Yoga Sutra 41 Peace Be Thy Goal

Patanjali himself has not been known to do it. What Patanjali is saying: he is revealing all the possibilities.

In fact a man who has attained to his uttermost being, for what will he think to become small? For what? He can’t be so foolish. For what? For what would he like to become like an elephant? What is the point in it? And why should he want to disappear? He cannot be interested in amusing people, their curiosities. He is not a magician. He is not interested in people applauding him. For what? In fact the moment a person reaches, to the highest peak of his being, all desires disappear. Siddhis appear when desires disappear. This is the dilemma: powers come when you don’t want to use them. In fact they come only when the person has disappeared who always wanted to have them.

So Patanjali is not saying that yogis will do such things. They have never been known to do such things. And the few people who try to do them are not yogis. And the few people who do them, in fact cannot do them; they are only tricksters.

Now Satya Sai Baba type people go on materializing Swiss-made watches. These are all tricks, and nobody should be enchanted by these tricks. Whatsoever Satya Sai Baba has been doing can be done by thousands of magicians all over the world, very easily, but you never go to magicians and touch their feet because you know that they are doing tricks. But if somebody who is thought to be religious is doing the same trick, then you think it is a miracle.

This part of Patanjali’s YOGA SUTRAS is to make you aware that these things become possible but they are never actualized because the person who would want it, who would have always liked to go on an ego trip through these powers; is there no more.

Miraculous powers happen to you when you are not interested in them. This is the economy of existence. If you desire, you remain impotent; if you don’t desire, you become infinitely potent. This I call the law of banking: if you don’t have money, no bank is going to give you; if you have money, every bank is ready to give you. When you don’t need, all is available; when you are needy, nothing is available.

BEAUTY, GRACE, STRENGTH, AND ADAMANTINE HARDNESS CONSTITUTE THE PERFECT BODY.

Patanjali is not talking about this body. This body can be beautiful, but can never be perfectly beautiful. The second body can be more beautiful than this, the third even more, because they are moving closer to the center. The beauty is of the center. The farther away it has to travel, the more limited it becomes. The fourth body is even more beautiful. The fifth is almost ninety-nine percent perfect.

But that which is your being, the real you, is beauty, grace, strength, and adamantine hardness. It is adamantine hardness and at the same time the softness of a lotus. It is beautiful but not fragile – strong. It is strong, but not just hard. All opposites meet in it…as if a lotus flower is made of diamonds or a diamond is made of lotus flowers. Because man and woman meet there and transcend. Because the sun and moon meet there and transcend.

The old term for yoga is hatha. This word hatha is very, very significant. Ha means sun, tha means moon; and hatha means the meeting of sun and moon. The union of sun and moon is yoga – UNIO MYSTICA.

In the human body, according to the hatha yogis, there are three channels of energy. One is known as pingala; that is the right channel, connected with the left brain – the sun channel. Then there is another channel ida; the left channel, connected with the right brain – the moon channel. And then there is the third channel, the middle channel, sushumna; the central, the balanced – it is made of sun and moon together.

Ordinarily your energy moves either by the pingala or by ida. Yogis’ energy starts moving through the sushumna. That is called kundalini, when the energy moves just between these two, right and left. Corresponding to your backbone these channels exist.

Once the energy moves in the middle channel, you become balanced. Then a person is neither a man nor a woman, neither hard nor soft; or both – man and woman, hard and soft. All the polarities disappear in sushumna; and Sahasrar is the peak of sushumna.

If you live on the lowest point of your being, that is muladhar: sex center; then either you move by ida or you move by pingala, sun channel or moon channel; and you remain divided. And you go on seeking the other, you go on asking for the other. You feel incomplete in yourself; you have to depend on the other.

Once your own energies meet inside and there happens a great orgasm, a cosmic orgasm, when the ida and pingala dissolve into sushumna; then one is thrilled, eternally thrilled.

Then one is ecstatic, continuously ecstatic. Then that ecstasy knows no end. Then one never comes down, then one never comes low. One remains high. That point of highness becomes one’s innermost core, one’s very being.

Remember again, I would like to say to you, this is the framework. We are not talking about actual things. There are foolish people who have even tried to dissect the human body to see where ida and pingala and sushumna are, and they have found them nowhere.

These are just indicators, symbolic. There are foolish people who have tried to dissect the body and to find the centers, where they are. Even one doctor has written a book to prove which center is exactly which complex in the body according to physiologists. These are all foolish attempts.

Yoga is not scientific in that way. It is allegorical; it is a great allegory. It is showing something, and if you go inside you will find it, but there is no way to find it by dissecting a body. By postmortem you will not find these things. These are – alive phenomena. And these words are simply indicative – don’t be confined to them, and don’t make a fixed obsession and doctrine out of them. Remain fluid. Take the hint, and go on the journey.

One more word; it is Oordhwaretas. It means the upward journey of energy. Right now you are existing at the sex center, and from that center the energy – goes on falling downward. Oordhwaretas means your energy starts moving upward. A delicate, very delicate phenomenon, and one-has to be very alert to work with it. If you are not alert there is every possibility you will become a perverted being. It is dangerous; that’s why yogis call it “serpent power.” It is dangerous. It is like a snake; you are playing with a snake. If you don’t know what to do, there is danger. You are playing with poison.

And many people have become perverted because they tried to repress their sex energy in order to become Oordhwaretas, to go upward. They never went upward. They even became more perverted than normal people.

I was reading one anecdote.

“Yes,” said Abe to his friend Issy, “I am afraid with my son it has turned out to be a great disappointment. You know how we struggled to give him an education that we never had; I sent him to the finest business school in the country, and now what happens? He rolls up at my dress factory at ten in the morning; at eleven o’clock he dawdles over tea; at twelve o’clock he is off for lunch; he is not back till two; and from two till four he fools around with the models. What rubbish he has turned out to be.”

“Abe,” replied Issy, “what troubles you have got is nothing; mine is a thousand time worse. You know how we struggled to give my son an education that we never had; I sent him to the best business school in the country, and now what happens? He rolls up at my factory at ten in the morning; at eleven o’clock he dawdles over tea; at twelve o’clock he is off for lunch; he is not back till two; and from two till four he fools around with the models. What rubbish he has turned out!”

“But, Issy, since when is that a thousand times worse than me? It is the same story that you have told me.”

“Abe, you forgot one thing: I am in men’s clothing.”

Get it? If you don’t know what to do with sex energy, and you start fooling with it, either your energy will become masturbatory or homosexual or there are a thousand and one other perversions. Then it is better to leave it as it is.

That’s why a Master is needed – one who knows where you are, where you are going, and what is going to happen next; one who can see your future and one who can see whether the right channeling is happening or not. Otherwise the whole world is in a mess of sexual perversion.

Never repress. It is better to be normal and natural than to be perverted. But just to be normal is not enough. Much more is possible. Transform. Repression is not the way of Oordhwaretas – transformation is. And that can be done only if you purify your body, you purify your mind; you throw all rubbish that you have gathered in the body and the mind. Only with a purity, light, weightlessness, will you be able to help the energy to move upwards.

Ordinarily it is like a coiled snake; that’s why we call it kundalini, or kundali. Kundali means “coiled up.” When it raises its head and moves upwards, the experience is tremendous. Whenever it passes one higher center, you will have higher and higher experiences. In each center many things will be revealed to you; you are a great book.

But the energy has to pass through the centers; only then can those centers reveal to you their beauties, their visions, their poetries, their songs, their dances. And each center has a higher orgasm than the lower one.

Sexual orgasm is the lowest. Higher is the orgasm of the hara. Higher than that is the orgasm of the nabhi, the navel. Higher than that is that of love, the heart. Then higher than that is that of the throat, creativity, sharing. Then higher than that is that of the third eye, the vision of life as really it is, without any projections – the clarity to sec unclouded. And highest is that of the Sahasrar, the seventh center.

This is the map. If you want, you can move upwards, become Oordhwaretas. But never try to become Oordhwaretas for siddhis, powers; they are all foolish. Try to become Oordhwaretas to know who you are. Not for power, but peace. Let peace be thy goal, never power.

This chapter is called vibhuti pada. Vibhuti means “power.” Patanjali included this chapter so that his disciples and those who will ever be following him are made alert that many powers happen on the way but you are not to get entangled with them. Once you become entangled with power, once you are on a power trip, you are in trouble. You will be tied down to that spot – and your flight will be stopped. And one has to go on flying and flying till the very end, when the abyss opens and you are absorbed back into the cosmic soul.

Let peace be thy goal.