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Chapter-7

THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI

Awareness: The fire that burns the past

 

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Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Yoga Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

 

Book 2, Sutra 12

12. WHETHER FULFILLED IN THE PRESENT OR THE FUTURE, KARMIC EXPERIENCES HAVE THEIR ROOTS IN THE FIVE AFFLICTIONS.

Book 2, Sutra 13

13. AS LONG AS THE ROOTS REMAIN, KARMA IS FULFILLED IN REBIRTH THROUGH CLASS, SPAN OF LIFE, AND TYPES OF EXPERIENCES.

Book 2, Sutra 14

14. VIRTUE BRINGS PLEASURE; VICE BRINGS PAIN.

MAN APPEARS to be in the present, but that is only an appearance. Man lives in the past. Through the present he passes, but he remains rooted in the past. The pre, sent is not really time for the ordinary consciousness. For the ordinary consciousness, the past is real time, the present just a passage from the past to the future, just a momentary passage. The past is real and the future also, but the present is unreal for the ordinary consciousness. Future is nothing but the past ex, tended. Future is nothing but the past projected again and again.

The present seems to be non-existential. If you think of the present, you will not find it at all because the moment you find it, it has already passed. Just a moment before when you had not found it, it was in the future. For a Buddha-consciousness, for an awakened being, only the present is existential. For ordinary consciousness, unaware, sleepy like a somnambulist, the past and future are real, the present is unreal. Only when one awakes is the present real; the past and future both become unreal.

Why is this so? Why do you live in the past? -- because mind is nothing but an accumulation of the past. Mind is memory: all that you have done, all that you have dreamed, all that you wanted to do and could not do, all that you have imagined in the past, is your mind. Mind is a dead entity. If you look through the mind, you will never find the present, because the present is life, and life can never be approached through a dead medium. Life can never be approached through dead vehicles. Life cannot be touched through death.

Mind is dead. Mind is just like dust gathering on a mirror. The more dust gathers, the less the mirror is mirror like. And if the layer of dust is very thick, as it is on you, then the mirror does not reflect at all.

Everybody gathers dust. Not only do you gather, you cling to it, you think it is a treasure. The past is gone; why do you cling to it? You cannot do anything about it. You cannot go back, you cannot undo it. Why do you cling to it? It is not a treasure. And if you cling to the past and you think it is a treasure, of course your mind will want to live it again and again in the future. Your future cannot be anything but your modified past -- a little refined, a little more decorated. But it is going to be the same because the mind cannot think of the unknown; the mind can only project the known, that which you know.

You fall in love with a woman and the woman dies. Now how are you going to find another woman? The other woman is going to be a modified form of your dead wife; that is the only way you know. Whatsoever you do in the future will be nothing but a continuation of the past. You can change a little -- a patch here, a patch there, but the main part will remain the same, just the same.

Somebody asked Mulla Nasrudin when he was lying on his deathbed, 'If you are again given a life, how are you going to live it Nasrudin? Would you make any changes?' Nasrudin pondered with closed eyes, thought, meditated, then opened his eyes and said, 'Yes, if I am again given a life, I will part my hair in the middle. That has always been my wish, but my father always insisted that I not do it. And when my father died, the hair had become so conditioned that it could not be parted in the middle.'

Don't laugh. If you are asked what you will do again with your life, you will make slight changes just like this: a husband with a slightly different nose, a wife with a little different complexion, a bigger or smaller house; but they are nothing more than parting your hair in the middle -- trivia, not essential. Your essential life will remain the same.

I look into your eyes and I see this. You have done it many, many times: your essential life has remained the same. Many times you have been given lives. You have lived many times; you are very, very ancient. You are not new on this earth, you are older than the earth because you have lived on other earths also, other planets. You are as old as existence. This is how it should be because you are part of it. You are very ancient, but repeating the same pattern again and again.

That's why Hindus call it the wheel of life and death;'wheel' because it goes on repeating itself. It is a repetition: the same spokes come up and go down, go down and come up. Mind projects itself, mind is past, so your future is not going to be anything other than the past.

And what is past? What have you done in the past? Whatsoever you have done -- good, bad, this, that -- whatsoever you do creates its own repetition. That is the theory of karma. If you were angry the day before yesterday, you created a certain potentiality for anger: to be angry again yesterday. Then you repeated it, you gave more energy to the anger, the mood of anger, you rooted it more, you watered it. Now today you will repeat it again with more force, with more energy. And then tomorrow you will again be a victim of today.

Each action that you do or even think about has its own ways of persisting again and again, because it creates a channel into your being. It starts absorbing energy from you. You are angry, then the mood goes and you think that you are angry no more; then you miss the point. When the mood has gone nothing has happened; only the wheel has moved and the spoke that was up has gone down. The anger was there on the surface a few minutes ago, the anger has now gone down into the unconscious, into the depth of your being. It will wait for its time to come again. If you have acted according to it, you have reinforced it, then you have again given a lease for its life. You have given it again a power, an energy. It is throbbing like a seed under the soil waiting for the right opportunity and season, then it will sprout.

Every action is self-perpetuating, every thought is self-perpetuating. Once you cooperate with it you are giving energy to it. Sooner or later it will become a habitual form. You wilt do it and you will not be the doer; you will do it just because of the force of habit. People say that habit is second nature. This is not exaggeration. On the contrary, this is an understate ment. In fact, habit finally becomes first nature and nature be comes secondary. Nature becomes just like an appendix or footnotes in a book, and habit becomes the main part, the main body of the book.

You live through the habit; that means that the habit lives basically through you. The habit itself persists, it has an energy of its own. Of course it takes the energy from you, but you cooperated in the past, you are cooperating in the present. By and by, the habit will become the master and you will be just a servant, a shadow. The habit will give the commandment, the order, and you will be just an obedient servant. You will have to follow it.

It happened that one Hindu mystic, Eknath, was going for a pilgrimage. The pilgrimage was going to last for at least one year because he had to visit all the sacred places of the country. Of course, it was a privilege to be with Eknath, so many people, a thousand people, were travelling with him. The thief of the town also came and said, 'I know that I am a thief and not worthy enough to be a member of your religious group, but give me a chance also. I would like to come for the pilgrimage.' Eknath said, 'It will be difficult, because one year is a long time and you may start stealing people's things. You may cause trouble. Please drop this idea.' But the thief was insistent. He said, 'For one year I will drop stealing, but I have to come. And I promise you that for one year I will not steal a single thing from anybody.' Eknath agreed.

But within a week trouble started, and the trouble was this: things started disappearing from people's luggage, and even more puzzling -- because nobody was stealing them -- things would disappear from somebody's bag and they would be found in somebody else's bag after a few days. The man in whose bag they would be found would say, 'I have not done anything. I really don't know how these things have come to be in my bag.'

Eknath suspected, so one night he pretended to sleep but he was awake, he watched. The thief appeared near about midnight, in the middle of the night, and he started changing things from one person's luggage to another person's. Eknath caught him red handed and he said, 'What are you doing? And you had promised!' He said, 'I am following my promise. I have not stolen a single thing. But this is my old habit. In the middle of the night if I don't do some mischief, it is impossible for me to sleep. And for one year, not to sleep? You are a man of compassion. You should be compassionate towards me. And I am not stealing, things are found again and again. They don't go anywhere but are just exchanged from one person to another. And moreover, after one year I have to start my stealing again, so it will be good practice also.'

Habits force you to do certain things; you are a victim. Hindus call it the theory of karma: each action that you repeat, or each thought -- because thought is also a subtle action in the mind -- becomes more and more powerful. Then you are in the grip of it. Then you are imprisoned in the habit. Then you live the life of an imprisoned man, a slave. And the imprisonment is very subtle: it is of your habits and conditioning and the actions that you have done. It is all around your body and you are entangled in it, but you go on thinking and befooling yourself that you are doing it. When you get angry, you think you are doing it. You rationalize it and you say that the situation demanded it:'I had to be angry, otherwise the child would go astray; if I were not angry then things would go wrong, then the office would be in a chaos, then servants won't listen; I had to be angry to manage things, to discipline the child. To put the wife in her right place I had to be angry.' These are rationalizations. That's how your ego goes on thinking that you are still the boss, but you are not. Anger comes out of old patterns, out of the past. And when anger comes you try to find an excuse for it.

Psychologists have been experimenting and they have come to the same facts as the Eastern esoteric psychology: man is a victim, not a master. Psychologists have put people in total isolation, with every comfort possible. Whatsoever was needed was given to them but they didn't come in any contact with other human beings. They lived in isolation in an air conditioned cell -- no work, no trouble, no problem, but the same habits continued. One morning, with no reason now -- because every comfort was fulfilled, there was no worry, there was no excuse to be angry -- and the man would find suddenly that anger was arising.

It is within you. Sometimes, suddenly sadness comes for no apparent reason at all, and sometimes one feels happy, sometimes one feels euphoric, ecstatic. A man deprived of all social relationships, isolated in total comfort, supplied with every need, moves through all the moods that you move through in relationship. That means that something comes from within and you hang it on somebody else. That is just a rationalization. You feel good, you feel bad, and these feelings are bubbling from your own unconsciousness, from your own past. Nobody is responsible except you. Nobody can make you angry, and nobody can make you happy. You become happy on your own, you become angry on your own, and you become sad on your own. Unless you realize this, you will always remain a slave.

The mastery of one's self comes when one realizes, 'I am absolutely responsible for whatsoever happens to me, whatsoever happens, unconditionally. I am responsible, absolutely.' In the beginning it will make you very, very sad and depressed because if you can throw the responsibility on the other, you feel good that you are not in the wrong. What can you do when the wife is behaving in such a nasty way? You have to be angry. But remember well, the wife is behaving nastily because of her own inner mechanisms. She's not nasty to you. If you were not there she would be nasty to the child. If the child were not there she would be nasty to the plates -- she would have thrown them on the floor. She would have broken the radio. She had to do something; nastiness was coming up. It was just coincidence that you were found reading your newspaper and she became nasty to you. It was just coincidence that you were available in a wrong moment.

You are angry not because the wife is nasty. She may have supplied the situation, that's all. She may have given you a possibility to be angry, an excuse to be angry, but the anger was bubbling up. If the wife were not there you would have been angry all the same -- with something else, with some idea, but anger had to be there. It was something that was coming from your own unconscious.

Everybody is responsible, totally responsible for his own being and behavior. In the beginning it will give you a very depressed mood that you are responsible, because you have always thought that you want to be happy -- so how can you be responsible for your unhappiness? You always desire blissfulness, so how can you be angry on your own? And because of this you throw the responsibility on the other. If you go on throwing responsibility on the other, remember that you will always remain a slave because nobody can change the other. How can you change the other? Has anybody ever changed the other? One of the most unfulfilled wishes in the world is to change the other. Nobody has ever done that. It is impossible because the other exists in his own right -- you cannot change him. You go on throwing responsibility on the other but you cannot change the other. And because you throw the responsibility on the other, you will never see that the basic responsibility is yours. The basic change is needed there inside you.

This is how you are trapped: if you start thinking that you are responsible for all your actions, for all your moods, in the beginning a depression will take over. But if you can pass through that depression, soon you will feel light because now you are freed from the other, now you can work on your own. You can be free, you can be happy. Even if the whole world is unhappy and unfree it makes no difference. Otherwise, how is a Buddha possible? And how is a Patanjali possible? How am I possible? The whole world is the same. It is just the same as it is for you, but a Krishna goes on dancing and singing; he's freed. And the first freedom is to stop throwing responsibility on the other, the first freedom is to know that you are responsible. Then Many things become immediately possible.

The whole philosophy of karma is that you are responsible. Whatsoever you have sown in the past you are reaping. You may not be able to follow the link between the cause and the effect, but if the effect is there, the cause must be there some where in you.

That is the whole method of prati-prasav: how to move from the effect to the cause, how to go backwards and find the cause, from where it is coming up. Whatsoever happens to you -- you feel sad, just close your eyes and watch your sadness. Follow where it leads, go deeper into it. Soon you will come to the cause. Maybe you will have to travel long, because this whole life is involved; and not only this life, but many other lives are involved. You will find many wounds in you which hurt, and because of those wounds you feel sad; they are sad. Those wounds have not gone dry yet; they are alive. The method of prati-prasav, the method of going back to the source, from the effect to the cause, will heal them. How does it heal? Why does it heal? What is the phenomenon implied in it?

Whenever you go backwards, the first thing you drop is throwing the responsibility on others, because if you throw the responsibility on the other you go outwards. Then the whole process is wrong: you try to find the cause in the other:'Why is the wife nasty?' Then the 'why' goes on penetrating into the wife's behavior. You have missed the first step and then the whole process will be wrong. Why am I unhappy? Why am I angry? -- close the eyes and let it be a deep meditation. Lie down on the floor, close the eyes, relax the body and feel why you are angry. Just forget the wife; that is an excuse -- A, B, C, D, whatsoever, forget the excuse. Just go deeper into yourself, penetrate the anger. Use anger itself as a river; into the anger you flow and the anger will take you inwards. You will find subtle wounds in you.

The wife looked nasty because she touched a subtle wound in you, something which hurts. You have always thought that you are not beautiful, your face is ugly, and there is a wound inside. When the wife is nasty she will make you aware of your face. She will say, 'Go and look in the mirror!' Something hurts. You have been unfaithful to the wife and when she wants to be nasty, she will bring it up again, 'Why were you laughing with that woman? Why were you sitting with that woman so happily?' A wound is touched. You have been unfaithful, you feel guilty; the wound is alive. You close the eyes, feel the anger, let it arise in its totality so that you can see it completely, what it is. Then let that energy help you to move towards the past, because the anger is coming from the past. It cannot come from the future of course. The future has not yet come into being. It is not coming from the present.

This is the whole standpoint of karma: it cannot come from the future because future is not yet; it cannot come from the present because you don't know at all what it is. The present is known only by the awakened ones. You live only in the past so it must be coming from somewhere else in your past. The wound must be somewhere in your memories. Go back. There may not be one wound, there may be many: small, big. Go deeper and find the first wound, the original source of all anger. You will be ab1e to find it if you try, because it is already there. It is there; all your past is still there. k is like a film, rolled and waiting inside. You unroll it, you start looking at the film. This is the process of prati-prasav. It means going backwards to the very root cause. And this is the beauty of the process: if you can consciously go backwards, if you can consciously feel a wound, the wound is immediately heated.

Why is it healed? -- because a wound is created by unconsciousness, unawareness. A wound is part of ignorance, sleep. When you consciously go backwards and look at the wound, consciousness is a healing force. In the past, when the wound happened, it happened in unconsciousness. You were angry, you were possessed by anger, you did something: you killed a man and you have been hiding the fact from the world. You can hide it from the police, you can hide it from the court and the law, but how can you hide it from yourself? -- you know, it hurts. And whenever somebody gives you an opportunity to be angry you become afraid because it could happen again, you could kill the wife. Go back, because at that moment when you murdered a man or you behaved in a very angry and mad way, you were unconscious. In the unconscious those wounds have been preserved. Now go consciously.

Prati-prasav, going back, means going consciously to things which you have done in unconsciousness. Go back -- just the light of consciousness heals. It is a healing force. Whatsoever you can make conscious will be healed, and then it will hurt no more.

A man who goes backwards releases the past. Then the past is no more functioning, then the past has no more grip on him and the past is finished. The past has no place in his being. And when the past has no place in your being you are available to the present, never before it. You need space; the past is so much inside -- a junkyard of dead things. There is no space for the present to enter. That junkyard goes on dream ing about the future, so half the place is filled with that which is no more and half the place is filled with that which is not yet. And the present? -- it simply waits outside the door. That's why the present is nothing but a passage, a passage from the past to the future, just a momentary passage.

Be finished with the past! Unless you are finished with the past you are living a ghost life. Your life is not true, it is not existential. The past lives through you, the dead goes on haunting you. Go backwards -- whenever you have an opportunity, whenever something happens in you: happiness, unhappiness, sadness, anger, jealousy, close the eyes and go backwards. Soon you will become efficient in travelling backwards. Soon you will be able to go back in time and then many wounds will open. When those wounds open inside you, don't start doing anything. There is no need to do. You simply watch, look, observe; the wound is there. You simply watch, give your watching energy to the wound, look at it. Look at it without any judgment because if you judge, if you say, 'This is bad, this should not be so,' the wound will close again. Then it will have to hide. Whenever you condemn then the mind tries to hide things. That's how the conscious and unconscious are created. Otherwise, mind is one; there is no need for any division. But you condemn. Then the mind has to divide and put things in the dark, in the basement so you cannot see them -- and then there is no need to condemn.

Don't condemn, don't appreciate. You simply be a witness, an unattached observer. Don't deny. Don't say, 'This is not good,' because that is a denial and you have started suppress ing. Be detached. Just watch and look. Look with compassion and the healing will happen.

Don't ask me why it happens because it is a natural phenomenon. It is just as at a hundred degrees, water evaporates. You never ask, 'Why not at ninety nine degrees?' Nobody can answer that. It simply happens that at a hundred degrees water evaporates. There is no question, and the question is irrelevant. If it evaporated at ninety nine degrees, you would ask why. If it evaporated at ninety eight, you would ask why. It is simply natural that at a hundred degrees water evaporates.

The same is true of the inner nature. When a detached, compassionate consciousness comes to a wound, the wound disappears, evaporates. There is no why to it. It is simply natural, it is how it is, it is how it happens. When I say this I say it from experience. Try it and the experience is possible for you also; this is the way.

Through prati-prasav one becomes free of the karmas. Karmas try to insist on the future; they don't allow you to go to the past. They say, 'Move into the future. What will you do in the past? Where are you going? Why waste time? Do something for the future!' Karmas always insist, 'Go into the future so the past remains hidden in the unconscious.' Start the reverse process, the prati-prasav. Don't listen to the mind which says to go into the future. Watch -- mind is always saying something about the future. It never allows you to be here. It is always forcing you to move into the future.

Go back into the past. And when I say to go back into the past I am not saying that you should remember the past. Remembering won't help; remembering is an impotent process. This distinction has to be remembered: remembering is not of any help -- it may even be harmful -- but reliving. They are totally different. The distinction is very subtle and has to be understood.

You remember something: you remember your childhood. When you remember your childhood you remain here and now. You don't become the child. You can remember, you can close your eyes and you can remember when you were seven years of age running in a garden -- you see it. You are here and the past is seen like a film: you are running, the child is running trying to catch butterflies. You are the seer and the child is the object. No, this is not right; this is remembering. It is impotent, it will not help.

Wounds are deeper. They cannot be revealed by remembering, and remembering remains a part of the conscious mind. A11 that is very, very significant has been hidden in the unconscious, so you remember only useless things, or you remember only those things which your mind accepts.

That's why every man says that his childhood was a paradise. Nobody's has ever been. Why does everybody say that child. hood was a paradise? You would like to be a child again, but ask the children. No child wants to be a child, every child is trying to become a grown-up and thinking how soon he can do it. No child is happy with childhood because he says, 'Grown-ups are powerful.' Every child feels helpless, and helplessness cannot be a very good feeling. Every child feels pushed and pulled from here and there, as if he had no in dependence. Childhood looks like a slavery to the child; he has to depend on others for everything. If he wants ice cream he has to ask and beg, and everybody is there to teach that ice cream is bad. The child thinks, 'Then why does God make ice cream?' All the things that the parents force him to eat are bad, he does not like them, and all the things that he likes to eat are bad for the parents. They say, 'This will be disturbing, your stomach will go wrong' and this will happen and that will happen. k seems to the child that all the good vitamins are put in wrong things, and wrong things have been put in good things. The child is not happy at all; he wants to be finished with this whole nonsense. He wants to grow up and be a free man. But later on these same children will say that the childhood was a paradise. What has happened?

Whatsoever is bad, ugly, is thrown into the unconscious because the ego does not want to look at it. All miseries are forgotten and all happinesses remembered. You go on cherishing happinesses and you go on forgetting miseries. This is a choice. That's why later on everybody says that childhood was paradise, because you have tried to forget all that was wrong. Your childhood as you remember it is not true, it is fictitious. It is a fiction created by the ego. So if you remember you will remember the happy things, not the unhappy things. If you relive, you will relive the total: happy, unhappy, all.

And what is reliving? -- reliving is to become the child again; not to look at the child as running in the garden, but to be the child running. Don't be a watcher -- become. This is possible because the child still exists in you, it is part of you. Layer upon layer, all that you have lived exists in you. You were a child, it is there; then you became young, it is there; then you became old, it is there. Everything is there, layer upon layer. You cut the trunk of a tree and each layer is there. In the depth, in the center-most place you will find the first layer. The tree was a very small plant; the first layer is there, the second layer is there. You can count the years because each year is one layer and the tree accumulates. You can count the age of the tree, how old it is. Not only trees, but even stones, rocks, have layers.

Everything is an accumulated phenomenon. You are the first seed that happened in your mother's womb. Still it is there. And then after it millions of layers were added every day, thousands of things were happening. They are all there, accumulated. You can be again, because you had been. You have just to step back. So try reliving.

Prati-prasav is reliving the past. You close your eyes, lie down and move backwards. You can try it in a simple way. It will give you the knack of it. Every night you can lie down on the bed and move backwards towards the morning. Lying down on the bed is the last thing -- make it first; and now move backwards. What did you do before lying down? -- you took a glass of milk; take it again, relive. You had a fight with the wife; relive. Don't judge because there is no need now to judge. It has happened. Don't say good or bad, don't bring in valuations. You simply relive, it has happened. You go backwards: early in the morning when the alarm clock woke you up, listen to it again. Just go and try to live every moment of the day, unwinding the clock. You will feel very, very refreshed and you will fall into a beautiful sleep because you are finished with the day. Now the day is no more hanging on you. You have relived it consciously.

In the day it was difficult to be conscious; you were involved in so many things. And you don't have such consciousness that you can take it to the market yet. Maybe in the temple, for a few seconds it happens. Maybe meditating, for a few seconds you will become aware. You don't have enough of it to carry it to the market, to the shop, to the world of affairs where you become unconscious. Again you fall into the old somnambulistic habit. But lying down on your bed, you can be conscious. Just watch, relive, let everything happen again. In fact, that's how it happens to a Buddha.

You relive consciously in the night: the wife said something, then you said something, then she reacted; Then how did the whole thing arise? How did you become angry and hit her, and how did she start crying?

And then you had to make love to her. Go into the minutest details, everything. Be watchful. It is easier because nothing is involved. The world is there no more. You can watch and relive it. The moment you are reaching the morning you will feel so silent and the oblivion of sleep will be descending on you, not as an unconsciousness, but as a beautiful darkness, velvet like -- you can touch it, you can feel it. The warmth surrounds you like a mother. And then you move into the night.

You will have less dreams because dreams are created by the unlived day. Millions of things are happening. You cannot live all of them and you cannot live them with alertness. They re, main hanging. Dreams are a hang over of the whole unlived day, or a day lived unconsciously; that is the same thing. A day half-heartedly lived, somehow lived, dragged, as if you are drunk, is how the dreams are created. Dreams are just to complete the whole process that has been left incomplete in the day.

Mind is a perfectionist; it doesn't want anything to be in complete. It wants to complete it and that's why the whole night you dream. But if you can relive the day, dreams will fall, and a day comes when suddenly there are no dreams. When there are no dreams, then for the first time you taste what sleep is.

Patanjali says that samadhi is just like sleep, the ultimate ecstasy is just like sleep, with only one difference: sleep is unconscious and samadhi is conscious. Sleep is one of the most beautiful phenomena, but you have never slept because you are so consistently dreaming.

In the whole night there are almost eight cycles of dreaming and each cycle persists for almost forty minutes. If you sleep for eight hours then there are eight cycles of dream, and each dream cycle persists for forty minutes. Between two dreams you have only twenty minutes, and that too is not very deep because another dream is getting ready. One dream finishes, the actors have gone behind the curtain, but there is much activity because they are getting ready, painting their faces and changing their dresses. They are getting ready and soon the curtain will be up; they will have to come.

So when between two dreams a twenty minute gap is given to you, that too is not very peaceful. Hidden behind is the basement; preparation is going on. It is just like the peace between two wars: the First World War, the Second World War, and the peace between the two. People count those as peaceful days -- they were not. They could not be. Otherwise how could you prepare for the Second World War? Those were not peaceful days. Now they have found a right word; they call it 'cold war'. There is a hot war, and between two hot wars, a cold war; that is the preparation behind the screen.

Between two dream cycles there is a twenty minute gap; it is like an interval. Everything is getting ready and you are also getting ready. It is not non-tense, it is tense.

When you relive the whole day, dreaming stops. Then you fall in such a bottomless depth. You go on falling and falling and falling as if a feather is falling into an abyss -- it is. It has a tremendous beauty. And this is only if you go backwards into the day. This is just to learn the knack of it; then you can do it for your whole life.

Go backwards to the very moment when you screamed and you were born. Remember, it has to be relived, not remembered -- because how can you remember? And you can scream again, the first scream, what Janov calls the primal scream. You can scream again as if you are reborn, as if you are again a child coming out of the passage of the mother's womb. It is a difficult passage, hard. You struggle to come out and it is painful, be cause for nine months you have been living in such a paradise as the womb.

Our whole science has not yet been able to create a more comfortable thing than the womb. It is perfect. The child lives absolutely without any responsibility, with no worries, no thinking about bread and butter, or the world, or the relation ship -- no worries. Because there is nobody else, there is no question of any relationship. He feeds on the mother with not even the worry of having to digest anything. The mother digests and the child simply gets the digested food. There is not even the worry to breathe. The mother breathes, the child simply gets the oxygen and he floats in the water.

Hindus have a picture of Vishnu. They say that Vishnu floats on the ocean. You must have seen the picture: on the bed of a snake he rests; the snake protects and Vishnu sleeps. That picture is really a symbolization of the womb. Every child is a Vishnu, a God incarnate -- at least in the womb. Everything is perfect, nothing is lacking. The water that he floats in is just exactly like the ocean water, with the same chemicals, the same salt. That's why a pregnant woman starts eating more salt and salty things, hankers after salty things: the womb needs more salt. It is the exact chemical situation as in the ocean and the child floats in the ocean, perfectly comfortable. The temperature remains exactly the same. Whether it is cold outside or hot makes no difference, the mother's womb carries exactly the same temperature for the child. He lives in perfect luxury. Coming out of that luxury in a dark passage, narrow, painful, the child screams.

If you can go back to your birth trauma you will scream, and you will scream if you relive. A moment will come when you will feel that you are the child, not the one who is remembering.

You are coming out of the birth passage; a scream comes. This scream vibrates your whole being, it comes from the very grounds of your being, the very roots of your being. That scream will relieve you of many things. You will again become a child, innocent -- that is a rebirth. This too is not enough be cause this is only for one life. If you can do it for one life, you can enter into other lives. You go to the very, very first day, the day of creation. Or, if you are a Christian then the terminology of Adam will be good: you go back, and again you are in the Garden of Eden. You have become Adam and Eve. Then all your past karmas, habits, conditionings are dissolved, washed away. You have entered heaven again. This is the process of prati-prasav. Now, enter these sutras.

WHETHER FULFILLED IN THE PRESENT OR THE FUTURE, KARMIC EXPERIENCES HAVE THEIR ROOTS IN THE FIVE AFFLICTIONS.

We talked about five kleshas, five afflictions, five causes which create misery. All actions, whether fulfilled in the present or the future, karmic experiences, have the roots in the five afflictions. The first affliction is avidya, lack of awareness, and the other four are by-products of it. The last is abhinivesh, lust for life. All the karmas that you do are born basically out of lack of awareness.

What does it mean, and what will be said when Buddha walks, eats, sleeps? Are those not karmas? No, they are not. They are not karmas because they are born out of awareness. They don't carry any seed for the future. If Buddha walks it is in the present. It has nothing to do with the walking in the past. It is not out of the past that he is walking. It is a present need, right now, here and how. It is spontaneous. If Buddha feels hungry, he eats, but it is spontaneous, here and now. The distance has to be understood.

This has been one of the theological problems in the East: Buddha lived for forty years after his enlightenment; what about those actions that he did during the forty years? If they had become seeds then he would have had to be born again. Or is there some difference?

They don't become seeds, they don't become....

You take your food every day at one o'clock in the day. It can be taken in two ways. You look at the clock and suddenly you feel the hunger pains in the stomach. This is hunger out of the past. It is not spontaneous because every day you have been eating at one o'clock. One o'clock reminds you that it is the time to be hungry. Not only does it remind you, it triggers the whole body and the whole body starts feeling hunger. You will say that just by being reminded, one cannot feel hungry -- right. But the body follows your mind. Immediately the body is reminded that it is one o'clock, 'I must be hungry.' The body follows suit: in the stomach you feel the churning of hunger. This is a false hunger created out of the past. If the clock says it is only twelve, if somebody has put the clock one hour backwards, you will look and you will say that there is still one hour -- 'I can go on doing my work' -- there is no hunger.

You live out of the past and habit: your hunger is a habit, your love is a habit, your thirst is a habit, your happiness is a habit, your anger is a habit. You live out of the past. That's why your life is so meaningless, with no significance, with no lustre in it, with no splendor. It is a desert-like phenomenon with no oasis.

A Buddha lives in the spontaneity of the moment. If he feels hunger, he feels hunger not because of the past. Right now, the body is hungry. His hunger is real, true. Right now he feels thirsty. The thirst is there; it has not been triggered by the mind. You live through the mind. Buddha has no mind; the mind has been washed clean. He lives through his being, what soever happens, whatsoever he feels like. That's why people like Buddha can say, 'Now, I am going to die.' You cannot say it. How can you say it? You have never felt anything spontaneous. You feel hungry because the time is there; you feel like loving because an old habit pattern is repeated. You have not known death in the past, so how will you recognize death when death comes? You will not be able to recognize it; death will come. A Buddha recognizes death.

When death came, Buddha told his disciples, 'If you have to ask something you can ask, because I am going to die.' A man who has lived spontaneously will feel hunger when the body is hungry, will feel thirsty when the body is thirsty, will feel death coming when the body is dying. It is simply strange that people die and they cannot see that the body is dying, they cannot feel. They have become so unfeeling, so mechanical, robot-like.

Death is a great phenomenon. When you can feel hunger, why can't you feel death? When you can feel that body is going sleepy, why can't you feel that body is going into death? No, you cannot feel. You can feel only out of the past, and in the past there has been no death so you don't have any experience. The mind carries no memory so when death comes, it comes, but the mind is unaware. Buddha says, 'Now you can ask if you have to ask something, because I am going to die.' And then he sits under a tree and dies consciously.

First he removes himself from the body, then the subtle layers, the subtle body, then he goes on moving inwards. In the fourth step he dissolves. He takes four steps withinwards. In the fourth step, he dissolves; he takes four steps inwards. Buddha doesn't die because of death, he dies himself. And when you die yourself it has a beauty of its own, it has a grace. Then there is no fight.

When a man is aware he lives in the moment, not out of the past. This is the difference: if you live out of the past then the future is created, the wheel of karma moves; if you live out of the present then there is no wheel of karma. You are out of it, you have dropped out of it. No future is created.

The present never creates future, only the past creates future. Then life becomes a moment-to-moment phenomenon with no continuity with the past. You live this moment. When this moment has gone another moment is there. You live another moment, not out of the moment gone but out of your aware ness, alertness, out of your feeling, your being. Then there is no worry, no dreams, no imagination in the future, no hangover from the past. One is simply weightless; one can fly. Gravitation loses meaning. One can open the wings, one can be a bird in the sky, and one can go on and on and on. There is no need to return back. There is nowhere tO come back to; a point of no return is reached.

What is to be done? With the accumulated past karmas you have to do the method of prati-prasav: you have to go back wards, living, reliving so that the wounds are healed. You are finished with the past -- the wound is closed.

The second thing is that when the past account is closed, then you are finished with it: all the records burned, the seeds burned, as if you never existed, as if you are born right this moment; fresh, fresh like the dewdrops in the morning. Then live with awareness. Whatsoever you did with your past memories, now do the same with your present phenomena. You relived with consciousness, now live every moment with consciousness. If you can live every moment with consciousness you don't accumulate karmas, you don't accumulate wounds, you don't accumulate at all. You live an unburdened life.

This is the meaning of sannyas: to live unburdened. Clean the mirror every moment so that no dust gathers, and the mirror will always reflect life as it is. To live an unburdened life, to live a life without any gravitation, to live a life with wings, to live a life of the open sky is to be a sannyasin. In old, ancient books it is said that a sannyasin is a bird of the sky -- he is! Just as the birds in the sky don't leave any footprints, he leaves no footprints. If you walk on the earth, you leave footprints.

A man who is unaware walks on the earth -- not only on the earth but on wet earth, leaves footprints -- the past. A man of awareness flies like a bird; he leaves no footprints in the sky, nothing is left. If you look backwards there is sky, if you look forward there is sky -- no footprints, no memories.

When I say this I don't mean that if a Buddha knows you, he will not remember you. He has memories, but no psychological memories. Mind functions, but it functions as a mechanism, separately. He is not identified with the mind. If you go to Buddha and you say, 'I have been here before, do you remember me?' he will remember you. He will remember you better than anybody else because he has no burdens. He has a clean, mirrorlike mind.

You have to understand the difference, because sometimes people think that when a man becomes perfectly alert and aware and the mind is dropped, he will forget everything. No, he does not carry anything, he remembers. His functioning is better now: mind is more clear, mirror like. He has existential memories, but he doesn't have any psychological memories. The distinction is very subtle.

For example: you came to me yesterday and you were angry at me. You come again today and I will remember you because you had come yesterday. I will remember your face, I will recognize you, but I don't carry the wound of your anger. That is for you to do. I don't carry the wound that you were angry. In the first place I never allowed the wound to be there. When you were angry it was something that you were doing to your self, not to me. It was just a coincidence that I was there. I don't carry the wound. I will not behave as if you are the same person that was angry yesterday. The anger will not be between me and you. The anger will not color the relationship in the present. If anger colors the present relationship, this is psychological memory; a wound is carried.

And a psychological memory is a very falsifying process: you may have come to ask to be forgiven, and if I am carrying the wound, I cannot see your present face which has come to be forgiven, which has come to repent. If I see the old face of yesterday I will still see anger in the eyes, I will still see the enemy in you; and you are no more the enemy if you have repented. The whole night you couldn't sleep, and you have come to be forgiven. I will behave in such a way because I will project yesterday onto your face. That yesterday will destroy the whole possibility of the new being born. I will not accept your repentance, I will not accept that you are feeling sorry. I will think that you are cunning. I will think that there must be something else behind it because the anger, the face of an angry man is still there, in between me and you. I may project it so much that it will become impossible for you to repent. Or, I may project it so deeply that you will completely forget that you had come to be forgiven. My behavior may again become a situation in which you become angry. And if you become angry, my projection is fulfilled, strengthened. This is psychological memory.

Existential memory is okay, it has to be there. A Buddha has to remember his disciples: Anand is Anand and Sariputra is Sariputra. He is never confused about who is Anand and who is Sariputra. He carries the memory but it is just part of the brain mechanism, functioning apart, as if you have a computer in the pocket and the computer carries the memory. Buddha's brain has become a computer in the pocket, a separate phenomenon. It doesn't come into his relationships. He does not carry it always. When it is needed he looks into it, but he is never identified with it.

When a person lives with full awareness in the present -- and with full awareness you cannot live anywhere else because when you are aware, only the present is there; the past, the future are no more, the whole life becomes a present phenomenon -- then no karma, no seeds of karma are accumulated. You are freed from your own bondage, the bondage created by yourself.

And you can be free. You need not wait for the whole world to be freed first. You can be blissful. You need not wait for the whole world to be freed from miseries. If you wait, you will wait in vain -- it is not going to happen.

This is an inner phenomenon: to be free from bondage. You can live totally free in a totally unfree world. You can live totally free; even in a prison it makes no difference, because it is an inner attitude. If your inner seeds are broken, you are free. You cannot make Buddha a prisoner. Throw him in the prison but you cannot make him a prisoner. He will live there, he will live there with full awareness. If you are in full awareness you are always in moksha, always in freedom. Awareness is freedom, unawareness is bondage.

AS LONG AS THE ROOTS REMAIN, KARMA IS FULFILLED IN REBIRTH THROUGH CLASS, SPAN OF LIFE, AND TYPES OF EXPERIENCES.

If you carry the seeds of karma, those seeds will be fulfilled again and again in millions of ways. You will again see the situations and opportunities where your karmas can be fulfilled.

For example, you may have many riches, you may be a rich man. You may be wealthy but you are a miser and you live a life of a poor man -- this is karma. In the past lives you have lived like a poor man. Now you have riches but you cannot live those riches. You will find rationalizations. You will think that the whole world is poor so you have to live a poor life. But you will not donate your riches to the poor, you will live a poor life, and the riches will be lying in the bank. Or, you may think that a poor life is the religious life, so you have to live a poor life. This is a karma, a seed of poverty. You may have riches but you cannot live them; the seed will persist.

You may be a beggar and you can live a rich life. You can be a beggar, and sometimes beggars are richer than rich people. They live freely. They don't worry about what is going to happen. They have nothing to lose, so whatsoever they have, they enjoy it. It cannot be less than what it is, so they enjoy. A poor man lives a rich life if he carries the seeds of a rich life, and those seeds will always find possibilities, opportunities to be fulfilled. Wherever you are, it will not make much difference. You will have to live through your past.

VIRTUE BRINGS PLEASURE; VICE BRINGS PAIN.

If you have done virtuous karmas, good actions, then you will have much pleasure around you. Even with nothing around you, you will have a pleasant attitude towards life, a pleasant outlook. You will be able to see the bright lining in dark clouds. You will enjoy simple things, small things, but you will enjoy them so much that they will be rich, richer than rich things. You can walk like an emperor in a beggar's robe. If you have done virtuous karmas, pleasure follows. If you have done vice, bad karmas -- violent, aggressive, harming to others, then pain follows. It is just an outcome, a natural outcome, remember.

Christians, Jews, Mohammedans think that God punishes you because you do bad. You do good and God appreciates you, gives you gifts, presents of pleasant things. Hindus are more scientific: they don't bring God in. They simply say, 'This is a law' -- just like a law of gravitation, if you walk balanced, you don't fall, you enjoy the walk; if you walk unbalanced like a drunkard, you fall and a bone is fractured. It is not that God is punishing you because you did wrong, it is just a simple law of gravitation. You eat well, good things, health follows; you eat wrongly, wrong things, disease follows. Not that somebody is punishing you. Nobody is there to punish you, just the law, just nature -- Tao, rit.

This law of karma is simple. If you bring God in then things become complicated, very complicated. Sometimes a bad man is enjoying life, and sometimes we see a good man suffering, so the question arises about what God is doing. He seems to be unjust. If He is just, then the bad should suffer and the good should enjoy life more.

The problem is: if God is absolutely just, then you cannot make Him compassionate, because then where will compassion fit? If a God is just then He cannot be compassionate, because compassion means that if somebody has done wrong but goes on praying, you forgive him. Hence, prayer becomes very meaningful in the Christian, Jewish, and Mohammedan worlds -- 'Pray, because if you pray God will forgive you. He is compassion.' That means that He will be unjust. If a man has not prayed and he has been a sinner, he will be punished and thrown in hell. And a man who has prayed and has been a greater sinner will enter heaven. This seems to be unjust. Just because of prayer? And what is prayer? Is it a sort of bribery? What is a prayer? A sort of buttering? What do you do in prayer? -- you 'butter' God.

Hindus say, 'No, don't bring God in because complications will arise. Either He will be just -- then there will be no space for compassion, or He will have compassion -- then He cannot be just.' Because of this people will think that good and bad deeds are not really relevant, only prayer, a pilgrimage to the sacred place. Hindus say, 'It is a simple law of nature; prayer will not help. If you have done bad you will have to suffer. No prayer can help.' So don't wait for prayer, and don't waste your time in praying. If you have done bad you will have to suffer; if you have done good you will enjoy.

But nobody is distributing these things to you, there is no personality in the world -- it is a law, impersonal. This is more scientific. It creates less complexities and solves more problems. The Hindu concept about the law of nature, rit, is in every way compatible with the scientific attitude towards the world. Then what can you do? You committed bad, you committed good; pleasure or pain will follow like a shadow. How does it come? What should be done?

There are two attitudes in the East: one is that of Patanjali and the other is that of Mahavir. Mahavir says, 'If you have done wrong then you have to do right to balance it, otherwise you will have to suffer.' That seems to be too much, because for many lives you have been doing millions of things. If everything has to be balanced, it will take millions of lives. And even then the account will not be closed because you will have to live these millions of lives, and you will be continuously doing things which will create more future. Everything leads to another thing, one thing to another; everything is intertwined. Then there seems to be no possibility of freedom.

Patanjali's attitude is another attitude. It goes deeper. The question is not of balancing the good; the past cannot be undone. You have killed a man in the past -- Mahavir's attitude is, 'Now you do good things in the world.' But even if you do good things, that man is not revived. That man is killed, killed for ever. That murder will remain forever as a wound inside you. You may console yourself that you have created so many temples and dharamsalas, and you have donated millions of rupees to people. Maybe it's a consolation, but the guilt will be there. How can you balance a murder? It cannot be balanced. You cannot undo the past. Patanjali says, 'The past is nothing but memory; it is a dream phenomenon, it is no more there. You can undo it just by going into pratiprasav. You go backwards, relive it: murder that man again in your memory, in your reliving. Feel that wound again. Feel the pain of when you murdered the man. Live the whole misery again and this is how that wound will be healed and the past will be washed.'

With Patanjali liberation seems possible, with Mahavir it seems to be impossible. That's why Jainism could not spread very much. Moksha seems to be almost impossible, unbelievable. Patanjali has become one of the bases of the Eastern esotericism. Mahavir remained on the fringe, just on the boundary. He could never become the centered force. He's much too concerned with action, and he believes in the reality of actions too much. Patanjali says, 'Actions are just like dreams. The whole world is nothing but a big stage, and the whole life is nothing but a drama. You did it because you were unaware. If you had been aware, there would be no problem.'

Now become aware, and bring the energy of awareness to your past. It will bum the whole past: pain and pleasure will both disappear, good and bad will both disappear. And when both disappear, when you transcend the duality of good and bad, you are liberated. Then there is neither pleasure nor pain. Then there comes a silence, a profound silence. In this silence arises a new phenomenon, satchitananda. In that silence, in that profound silence, truth happens to you, consciousness happens to you, bliss happens to you. I am all in favor of Patanjali.

That's why Mahavir's whole standpoint became more and more moralistic. The Jain religion has completely forgotten yoga. You will not find Jain munis, monks, doing yoga -- never. They are just balancing their actions. They are continuously thinking of what to do and what not to do. They have completely forgotten how to be. What to do and what not to do, 'should' and 'should nots' -- their whole standpoint is concerned with actions -- don't walk in the dark, because some insects may be killed, and then the karma; don't eat in the night because in the dark, some insects may fall, flies may fall in the food and you may eat them, and it will be a murder. Don't eat this, don't do that. Don't even walk in the rains because when the earth is wet, many insects walk on the earth, many insects are born in the rains. They are continuously worried about actions, karmas; what ro do and what not to do. Their whole standpoint is just concerned with the outward phenomena. They have completely forgotten how to be. They don't do yoga, they don't meditate. They are action-oriented; Patanjali is consciousness-oriented.

Many more people attain to nirvana through Patanjali. Through Mahavir, rarely, very few; the whole standpoint seems to be impossible. So listen to Patanjali well. Not only listen, but try to imbibe the spirit. Much is possible through him. He's one of the greatest scientists of the inner journey in the world.

 

Next: Chapter 8, The psychology of the buddhas: First Question

 

Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Yoga Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

 

 
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