Yoga Sutra 47 Original Mind

Before we enter Yoga Sutra 47, let us understand what the Original Mind is.

ONLY THE ORIGINAL MIND which is born of meditation is free from desires: this is one of the most significant sutras.

FIRST, WHAT IS THE ORIGINAL MIND? – Because the original mind is the very goal of all yogas.

The East has been searching continuously for the path to the original mind. The original mind is that mind which you had before you were born, not in this life, but before you entered the world of desires; before you were confined to thoughts, desires, instincts, body, mind; that original space, uncontaminated by anything; that original sky, unclouded – that’s the original mind.

In that original mind, layers and layers of minds are there. A man is like an onion; you go on peeling it. You peel one layer, another layer is there; you peel that layer, another layer comes up. You don’t have one mind, you have layers and layers of many minds. Because in each life you have cultivated a certain mind, then in another life another mind, and so on and so forth. And the original mind is lost completely behind these minds, these layers upon layers. But if you go on peeling the onion, a moment comes when only emptiness is left in your hands. The onion has disappeared.

When minds disappear, then arises the original mind. In fact, to call it a mind is not good, but there is no other way to express it. It is a no-mind. The original mind is a no-mind. When all the minds that you have, have been dissolved, dropped, the original appears with its pristine purity, with its virginity.

This original mind you have already. You may have forgotten. You may be lost in the jungle of your mind’s conditionings, but deep down, hidden behind all these layers you still live in your original mind, and in rare moments, you penetrate it. In deep sleep, when even dreams have stopped, in dreamless sleep, you have a dip into the original mind. That’s why in the morning you feel so fresh.

But if there has been a continuity of dreams the whole night, then you feel tired. You feel more tired than you were feeling when you went to bed. You could not have a dip into your inner Ganges, into your stream of pure consciousness. You could not move into it, you could not bathe in it. In the morning you feel tired, worried, tense, confused, divided. You don’t have the harmony that comes out of deep sleep. But it is not coming out of deep sleep; deep sleep is just a passage to the original mind. That’s why Patanjali says that samadhi is like deep sleep with only one difference: in samadhi, you move into the same original mind that you move into in sleep, but you move fully aware; in deep sleep, you slip into it unawares, not knowing where you are going, not knowing what path you are following. That’s your only contact left with the original mind.

Doctors and physicians know well that whenever somebody is suffering from a disease, if he cannot sleep well, then there is no way to cure him. Sleep is therapeutic. In fact, the first thing for the patient is: how to help him move into deep sleep, deep rest. That rest cures because the patient becomes again connected with the original mind, and the original mind is a healing source. It is your source of life-energy, love. All that you have is coming from the oceanic world of your original mind.

Of course, when it has to pass through so many layers of mind, it is contaminated, polluted. Your inner ecology is no longer original. It has been filled up, stuffed with many dead things. Your minds are nothing but your dead experience.

A person who wants to move into the original mind alert, aware, has to learn how to unlearn, how to unlearn the experience, how to die to the past continuously, how not to cling to the past. One moment you have lived – finished – be finished with it. Let there be no continuity with it; become discontinuous. It no longer belongs to you. It is finished and finished forever. Let it be a full point, and you get out of it as a snake moves out of the old skin and does not even look back. Just a moment before, that skin was part of his body; now, no more. Move out of the past continuously so that you can remain in the present. If you can remain in the present, you cannot go out of your original mind. The original mind knows no past and no future.

What you call the mind is nothing but past and future, past and future – a swing between past and future – and your mind never stops here-now. That’s the meaning of meditation: to get out of the past, not create the future, and remain with the reality that is available here-now. Remain with it.

Suddenly, you will see there is no mind between you and the reality, between you and that which is, because mind cannot exist in the present. You cannot think about it, because the moment you think about anything it is already the past, or, it is not yet present. Thinking needs time. Hence, the sutra, that only through meditation does one come to the original mind.

Meditation is not thinking; it is dropping of thinking.

I have heard: An old tramp was on the dole and he was asked what he did all day long. “Well,” he said, “sometimes I sit and think, and other times I just sit.”

That ‘just sits’ is exactly the meaning of meditation. In Japan: they call meditation zazen. ‘Zazen’ means: just sitting and doing nothing, just being and doing nothing; in a state of suspended mentation. And clouds open, and you can see the space, the sky. Once you know how to move in that space, it is always available. You can go on working and whenever you want, you can have a dip inside. It becomes so easy, as if you move inside the house and outside the house. Once you know the door, there is no problem in it. You don’t even think about it. When it is feeling too hot, you move inside the house, into the coolness and the shelter. When it is feeling too cold and you are freezing, you move out of the house into the hot sun. You become fluid between the inner and the outer.

The mind is blocking the path to the inner. Whenever, you go within yourself, again and again you find some layer of mind: some thought fragment, some desire, some planning, some dream, something of the future or something of the past. And remember, the future is nothing but a projection of the past.

Future is again asking for the past in a slightly modified way, a little better. In the past you had happinesses and unhappinesses, pleasures and pains, thorns and flowers. Your future is nothing but flowers, thorns deducted, pains dropped – just pleasures and pleasures and pleasures. You go on sorting out your past, and whatsoever you feel is good and beautiful, you project it into the future.

Once you know how to get out of the past, the future automatically disappears. There is no past inside, there cannot be any future. Past produces the future. Past is the mother of the future, the womb. When there is no past and no future, then what is, is. Then what is, is! Then suddenly, you are in eternity.

This is what the original mind is: with no flicker of thought, no cloud in sight, no dust around you.

Just pure space.

Now sutra:

TATRA DHYANAJAM ANASAYAM.

ONLY THE ORIGINAL MIND IS FREE FROM DESIRES… because the original mind is free from the past, free from experiences. When you are free from experiences, how can you desire? Desire cannot exist without the past. Just think: if you don’t have any past, how can you desire? What will you desire? To desire anything, experience, accumulated experience is needed. If you cannot desire you will be in a vacuum – tremendously beautiful emptiness.

Only the original mind is free from desires, so don’t fight with desires. That fight will not lead you anywhere because to fight with desires you will have to create anti-desires. And they have as many desires as other desires. Don’t fight with desires; see the fact. The original mind cannot be found through fighting with desires. You may find a better mind, but not the original mind. You may have a sinner’s mind, and if you fight with it, you may gain a saint’s mind; but the saint is nothing but sinner upside-down.

Sinners and saints are not separate beings; they are two aspects of the same coin. You can turn the coin this way or that. A sinner can become the saint any moment, and the saint can become the sinner any moment. And the sinner is always dreaming of becoming a saint, and the saint is always afraid of falling again back into the mire of sin. They are not separate; they exist together. In fact, if all sinners disappeared from the world, there would be no possibility for saints. They cannot exist without sinners.

I have heard: A priest was going to his church. On the way, by the side of the road, he saw a man who had been stabbed, almost dying. Blood was flowing. He rushed, but when he went near and saw the man’s face, he shrank back. He knew this face well. This man was nobody else but the devil himself. He had a picture in his church of the devil. But the devil said, “Have compassion on me. And you talk about compassion, and you talk about love! And have you forgotten? Many times you have been preaching in your church, ‘Love your enemy.’ I am your enemy; love me.”

Even the priest could not deny the validity of the argument. Yes, who is more an enemy than a devil? For the first time he became aware, but still he could not bring himself to help a dying devil.

He said, “You are right, but I know that the devil can quote scriptures. You cannot befool me. It is good that you are dying. It is very good; the world will be better if you die.” The devil laughed, a very devilish laugh and he said, “You don’t know; if I die, you will be nowhere. You will have to die with me. And now I am not quoting scripture, I am talking business. Without me where would you be, and your church, and your God?” Suddenly, the priest understood. He took the devil on his shoulders and went to the hospital. He had to, because even God cannot exist without the devil.

Without the sinner, the saint cannot exist. They feed upon each other, they protect each other, they defend each other. They are not two separate things; they are two poles of the same phenomenon.

The original mind is not a mind. It is neither the mind of the sinner nor the mind of the saint. The original mind has no mind in it. It has no definition, no boundary; it is so pure that you cannot even call it pure, because to call anything pure you have to bring the concept of impurity in. Even that will contaminate it. It is so pure, so absolutely pure that there is no point in saying that it is pure.