The first sutra:
JAN AUSHADHI-MANTRA-TAPAH-SAMADHIJAH SIDDHAYAH. THE POWERS ARE REVEALED AT BIRTH…
Osho says – This is a very pregnant sutra, and I have not yet come across a right commentary about this sutra.
It is so pregnant that unless you penetrate it to the very core, you will not be able to understand it.
THE POWERS ARE REVEALED AT BIRTH, OR ACQUIRED THROUGH DRUGS, REPEATING SACRED WORDS, AUSTERITIES, OR SAMADHI.
Whatsoever you are is revealed at birth without any effort. Every child, while he is being born, knows the truth, because he has not yet been hypnotized. He has no desires; he is still innocent, virgin, not corrupted by any intention. His attention is pure, unfocused. The child is naturally meditative.
He is in a sort of samadhi; he’s coming out of the womb of God. His life river is yet absolutely fresh, just from the source. He knows the truth, but he does not know that he knows. He knows it, not knowing that he knows it. The knowledge is absolutely simple. How can he know that he knows? – Because there has never been a moment of not knowing. To feel as if you know something, you have to have some experience of non-knowledge. Without ignorance you cannot feel knowledge.
Without darkness you cannot see stars. During the day you can’t see that it is all dark; contrast is needed.
A child is born in perfect light: he cannot feel that this is light. To feel it, he will have to pass through the experience of darkness. Then he will be able to compare and see, and know that he knows.
His knowledge is not yet aware, it is innocent. It is simply there, as a matter of fact. And he is not separate from his knowledge; he is his knowledge. He has no mind, he has a simple being.
What Patanjali is saying is this: what you are seeking you had known before. Not knowing it, you had known it before. Otherwise, there would be no way to seek it because we can only seek something which we have known in some way – maybe very dimly, vaguely. Maybe the awareness was not clear: it was clouded in mist; but how can you seek something which you have not known before?
How can you seek God? How can you seek bliss? How can you seek truth? How can you seek the self, the supreme self? You must have tasted something of it, and that taste, the memory of that taste is still treasured somewhere within your being. You are missing something; that’s why search, seeking arises.
The first experience of samadhi, the first experience of infinite power, siddhi, of potentiality, of being a god, is revealed at birth. But at that time, you cannot make a knowledge out of it. For that you will have to go through a dark night of the soul; you will have to go astray. For that, you will have to sin.
The word ‘sin’ is very beautiful. It simply means going off-track, missing the right path, or missing the target, missing the goal. Adam has to go out of the Garden of Eden. It is a necessity. Unless you miss God, you will not be able to know Him. Unless you come to a point where you don’t know whether God is or is not, unless you come to a point where you are miserable, in pain and anguish, you will never be able to know what bliss is. Agony is the door to ecstasy.
Patanjali’s first sutra is simply saying that whatsoever is attained by the yogi is nothing new. It is a recovery of something lost. It is a remembrance. That’s why in India once somebody attains samadhi, we call it a rebirth; he is reborn. We call him dwija: twice born. One birth was unconscious, the first birth; the second birth, is conscious. He has suffered, gone astray, and come back home.
When Adam returns home, he is Jesus. Every Jesus has to go far away from the home; then he is Adam. When Adam starts the returning journey, he is Jesus. Adam is the first man, Jesus the last.
Adam is the beginning, the alpha, and Jesus the end, the omega; and the circle is complete.
“The powers are revealed at birth.:..” Then arises ‘the world’; what Hindus call maya. It has been translated as illusion, magic, but the best way to translate it is as hypnosis. Then arises the hypnosis.
A thousand and one hypnosis are all around: here he’s being taught that he is a Hindu – now it is a hypnosis; he’s being taught that he is a Christian – now it is a hypnosis. Now his mind is being conditioned and narrowed down. He’s a Mohammedan – it is a hypnosis. Then he is taught that he is a man or a woman – it is a hypnosis.
Ninety per cent of your manhood or womanhood is simply hypnosis; it has nothing to do with your biology. The biological difference between man and woman is very simple, but the psychological difference is very complicated and complex. You have to teach small boys to be boys and small girls to be girls, and you bifurcate them. You create an intention: the girls are going to become beautiful women, and the boys are going to become very powerful men. The girls are going to be just confined in the home: householders, housewives, mothers; and the boys are going on a great adventure in the world: money, power, prestige, ambition. You create different intentions in them.
In different societies, different conditionings are given. There are societies which are matriarchal; the woman is predominant. Then you will see an unbelievable truth there: whenever there is a society in which the woman is predominant, the man becomes weak and the woman becomes powerful. She manages all outside work and the man simply looks after the home.
But because we live in a male-dominant society, man becomes powerful and woman becomes weak and fragile. But this is a hypnosis; it is not natural. It is not so in nature. You give a certain direction, then a thousand and one sorts of hypnoses go round.
In India, if a man is born in a poor, untouchable’s family, is a shudra, he’s confined to being a shudra for his whole life. He cannot even change his business. He cannot become a brahmin. He’s confined: a very narrow hole, a tunnel-like hole is given to him. He has to go through that; no other alternatives are available. And he will think in those terms, he will live a certain style of life. And each conditioning of the mind is self-perpetuating: it goes on creating itself more and more skillfully.
Then you are given ideas about God. In Soviet Russia, you are given the idea that there is no God.
Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana, has written in her memoirs that from the very beginning, of course, since she was Stalin’s daughter, she was taught very strictly to be an atheist. But by and by, she started feeling, “Why? If there is no God, why is there so much propaganda against Him? What is the point? There is no point in it; if God is not there, finished. Why be worried? Why create anti-God propaganda, literature, this and that; why try to prove? The very effort shows that something seems to be there, something may be there.” She became suspicious, and when Stalin died she revolted.
She became a religious person, but her mind was narrowed down. She must be a very rare human being, because to be a theist in Soviet Russia is as difficult as to be an atheist in India.
These things are not taught, these things are caught – with the blood of the mother, with the milk of the mother, with the breathing of the mother. Your whole atmosphere surrounds you as a subtle conditioning. These things are not taught. Nobody is teaching you these things in particular; you catch them. The first thing a Hindu child hears when he opens his eyes and his ears here, the first thing is going to be a mantra, or something from the Bhagavad-Gita. He does not understand anything, but the first impact is of Sanskrit, the first impact is of some religious scripture. Then he starts growing; he sees his mother praying, the statues of gods, and flowers and incense, and he goes on crawling there, watches and sees what is happening. He can see that the mother is crying, tears are coming, and she looks so happy and so graceful. Something tremendously great is happening; he cannot know what it is, but something is happening. He is catching. Then the temple, then the priest, then the flamboyant robes, and the whole atmosphere; he goes on drinking the atmosphere. It becomes part of his being. Either from the mother’s breast or from the state’s breast, but these things are just caught while he is unaware. You become a Christian: by the time you become alert you are already a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Jaina, a Buddhist, and it is very difficult to uncondition you.
The whole effort of Patanjali is how to uncondition you, how to help you so that you can uncondition yourself. All that has been given to you has to be dropped so that again you come out of the clouds into the open sky, so that again you can come out of this small, tunnel-like existence of being a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a communist, this and that; how to find the open sky again – dimensionless. No religion, particularly no organized religion, is in favor of it. They decorate their tunnels. They force things on people, as if theirs is the only way to reach God.
I have heard about a man, a Protestant, who died and reached heaven. He asked Saint Peter, “First, before I settle somewhere, I would like to have a tour. I would like to see the whole of heaven.”
Saint Peter said, “Your curiosity is understandable, but one thing you will have to remember: I will take you around, but don’t talk, be completely quiet. And walk so that no noise is made.’ The Protestant was a little worried, “Why so much…?” But they walked. Whenever he wanted to say anything, Saint Peter would put his finger on his lips and say, “Shhh! Keep quiet.” When the tour was over he asked, “What is the matter? Why so much quietness?” Peter said, “Everybody here believes. For example, the Catholics believe only they are in heaven; the Protestants believe only they are in heaven; the Hindus believe only they are; the Mohammedans believe only they are. So they feel very much offended if they come to know that somebody else is also there. That is impossible for them to believe.”
On the earth people live in tunnels, and in heaven also.
No organized religion can be in favor of a totally open mind. That’s why an organized religion is not a religion at all; it is a politics.
Osho wrote – I received a letter from Amida. She was in Arica. Now she has come here, so those African people are very much disturbed. She has become a sannyasin, so they have written a letter of expulsion. She is expelled. This looks like nonsense. This seems to be politics. Now she cannot be allowed to attend their meetings anymore, or to participate with them. In their jargon they have said, “Now you are put in water.” She is condemned. The same goes on everywhere.
Scientology does the same to people. Once you are in Scientology and you leave it, just as Amida has been put in water, they give a notice that you are now an enemy. An enemy!
But this is how it has always happened. Always remember, wherever your mind is being narrowed, escape from there. It is not religion, it is politics. It is an ego-trip.
Religion widens you.
Religion widens you so much that the whole house around you, by and by, disappears. You are just under the sky, absolutely nude, in total communication with existence. Nothing exists between you and existence. This point is achieved easily, naturally, spontaneously, at the time of birth. The powers are revealed at birth – everything is revealed at birth. It is only a question of reclaiming it. It is a question of remembering it again. It is not going to be a discovery, it is going to be a re-discovery.
Many people go to Osho and they ask, “If samadhi happens, if enlightenment happens, how are we going to recognize it, that it is that?” Osho replies to them, “Don’t you be worried; you will recognize it because you know what it is. You have forgotten. Once it happens again, suddenly, in your consciousness, the memory will arise, surface, and immediately you will recognize.”
And this can be also acquired in four ways. The first is through drugs. Hindus have made drugs for thousands of years. In the West the craze is very new; in India it is very ancient.
Tags: Patanjali Yoga Sutra 46 Uncondition You
