Yoga Sutra 40 Bondage Is Identification

LOOSENING THE CAUSE OF BONDAGE AND KNOWING THE CHANNELS ALLOWS THE MIND TO ENTER ANOTHER’S BODY.

“BANDHA KARNA SHAITHILYA” – “Loosening the cause of bondage.” What is the cause of bondage? Identification. If you are identified with the body, you cannot move beyond it. Wherever your identification is, there is your imprisonment. If you think you are the body, your very thinking will not allow you to do something which can be done only when you know that you are not the body. If you think you are the mind, then the mind is your only world; you cannot go beyond it.

You have learned a particular language, and you go on interpreting all the experiences through that language. Even if you come across a man who has gone beyond body identity, you will reduce his experiences also to your own experiences. You will interpret. If you come across a Buddha, you will not see his Buddhahood; you will see only his body. Because you can see only that, which you are.

You cannot see anything more. You are your confinement.

Remember not to get identified with lower things.

There are people who are simply living to eat. They don’t eat to live; they live to eat. And they go on eating and stuffing. They become just food, nothing else. They are like a refrigerator – stuffed, nothing else in them. And they go on doing it continuously; and they never think for a single moment, “What are you doing? Is this the whole of life? – Then you are vegetating.”

Mulla Nasruddin fell ill. The wife said, “Should I call the doctor?”

He said, “No. Call the vet.”

She said, “What do you mean? Have you gone mad, or the fever has gone too high? Why the vet? Why the veterinary doctor?”

He said, “I live like a vegetable, I work like a mule, I think like a donkey, and I sleep with a cow. You call the vet; I am not a man. Only the vet can understand me.”

Just watch, observe what you are doing with yourself. Vegetating? Just stuffing with food? Or just hankering for more and more sex indulgence, just chasing women or men?

Question was asked to Osho – One very lovely woman asked me, “Osho, should I remain alone, or should I chase men?” She has passed her prime, her age. Now it is time to be alone and be happy; now it is almost foolish to chase. So I told her, “Now there is no need.” But in the West there is a problem; even old women have to pretend that they are young. And they go on chasing because that’s their only life. If sex disappears, they think life disappears, because then for what to live? That was their whole meaning.

The woman understood. It is very easy when you are near me to understand something, but when you go away the problems come back because that understanding was because of me. I had almost possessed you; in that lightning you can see many things very easily. Next day she wrote a letter, “Osho, right, you are right. I should not chase. But what about casual affairs?” Here you go again.

Don’t crawl; stand up. Upanishads say: “UTTISHTHA JAGRAT PRAPYA VARANNI BODHAYAT” – “Stand up; become aware.” Because to become aware is the only way to stand up, to rise and soar high.

The cause of bondage is identification. The sutra says, “Loosening the cause of bondage….” If you can loosen it a little, relax it a little, if you can uproot yourself from your body and mind, you will attain a very great experience; and that experience is: you can enter into another’s body.

But why is this a great experience? Once you can enter into another’s body, the body identification drops forever. Then you know that you have entered, in many bodies before; you have entered millions of bodies, remained, loved, suffered, and thought that you are this body or that. When you are not too identified with the body and the bondage is loose, you can try it.

You can enter into a dead man’s body. Buddha used to send his disciples to the cemetery. Sufis have worked very much on this method; they will live in the cemeteries where dead people are, and when a fresh body is buried they will try to enter into the buried body. Once you can enter into another’s body, suddenly your vision becomes absolutely clear that the body is just a house you are in. If you have lived in your own house, confined for ever and ever, by and by you become identified with the house, you start thinking as if “I am the house”; but if you can go and visit a friend’s house, suddenly you see that you are not the house: the house is left behind, you are in another house.

Then the vision becomes clear.

And this loosening of identification can be of much help also. You can help somebody very deeply if you can loosen your bondage. This is one of the methods of shaktipat. Whenever a Master wants to help you, to cleanse you, your energy channel, your passage, if it is blocked, he simply possesses you. He simply descends in you, and his energy, of a higher quality, purer, unbounded, moves in your energy channels. They become open. Then your own energy can move in them easily. This is the whole art of shaktipat. If a disciple is really surrendered, the Master can possess him immediately.

And once you are possessed by the energy of the Master, once his prana surrounds you, enters in you, much is done very easily which you cannot do in years. It will take years for you because you will be working, working… hard is the work, blocks are very, very rocky, you have accumulated them in many, many lives, and your energy is very tiny, just a trickling, a few drops of energy. They are lost again and again in the desert. They are lost again and again against the rock. But if a Master can enter, in you like a waterfall, many things are simply washed away. And when the Master has gone out of you, suddenly you start to be a totally different person – cleaner, younger, vital… and all energy passages open. Just knock a little and you move.

When a Master enters the body of a disciple, he leaves behind him for a few moments such a great opportunity that if the disciple wants to use it, he can attain it – so easily, so simply that there will be almost no effort.

There are certain schools, those schools are called schools of siddhas, they don’t allow their disciples to work on any technique. The siddha guru simply tells them to sit by his side and wait.

They believe in satsang, and it is a tremendously powerful method, but for it a great devotion is needed. A single doubt and it cannot happen, a little resistance and it cannot happen. One has to be completely open. One has to be completely a moon, only then can the Master possess you.

“Loosening the cause of bondage and knowing the channels allows the mind to enter another’s body.” Two things are needed. First, loosening of the bondage; and another, the awareness, the knowledge of the channels from where to leave the body and how to re-enter it – how to enter another’s body. Because if you don’t know; from where to leave your body, you may not be able to re-enter again. So just loosening of the bondage won’t help; you will have to be very, very aware of the inside world of your body.

Ordinarily we know only the outside, just the skin part. That’s why people go on powdering, deodorizing their skin. Hmm?… That’s their whole body. They don’t know what great mechanism is hidden inside. You are not aware. Just the skin part, just the surface, which is nothing but the outer shell. As if you go to see the Taj Mahal and you just go round and round and see the outer walls and come back. You look into the mirror, the mirror simply reflects your skin, the outer shell, and you get identified with it. You think, “I am this man.” You are not. You are very, very great – but you never look from the within.

Get disidentified with the body, then close your eyes and try to feel the body from within. Try to touch the body from within, how it feels from within. Get centered and from there look around – and mysteries upon mysteries open their secrets to you. That’s how yogis came to know about the channels, the centers, the nadis, the energy fields, the working of the energy fields – from where you can get out of the body and how you can re-enter and how you can enter into another’s body.

A great knowledge, the whole topography of the inner body is needed. One has to know it; otherwise you will miss it. Many times it has happened.

That’s why Patanjali simply gives the sutra and does not go into detail because if the detail is described there are foolish people who will try. No detail is given. You cannot do anything just reading this sutra. In fact all the practical details have not been opened to you. Patanjali keeps them secret. They are only for those who are working with a Master. They cannot be said publicly, because curious people are there and they will try, and sometimes they can get out of the body but then they will not be able to get in. Sometimes they can get into another’s body and may not be able to get out. Then they will create trouble for themselves and for others.

So details are not being given; details have always been handed over in personal intimacy. These sutras simply give you the framework.