Chapter-3

THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI

Five Modifications Of Mind

Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Yoga Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

Book 1, Sutra 5, Part 2

THEY ARE RIGHT KNOWLEDGE, WRONG KNOWLEDGE, IMAGINATION, SLEEP AND MEMORY.

The first is praman, right knowledge. The Sanskrit word praman is very deep and really cannot be translated. Right knowledge is just a shadow, not the exact meaning, because there is no word which can translate praman. Praman comes from the root prama. Many things have to be understood about it.

Patanjali says that the mind has a capacity. If that capacity is directed rightly, then whatsoever is known is true; it is self-evidently true. We are not aware about it because we have never used it. That faculty has remained unused. It is just... The room is dark, you come in it, you have a torch, but you are not using it -- so the room remains dark. You go on stumbling on this table, on that chair, and you have a torch, but the torch has to be put on. Once you put the torch on, immediately darkness disappears. And wherever the torch is focused you know. At least that spot becomes evident, self-evidently clear.

Mind has a capacity of praman, of right knowledge, of wisdom. Once you know how to put it on, then wherever you move that light, only right knowledge is revealed. Without knowing it, whatsoever you know will be wrong.

Mind has the capacity of wrong knowledge also. That wrong knowledge is called in Sanskrit viparyaya  -- false, mithya. And you have that capacity also. You take alcohol. What happens? The whole world becomes a viparyaya; the whole world becomes false. You start seeing things which are not there.

What has happened? Alcohol cannot create things. Alcohol is doing something within your body and brain. The alcohol starts working the center Patanjali calls viparyaya. The mind has a center which can pervert anything. Once that center starts functioning, everything is perverted.

I am reminded... Once it happened that Mulla Nasruddin and his friend were drinking in a pub. They came out, completely drunk, and Nasruddin was an old, experienced drinker. The other was new, so the other was affected more. So the other asked, "Now I cannot see, I cannot hear, I cannot even walk rightly. How I will reach my home? You tell me, Nasruddin please direct me. How I should reach my home?"

Nasruddin said, "First you go. After so many steps you will come to a point where there are two ways: one goes to the right, the other goes to the left. You go to the left because that which goes to the right doesn't exist. I have been many times on that right also, but now I am an experienced man. You will see two paths. Choose the left one; don't choose the right. That right doesn't exist. Many times I have gone on it, and then you never reach, you never reach your home."

Once Nasruddin was teaching his son the first lessons of drinking. So he told him... The son was asking, he was curious. He asked that, "When is one to stop?" Nasruddin said, "Look at that table. Four persons are sitting there. When you start seeing eight, stop!" The boy said, "But father, there are only two persons sitting!"

Mind has a faculty. That faculty functions when you are under any influence of a drug, any intoxicant. That faculty Patanjali calls viparyaya, wrong knowledge, the center of perversion.

Exactly opposite to it there is a center you don't know. Exactly opposite to it there is a center. If you meditate deeply, silently, that other center will start functioning. That center is called praman, right knowledge. Through the functioning of that center, whatsoever is known is right. What you know is not the question, from where you know is the question.

That's why all the religions have been against alcohol. It is not on any moralistic grounds, no! It is because alcohol influences the center of perversion. And every religion is for meditation because meditation means more and more creating a stillness, more and more becoming silent.

Alcohol goes on doing quite the opposite, makes you more and more agitated, excited, disturbed. A trembling enters within you. The drunkard cannot even walk rightly. His balance is lost. Not only in the body, but in the mind also balance is lost.

Meditation means gaining the inner balance. When you gain the inner balance and there is no trembling, the whole body-mind has become still, then the center of right knowledge starts functioning. Through that center, whatsoever is known is true.

Where you are? You are not alcoholics, you are not meditators, you must be somewhere between the two. You are not in any center. You are between these two centers of wrong knowledge and right knowledge. That's why you are confused.

Sometimes you have glimpses. You lean a little towards the right knowledge center, then certain glimpses come to you. You lean toward the center, which is of perversion, then perversion enters you. And everything is mixed, you are in chaos. That's why either you will have to become meditators or you will have to become alcoholics, because confusion is too much. And these are the two ways.

Either you lose yourself into intoxication, then you are at ease. At least you have gained a center -- may be of wrong knowledge, but you are centered. The whole world may say you are wrong. You don't think, you think the whole world is wrong. At least in those moments of unconsciousness you are centered, centered in the wrong center. But you are happy because even centering in the wrong center gives a certain happiness. You enjoy it, hence, so much appeal of alcohol.

Governments have been fighting for centuries. Laws have been made, prohibition and everything, but nothing helps. Unless humanity becomes meditative, nothing can help. People will go on; they will find new ways and new means to get intoxicated. They cannot be prevented, and the more you try to prevent them, more prohibition laws, the more appeal.

America did it, and had to fall back. They tried their best, but when alcohol was prohibited more alcohol was used. They tried; they failed. India has been trying after independence. It has failed, and many states have started again. It seems useless.

Unless man changes inwardly, you cannot force man for any prohibition. It is impossible because then man will go mad. This is his way to remain sane. For few hours he becomes drugged, "stoned", then he is okay. Then there is no misery; then there is no anguish. The misery will come, the anguish will come, but at least it is postponed. Tomorrow morning the misery will be there, the anguish will be there -- he will have to face it. But by the evening he can hope again -- he will take drink and be at ease.

These are the two alternatives. If you are not meditative, then sooner or later you will have to find some drug. And there are subtle drugs. Alcohol is not very subtle, it is very gross. There are subtle drugs. Sex may become a drug for you. And through sex you may be just losing your consciousness. Anything you can use as a drug. Only meditation can help. Why? Because meditation gives you centering on the center which Patanjali calls praman.

Why so much emphasis of every religion for meditation? Meditation must be doing some inner miracle. This is the miracle: that meditation helps you to put on the light of right knowledge. Then wherever you move, then wherever your focus moves, whatsoever is known is true.

Buddha has been asked thousands and thousands of questions. One day somebody asked him that, We come with new questions. We have not even put the question before you and you start answering. You never think about it. How it happens?"

So Buddha says, "It is not a question of thinking. You put the question and, simply, I look at it. And whatsoever is true is revealed. It is not a question of thinking and brooding about it. The answer is not coming as a logical syllogism. It is just a focusing of the right center."

Buddha is like a torch. So wherever the torch moves, it reveals. Whatsoever the question, that is not the point. Buddha has the light, and whenever that light will come on any question, the answer will be revealed. The answer will come out of that light. It is a simple phenomenon, a revelation.

When somebody asks you, you have to think about it. But how can you think if you don't know? If you know, there is no need to think. If you don't know, what you will do? You will search in the memory, you will find many clues. You will just do a patchwork. You don't know really; otherwise the response would have been immediate.

I have heard about one teacher, a woman teacher in a primary school. And she asked the children that, "Have you got any questions?" One small boy stood and he said, "I have one question and I have been waiting -- whenever you ask I will ask: what is the weight of the whole earth?"

She became disturbed because she has never thought about it, never read about it. What is the weight of the whole earth? So she played a trick teachers know. They have to play tricks. She said, "Yes, the question is significant. Now tomorrow, everybody has to find the answer." She needed time. "So tomorrow I will ask the question. Whoever brings the right answer there will be a present for him."

All the children searched and searched, but they couldn't find. And the teacher ran to the library. The whole night she searched, and only just by the morning she could find the weight of the earth. She was very happy. And she came back to school, and the children were there. And they were exhausted. They said they couldn't find. "We asked Mom and we asked Dad and we asked everybody. Nobody knows. This question seems to be so difficult,"

The teacher laughed and she said, "This is not difficult. I know the answer, but I was just trying whether you could find it out or not. This is the weight of the earth..." That small child who had raised the question, he stood again, and he said, "With people or without?" Now the same situation.

You cannot put Buddha in such a situation. It is not a question of finding somewhere; it is not really a question of answering you. Your question is just an excuse. When you put a question, he simply moves his light toward that question and whatsoever is revealed is revealed. He answers you; that's a deep response of his right center -- praman.

Patanjali says there are five modifications of the mind. Right knowledge. If this center of right knowledge starts functioning in you, you will become a sage, a saint. You will become religious. Before that you cannot become religious.

That's why Jesus or Mohammed, they look mad -- because they don't argue; they don't put their case logically, they simply assert. You ask Jesus, "Are you really the only son of God?" He says, "Yes." And if you ask him, "Prove it," he will laugh. He will say, "There is no need to prove. I know This is the case; this is self-evident." To us it looks illogical. This man seems to be neurotic, claiming something without any proof.

If this praman, this center of prama, this center of right knowledge starts functioning, you will be the same: you can assert, but you cannot prove. How can you prove? If you are in love, how can you prove that you are in love? You can simply assert. You have pain in your leg; how can you prove that you have pain? You simply assert that, "I have pain." You know somewhere inside. That knowing is enough.

Ramakrishna was asked, "Is there God?" He said "Yes." He was asked, "Then prove it." He said, "There is no need. I know. To me, there is no need. To you there is a need, so you search. Nobody could prove it for me I cannot prove it for you. I had to seek; I had to find. And I have found. God is!"

This is the functioning of the right center. So Ramakrishna or Jesus look absurd. They are claiming certain things without giving any proof. They are not claiming; they are not claiming anything. Certain things are revealed to them because they have a new center functioning which you don't have. And because you don't have it you have to prove.

Remember, proving proves that you don't have an inner feeling of anything -- everything has to be proved even love has to be proved. And people go on. I know many couples. The husband goes on proving that he loves, and he has not convinced the wife, and the wife goes on proving that she loves, and she has not convinced the husband. They remain unconvinced and that remains the conflict. And they go on feeling that the other has not proved.

Lovers go on searching. They create situations in which you have to prove that you love. And by and by both get bored -- this futile effort to prove, and nothing can be proved. How can you prove love? You can give presents, but nothing is proved. You can kiss and hug and you can sing, you can dance, but nothing is proved. You may be just pretending.

This first modification of the mind is right knowledge. Meditation leads to this modification. And when you can rightly know and there is no need to prove, then only mind can be dropped, not before it. When there is no need to prove, mind is not needed, because mind is a logical instrument.

You need it every moment. You have to think, find out what is wrong and what is right. Every moment there is choices and alternatives. You have to choose. Only when praman functions, when right knowledge functions, you can drop the mind, because now choosing has no meaning. You move choicelessly. Whatsoever is right is revealed to you.

The definition of the sage is one who never chooses. He never chooses good against bad. He simply moves towards the direction which is that of good. It is just like sunflowers. When the sun is in the east, the flower moves to the east. It never chooses. When the sun moves to the west, the flower moves to the west. It simply moves with the sun. It has not chosen to move; it has not decided. It has not taken a decision that, "Now I should move because the sun has moved to the west."

A sage is just like a sunflower. Wherever is good he moves simply. So whatsoever he does is good. Upanishads say, "Don't judge sages. Your ordinary measurements won't do." You have to do good against bad, he has nothing to choose. He simply moves, whatsoever is good. And you cannot change him because it is not a question of alternatives. If you say, "This is bad," he will say, "Okay, it may be bad, but this is how I move, this is how my being flows."

Those who knew -- and people in the days of Upanishads knew -- they have decided that, We will not judge a sage." Once a person has come to be centered in himself, when a person has achieved meditation, once a person has become silent and the mind has been dropped, he is beyond our morality, beyond tradition. He is beyond our limitations. If we can follow, we can follow him if we cannot follow, we are helpless. But nothing can be done, and we should not judge.

If right knowledge functions, if your mind has taken the modification of right knowledge, you will become religious. Look, it is totally different. Patanjali doesn't say if you go to the mosque, to the gurudwara, to the temple, you do some ritual, you pray... No, that's not religion. You have to make your right-knowledge center functioning. So whether you go to the temple or not, it is immaterial; it doesn't matter. If your right-knowledge center functions, whatsoever you do is prayer and wherever you go-is a temple.

Kabir has said, "Wherever I go I find you, my God. Wherever I move, I move into you, I stumble upon you. And whatsoever I do, even walking, eating, it is prayer." Kabir says, "This spontaneity is my samadhi. Just to be spontaneous is my meditation."

Second is wrong knowledge. If your center of wrong knowledge is functioning, then whatsoever you do you will do wrongly, and whatsoever you choose you will choose wrongly. Whatsoever you decide will be wrong because you are not deciding, the wrong center is functioning.

There are people, they feel very unfortunate because whatsoever they do goes wrong. And they try not to do wrong again, but that's not going to help because the center has to be changed. Their minds function in a wrong way. They may think that they are doing good, but they will do bad. With all their good wishes, they cannot help; they are helpless.

Mulla Nasruddin used to visit a saint. He visited for many, many days. And the saint was a silent one; he will not speak anything. Then Mulla Nasruddin had to say, he had to ask, "I have been coming again and again, waiting that you will say something, and you have not said anything. And unless you say, I cannot understand, so just give me a message for my life, a direction so that I can move in that direction."

So that Sufi sage said, "NEKI KAR KUYEN MAY DAL: Do good and throw it in the well." It is one of the oldest Sufi sayings: "Do good and throw it in the well." It means do good and forget it immediately; don't carry that "I have done good."

So next day Mulla Nasruddin helped one old woman to cross the road, and then he pushed her into the well.

"NEKI KAR KUYEN MAY DAL: DO good and throw it in the well."

If your wrong center is functioning, whatsoever you do... You can read Koran, you can read Gita, and you will find meanings -- Krishna will be shocked, Mohammed will be shocked to see that you can find such meanings.

Mahatma Gandhi wrote his autobiography with the intention that it will help people. Then many letters came to him because he describes his sex life. He was honest, one of the most honest men, so he wrote everything -- whatsoever has happened in his past -- how he was too much indulgent the day his father was dying; he couldn't sit by his side. Even that day he had to go with his wife to bed.

And doctors had said that "This is the last night. Your father cannot survive the morning. He will be dead by the morning." But just about twelve, one, in the night, he started feeling desire, sexual desire. The father was feeling sleepy, so he slipped away, went to his wife, indulged in sex. And the wife was pregnant. It was the ninth month. And the father was dying, and the child also died the moment he was born. And the father died in the night, so the whole life Gandhi had a deep repentance he couldn't be with his dying father. Sex was so obsessive.

So he wrote everything, he was honest-and just to help others. But many letters started coming to him, and those letters were such that he was shocked. Many people wrote to him that "Your autobiography is such that we have become more sexual than before just reading. Just reading through your autobiography we have become more sexual and indulgent. It is erotic."

If the wrong center is functioning, then nothing can be done. Whatsoever you do, read, behave, it will be wrong. You will move to the wrong. You have a center which is forcing you to move towards the wrong. You can go to Buddha, but something wrong you will see in him. Immediately! You cannot meet Buddha; something wrong you will see immediately. You have a focusing for the wrong, a deep urge to find wrong anywhere, everywhere.

This modification of the mind Patanjali calls viparyaya. Viparyaya means perversion. You pervert everything. You interpret everything in such a way it becomes a perversion.

Omar Khayyam writes that "I have heard that God is compassionate." This is beautiful. Mohammedans go on repeating, "God is rehman, compassion; rahim, compassion." They go on repeating, continuously. So Omar Khayyam says, "If really he is compassionate, if he is compassion, then there is no need to be afraid. I can go on committing sin. If he is compassion, then what is the fear? I can commit whatsoever I want and he is compassion -- so whenever I will stand before him, I will say, rahim, rehman: Oh God of compassion, I have sinned, but you are compassion. If you are really compassion, then have compassion on me." So he goes on drinking, he goes on committing whatsoever he thinks is sin. He has interpreted in a very perverted way.

All over the world people have done that. In India we say, "If you go to the Ganges, if you bathe in the Ganges, your sins will dissolve." It was a beautiful concept in itself. It shows many things. It shows that sin is not something very deep, it is just like dust upon you. So don't get too much obsessed by it, don't feel guilty; it is just dust, and you remain pure inside. Even bathing in the Ganges can help.

This is just to show you, don't become so much obsessed with sin as Christianity has become. Guilt has become so burdensome, so even just taking a bath in the Ganges will help. Don't be so much afraid. But how we have interpreted it? We say, "Then it is okay. Go on committing sin." And after a while, when you feel now you have committed many, so give a chance to the Ganges to purify; then come back and commit again. This is the center of perversion.

Third is imagination. Mind has the faculty to imagine. It is good, it is beautiful. All that is beautiful has come through imagination. Paintings, art, dance, music, everything that is beautiful has come through the imagination. But everything that is ugly, that has also come through the imagination. Hitler, Mao, Mussolini they have all come through imagination.

Hitler imagined a world of supermen. And he believed in Friedrich Nietzsche who has said, "Destroy all those who are weak. Destroy all those who are not super. Leave only supermen on the earth." So he destroyed. Just imagination, just utopian imagination -- that just by destroying the weak, just by destroying the ugly, just by destroying the physically crippled you will have a beautiful world. But the very destruction is the most ugly thing in the world possible -- the very destruction.

But he was working through imagination. He had an imagination, a utopian imagination -- the most imaginative man! Hitler is one of the most imaginative. And his imagination became so fantastic and so mad that for his imaginative world, he tried to destroy this world completely. His imagination has gone mad.

Imagination can give you poetry and painting and art, and imagination can give you madness also. It depends how you use it. All the great scientific discoveries have been through imagination -- people who could imagine, who could imagine the impossible. Now we can fly into the air, now we can go to the moon.

These are deep imaginations. Man has been imagining for centuries, millennia, how to fly, how to go to the moon. Every child is born with the desire to go to the moon, to catch the moon. But we reached. Through imagination creativity comes, but through imagination destruction also.

Patanjali says imagination is the third mode of mind. You can use it in a wrong way, and then it will destroy you. You can use it in a right way. And then there are imaginative meditations. They start with imagination, but by and by imagination becomes subtler and subtler and subtler. And then imagination is dropped ultimately, and you are face to face with the truth.

All Christian, Mohammedan meditations are basically through imagination. First you have to imagine something. And then you go on imagining it, and then through imagination you create an atmosphere around you. You try it, that through imagination what is possible. Even impossible is possible.

If you think you are beautiful, if you imagine you are beautiful, a certain beauty will start happening to your body. So whenever a man says to a woman that "You are beautiful," the woman has changed immediately. She may not have been beautiful. Before this moment she may not have been beautiful -- just homely, ordinary. But this man has given imagination to her.

So every woman who is loved becomes more beautiful, every man who is loved becomes more beautiful. A person who is not loved-may be beautiful -- becomes ugly because he cannot imagine, she cannot imagine. And if imagination is not there, you shrink.

Coue, one of the great psychologists of the West, helped millions of people just through imagination to be cured of many, many diseases. His formula was very simple. He will say that, "Just you start feeling that you are okay. Just go on repeating inside the mind, I am getting better and better. Every day I am getting better." In the night while you fall asleep, go on thinking you are healthy, and you are getting healthier every moment, and by the morning you will be the healthiest person in the world. Go on imagining."

And he helped millions of people. Even incurable diseases were cured. It looked like a miracle; it is nothing. It is just a basic law: your mind follows imagination.

Now psychologists say that if you say to children that "You are duffers, dull," they become dull. You force them to be dull. You give their imagination the suggestion that they are dull.

Many experiments have been done. Say to a child, "You are dull. You cannot do anything; you cannot solve this mathematical problem, and give him the problem and tell him, "Now try," he will not be able to solve it. You have closed the door. Say to the child, "You are intelligent and I have not seen any intelligent boy like you are; for your stage, your age you are over-intelligent. You show many potentialities; you can solve any problem. Now try this," and he will be able to solve it. You have given imagination to him.

Now these are scientific proofs, now scientific discoverings, that whatsoever imagination catches, it becomes a seed. Whole generations have been changed, whole ages, whole countries have been changed, just through imagination.

You go Punjab. I was traveling once from Delhi to Manali. My driver was a Sikh, a sardar. The way, the road, was dangerous, and the car was very big. And the driver became many times afraid. And many times he will say, "Now I cannot go ahead. We will have to go back." We tried in every way to persuade him. At one point he became so afraid he stopped the car, got out of the car and said, "No! Now I cannot move from here. It is dangerous," he said. "It may not be dangerous for you; you may be ready to die. But I am not I want to go back."

By chance one of my friends who is also a sardar and was a big police official, he was also coming, following me to attend the camp in Manali. His car reached, so I told him that "Do something! The man has gone out of the car." That police official came and he said, "You being a sardar, and a Sikh -- and a coward? Get into the car." The man immediately came into the car and started. So I asked him, "What is the matter?" He said "Now he has touched my ego. He says, You are a sardar? " Sardar means leader of men. "A Sikh? And a coward? He has touched my imagination. He has touched my pride. Now we can go. Dead or alive, but we will reach Manali."

And this has not happened with one man. If you go to Punjab, you will see that it has happened with millions. Look at the Hindus of Punjab and at the Sikhs of Punjab. Their blood is same; they belong to the same race. Five hundred years before all were Hindus. And then a different type of race, a military race, was born. Just by growing beard, just by changing your face, you cannot become brave. But you can! Imagination.

Nanak gave the imagination that "You are a different type of race. You are unconquerable." And once they believe, once that imagination started to work, in the Punjab, within five hundred years, a new race, totally different from Punjabi Hindus has come into being. Nothing is different. But in India, no one is braver than they. These two world wars have proved that on whole of the earth Sikhs have no comparison. They can fight fearlessly.

What has happened? Just their imagination has created a milieu around them. They feel that just being Sikhs they are different. Imagination works It can make a brave man out of you, it can make a coward.

I have heard Mulla Nasruddin was sitting in a pub drinking. He was not a brave man, one of the most coward. But alcohol gave him courage. And then a man, a giant of a man, entered the pub ferocious looking, dangerous, looked like a murderer. At any other time, in his senses, Mulla Nasruddin would have been afraid. But now he was drunk, so he was not afraid at all.

That ferocious looking man came near to Mulla, and seeing that he is not afraid at all he stomped on his feet. Mulla got angry, furious, and he said, "What are you doing? Are you doing that on purpose or it is just a sort of joke?" But by this time, his stomping on his feet, Mulla was brought back from his alcohol. He was brought back; he came to his senses. But he has said, "What are you doing -- on purpose or it is just a sort of joke?"

The man said, "On purpose." Mulla Nasruddin said, "Then thank you. On purpose, it is okay, because I don't like such type jokes"

Patanjali says imagination is the third faculty. You go on imagining. If you wrongly imagine, you can create delusions around you, illusions, dreams -- you can be lost in them. LSD and other drugs, they help and work on this center. So whatsoever inside potentiality you have, your LSD trip will help you to develop it. So nothing is certain. If you have happy imaginations, the drug trip will be a happy trip, a high. If you have miserable imaginations, nightmarish imaginations, the trip is going to be bad.

That's why many people report contradictorily. Huxley says that it can become a key to the door of heaven and Rheiner says it is ultimate hell. It depends on you; LSD cannot do anything. It simply jumps on your center of imagination, starts functioning chemically there. If you have an imagination of the nightmarish type, then you will develop that and you will pass through hell. And if you are addicted to beautiful dreams, you may reach heaven.

This imagination can function either as a hell or as heaven. You can use it to go completely insane. What has happened to madmen in the madhouses? They have used their imagination, and they have used it in such a way that they are engulfed by it. A madman may be sitting alone and he is talking to someone loudly. Not only he talks, he answers also. He questions, he answers, he speaks for the other also who is absent. You may think that he is mad, but he is talking to a real person. In his imagination the person is real, and he cannot judge what is imaginary and what is real.

Children cannot judge. So many times children may lose their toy in the dream, and then they will weep in the morning, "Where is my toy?" They cannot judge that dream is dream and reality is reality. And they have not lost anything, they were just dreaming. Boundaries are blurred. They don't know where dream ends and where reality starts.

A madman also is blurred. He doesn't know what is real, what is unreal. If imagination is used rightly, then you will know that this is imagination and you will remain alert that this is imagination. You can enjoy it, but this is not real.

So when people meditate, many things happen through their imagination. They start seeing lights, colors, visions, talking to God himself, or moving with Jesus, or dancing with Krishna. These are imaginative things, and a meditator has to remember that these are functions of the imagination. You can enjoy it; nothing is wrong in them -- they are fun. Don't think that they are real.

Remember that only the witnessing consciousness is real; nothing else is real. Whatsoever happens may be beautiful, worth enjoying -- enjoy it. It is beautiful to dance with Krishna; nothing is wrong in it. Dance! Enjoy it! But remember continuously that this is imagination, a beautiful dream. Don't be lost in it. If you are lost, then imagination has become dangerous. Many religious people are just in imagination. And they move in imagination and waste their lives.

The fourth is sleep. Sleep means unconsciousness as far as your outward-moving consciousness is concerned. It has gone deep into itself. Activity has stopped; conscious activity has stopped. Mind is not functioning. Sleep is a non-functioning of the mind. If you are dreaming, then it is not sleep. You are just in the middle, in the waking and the sleep. You have left the waking, and you have not entered sleep. You are just in the middle.

Sleep means totally contentless state -- no activity, no movement in the mind. Mind has completely been absorbed, relaxed. This sleep is beautiful; it is life-giving. You can use it. And this sleep if you know how to use it, can become samadhi. Because samadhi and sleep are not very different. Only one difference is there that in samadhi you will be aware. Everything else will be the same.

In sleep everything is the same, only that you are not aware. You are in the same bliss in which Buddha entered, in which Ramakrishna lives, in which Jesus has made his home. In deep sleep you are in the same blissful state, but you are not aware. So in the morning you feel the night has been good, in the morning you feel refreshed, vital, rejuvenated, in the morning you feel that the night was just beautiful -- but this is just an afterglow. You don't know what has happened, what really happened. You were not aware.

Sleep can be used in two ways. Just as a natural rest -- you have even lost that. People are not really going into sleep. They continuously go on dreaming. Sometimes, for very few seconds, they touch. They touch, and they again start dreaming. The silence of sleep, the blissful music of sleep, has become unknown. You have destroyed it. Even natural sleep is destroyed. You are so agitated and excited that the mind cannot fall completely into oblivion.

But Patanjali says natural sleep is good for the body health, and if you can become alert in sleep it can become samadhi, it can become a spiritual phenomenon. So there are techniques -- we will discuss them later on -how sleep can become an awakening. Gita says that the yogi doesn't sleep even while he is asleep. He remains alert. Something inside goes on being aware. The whole body falls into sleep, the mind falls into sleep, but the witnessing remains. Someone is watching -- a watcher on the tower goes on. Then sleep becomes samadhi. It becomes the ultimate ecstasy.

And the last is memory. Memory is the fifth modification of the mind. That too can be used, misused. If memory is misused, it creates confusion. Really, you may remember something, but you cannot be certain whether it happened that way or not. Your memory is not reliable. You may add many things in it; imagination may enter into it. You may delete many things from it, you may do many things to it. And when you say that "This is my memory," it is a very refined and changed thing. It is not real.

Everybody says that "My childhood was just paradise," and look at children These children will also say later on that their childhood was paradise, and they are suffering. And every child hankers how to grow soon, how to become an adult. Every child thinks that adults are enjoying, all that is worth enjoying they are enjoying. They are powerful; they can do everything, he is helpless. Children think they are suffering, but these children will grow as you have grown, and then later on they will say that childhood was beautiful, just a paradise.

Your memory is not reliable. You are imagining; you are just creating your past. You are not true to it. And you drop many things from it -- all that was ugly, all that was sad, all that was painful you drop it; all that was beautiful you continue. All that was a support to your ego you remember, and all that was not a support you drop it, you forget it.

So everybody has a great storehouse of dropped memories. And whatsoever you say is not true, you cannot remember truly. All your centers are confused, and they enter into each other and disturb.

Right memory. Buddha has used the words "right memory" for meditation. Patanjali says if memory is right, that means one has to be totally honest to oneself. Then, only then, can memory be right. Whatsoever has happened, bad or good, don't change it. Know it as it is. It is very hard! It is arduous! You choose and change. Knowing one's past as it is will change your whole life. If you rightly know your past as it is, you will not like to repeat it in the future. Right now everybody is thinking how to repeat it in a modified form, but if you know your past exactly as it was you will not like to repeat it.

Right memory will give you the impetus how to be free from all lives. And if memory is right, then you can go even in past lives. If you are honest, then you can go into the past lives. And then you have only one desire, how to transcend all this nonsense. But you think past was beautiful, and you think future is going to be beautiful, only this present is wrong. But the past was present a few days before, and the future will become present a few days after. And every time every present is wrong, and all past is beautiful and all future is beautiful. This is wrong memory. Look directly. Don't change. Look at the past as it was. But we are dishonest.

Every man hates his father, but if you ask anybody he will say, "I love my father. I honor my father as anything." Every woman hates her mother, but ask and every woman will say, "My mother, she is just divine." This is wrong memory.

Gibran has a story. He says, one night one mother and daughter were awakened suddenly because of a noise. They both were sleepwalkers, and the time the sudden noise happened in the neighborhood they were both walking in the garden, asleep. They were sleep-walkers.

It must have been a shock, because in sleep the old woman, the mother, was saying to the daughter that, "Because of you, you bitch, because of you, my youth is lost. You destroyed me. And now anybody who comes to the house looks at you. Nobody looks at me." A deep jealousy that comes to every mother when the daughter becomes young and beautiful. It happens to every mother, but it is inside.

And the daughter was saying, "You old rotten... Because of you I cannot enjoy life. You are the hindrance. Everywhere you are the hindrance, the obstacle. I cannot love; I cannot enjoy."

And suddenly, because of the noise, they were both awakened. And the old woman said, "My child, what are you doing here? You may catch cold. Come inside." And the daughter said, "But what are you doing here? You were not feeling well and this is a cold night. Come, mother. Come to the bed."

The first thing that was happening was coming from the unconscious. Now they are again pretending; they have become awakened. Now the unconscious has gone back, the conscious has come in. Now they are hypocrites. Your conscious is hypocrisy.

To be truly honest with one's own memories one will have to really pass through arduous effort. And you have to be true, whatsoever. You have to be nakedly true, you have to know what really you think about your father, about your mother, about your brother, about your sister-really. And what you have in the past, don't mix, don't change, don't polish; let it be as it is. If this happens, then, Patanjali says, this will be a freedom. You will drop it. The whole thing is nonsense, and you will not like to project it again in the future.

And then you will not be a hypocrite. You will be real, true, sincere -- you will become authentic. And when you become authentic, you become like a rock. Nothing can change you; nothing can create confusion.

You become like a sword. You can always cut whatsoever is wrong; you can divide whatsoever is right from the wrong. And then a clarity of mind is achieved. That clarity can lead you towards meditation; that clarity can become the basic ground to grow -- to grow beyond.