Yoga Sutra 48 All Always Is

PAST AND FUTURE EXIST IN THE PRESENT, BUT THEY ARE NOT EXPERIENCED IN THE PRESENT BECAUSE THEY ARE ON DIFFERENT PLANES.

Yoga believes in eternity, not in time. Yoga says: all always is – the past is still there, hidden in the present, and the future is also there, hidden in the present – because the past cannot simply disappear and the future cannot simply appear out of nothingness. Past, present, future, all are here-now. For us they are divided because we cannot see the totality. We have very small slits of eyes, senses, to look at reality. We divide.

If our consciousness is pure and there is no cloud in it, we will see eternity as it is. There will be no past and there will be no future. There will only be this moment, eternally this moment.

A great Zen Master, Bokuju, was dying, and his disciples gathered. The chief disciple asked, “Master, you are leaving us. People will ask us what your message was, after you are gone. Though you have been teaching us always and always, you have taught so many things, and we are ignorant people; it will be difficult for us to condense your message. So please, before you leave, give your very essence just in a single sentence.” Bokuju opened his eyes and said loudly, “This is it!” closed his eyes and died. Now after him, for centuries, people have been asking what he meant: This is it?

He had said everything.

This… is… it…

He had given the whole message: this moment is all there is. This moment – the whole past, the whole present, the whole future, is involved in this moment. But you cannot see it in its totality because your mind is so clouded, so dusty with thought, dream, sleep; so much hypnosis, desire, motive. You cannot see. You are not total, your vision is not total. “Once the vision is total,” Patanjali says, “past and future exist in the present, but they are not experienced in the present because they are on different planes.” The past has moved on a different plane. It has become superconscious you cannot know your future. You are closed in your small consciousness, very fragmentary. You are just like the tip of an iceberg: much is hidden deep, just beneath you, and much is hidden just above you. Just below, and above, and the whole reality surrounds you, but you are clinging to a very small consciousness. Make this consciousness greater and bigger.

That’s what meditation is all about – how to make your consciousness bigger, how to make your consciousness infinite. You will only be able to know that much reality; in the same proportion will you be able to know the reality as you have consciousness. If you have infinite consciousness you will know the infinite; if you have momentary consciousness you will know the moment. Everything depends on your consciousness.

WHETHER MANIFEST OR UNMANIFEST, THE PAST, THE PRESENT, AND THE FUTURE ARE OF THE NATURE OF THE THREE GUNAS: STABILITY, ACTION AND INERTIA.

We have talked in the past about the three gunas: sattva means stability, rajas means action, and tamas means inertia. Patanjali now joins the past, present, and future with the three gunas. For Patanjali, everything in life and existence is somehow joined with the three gunas, the three attributes of existence. That is Patanjali’s trinity. Everything consists of three things. Stability; the past is stability. That’s why you cannot change your past; it has become almost stable. Now you cannot change it. There is no way to change it. It has become permanent. The present is action, rajas. The present is a continuous process, movement. Present is dynamic and the future is inertia. It is still in the seed, fast asleep. In the seed the tree is asleep, is in inertia.

The future is the potential, the past is the actual, and the present is the movement of the potential towards the actual. The past is that which has happened, the future is that which is going to happen, and the present is the passage between the two. Present is the passage of the future to become past, for the seed to become the tree.

THE ESSENCE OF ANY OBJECT CONSISTS IN THE UNIQUENESS OF THE PROPORTIONS OF THE THREE GUNAS.

Now physicists say that the electron, neutron, and proton are the basic elements, and everything is made of these. Everything is made of these three: the positive, the neutral and the negative.

That is exactly the meaning of sattva, rajas, and tamas: the positive, the neutral, and the negative – and everything is made of these three. Just the proportions differ, otherwise these are the basic elements that the whole existence consists of.

THE SAME OBJECT IS SEEN IN DIFFERENT WAYS BY DIFFERENT MINDS… but a different mind will see the same object in a different way.

For example, a woodcutter comes into the garden – he will not look at the flowers, he will not look at the greenery; he will be looking at the wood and the possibilities for the wood – which tree can become a beautiful table, which tree can become a door. For him, trees exist only as material for furniture. Potential furniture, that’s what he will see. And if there comes a painter he will not think of furniture at all. Not even for a single moment will furniture enter into his consciousness. He will think of colors: the green, the red, the white, and thousands of colors all around. He will think of painting, of bringing these colors to canvas. If a poet comes he will not think of painting, he will think of something else. A philosopher comes and he will still think of something else. It depends on the mind. The object is always seen through the mind; the mind colors it.

Let me tell you a few anecdotes.

The tramp happened to call at the house of a temperance man. “I want to ask you a question,” said the man to the tramp. “Do you ever take alcoholic drinks?” “Before I answer,” said the tramp, “I want to know whether it is put as an inquiry or as an invitation.”

It depends… The answer will depend on the question. The tramp is trying to be safe as to whether it is an invitation or an inquiry. His ‘yes’ and ‘no’ is going to be dependent on what it is. When you see a certain thing, you don’t see the thing as such.

Immanuel Kant has said that a thing in itself cannot be known, and he is right in a way. He is right because whenever you know a thing, your mind, your prejudice, your greed, your concept, your culture, your religion, are all there looking at the thing. But Immanuel Kant is not absolutely true because there is a way to look at a thing without the mind. But he was not aware of meditation at all.

That’s the difference between Western philosophy and Eastern philosophy. The Western philosophy goes on thinking through the mind, and the whole effort in the East is how to drop the mind and then see things, because then things appear in their own light, in their intrinsic qualities. Then you don’t project anything.

He was the laziest man in the entire town. Unfortunately, he had a bad accident: he fell off his couch at home. A doctor examined him and said, “I’m afraid I have some rather bad news for you, sir. You will never be able to work-again.” “Thank you doctor,” said the lazy one. “Now what is the bad news?”

For a lazy man it is not bad news that he will never be able to work again in his life. This is good news. It depends on your interpretation. And always remember, all interpretation is false because it falsifies reality.

The man lay on the psychiatrist’s couch in a state of nervous tension. “I keep having this recurring, horrible nightmare,” he told the psychiatrist. “In it I see my mother-in-law chasing me with a man – eating an alligator on a leash. It is really frightening. I see the yellow eyes, the dry scaly skin, the yellow, decaying and razor sharp teeth, and smell foetid heavy breath.”

“It sounds pretty nasty,” agreed the psychiatrist understandingly.

“That’s nothing, doctor,” continued the man. “Wait till I tell you about the alligator!”

Your mind is continuously projecting something. The reality functions as a screen and you go on working as a projector. A man who is learning how to be aware will learn how to drop his projections and look at facts as they are. Don’t bring your mind in, otherwise you will never be able to know reality. You will remain closed in your own interpretations.