Yoga Sutra 49 Ultimate Effort

THE MIND IS NOT SELF-ILLUMINATING, BECAUSE IT IS ITSELF PERCEPTIBLE.

The mind itself can be seen. It can become an object. It can be perceived, so it is not the perceiver.

Ordinarily, we think that it is the mind which is seeing the flower. No, you can go beyond the mind and you can see the mind, just as the mind is seeing the flower. The deeper you go, the more you will find that the observer itself becomes – the observed. That’s why Krishnamurti goes on saying again and again, “The observer is the observed; the perceiver is the perceived.” When you go deep, first you see the trees, and the rose and the stars, and you think the mind is witnessing. Then close your eyes. Now, see the impressions in the mind: of roses, stars, trees. Now who is the perceiver?

The perceiver has gone a little deeper. Mind itself has become an object.

These five koshas, these five seeds, are five stations where the perceiver again and again becomes the perceived. When you move from the gross body, the food body, the anamayakos, to the vital body, you immediately see that from the vital body the gross body can be seen as an object. It is outside the vital body. Just as the house is outside you, when you stand in the vital body, your own body is just like a wall around you. Again you move from the vital body to manomayakos, the mental body; the same happens. Now, even the vital body is outside you, like a fence around you; and this way it goes on. It goes on to the ultimate point where only the witnesser remains. Then you don’t see yourself as, “I am blissful”; you see yourself as a witness of bliss.

The last body is the bliss body. It is the most difficult to separate from because it is very close to the lord. It almost surrounds the lord like a climate. But that too has to be known. Even at that last point when you are ecstatically blissful, then too you have to do the ultimate effort, the last effort of discrimination, and of seeing that the bliss is separate from you.

Then is liberation, kaivalya. Then you are left alone – just the witnesser – and everything has been reduced to objects: the body, the mind, the energy. Even the bliss, even the ecstasy, even meditation itself is no more there. When meditation becomes perfect, it is no more a meditation. When the meditator has really achieved the goal, he does not meditate. He cannot meditate because that too is now an activity like walking, eating. He has become separate from everything. That is the difference between dhyana and samadhi, between meditation and samadhi. Meditation is of the fifth body, the bliss body. It is still a therapy, a medicine. You are still a little ill, ill because you are identifying yourself with something which you are not. All illness is identification, and absolute health is through non-identification. Samadhi is when even meditation has been left behind.

I was reading a book by Edward de Bono. He writes about a very ancient incident that happened in China.

Once, in ancient China, a pagoda, a temple burned down. A strange and appetizing smell led the searchers in the ashes to the roasted body of an unfortunate pig which had got into the blaze, burned in the blaze. Roast pig became a delicacy in China. Accidentally it was discovered because the pagoda burned and a pig was burned in it. But then people thought that it must have something to do with the pagoda, otherwise how could the pig be so delicious? So for centuries in China it continued that whenever they would like to eat a roast pig, they would build a pagoda first, then put a pig inside and burn it down. It was very costly, but it looked very scientific to them. Only after centuries did they become aware that it was foolish. The pig can be roasted without the pagoda.

The pagoda is not essential to it.

But this is how the human mind functions, because you become aware of your body first and everything gets associated with it. When you feel a certain well-being, a happiness all around you, of course you feel it is because of the body, because, “I am feeling healthy, no illness, no disease. That’s why it is there.” Then you try to keep the body young, healthy. Nothing is wrong in it, but well-being comes from somewhere deep within you. Yes, a healthy body is needed, otherwise those deep springs will not be able to be active. A healthy body functions as a vehicle to bring you the well-being from your own innermost core, but the body itself is not the cause.

Let me tell you a few anecdotes on how the mind gets apparently very logical, but deep down comes to very absurd conclusions.

A professor once trained a hundred fleas to jump when he shouted the right command. Once they were responding satisfactorily, he took a pair of scissors and snipped off their legs. As soon as he realized that not one single flea obeyed the command to jump anymore, he announced his findings to the medical world: “I have irrefutable proof, gentlemen, that a flea’s ears are situated in its legs.”

This has happened many times in the whole history of human thought: legs cut, now they don’t jump, they don’t listen to the command. Of course, naturally, the ears of the flea are situated in the legs.

Logic can go to very illogical ends. Logic can conclude very illogical conclusions. The body is the most gross part, easily comprehensible; you can catch hold of it, you can train it, you can make it more healthy by giving food, nutrition. You can kill it by starving it. You can do a thousand and one things with the body. It is graspable. Beyond the body starts the world of the elusive.

Scientists are a little afraid to move into the elusive world, because then their criteria don’t function well. Then everything goes on becoming dimmer and dimmer. Of course, they stay where light is.

A famous anecdote about Rabia al Adaviya: One evening she was searching for something in the street. Somebody asked, “What are you searching for?” She said, “I have lost my needle.” So those people, being kind people, started helping her. “The old woman, poor woman, has lost her needle”; everybody tried to help. But then somebody became aware that a needle is such a small thing: “Exactly where has it fallen? The street is big. If we go on searching it will take millennia.” So they asked, “Where exactly has the needle fallen, so we can search only in that place?” Rabia said, “Don’t ask that, because the needle has fallen inside, in my house.” They all stood up and said, “Have you gone mad! If the needle has fallen inside, search for it there!” Rabia said, “But there is no light! Here on the street there is still light. The sun has not yet set. Don’t waste time. Help, because soon the sun will set and the street will be dark.”

In a way, it looks illogical; in another way it seems to be very logical. That’s what science has been doing. The body seems to be the only lighted part of you; everything else is dark – the deeper you go the more dark. The deeper you go, the more direction is lost. The deeper you go, all that looks clear looks clear no more. Everything seems to be a tremendous confusion. Better keep to the lighted part; remain there. Something can be done, because the body can be manipulated.

But in this way something very valuable is being lost, and humanity, by and by, has become too focused with the body. And the body is just your outer shell.

It happened in a prison: Joe was sentenced to twenty years for his part in a robbery. Shortly after his term of imprisonment began, he discovered a flea in his hair, and having nothing better to do, trained it to do tricks. First of all, Joe taught the flea to jump on command, then gradually the tricks became more and more complex. Every single day of every single week, Joe kept up a routine of constant practice and calm patience, so that when the day of his release came he had trained the flea to do tricks which were utterly unbelievable. As soon as he got outside the prison gates, Joe rushed to the world’s biggest circus. Hurrying into the manager’s caravan Joe produced the flea from his top pocket and placed it on the table, “Just look at this,” said Joe to the manager. “Yes,” said the manager, as he slammed a large heavy ashtray down on the flea. “Nuisances, are they not?”

He killed the flea, and now there is no way for that poor Joe to prove that he had trained the flea to do almost miraculous things, unbelievable things. Now there is no way to prove it.

That’s what gross thinking about humanity has done: it has killed the inner mystery. It has made people so addicted to their bodies that they have forgotten their inner world. Now even to prove it has become difficult. People like Buddha and Jesus and Krishna look insane. There are books in the English language and in other Western languages proving Jesus to be neurotic. Of course, if you have not known anything of the inner world, he looks neurotic. He is neurotic if you don’t know anything about the inner world. Then he seems to be like a madman because sometimes he talks to God, and he declares that he receives the answers also. And you have lost all contact with the inner world, so what is the difference between a madman and him? A madman also listens to voices. You can see; go to the madhouse and you can see mad people sitting alone and talking so enchantedly, as if somebody is present there. What is the difference? When in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prayed, raised his hands towards the sky and started talking to God, what is the difference? There seems to be nobody there. Jesus is as mad as the madman. When on the cross he started crying and saying things to God, what is the difference? Because many thousands of people had gathered there; they could not see anybody there. And Jesus said, “Father, forgive these people, because they don’t know what they are doing.” He is mad. To whom was he talking? He had gone out of his senses. By and by, if your innermost world is crippled and you have lost contact with it, you cannot believe in Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, or Patanjali. What are they talking about? These people are dreaming. And you, very clever people, go on talking about your dreaming in a very scientific way.

Many mad people are very, very logical. If you listen to mad people, you will be surprised. They are very argumentative, very rational; and up to a certain extent you will be almost convinced by them.

I have heard about one man who went to see a relative who was in a madhouse. In the same cell there was another inmate, and the other man looked so gentlemanly, so graceful, and was sitting with such dignity reading a newspaper, that this visitor asked, “You don’t look mad at all.” He talked with that man and he was perfectly logical, absolutely normal. The visitor was surprised: “Why have you been kept?” He said, “Because of my relatives; they wanted to throw me in here because they want to grab all the money that I have, and that is the only way: either to kill me, or to throw me into a madhouse. And I also agreed. This is better. At least I am alive. Otherwise, they would have killed me. I have such a lot of money.”

And everything was so logical and normal that the visitor said, “You don’t worry. I know the governor, and I will go to him and tell everything.” The madman said, “Please, if you can do something, do it.” When the visitor was just leaving the room, suddenly the madman jumped and hit him hard on the head. The visitor said, “What are you doing?” He said, “Just to remind you… don’t forget to go to the governor. Now you will not forget.”

Everything was logical somewhere, but how to differentiate between a madman and a mystic?

Because everything seems to be logical in a mystic also, to a certain extent. Then suddenly, he is talking of something which you have not ever experienced. Then you become afraid, and to protect yourself from the fear, you start rationalizing your fear.