Yoga Sutra 45 Absolute Liberation

Now the sutra:

SATTVA-PURUSHAYOH SHUDDHI-SAMYE KAIVALYAM.

LIBERATION IS OBTAINED WHEN THERE IS EQUALITY OF PURITY BETWEEN THE PURUSHA AND SATTVA.

Yoga divides existence in two. The unmanifest is one, but the manifest is two because in the very process of manifestation things become two. For example, you look at a rosebush, beautiful flowers. You just look, you don’t say a word. You simply see the rose, not even uttering a word inside. The experience is one. Now if you want to say to somebody, “The flowers are beautiful,” the moment you say, “The flowers are beautiful,” you have said something about ugliness also. The flowers are “not ugly.” With beauty, ugliness enters in. If somebody asks, “What is beauty?” you will have to use ugliness to explain it.

If you look at a woman and no word arises in you, then the experience is one, nondual.

The moment you say, “I love you,” you have brought hate in. Because love cannot be explained without hate. The day cannot be explained without night and life cannot be explained without death. The opposite has to be brought in.

At the point of vaikhari, everything is clear-cut, duality; night is separate from day, death is separate from life, beauty is separate from ugliness, light is separate from darkness – everything divided in an Aristotelian way, clear-cut, no bridge. Move a little deeper. At the point of madhyama, division starts but is not so clear; night and day meet, mix, as in the evening or in the morning. Go Still deeper. At the point of pashyanti, they are in the seed, the duality has not arisen yet; you cannot say what is what, everything is undifferentiated. Move still deeper. At the point of para, there is no division – visible, invisible.

At the point of expression, yoga divides reality in two: purusha and prakriti. Prakriti means “matter”; purusha means “consciousness.” Now when you are identified with the bodymind, with prakriti, with nature, with matter; both are polluted. Pollution is always double, both.

For example, if you mix water and milk, you say, “The milk is no longer pure,” but you have not observed anything: the water is also no longer pure. Because water is free so nobody is worried, that is one thing; but when you mix water and milk, both become impure. This is something, because both were pure – water was water, milk was milk – both were pure. This is a miracle. Two purities meet, and both become impure.

Impurity has nothing condemnatory in it. It simply says the foreign element has entered.

It simply says something which is not of its innermost nature has entered, that’s all.

This sutra is very beautiful. “Vibhuti Pada” ends with this sutra; it is a culmination. This sutra says when you are identified with the body, you are impure, body is impure. When you are identified with the mind, you are impure, mind is impure. When you are not identified, both become pure.

Now this will look like a paradox. A siddha, or a Buddha, one who has achieved, his mind functions in purity. His genius functions in purity; all his talents become pure. And his consciousness functions in purity. Both are separated – milk is milk, water is water.

Both have become pure again.

The sutra says, “Liberation is obtained when there is equality of purity between the purusha and sattva.” Sattva is the highest point of prakriti, nature, matter. Sattva means “intelligence”; and purusha means “awareness.” That is the most subtle tie inside you because they are so similar. Intelligence and awareness are so similar that many times you may start thinking that an intelligent man is an aware man. It is not so.

Einstein is intelligent, tremendously intelligent, but he is not a Buddha, he is not aware.

He may even be more unaware than ordinary people because he will be inside his intelligence so much.

It happened that Einstein was going to some place in a bus, and the conductor came and asked for the money. He gave him the money. The conductor gave Einstein his change.

Einstein counted it but counted it wrongly – the greatest mathematician of the world – and he said, “You have not given me the right change; give me a few more coins.”

The conductor counted again; he said, “Don’t you know figures?”

He was not aware that this was Albert Einstein. There has never been such a great mathematical genius ever… and the conductor said, “Don’t you know figures?” Nobody has known anything more than this man about figures, but what happened?

People who are very intelligent almost always become absentminded. They are moved by and attached to their intelligence so much that they become oblivious to many things in the outside world.

I have heard about a great psychoanalyst, a very intelligent man. He was absorbed so much in his experiments that for two or three days he didn’t turn up home. The wife was worried. The third day she could not wait anymore, so she phoned and she said, “What are you doing? Come back; I am waiting for you. And supper is ready.”

He said, “Okay, I will come. What is the address?”

He had forgotten completely – his wife and the home and the address also.

Intelligence is not necessarily awareness. Awareness is necessarily intelligence! A man who is aware is intelligent, but a man who is intelligent need not be aware, there is no necessity in it. But both are very close. Intelligence is part of body-mind, and awareness is part of purusha, the ultimate, the beyond.

The sky meets the earth. That point, that horizon where the sky meets the earth is the point to become perfectly unidentified – there, where intelligence meets awareness. Both are very similar. Intelligence is purified matter, so pure that one can get into it and one can think, “I have become aware.” That’s how many philosophers waste their lives: they think their intelligence is their awareness. Religion is the search of awareness; philosophy the search of intelligence.

“Liberation is obtained when there is equality of purity between the purusha and sattva.”

But how to attain liberation? First you have to attain the purity of sattva, intelligence.

So move deeper. Vaikhari is intelligence manifest; madhyama is intelligence manifest only to you not to the world; pashyanti is intelligence in seed form; and para is awareness. By and by, detach yourself, discriminate, start looking at the body as an instrument, a medium, an abode; and remember it as much as you can. By and by the remembrance settles. Then start working on the mind. Remember you are not the mind.

This remembrance will help you to become separate.

Once you are separate from the body-mind, your sattva will be pure. And your purusha has always been pure; just the identity with matter has helped it to appear impure. Once both mirrors are pure, nothing is mirrored. Two mirrors facing each other: nothing is mirrored, they remain empty.

This point of absolute emptiness is liberation. Liberation is not from the world.

Liberation is from identification. Don’t be identified, never be identified with anything.

Always remember you are the witness, never lose that point of witnessing; then one day the inner awareness rises like thousands of suns rising together.

This is what Patanjali calls kaivalya, liberation.

The word kaivalya has to be understood.

In India different prophets have used different words for that ultimate thing. Mahavir calls it moksha. Moksha can be rightly translated as “absolute freedom,” no bondage, all imprisonment has fallen. Buddha has used the word nirvana; nirvana means “cessation of the ego.” As you put a light off and the flame simply disappears, just the same way the light of the ego disappears: you are no longer an entity. The drop has dissolved into the ocean; or the ocean has dissolved into the drop. It is dissolution, annihilation.

Patanjali uses kaivalya; the word means “absolute aloneness.” It is neither moksha, nor nirvana. It means absolute aloneness: you have come to a point where nobody else exists for you. Nothing else exists; only you, only you, only you. In fact it is not possible to call yourself “I,” because “I” has a reference with “thou,” and “thou” has disappeared. It is no longer possible to say you are in moksha, freedom, because when all bondage has disappeared, what is the meaning of freedom? Freedom is possible if imprisonment is possible. You are free because the prison exists just near the neighborhood. You are not inside the prison, there are other people inside the prison, but potentially, theoretically, you can be put into the prison any day. That’s why you are free. But if the prison has disappeared absolutely, utterly, then what is the point of calling oneself free?

Kaivalya, just aloneness. But remember, this aloneness has nothing to do with your loneliness. In loneliness “the other” exists, is felt, the absence of the other is felt. That’s why loneliness is a sad thing. You are “lonely”: that means you are feeling the need for the other. “Alone”: when the need for the other has disappeared. You are enough unto yourself, absolute unto yourself, no need, no desire, nowhere to go: this is what Patanjali calls “you have come home.” This is liberation in his description; this is his nirvana or moksha.

Glimpses can come to you also. If you sit silently and detach yourself.,.. First detach yourself from the objects. Close your eyes, forget the world, even if it exists just take it as a dream. Then look at the ideas and remember that you are not them, they are floating clouds. Detach yourself from them; they have disappeared. Then one idea arises: that you are detached. That is pashyanti. Now drop that too because otherwise you will hang there.

Drop that too; simply be a witness to this idea also. Suddenly you explode into nothingness. It may be only for a single split moment, but you will have the taste of tao, the taste of yoga and tantra; you will have the taste of truth. And once you have had it, it becomes easier and easier to approach it, allow it, become vulnerable to it, become available to it. Every day it becomes easier and easier. The more you travel the path, the more the path becomes clear.

One day you go in and never come out… KAIVALYAM. This is what Patanjali calls the absolute liberation. This is the goal in the East.

Eastern goals reach very much higher than Western goals. In the West heaven seems to be the last thing; not so in the East. Christians, Mohammedans, Jews, for them heaven is the last thing, nothing beyond it. But in the East we have worked more, we have drilled into reality deeper. We have drilled to the very end, when suddenly the drill comes to face the emptiness and nothing can be drilled anymore.

Heaven is a desire, desire of being happy; hell is a fear, fear of being unhappy. Hell is pain accumulated; heaven is pleasure accumulated. But they are not, freedom. Freedom is when you are neither in pain nor in pleasure. Freedom is when the duality has been dropped. Freedom is when there is no hell and no heaven: kaivalyam. Then one attains to the uttermost purity.

This has been the goal in the East, and I think this has to be the goal of all humanity.