Yoga Sutra 42 Meditation Brings Mastery

Right now when you look at a flower, the flower is there, but have you ever felt your eyes? You see the flower, but have you felt the power of your eyes? It should be there because you are using your eyes to see the flower. And of course eyes are more beautiful than any flower because all flowers have to come through the eyes. It is through the eyes that you have become aware of the world of flowers, but have you ever felt the power of the eyes? They are almost dull and dead. They have become passive, just like windows, receptive. They don’t go to their object. And power means being active. Power means your eyes going and almost touching the flowers, your ears going and almost touching the songs of the birds, your hands going with the total energy in you, focused there and touching your beloved. Or you are lying down on the grass, your whole body, full of power, meeting in contact with the grass, having a dialogue with the grass. Or you are swimming in the river and whispering with the river and listening to the whispers of the river. Connected, in communion, but power is needed.

So the first thing I would like you to do is when you see, really see, become the eyes.

Forget everything. Let your whole energy flow through the eyes. And your eyes will be cleaned, bathed in an inner shower, and you will be able to see that these trees are no longer the same, the greenery is no longer the same. It has become greener, as if dust has disappeared from it. The dust was not on the trees. It was in your eyes. And you will see for the first time and you will hear for the first time.

Jesus goes on saying to his disciples, “If you have ears, listen. If you have eyes, see.”

They were not all blind, and they were not all deaf. What does he mean? He means that you have almost become deaf and almost become blind. You see and yet you don’t see.

You hear yet you don’t hear. It is not a power, it is not energy, it is not vital.

“Performing Samyama on their power of cognition, real nature….” Then you will be able to see what is the real nature of your senses. It is divine. Your body embodies the divine.

It is God who has looked through your eyes!

I remember Meister Eckhart’s famous saying. The day he realized and became enlightened, his friends and disciples and brothers asked, “What have you seen?” He laughed. He is the only one in the whole of Christianity who comes very close to Zen Masters, almost a Zen Master. He laughed; he said, “I have not seen him. He has seen himself through me. God has seen himself through me. These eyes are his. And what a game, what a play. He has seen himself through me.”

When you really feel the nature of your senses, you will feel it is divine. It is God who has moved through your hand. It is God’s hand. All hands are his. It is God who has loved through you. All love affairs are his. And how can it be otherwise? Hindus call it leela, God’s play. It is he who is calling you through the cuckoo, and it is he who is listening through you. It is he and he alone spread all over.

“Performing Samyama, on their power of cognition, real nature, egoism, all-pervasiveness, and functions brings mastery over the sense organ.” This word “egoism” has to be understood because in Sanskrit we have three words for the ego and in English there is only one word. That creates difficulty. The Sanskrit word in the sutra is asmita, so let me first explain it to you.

There are three words: ahankar asmita atma. All mean “I.” Ahankar can be translated as the “ego,” the very gross, too much emphasis on I. For asmita there is no word in English.

Asmita means amness. I am; in ego the emphasis is on “I”; in asmita the emphasis is on “am.” Amness, purer than ego. Still it is there, but in a very different form. Amness. And atma; even amness has disappeared. In the ego “I am”; in asmita only “am”; in atma even that has disappeared. In atma there is pure being, neither I nor amness.

In this sutra asmita is used, amness. Remember, the ego is of the mind. Senses have no ego. They have a certain amness but no ego. The ego is of the mind. Your eyes don’t have any ego; your hands don’t have any ego. They have a certain amness. That’s why if your skin has to be replaced and somebody else’s skin is planted on you, your body will reject it, because the body knows “it is not mine.” So your own skin has to be replaced from some other part of the body, from your thighs. Your own skin has to be replaced; otherwise the body will reject. The body will not accept it: “It is not mine.” The body has no I but it has an amness.

If you need blood, anybody’s blood won’t do. The body will not accept all sorts of blood, only a particular blood. It has its own amness. That will be accepted; some other blood will be rejected. The body has its own feel of its being. Very unconscious, very subtle and pure, but it is there.

Your eyes are yours, just like your thumbprints. Everything yours, is yours. Now physiologists say that everybody’s heart is different, of a different shape. In the books of physiology the picture that you will find is not a real picture. It is just average; it is just imagined. Otherwise each person’s heart has a different shape. Even each person’s kidney has a different shape. These parts all have their signatures; everybody is so unique. That is the amness.

You will never be here again, you have never been before, so move cautiously and alertly and happily. Just think, the glory of your being. Just think that you are so superb and unique. God has vested much in you. Never imitate, because that will be a betrayal. Be yourself. Let that be your religion. All else is politics. Don’t be a Hindu, don’t be a Mohammedan, don’t be a Christian. Be religious, but there is only one religion, and that is just being yourself, authentically yourself.

“Performing Samyama, on their power of cognition, real nature, asmita (the subtle amness), all-pervasiveness, and functions brings mastery over the sense organ.” And if you meditate on these things, you will become a master. Meditation brings mastery; nothing else brings mastery except meditation. If you meditate on your eye, first you will see the rose flower; by and by you will be able to see the eye that is seeing. Then you have become a master of the eye. Once you have seen the seeing eye, you have become a master. Now you can use all its energies; and they are all-pervasive. Your eyes are not as limited as you think them to be. They can see many more things which you have not seen. They can penetrate many more mysteries that you have not even dreamed about.

But you are not a master of your eyes, and you have used them in a very haphazard way, not knowing what you are doing.

And having been in contact with objects too much, you have forgotten the subjectivity of your eyes. It happens if you keep company with someone, by and by; you become influenced by him. You have been in contact with objects too much and you have forgotten the inner quality of your senses. You see things, but you never see your seeing.

You hear the songs, but you never hear the subtle vibration that goes on within you, the sound of your being.

Let me tell you one anecdote.

I have heard that one extremely confident tramp had enormous nerve. He had just completed a very large meal in a swanky restaurant when he announced to the manager, “My good man, I have really enjoyed your food, but unfortunately I cannot afford to pay for any of it at all. I have not a penny to my name. Now don’t get angry. I am by profession a beggar, as you may see. I happen to be an extremely talented beggar too. I can go out and within one hour get the money I owe you for this meal. Naturally though, you cannot trust me to come back, and this I fully understand. You would be most welcome to accompany me, but can a man like you, a well-known restaurant owner, afford to be seen with a man of my calibre? No. So I have, sir, the perfect solution to our little problem. I will wait here and you go out and beg until you have the cost of this meal.”

If you keep company with a beggar, you will become a beggar. He will suggest in a thousand and one ways to you to become like him.

We have kept company with objects so long that we have forgotten our subjectivity. We have remained focused outwardly so long on things that we have forgotten that we are persons. This long association with objects has completely destroyed your image of yourself. You have to come back home.

In yoga, when you start seeing your seeing eye, you come across a subtle energy. They call it tanmatra. When you can see, your eye seeing, just hidden behind the eyes you see a tremendous energy. That is tanmatra, the energy of the eye. Behind the ear you see tremendous energy accumulated, tanmatra of the ear. Behind your genital organs you see tremendous energy accumulated, tanmatra of sexuality. And so on and so forth.

Everywhere, behind your senses there is a pool of energy – unused. Once you know it, you can pour that energy into your eyes, and then you will see visions which only sometimes poets see, painters see. Then you will hear sounds which only sometimes musicians hear, poets hear. And then you will touch things which only sometimes in rare moments lovers know how to touch.

You will become alive, streaming.

Ordinarily you have been taught to repress your senses, not to know them. It is very foolish, but very convenient.

It happened: After a rural wedding, the bride and the groom climbed into his wagon and set out for their farm home. About a mile down the road, the horse stumbled. “That’s one!” shouted the groom.

They continued on and the horse stumbled again. “That is two!” shouted the groom.

As they neared the farm, the horse stumbled again. “That is three!” shouted the groom and, seizing a gun from behind the seat, put a bullet through the horse’s brain. The bride sat aghast. Then, in no uncertain terms, she told her new husband what she thought of his action. He sat quietly until she subsided, then pointed at her and shouted, “That is one!”

The couple lived happily for sixty years.

But that happiness cannot be real happiness. Easy to repress at the point of a gun, but then what sort of love will happen between these two people? The gun will always stand in between, and the wife will always be afraid now any moment he is going to say, “Now this is two! Now this is three!” and finished.

That’s what you have done with your senses, with your body. You have repressed it. But you were helpless. I don’t say that you are responsible for repressing it. You were brought up in such a way, nobody allowed your senses freedom. In the name of love, only repression continues. The mothers, the fathers, the society, they go on repressing. By and by they teach you a trick, and the trick is not to accept yourself, deny. Everything has to be channelized into conformity. Your wilderness has to be thrown into the dark part of your soul and a small corner has to be clean, like a drawing room, where you can see people, meet people, and live and forget all about your wilder being, your real existence.

Your fathers and your mothers are not responsible either, because they were brought up in the same way.

So nobody is responsible. But once you know it, and you don’t do anything, then you become responsible. Being near a master is going to make you very, very responsible, because you will know it, and then if you don’t do anything, then you cannot throw the responsibility on anybody else. Then you are going to be responsible.

Now you know about how you have destroyed your senses and you know also how to revive them. Do something. Throw the gun completely, the repressive mind completely.

Unblock yourself. Start flowing again. Start connecting again with your being. Start connecting with your senses again. You are like a disconnected telephone-line.

Everything looks perfectly okay, the telephone is there, but the line is disconnected. Your eyes are there, your hands are there, your ears are there, but the line is disconnected.

Reconnect it. If it can be disconnected, it can be reconnected. Others have disconnected it because they were also taught in the same way, but you can reconnect it.

All Osho’s meditations are to give you a streaming energy. That’s why he calls them dynamic methods. Old meditations were just to sit silently, not to do anything. He gives you active methods because when you are streaming with energy you can sit silently, that will do, but right now first you have to become alive.