Yoga Sutra 46 Remove The Obstacles

THE INCIDENTAL CAUSE DOES NOT STIR THE NATURAL TENDENCIES INTO ACTIVITY; IT MERELY REMOVES THE OBSTACLES – LIKE A FARMER IRRIGATING A FIELD: HE REMOVES THE OBSTACLES, AND THEN THE WATER FLOWS FREELY BY ITSELF.

Patanjali is saying that, in fact, if you don’t have blocks everything will be attained naturally. It is not a question of creating anything; the question is only of removing the blocking. It is as if a spring is there, and a rock is blocking its way. It is streaming behind it, but cannot remove the rock. The spring, the water, has not to be created, it is already there; you simply remove the rock and it bursts forth. It is like a fountain: you just remove the rock and it bursts forth, it flowers. The child has it naturally; you have to attain it by understanding. And, you have to drop all the blocks that society has enforced upon you.

The society is against sex: it has created a block, just near the sex center. Whenever sex arises you feel restless, you feel guilty, you feel afraid. You shrink; you don’t stream, you don’t flow. The society is against anger: it has created a block there. So anger comes, but you cannot move into it totally.

You will have to drop all these blocks.

That’s why Osho insists, for dynamic methods: they will melt your blocks. If you are angry, scream, yell.

There is no need to yell and scream at anybody; just a pillow will do. Beat the pillow, jump on it, kill the pillow – there is no need to kill anybody. Just the idea that you are killing the pillow is enough.

Just getting into the rage, into the anger, is enough; the block is broken. If you want to kill somebody, or if you want to be angry at somebody, you can never be totally in it – impossible – because the other is going to be hurt, wounded, and you are a human being: you have compassion and love also. So one withholds.

Beat the pillow. Have a good knife and kill the pillow. When the pillow is dead, bury the body and be finished with it. Suddenly, you will feel that something has broken inside you. A rock has been removed. Yell, jump, jog. If sex arises, help it to arise. Forget all that society has taught you. Enjoy the very feeling of sensuality arising in you. Cooperate with it. Don’t shrink and don’t resist it; cooperate with it. Soon you will see that sensuality is transforming. When the pool is full, it starts overflowing. Sensuality overflowing becomes sensitivity. People who repress their sex become insensitive, dull. They don’t have life. They become wooden.

THE INCIDENTAL CAUSE DOES NOT STIR THE NATURAL TENDENCIES INTO ACTIVITY; IT MERELY REMOVES THE OBSTACLES.

The whole effort of yoga is to remove the obstacles, via negativa. Nothing is really to be done because you have everything; it is just not flowing. A few rocks have been put on the path. You have been distracted. It is just like a farmer irrigating a field. Have you seen a farmer irrigating a field?

Water is flowing in one channel; he removes a little earth and the water starts moving into that path.

When that part is irrigated he puts a little earth back on the gate; the water stops flowing on that path. Then he opens the channel somewhere else; the water starts flowing there. Water is there; it needs channelization. Energy you have, you are; it simply needs channelization so it reaches to the sahasrara, to the highest peak, the climax of your being.

ARTIFICIALLY CREATED MINDS PROCEED FROM EGOISM ALONE.

And we all have artificial minds. That’s what I call the hypnosis that society has done to you.

Osho has a group in the ashram, and he has been thinking about it. It is called ‘Hypnotherapy’, but he would like to call it ‘deHypnotherapy’ – because the basic effort is to de-hypnotize you, or unhypnotize you, un-condition you.

All minds are artificially created minds: nirmana cittany asmita-matrat. Artificially created minds proceed from egoism alone: I am a Hindu, I am a Mohammedan, I am black, I am white, I am this, that – they are all artificial minds. The original face, the original mind, uncreated by man, has to be known and realized.

I have heard: A little colored boy accidentally spilled a tin of white paint over himself. When he arrived home, his father gave him a good hiding and told him to go straight to bed. Sobbing his way out of the room he said, “I have only been white for twenty minutes, and I hate you blacks already!”

Even a twenty-minute-old child has started accumulating the artificial mind. Even a twenty-minute old child looks at his mother with more love than towards anybody else, because he has learned one trick. The conditioning has started: she is food, and survival depends on food. So howsoever ugly the mother is, the mother always looks beautiful. It is survival, and the child has started learning diplomacy. He will not smile so much at the father. He does not know who this man is. He will learn it later on. By and by, he will see that this man is important. Of course, he is not seen very much in the home, but he is important. Rarely, on Sundays he is there, but even the mother depends on him, even the mother smiles at him. Then the child also smiles at the father. He is learning the artificial mind. He’s creating relationships, arranging his survival, creating a situation – diplomacy, politics – but this artificial mind which is a help in survival in the beginning, becomes the greatest problem in the end.

When you have survived and you have used the artificial mind, then it hangs around you like a rock around your neck. It becomes the ego. It has to be learned; nothing can be done about it. Every child will have to move into the artificial mind. But when you become alert and aware, and when you start thinking and meditating about life, then it is time to, by and by, drop it. And drop the ego, because the ego is nothing but the artificial mind. The center of the artificial mind is the ego. And every artificial mind can be continued only if you go on enhancing your ego.

Hindus will say that they have the greatest religion in the world, that they are the most religious people in the world. In fact, if they were really religious they would not utter such nonsense, because a religious mind is humble, simple. This is ego. Then every country has its own ego. The Russian, the Chinese, the American, the German, the English – everybody has his own ego, and every country goes on feeling that, “We are the superb, the chosen.” Every country finds ways and means to feel enhanced, as with every race, every group, and every man and woman.

I have heard: The elephant looked down and saw a little, very tiny mouse standing by its foot. “Dear me,” said the elephant, “you are very tiny.” “Yes,” agreed the mouse, “I have not been very well lately.”

Even a mouse has his own ego? – He has been ill, that’s why.

The artificial mind lives through ego, so if you start dropping your ego, the artificial mind will start disintegrating. Or, if you drop your artificial mind, the ego will start disintegrating. And if you really want to get rid of this rock, start both ways together. Never enhance the ego in any way. The ways are very subtle.

Remember that the original mind is egoless. It does not know the ‘I’, because ‘I’ is shrinking. The original mind is infinite, like the sky.

And one problem arises continuously as far as ego is concerned. In the beginning you try to befool others about yourself, but, by and by, you are befooled yourself. When you start convincing others that you are somebody in particular, you become convinced yourself.

There was a strict rule in the mental asylum: no pets.The warder heard poor Harry talking to a dog called Rover, and marched into his padded cell. There was Harry, leading a tube of toothpaste around on a piece of string. “What is that?” asked the warder. Harry looked at him in surprise.

“Surely any fool can see it is just a tube of toothpaste on a piece of string!” he said. Satisfied, the warder left. Just as he closed the door behind him, Harry breathed a sigh of relief. “Good boy, Rover. We sure fooled him that time.”

The more you try to be-fool others, to prove that you are somebody in particular, exceptional, extraordinary, this and that – all neurotic ideas – the more you succeed in proving it to others, the more you will only succeed in be-fooling yourself. Look at the whole nonsense of it.

Nobody is extraordinary, or, everybody is extraordinary. Nobody is special, or, everybody is special.

But there is no point in proving anything either way – there is no need.

Artificially created minds proceed from egoism alone, so if you want to come to the original mind – which is the whole effort of Yoga, Tantra, Zen – then you will have to drop the artificial mind; the mind that has been created by the society and given to you; the mind that has been created from the outside and enforced on you. By and by, drop it. The more you see, the more you will be able to drop. Whenever you start feeling attached to the artificial mind: whenever you say, “I am a Hindu, and I am an Indian; or, I am English, I am British”; or this and that, just catch yourself red handed.

Deep inside, slap your face, and say “What nonsense!” By and by, don’t be defined by society. Then you will find the indefinable; your real, authentic being.

THOUGH THE ACTIVITIES OF THE MANY ARTIFICIAL MINDS VARY, THE ONE ORIGINAL MIND CONTROLS THEM ALL.

So whatsoever your artificial mind, in fact, in reality, the original mind hiding behind it controls them all. Find the controller. Try to find who you originally are, before the society corrupted you, contaminated you, before the society entered, planned you, and destroyed your wildness. In Zen they call it: finding the original face which you had before you were born, and which you will have when you will again die; the original face, untouched by society. That’s your nature, your soul, your being.

Finding the original face, you will be reborn, you will become a dwij, twice-born. You will become really a brahmin, one who knows. Then again everything will be revealed to you as it was revealed at the time of birth, because you will be born again. But this time, there is going to be a great difference: you will be alert. The first time you missed; you will not miss this time. The first time it happened naturally; this time it will happen with your alertness, your awareness. You will be conscious of it. You will see yourself reborn again, being born again, arising out of the past, out of the clouds and confusion – thoughts, prejudices, egos, minds, conditionings – arising out of them, virgin, pure.

Then you will again see the power that you are, the being that you are.

So first, it happens at birth; second it happens at samadhi; in between, it can be managed by three methods – drugs, chanting, austerities – but those three methods are ways of deceiving, cheating.

And you cannot cheat upon God, you can cheat yourself; remember that.