Book 2, Sutra 30

30. SELF-RESTRAINT, THE FIRST STEP OF YOGA, IS COMPRISED OF THE FOLLOWING FIVE VOWS: NONVIOLENCE, TRUTHFULNESS, HONESTY, SEXUAL CONTINENCE, AND NONPOSSESSIVENESS.

Book 2, Sutra 31

31. THESE FIVE VOWS, WHICH CONSTITUTE THE GREAT VOW, EXTEND TO ALL THE SEVEN STAGES OF ENLIGHTENMENT REGARDLESS OF CLASS, PLACE, TIME, OR CIRCUMSTANCE.

THE five vows of ahimsa, satya, achaurya, brahmacharya, aparigra, are the very base, the foundation. They have to be understood as deeply as possible because there is a possibility to move without fulfilling these five steps which constitute the first step of yam.

You can find yogis and fakirs all over the world who have moved without fulfilling these five steps of the first step. Then they become powerful, but their power is violent. Then they are very, very powerful, but their power is not spiritual. Then they become sort of black magicians; they can harm others. Power is dangerous; it can help, it can harm. Not only to others is it dangerous, it is dangerous to the person himself. It can destroy you; it can give you a rebirth. It depends. These five vows are just a guarantee so that the power which arises out of discipline is not misused.

You can see "yogis" displaying their power. That is impossible for a yogi, because if the yogi has really fulfilled these five vows he will no longer be an exhibitionist; he cannot display. He can no longer try to play with miracles -- that is not possible for him. Miracles happen around him, but he is not the doer.

These five vows kill your ego completely. Either the ego can exist or these five vows can be fulfilled. Both are not possible. And before you enter into the world of power -- and yoga is a world of power, infinite power -- it is very, very necessarily needed that you drop the ego outside the temple. If the ego is with you there is every possibility that the power is going to be misused. Then the whole effort becomes futile, a mockery, in fact ridiculous.

These five vows are to purify you, to make you a vehicle for the power to descend and for the power to become a beneficial influence, a blessing to others. They are a must. No one should bypass them. You can bypass. In fact to bypass them is easier than to go through them because they are difficult, but then your building will be without a foundation. It is going to fall any day, collapse any day. It may kill neighbors; it may kill you yourself. This is the first thing to be understood.

The second thing: the other day Narendra asked a question, a very relevant one. He said, "In Sanskrit yam means death and yam also means inner discipline. Is there any correlation between the two, death and inner discipline?" There is. That too has to be understood. Sanskrit is a very potential language. In fact no language exists in the world which is comparably potential. And each word has been coined with much care and effort -- Sanskrit is not a natural language. All other languages are natural. The very word "Sanskrit" means created, refined, not natural. The natural language of India is called Prakrit; Prakrit means natural, that which has come out of use. Sanskrit is a refined phenomenon. It is not like natural flowers: it is like essence, refined. Much care and effort has been taken to coin single words, and it has been thought about and brooded over so that all the possibilities should be implied in it. This word yam has to be understood. It means the god of death; it also means inner discipline. But what necessary connection can there be between death and inner discipline? There seems none, but there is.

On the earth, up to now, two types of cultures have existed -- both lopsided, both unbalanced. Not yet has it been possible to develop a culture which is total, whole, and holy. In the West. right now, sex is given total freedom; but you may not have watched -- death is suppressed. Nobody wants to talk about death; everybody is talking about sex. A vast literature of pornography exists about sex. Magazines like PLAYBOY exist -- obscene, morbid, ill, neurotic. A neurotic obsession about sex exists in the West, but death? Death is the taboo word. If you talk about death people will think you are morbid -- "Why are you talking about death?" Eat, drink, be merry  -- that's the motto. "Why do you bring death in? Keep it out. Don't talk about it."

In the East sex has been suppressed, but death is talked about freely. Exactly like the sexual, obscene pornographic literature, in the East a different type of pornography exists. I call it the pornography of death -- as much obscene and morbid as the pornography of the West about sex. I have come across scriptures.... And you can find them anywhere; almost all Indian scriptures are full of death pornography. They talk about death too much. They never talk about sex; sex is the taboo. They talk about death.

All so-called mahatmas in India go on talking about death. They go on hinting about death continuously. They say, if you love a woman, "What are you doing? What is a woman? -- just a skin bag. And inside there are all sorts of dirty things." And they bring up all those sorts of dirty things; and it seems they enjoy. It is morbid. They talk about the mucus inside the body, the blood, the flesh; they talk about the stomach, about the belly full of excreta, the bladder full of urine. "This is your beautiful woman. Bag of dirt! And you are falling in love with this bag. Be alert."

But this is something to understand: in the East when they want to make you aware that life is dirty they bring in the woman; in the West when they want to make you aware that life is beautiful they again bring in the woman. Look at PLAYBOY: plastic girls, so beautiful. They don't exist in the world; they are not real. They are manufactured photographic tricks -- and everything has been done, retouched again and again. And they become the ideals. and thousands of people fantasize about them and dream about them.

The sexual pornography depends on the body of the woman and the death pornography also depends on the body of the woman. And then they say, "You are falling in love? This young woman soon is going to become old. Soon she will he a dirty old hag. Be alert, and don't fall in love, because soon this woman is going to die: then you will weep and cry. and then you will be in suffering." If you have to bring life in, the body of the woman is needed. If you have to bring death in, the body of the woman is needed.

Man seems to be continuously obsessed with the body of the woman -- whether they are playboys or mahatmas makes no difference.

But why? It always happens: whenever a society suppresses sex it expresses death; whenever a society suppresses death it becomes expressive about sex. Because death and sex are the two polarities of life. Sex means life, because life arises out of it. Life is a sexual phenomenon -- and death is the end of it.

And if you think about both together, there seems to be a contradiction; you cannot reconcile sex and death. How to reconcile it? It is easier to forget one and remember the other. If you remember both it will be very difficult for your mind to manage how they exist together -- and they do exist together, they do cohere together. They are not in fact two, but the same energy in two states: active and inactive, yin and yang.

Have you watched it? While making love to a woman there comes a moment of orgasm where you become afraid, fearful, you start trembling; because at the highest peak of orgasm death and life both exist together. You experience life at its peak, and you also experience death at its depth. The peak and the depth both available at one moment -- that's the fear of orgasm. People desire it because it is life, and people avoid it because it is death. They desire it because it is one of the most beautiful moments, ecstatic, and they want to escape from it because it is one of the most dangerous moments also: because death opens its mouth in it.

A man of awareness will become immediately aware that death and sex are one energy: and a total culture, a whole culture, a holy culture, will accept both. It will not be lopsided; it will not move to one extreme and avoid the other. Each moment you are both life and death. To understand this is to transcend duality. The whole effort of yoga is: how to transcend.

Yam is meaningful because when a person becomes aware of death, only then, a life of self-discipline is possible. If you are only aware of sex. Life, and you have been avoiding death, escaping from it, closing your eyes to it, keeping it always at the back, throwing it into the unconscious, then you will not create a life of self-discipline. For what? Then your life will be a life of indulgence -- eat, drink. be merry. Nothing is wrong in it, but, in itself, this is not the whole picture. This is just a part, and when you take the part as the whole, you miss -- you miss tremendously.

Animals are there without any awareness of death: that's why no possibility for Patanjali to teach animals. No possibility because no animal will be ready for self-discipline. The animal will ask, "For what?" There is life only, there is no death, because the animal is not aware that he is going to die. If you become aware that you are going to die, then immediately you start rethinking about life. Then you would like the death to be absorbed in life.

When death is absorbed in life yam is born: a life of discipline. Then you live but you always live with the remembrance of death. You move but you always know that you are moving towards death. You enjoy but you always know that this is not going to last forever. Death becomes your shadow, part of your being, part of your perspective. You have absorbed death... now self-discipline will be possible. Now you will think, "How to live?" because life is not the goal now: death is also part of it. "How to live?" that you can live and die also beautifully. "How to live?" that not only does life become a crescendo of bliss, but death becomes the highest, because death is the climax of life.

To live in such a way that you become capable of living totally and you become capable of dying totally, that s the whole meaning of self-discipline. Self-discipline is not a suppression; it is to live a directed life, a life with the sense of direction. It is to live a life fully alert and aware of death. Then your river of life has both the banks. Life and death, and the river of consciousness flows between these two. Anybody who is trying to live life denying death its part is trying to move along one bank; his river of consciousness cannot be total. He will lack something; something very beautiful he will lack. His life will be superficial -- there will be no depth in it. Without death there is no depth.

And if you move to the other extreme as Indians have done -- they start living with death continuously: afraid, fearful, praying. doing things just how to become deathless, immortal -- then they stop living at all. That too is an obsession. They will also flow along one bank: their life will also be a tragedy.

West is a tragedy, East is a tragedy -- because a total life has not yet been possible. Is it possible to have a beautiful sex life, remembering death? Is it possible to eat, and eat blissfully, remembering death? Is it possible to love, and love deeply, knowing well that you are going to die and the beloved is going to die? If it is possible then a total life becomes possible. Then you are absolutely balanced; then you are complete. Then you lack nothing; then you will have a fulfillment; a deep contentment will descend on you.

The life of yam is a life of balance. These five vows of Patanjali are to give you a balance. But you can misunderstand them and you can create again another unbalanced life. Yoga is not against indulgence; yoga is for balance. Yoga says, "Be alive but be always ready to die also." It looks contradictory. Yoga says, "Enjoy. But, remember, this is not your home. This is an overnight stay." Nothing is wrong: even if you are enjoying in a dharmasala and it is a fullmoon night, nothing is wrong. Enjoy it, but don't take the dharmasala to be your home, because tomorrow we leave. We will be thankful for this overnight stay, we will be grateful -- it was good while it lasted -- but don't ask it to last forever. If you ask that it should last forever, this is one extreme; and if you don't enjoy at all because it is not going to last forever, this is another extreme. And in both the ways you remain half.

If you try to understand me, this is my whole effort: to make you whole and total so all the contradictions are absorbed and a harmony arises. I don't want you to become monotonous. A life of ordinary indulgence is monotonous. A life of ordinary yoga is also monotonous, boring. A life which comprehends all contradictions in it, which has many notes in it but, still, all notes fall in a harmony; that life is a rich life. And to become that rich life, to me, is yoga.

And these five vows are not to cut you from life, they are to join you. That emphasis has to be remembered because many people have used these five vows to cut themselves from life. They are not meant for that -- they are meant for just the opposite.

For example, the first is ahimsa, nonviolence. People have used it to cut themselves from life because they think if you are in life there will be some violence or other. There are Jains in India; they believe in nonviolence. That is their whole religion. You see a Jain monk: he escapes from everything because everywhere he finds there is a possibility of violence. Jains stopped cultivation -- gardening, farming -- because if you are doing farming, gardening, cultivating, then there will be violence because you will have to cut many plants and every plant has a life. So Jains completely dropped but of agriculture.

They could not go to war, because there will be violence. All their teachers were warriors; they came from the kshatriya clan. Mahavir and all other teerthankeras, they all came from the kshatriyas, but their followers are all merchants, businessmen. What has happened? To war they cannot go; the army they cannot join. So they cannot be warriors because there is violence; they cannot be agriculturists because there is violence. And nobody wants to be a sudra, nobody wants to be an "untouchable" and clean other people's latrines and wash other people's houses -- nobody wants -- so that they cannot become. Brahmins they cannot become because their whole religion was a revolt against brahmins. So the only possibility that remained was that they become only merchants.

There are Jain monks who are even afraid to breathe because in breathing many lives are killed. Very small lifes are moving in the air. It is full of germs, very minute germs; you cannot see them with the naked eye. When you breathe in, they die; when you breathe out, your hot air coming out kills them. So they have even become afraid of breathing. They cannot walk in the night because maybe some insect in the dark... then there is violence. They cannot move in the rainy season because in the rainy season many insects and many flies, many ants, are born, and everywhere life is alive. If you move on wet ground there is a possibility.... It is said that a Jain monk should not even turn his side in the night while asleep, because if you turn your side too many times you may kill a few insects; you should remain on one side.

This is moving to the extreme. This is moving to absurdity. So remember, people have used nonviolence against life. And nonviolence means such a deep love of life that you cannot kill: you love life so much that you will not like to hurt anybody. It is deep love, not rejection.

Of course, in being alive a little violence is a must, but that is not violence, because you are not doing it willfully. So remember, only that is violence which you do willfully. If I am breathing, I am not breathing willfully. Breathing is going automatically -- you are not breathing; you are not the doer. You try to stop it and then you will know. Just for a single second you can stop, and it comes rushing out or rushing in. It happens you are not responsible for it. Food, you will have to eat. Whatsoever you eat will be a sort of violence. Even if you pluck fruits from the trees you are hurting the trees.

Jains started not to eat meat. Good -- because that can be avoided. That which can be avoided is beautiful. Then they became afraid of eating fruits from the trees because if you take the fruit the tree is hurt. So what to do? Wait... when the fruit is ripe and falls on the ground. That too is good, nothing is wrong, but even if the fruit has fallen on the ground it contains millions of seeds -- and each seed could have become a tree, and in each tree there was the possibility of millions of fruits again. So you are eating all those possibilities -- you are violent.

You can stretch a principle to absurdity: and then there is only one possibility -- commit suicide. But that too is violent: you arc killing yourself. Not only yourself, in your bloodstream there are seven million germs; they will be killed if you commit suicide. So nowhere to go -- not even suicide is possible.

This will become a very absurd life, worried, tense. And you were in search of a relaxed, calm and quiet life; and this life will become so tense and such anguish.... You can see -- go, look at Jain monks' faces. You will never find their faces blissful -- impossible. If you live in such total fear that everything seems to be wrong, you are surrounded by guilt and guilt and nothing else, and whatsoever you do is sin more or less.... Even to speak a word is to commit sin because when you speak, more hot air comes out of the mouth: it kills thousands of small microbes. You drink water and you kill; you cannot avoid. Then what to do?

Patanjali is not against life; he is a lover. Nobody who knows is against life. Then nonviolence simply means love life so much -- to me, nonviolence is love -- love life so much that you would not like to hurt anybody, that's all. But in sheer living many things will happen which you cannot help. Don't be worried about them, otherwise you will go mad. Don't be worried about them. Remember only one thing: that you have not been killing anybody willfully. And even if you have to harm somebody unwillfully, you have a feeling of love.

Go to the tree, and if you have to pluck the fruit because you are hungry and you will die if you don't pluck the fruit, then thank the tree. First ask the permission of the tree: "I am going to take this fruit. This is a trespass, but I am dying and I have to do it. But I will serve you in many ways. I w;ll pay it back. I will give you more water; I will take more care of you. So whatsoever I am taking, I will give you back -- even more than that." To love life, to help life. to be beneficial to life -- to everything that is alive, be a blessing. And if you have to do something which you feel could be avoided, first, avoid it; if it cannot be avoided then try to repay it back.

And there is a difference. Now even scientists say there is a difference. If you go to the tree and ask the permission, the tree doesn't feel hurt. It is no longer a trespass; the permission has been asked. The tree in fact feels good that you came. The tree feels happy that she could help somebody in need. The tree is richer because you came and the tree could share. The fruits were going to fall anyhow. The tree could share with somebody -- you not only helped yourself, you have helped the tree to grow in consciousness.

To be nonviolent means to be beneficial, to be helpful to everybody -- to yourself and to others also. This is the first yam; the first self-discipline is love.

Somebody asked St. Augustine, "I am a very illiterate person and I don't know what to do and what not to do; and scriptures are many and doctrines millions, and I am confused because somebody says something, somebody else says just the opposite -- and I am paralyzed over what to do and what not to do. You are a great man, wise, a saint; just tell me one word, so without any confusion I can follow it."

St. Augustine was a great preacher. He could have talked for hours, but nobody has asked for the whole religion in one word. He closed his eyes, meditated, because it was difficult, and then he opened his eyes and said, "Then you go and love. If you love then everything is okay."

Nonviolence means love. If you love then everything is okayed. If you don't love, even if you become nonviolent it is useless.

And why does Patanjali make it the first yam, first discipline? Love is the first discipline, the very base. If a trace remains in you to hurt others, when you will become powerful you will become dangerous. That trace will become the danger. Not a single trace should remain in you "to hurt"; and it is there in everybody.

And you hurt in millions of ways -- and you hurt in such ways that nobody can defend. Sometimes you hurt in "good" ways, with good reasons, rationalizations. You say something to a person which may be true, and you say, "I am saying the truth," but deep down the desire is to hurt the man by saying the truth. Then the truth is worse than a lie; it should not be told. If you can't make your truth sweet and nice and beautiful -- better not to say it. And always look within for what you are saying it. What is the deep desire? Do you want to hurt the other in the name of truth? Then your truth is poisoned already: it is no longer religious, it is no longer moral -- it is already immoral. Drop that truth.

I tell you, even a lie is good if it is spoken out of love, and a truth is bad it is spoken just to hurt.

These are not dead principles. You have to understand them, and you have to understand the knack how to use them. I have seen people using good principles for bad reasons, living a good life for bad reasons. You can be very pious just to feel egoistic: then your piousness is a sin. You can be a man of character just to feel proud that you arc a man of character. Better it was that you were a man of no character; at least this ego would not have been there. If the character is only feeding the ego, it is worse than characterlessness. So always look deep down. Always be a depth-searcher into your own being: what you are doing, why you are doing. And don't be satisfied with superficial rationalizations -- they are thousands and you can convince yourself that you were right:

You come home. You are feeling angry because the boss in the office didn't behave well. No boss ever behaves well. Just because he is a boss, whatsoever he does looks bad, appears bad, because deep down you resent that you are an underdog and somebody is a topdog. You resent the fact of being an underdog, so whatsoever is said looks bad, but you cannot react; it will be too costly. You come home full of anger and then you start beating your child, and you say, "... because you were playing with bad boys." The child has been playing with the bad boys always. And who are the bad boys? Because the mothers of the other bad boys are beating their children because they were playing with your bad son. Who are the bad boys? But you are rationalizing. Anger is there, bubbling. You want to throw it on someone and, of course, only on a weaker person can it be thrown.

Children are in that way very useful. The father is angry, he beats the boy; the mother is angry, she beats the boy; the teacher is angry, he beats the boy; and everybody is throwing things on the small child which they cannot throw-anywhere else.

This has been my feeling, that if a couple lives without children there is more possibility of divorce, if they have children, less possibility of divorce because whenever the wife is angry at the husband she can beat the children; whenever the husband is against the wife he can beat the children. Children are like a therapy. They help, they help tremendously. That's why in the East where there are so many children to each couple, divorce doesn't exist. In the West it is difficult now, marriage becoming impossible, because children are not there. They were needed as a deep therapy. They are the cementing force; they help catharsis.

Remember, never do a good thing for a bad reason, because then it is no longer good and you are deceiving.

Nonviolence is the first -- love is always the first. And if you learn how to love, you learn everything. By and by the very phenomenon of love becomes an environ around you: wherever you move, a grace moves with you, wherever you go, you go with gifts, you share your being. Nonviolence is not a negative thing; it is a positive feeling of love. The word is negative, "nonviolence." The word is negative because people are violent, and violence has become such a positive force in their being that a negative word is needed to negate it. Only the word is negative: the phenomenon is positive: it is love.

"Nonviolence, truthfulness...." Truthfulness means authenticity, to be true, not to be false -- not to use masks: whatsoever is your real face, show it... and at whatsoever the cost.

Remember, that doesn't mean that you have to unmask others. If they are happy with their lies it is for them to decide. Don't go and unmask anybody, because this is how people think. They think they have to be truthful, authentic; they mean they have to go and make everybody nude -- "Because why are you hiding your body? These clothes are not needed." No. Please remember, be truthful to yourself. You are not needed to reform anybody else in the world. If you can grow yourself, that's enough. Don't be a reformer, and don't try to teach others, and don't try to change others. If you change, that's enough message.

To be authentic means: to remain true to your own being. How to remain true? Three things have to be remembered. One, never listen to anybody, what they say for you to be: always listen to your inner voice, what you would like to be. Otherwise your whole life will be wasted. Your mother wants you to be an engineer, your father wants you to be a doctor, and you want to be a poet. What to do? Of course the mother is right because it is more economical, more financially helpful, to be an engineer. The father is also right, to be a doctor; it is a good commodity in the market. it has a market value. "A poet? Have you gone mad? Are you crazy?"

Poets are people who are cursed. Nobody wants them. There is no need for them; the world can exist without poetry. There will be no trouble because poetry is not there. The world cannot exist without engineers; the world needs engineers. If you are needed you are valuable; if you are not needed you don't carry any value. But if you want to be a poet, be a poet. You may be a beggar. Good. You may not get very rich out of it -- don't worry about it, because you may become a great engineer and you may earn much money, but you will never have any fulfillment. You will always hanker, your inner being will hanker, to be a poet,

I have heard that one great scientist, a great surgeon who was awarded a Nobel prize, was asked, "When the Nobel prize was awarded to you, you didn't look very happy. What is the matter?" He said, "I always wanted to be a dancer. I never wanted to be a surgeon in the first place, and now not only have I become a surgeon, I have become a very successful surgeon; and this is a burden. And I wanted to be just a dancer -- and I remain a lousy dancer. That is my pain, anguish. Whenever I see somebody dancing, I feel so miserable, in such a hell. What will I do with this Nobel prize? It can't become a dance to me; it can't give me a dance."

Remember, be true to your inner voice. It may lead you in danger; then go in danger, but remain true to the inner voice. Then there is a possibility that one day you will come to a state where you can dance with inner fulfillment. Always look, the first thing is your being; and don't allow others to manipulate and control you. And they are many: everybody is ready to control you, everybody is ready to change you, everybody is ready to give you a direction you have not asked for. Everybody is giving you a guide for your life. The guide exists within you; you carry the blueprint.

To be authentic means to be true to oneself. It is a very, very dangerous phenomenon; rare people can do that. But whenever people do it, they achieve. They achieve such beauty, such grace, such contentment, that you cannot imagine. If everybody looks so frustrated, the reason is that nobody has listened to his own voice.

You wanted to marry a girl, but the girl was a Mohammedan and you are a Hindu brahmin. Your parents wouldn't allow. The society wouldn't accept; it was dangerous. The girl was poor and you are rich. So you married a rich woman, Hindu, brahmin by caste, accepted by everybody -- but not by your heart. So now you live an ugly life. Now you go to the prostitute, but even prostitutes won't help you. You have prostituted your whole life. You wasted your whole life.

Always listen to the inner voice, and don't listen to anything else. Thousand and one are the temptations around you because many people are there peddling their things. It is a supermarket, the world, and everybody is interested in selling his thing to you; everybody is a salesman. If you listen to too many salesmen you will become mad. Don't listen to anybody, just close your eyes and listen to the inner voice. That is what meditation is all about: to listen to the inner voice. This is the first thing.

Then the second thing -- if you have done the first thing only then the second becomes possible: never wear a mask. If you are angry, be angry. It is risky, but don't smile, because that is to be untrue. But you have been taught that when you are angry, smile; then your smile becomes false, a mask. Hmm?... just an exercise of the lips, nothing else. The heart full of anger, poison, and the lips smiling -- you become a false phenomenon.

Then the other thing also happens: when you want to smile you cannot smile. Your whole mechanism is topsy-turvy because when you wanted to be angry you weren't, when you wanted to hate you didn't. Now you want to love; suddenly you find that the mechanism doesn't function. Now you want to smile; you have to force it. Really your heart is full of smile and you want to laugh loudly, but you cannot laugh, something chokes in the heart, something chokes in the throat. The smile doesn't come, or even if it comes it is a very pale and dead smile. It doesn't make you happy. You don't bubble up with it. It is not a radiance around you.

When you want to be angry, be angry. Nothing is wrong in being angry. If you want to laugh, laugh. Nothing's wrong in laughing loudly. By and by you will see that your whole system is functioning. When it functions, really, it has a hum around it, just as a car, when everything is going good, hums. The driver who loves the car knows that now everything is functioning well, there is an organic unity -- the mechanism is functioning well. You can see: whenever a person's mechanism is functioning well, you can hear the hum around him. He walks, but his step has a dance in it. He talks, but his words carry a subtle poetry in them. He looks at you, and he really looks; it is not just lukewarm, it is really warm. When he touches you he really touches you; you can feel his energy moving into your body, a current of life being transferred... because his mechanism is functioning well.

Don't wear masks; otherwise you will create dysfunctions in your mechanism -- blocks. There are many blocks in your body. A person who has been suppressing anger, his jaw becomes blocked. All the anger comes up to the jaw and then stops there. His hands become ugly. They don't have the graceful movement of a dancer, no, because the anger comes into the fingers -- and blocked. Remember, anger has two sources to be released from. One is teeth, another is fingers: because all animals, when they are angry -- they will bite you with the teeth or they will start tearing you with the hands. So the nails and the teeth are the two points from where the anger is released.

I have a suspicion that wherever anger is suppressed too much, people have teeth trouble. Their teeth go wrong because too much energy is there and never released. And anybody who suppresses anger will eat more; angry people will always eat more because the teeth need some exercise. Angry people will smoke more. Angry people will talk more; they can become obsessive talkers because, somehow, the jaw needs exercise so that the energy is released a little bit. And angry people's hands will become knotted, ugly. If the energy was released they could have become beautiful hands.

If you suppress anything, in the body there is some part, corresponding part, to the emotion. If you don't want to cry, your eyes will lose the luster because tears are needed; they are a very alive phenomenon. When once in a while you weep and cry, really you go into it -- you become it -- and tears start flowing down your eyes; your eyes are cleansed, your eyes again become fresh, young, and virgin. That's why women have more beautiful eyes, because they can still cry. Man has lost his eyes because they have a wrong notion that men should not cry. If somebody, a small boy cries, even the parents, others, say, "What are you doing? Are you being a sissy?" What nonsense, because God has given you -- man, woman  -- the same tear glands. If man was not to weep, there would have been no tear glands. Simple mathematics. Why do the tear glands exist in man in the same proportion as they exist in woman? Eyes need weeping and crying, and it is really beautiful if you can cry and weep wholeheartedly.

Remember, if you cannot cry and weep wholeheartedly, you cannot laugh also, because that is the other polarity. People who can laugh can also cry; people who cannot cry cannot laugh. And you may have observed sometimes in children: if they laugh loudly and long they start crying -- because both things are joined. In the villages I have heard mothers saying to their children, "Don't laugh too much; otherwise you will start crying." Really true, because the phenomena are not different -- just the same energy moves to the opposite poles.

Second thing: don't use masks -- be true whatsoever the cost.

And the third thing about authenticity: always remain in the present -- because all falseness enters either from the past or from the future. That which has passed has passed -- don't bother about it. And don't carry it as a burden; otherwise it will not allow you to be authentic to the present. And all that has not come has not come yet -- don't unnecessarily be bothered about the future; otherwise that will come into the present and destroy it. Be true to the present, and then you will be authentic. To be here-now is to be authentic. No past, no future: this moment all, this moment the whole eternity.

These three things, and you attain what Patanjali calls truthfulness. Then whatsoever you say will be true. Ordinarily you think you have to be alert to say the truth. I'm not saying that. I am saying: you create authenticity -- whatsoever you say will he true. An authentic man cannot lie; whatsoever he says will be true.

In yoga we have a tradition -- it may not even be possible for you to believe it; I believe it because I have known it, I experienced it: if a real, authentic man lies, the lie will become true, because an authentic man cannot lie. That's why in the old scriptures it is said, "If you are practicing authenticity, be alert not to say anything against anybody -- because it can become true." We have many stories of great seers who said something in anger, but they were so authentic....

You must have heard the name of Durvasa -- a great seer, authentic man. but if he says something, even he cannot cancel it. If he curses you, the curse is going to come true. If he says, "You will die tomorrow!" you will die tomorrow, because from that source of authenticity the lie is not possible. The whole existence follows an authentic man. And even then he cannot cancel it.

It is beautiful. That's why people go to great seers for their blessing: if they bless, it is going to come true. That is the meaning, nothing else. They go and they ask blessings. If the seer gives the blessings then they are not worried; it is going to happen now, because how can an authentic man say a lie? Even if it is a lie, it is going to be true. So I don't say, "Tell the truth." I say, "Be authentic and whatsoever you say is going to be true."

The third is asteya, achaurya -- nonstealing, honesty. The mind is a great thief. In many ways it goes on stealing. You may not be stealing things from people, but you can steal thoughts. I say something to you; you go out and you pretend that that is your thought. You have stolen it, you are a thief -- you may not be aware what you are doing.

Says Patanjali, "Be in a state of nonstealing." Knowledge, things -- nothing should be stolen. You should be original and should always be aware that "these things don't belong to me." Remain empty, it is better, but don't fill your house with stolen things, because if you go on stealing you will lose all originality. Then you will never be able to find your own space: you will be filled with others' opinions, thoughts, things. And, finally, they don't prove of any value. Only that which comes out of you is valuable. In fact only that which comes out of you can you possess, nothing else. You can steal but you cannot possess.

A thief is never at ease, cannot be -- he is always afraid of being caught. And even if nobody catches him he knows that this is not his. This remains a constant burden in his being.

Patanjali says, "Don't be a thief -- in any way, in any dimension," so that your originality can flower. Don't burden yourself with stolen things and thoughts, philosophies, religions. Allow your inner space to flower.

Fourth is brahmacharya. This word is really very difficult to translate. It has been translated as "sexual continence," celibacy. That's not right, because brahmacharya is a wide word, very vast. Sexual celibacy is a very narrow thing; it is one part of it, but not the who]e of it. The word brahmacharya means "living like a god." The very word means living like a god, living a life divine. Of course, in a life divine, sex disappears.

Brahmacharya is not against sex. If it is against sex then sex can never disappear. Brahmacharya is a transmutation of the energy: it is not being against sex, rather it is changing the whole energy from the sex center to the higher centers. When it reaches to the seventh center of man, the sahasrar, then brahmacharya happens. If it remains in the first center, muladhar, then sex; when it reaches to the seventh center, then samadhi. The same energy moves. It is not being against it; rather, it is an art how to use it.

A man who is indulging in sex is a suicidal man. He is destroying his own energy. He is like a man who goes to the market, gives his diamonds, and purchases pebbles -- and comes home happy that he has done a great bargain. In sex you attain such a little, a tiny moment of happiness, and you lose so much energy. The same energy can give you tremendous blissfulness, but then it has to move on a higher level.

Sex has to be transformed -- don't be against it. If you are against it you cannot transform it, because when you are inimical towards something you cannot understand it. Great sympathy is needed for understanding. If you are inimical, how can you give sympathy? When you are inimical to something, you cannot even observe: you want to withdraw from your enemy, to escape from the enemy. Be in friendship with your sex, because it is your energy, with tremendous possibilities hidden in it. It is God, raw. Sex is samadhi, raw. It can be transmuted, it can be changed, it can be transfigured. The whole yoga is the path to transfer, to change, the baser metal into the higher metal. The whole art is how to change iron into gold. Yoga is alchemy, alchemy of your inner being.

Brahmacharya means: trying to understand sex energy, trying to understand how it moves in your being, trying to understand why it gives you pleasure, trying to understand from where pleasure really comes -- whether it comes from sexual congress, sex release, or it comes from somewhere else. If you are an observer, soon you will realize and discover it is coming from somewhere else. When you are in a sexual intercourse a deep shock happens to the whole body. It is a shock, because so much energy is released; the whole body trembles in a shock. In that shock thoughts stop. It is just like an electric shock.

A man goes mad; you go to the psychiatrist and he gives him an electric shock. For what? Because if you give an electric shock, then for a moment when the shock passes through the mind everything stops. For example, you are listening to me. Still, thoughts will be there. Then suddenly a bomb exp!odes here: immediately, there will be no thought. For a second the shock will be too much so that the whole system will stop functioning. Electric shock helps mad people because the shock gives a discontinuity. After the shock they cannot remember what they were before it. The gap. If they are thinking before that they have become horses -- madmen can become anything -- if they are thinking that they have become horses just before the shock, after the shock they cannot remember what the idea was with which they were obsessed. Now a new circle starts. Shock helps.

Sexual energy is as much electrical as any energy. All energies are electrical, and sex energy is bioelectricity. It comes out of your body. Have you heard about a woman in Sweden? Something has gone wrong in her body. She can take a five-candle bulb in her hand and the bulb goes on. A five-candle bulb can remain lighted in her hand -- but don't start thinking that this would be good if it happens to you. She is in a danger, because when her husband touches her he gets a shock. You cannot make love to that woman -- you will be in such a shock you will forget about all women forever. Now the court is deciding the case because there is no precedent and there is no law how to decide it: the husband has asked for a divorce because this woman is giving him such shocks that he has become afraid. Something has gone wrong in the system -- a short circuit.

In sex you create energy; by the sexual movement, fantasy, desire, you create energy. The whole energy moves towards muladhar, the sex center, concentrates there; then comes a peak, a buildup; then sudden explosion -- shock all over the body; then peace follows. This peace is at a very great cost. You are destroying valuable life energy -- for nothing.

Now, one scientist, very famous, and very dangerous for the future -- his name is Delgado -- has created a small mechanism; you can keep it in the pocket. It can be connected to your sex center in the mind, from where the sex center in the body is controlled -- a wire goes and connects it. You can keep it in the pocket: whenever you want sexual pleasure you just push the button. It gives a shock from the battery to the sex center in the mind: you have tremendous happiness. This is better, but this is dangerous -- dangerous because then you will not stop, you will go on pushing.

It has happened. Delgado worked on rats, one dozen rats, and he placed the electrodes in their heads. The mechanism was just before them, and he taught them how to press it. They went crazy. In one hour -- six thousand times! Unless they fall completely exhausted and unconscious they won't listen to Delgado -- they will just go on pushing. Delgado says if this becomes possible to man nobody will be interested in women, no women will be interested in men, because this is such a nontrouble-creating thing.

Just the other day I was reading Marpa's sentence that "a woman is a troublemaker." She is. This box is very economical, no trouble. Man is also a troublemaker, because whenever two meet, two troublemakers meet. This box is very cheap, but very dangerous because those rats will not go to food, to water, no; they will not go to sleep. And with no cost -- just an electric phenomenon.

The same is happening when you are making love to a woman or to a man. It is childish. You laugh at the rat. Have you laughed at yourself? If you have not laughed, you are not allowed to laugh at the rat -- that's not good. Look at your mind: the rat is there, continuously fantasizing.

Brahmacharya is: to understand the whole phenomenon, what is happening. And if by shocks you become peaceful and you attain a little glimpse of happiness... this cannot be eternal. It can only be momentary. And soon the energy will be lost and then you will be frustrated. No, something else has to be found and discovered, something of the eternal, something so that you remain blissful. It cannot be through the shock; it can be only through the transmutation of the energy.

When the same energy moves upwards you become a dam of energy. That is brahmacharya. You go on accumulating energy. The more you accumulate, the higher it rises. Just like in a dam: it will be raining now, and the water level will go higher and higher and higher. But if there is a leakage, then the water level will not go high. Your sexuality is a leakage of your being.

If the leakage is not there, the water level goes higher and higher and higher, and a moment comes -- then it passes through many centers. First it comes to the hara, from the muladhar it comes to the second center. At that center you have a feeling of deathlessness; you become aware that nothing dies. Fear disappears. Have you observed, whenever you feel afraid something hits you just near the navel? There is the center of death and deathlessness. When the energy passes to that center, comes to that level, you feel deathless. If somebody even kills you, you know that you are not being killed: "Na hanyate hanyamane sharire" -- "By killing the body you cannot kill the soul."

Then the energy goes higher, comes to the third center. At the third center you start becoming very, very peaceful. Have you ever observed that whenever you are peaceful you start breathing from the belly and not from the chest? Because the center of peace is just above the navel. Below the navel is the center of death and deathlessness; above the navel is the center of peace and tensions. If there is no energy you will feel tension; if there is no energy you will feel fear. If there is energy, tension disappears; you feel very, very peaceful, tranquil, calm, quiet, collected.

Then the energy moves to the fourth center, of the heart. There arises love. You cannot love right now, and whatsoever you call love is nothing but sex camouflaged in a beautiful word "love." That word is not true to you -- cannot be. Love is possible only when energy reaches to the fourth center of the heart. Suddenly you are in love -- love with the whole existence, love with everything. You are love.

Then the energy moves to the fifth center, in the throat. That center is the center of silence -- silence, thought, thinking, speech. Speech, no-speech -- both are there. Right now your throat only works to speak. It does not know how to function in silence, how to go into silence. When the energy comes to it, suddenly you become silent. Not that you make any effort, not that you force yourself to be silent -- you find yourself to be silent, full of silence Even if you have to speak, you have to make effort. And your voice becomes musical, whatsoever you say becomes poetry a subtle glow in your words, of life. And your words carry silence within them, around them. In fact your silence becomes more pregnant than your words.

Then the energy goes to the sixth center, the third eye. There you find light -- awareness, consciousness. That is the point where sleep happens -- hypnosis happens. Have you watched any hypnotizer? He says to fix your eyes to a point. When you fix your two eyes to a point, your third eye goes into sleep. That is just a trick to create sleep in the third eye. When the energy reaches to the third eye, you feel so full of light... all darkness disappeared, infinite light surrounds you. In fact there is no shadow in you then. The oldest saying in Tibet is, "When a yogi becomes realized in awareness, there falls no shadow of his body." Don't take it literally -- the body will create the shadow. But deep inside, because there is so much light everywhere.... Light without source! If light is with a source there will be shadow; light without source: there cannot be any shadow.

And life now has a different meaning and dimension. You move on the earth but you are no longer of the earth, as if you fly. You have come nearest to Buddhahood. Now the garden is very near; you can feel the fragrance. At this point, for the first time, you become capable of understanding a Buddha; before it, by and by, gradually, fragments happen to you, but not total understanding. But at this point you are close, just near the door. The temple has arrived; a knock, and the door shall open and you yourself will be a Buddha. Now, so near and at such close quarters, you for the first time start feeling what understanding is.

And then the energy moves to the seventh, sahasrar. There it becomes brahmacharya, a life divine. Then you are no longer a man -- then you are a god. You have attained to bhagwatta, to divineness. This is brahmacharya.

"... and nonpossessiveness." And only after brahmacharya, when you have attained to the fulfillment, you possess the world!without possessing it. But by and by you have to train yourself for nonpossession. Don't be possessive, because whenever you are possessive you simply show that you are a beggar. Whenever you try to possess, you simply show that you don't possess it; otherwise there is no effort. You are the master. There is no need to try for it.

For example, if you love a person: if you try to possess the person, then you don't love. And you are not certain about his love also; that's why you create all safety measures, surround him by every trick, cunningness, cleverness, so that he cannot leave you. But you are killing love. Love is freedom, love gives freedom, love lives in freedom -- love is, in its intrinsic core, freedom. You will destroy the whole thing. If you really love, there is no need to possess; you possess so deeply, what is the need? You don't c]aim; the claim will look shallow. When you really possess, you become nonpossessive, but one has to train oneself, be aware. Don't try to possess anything. At the most use, and be thankful that you were allowed to use, but don't possess.

Possession is a miserliness; and a miserly being cannot flower. A miserly being is always in a spiritual constipation, ill. You have to open, share. Share whatsoever you have and it will grow -- share more and it grows more. Go on giving, and you are continuously refilled. The source is eternal; don't be a miser. And whatsoever it is -- love, wisdom -- whatsoever it is, share. Sharing is the meaning of nonpossessiveness.

But you can be foolish, as many people are. They think, "Leave the house, go to the forest, because how can you live in the house if you don't possess?" You can live in the house; there is no need to possess it. You will be living in the forest. Will you possess the forest? Will you say, "Now I am the lord of this forest"? If you can live in the forest without possessing it, what is the problem? Why can't you live in the house and in the shop without possessing it? Foolish people say, "Leave your wife, your children. Escape, because nonpossessiveness is to be practiced." They are stupid.

Where will you go? Where you will go, wherever you go, your possessiveness will be with you. It won't make any difference. Wherever you are, just understand and drop possessiveness. Nothing is wrong in your wife -- don't say "my" wife. Just drop the "my." Nothing is wrong in your children -- beautiful children, children of the God. You have been given an opportunity to serve and love them -- use it, but don't say "my." They have come through you, but they don't belong to you. They belong to the future; they belong to the whole. You have been a passage, a vehicle, but you are not the owner.

So what is the need to escape anywhere? Be wherever it has happened that you are. Be wherever God placed you and live in a nonpossessiveness, and suddenly you will start flowering -- energies will be flowing, you will not be a blocked phenomenon, you will become a flow. And flow is beautiful. To live blocked and frozen is to be ugly and dead.

These five inner self-disciplines are the basic requirement "... regardless of class, place, time, or circumstance." Whether you are born today or you were born five thousand years before makes no difference. There arc preachers in India who say, "In this kali yuga you cannot become enlightened." And Patanjali says, "... regardless of class, place, time, or circumstance." You can become enlightened wherever you are.

Time doesn't matter. It is awareness that matters. Place doesn't matter. Whether you are in the Himalayas or in the market does not matter. Circumstance doesn't matter -- whether you are a grahasta, a householder, or a person who has renounced everything, no. Class doesn't matter -- whether you are rich or poor, educated or uneducated, brahmin or a shudra, Hindu or a Mohammedan, Christian or a Jew. Nothing matters, because deep down you are one.

On the circumference there may be differences, but they are only on the circumference; the center remains untouched. Attain to the purity of the center. That's the goal.

 

 

Next: Chapter 8, Male mind, female mind, no-mind: First Question

 

Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Yoga Yoga Sutras of Patanjali