriented, but the real psychology – the real psychology of being – will be pratibha-oriented. It will not be divided into a man and woman. It will be the highest and the greatest synthesis, and transcendence.
Intellect is like a blind man: it gropes in the dark. That’s why so much argumentation is needed.
Intuition is not blind but is like a crippled man: it cannot move. Pratibha is like a healthy man, all limbs healthy.
There is an Indian story that once a forest caught fire. There was one blind man and one crippled man in the forest. The blind man could not see, he could run; But it was dangerous to run without knowing where you are running – where the fire is all over, all around. The crippled man could not walk, but he could see. They came to a tacit understanding: the blind man allowed the crippled man to ride on his back and to see for him, and the crippled man agreed to see for him if he was to run for him. In their synthesis they could get out of the forest and the fire.
Intellect is half, intuition is also half. Intuition cannot run-it is just in flashes. It cannot be a continued source of revelation. And intellect goes on groping in the dark, continuously groping in the dark.
Tags: Patanjali Yoga Sutra 38 Through Pratibha All
