Into the fantastic

"I am beginning to lose faith in my ability," said the young salesman to his friend.

"Today has been terrible, and not one sale. I have been thrown out of apartments, had doors slammed in my face, been kicked down staircases, had my samples thrown in the gutter, and been shot at by irate householders."

His friend said. "What is your line?"

"Bibles," said the young salesman.

WHY has religion become a dirty word? Why are people full of hatred the moment you mention the word religion, God, or something like that? Why has the whole of humanity become indifferent? Something must have gone wrong somewhere. It has to be understood because this is not an ordinary matter.

Religion is such a significant phenomenon that man cannot live without it. And to live without religion will be living without any purpose. To live without religion will be living without any poetry. To live without religion will be living a drag of a life, a boredom -- what Sartre is saying when he says that man is a useless passion. Without religion he becomes so. Man is not a useless passion, but without religion he certainly becomes so. If there is nothing higher than you then all purpose disappears. If there is nothing higher to reach, higher to be, then your life cannot have any goal, cannot have any meaning. The higher is needed to attract you, to pull you upwards. The higher is needed so that you don't get stuck in the lower.

Without religion life will be like a tree which never comes to flower, a fruitlessness. Yes, without religion man is a useless passion, but with religion man becomes the very flowering of life, as if God is fulfilled in him. So it has to be understood why religion has become such a dirty word.

There are people who are positively against religion. There are people who may not be positively against but who are positively indifferent towards religion.

There are people who may not be indifferent to religion but who are only hypocrites who go on pretending that they interested. And these three categories are all the categories there are. A genuine religious person has disappeared.

What has happened?

First thing the discovery of a new attitude towards life, the discovery of science -- a new window opened -- and religion could not absorb it. Religion failed to absorb because ordinary religion is incapable of absorbing it.

There are three attitudes towards life possible one is logical, rational, scientific: another is infralogical -- superstitious, irrational; and the third is suprarational -- transcendental. The ordinary religion tried to cling to the infrarational attitude.

That became the suicide; that became the slow poisoning. Religion has committed suicide because it got stuck in the lowest standpoint towards life -- infrarational. What do I mean when I use the word "infrarational"? Just a blind faith. Religion thrived on it up to this century because there was no competitor, there was not a higher standpoint.

When science came into being, a higher standpoint, more mature, more valid came into existence, there was a conflict. Religion became apprehensive, afraid, because the new attitude was going to destroy it. It became defensive. It became more and more closed. It tried in the beginning -- because it was powerful, it was the establishment -- it tried to destroy the Galilee's of science, not knowing that those destructive steps were going to become suicidal to itself. Religion started a long battle with science -- of course a losing battle.

No lower standpoint can fight with a higher standpoint. The lower standpoint is bound to fail -- today, or tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow. The battle at the most can postpone the defeat, but it cannot avoid it. Whenever a higher standpoint is there, the lower has to disappear. It has to change; it has to become more mature.

Religion died because it could not become more mature. Ordinary religion, the so-called religion, has died because it cannot raise itself to Patanjali's level.

Patanjali is religious and scientific. Only the religion of Patanjali can survive.

Less than that won't do now. Man has tasted a higher consciousness through science, more validity about truth. Now man cannot be forced to remain blind and superstitious; it is impossible. Man has come of age. He cannot be forced to be a child in the old ways, and that's what religion has been doing.

It has become a dirty word, naturally.

The second attitude, the logical attitude, is Patanjali's standpoint. He does not ask to believe in anything. He says be experimental. He says that all that is said is hypothetical -- you have to prove it through your experience and there is no other proof. Don't believe in others and don't remain with borrowed knowledge.

Religion died because it became just a borrowed knowledge. Jesus says. "God is," and Christians go on believing. Krishna says, "God is," and Hindus go on believing. And Mohammed says, "God is, and I have encountered him and I have heard his voice." and Mohammedans go on believing. This is borrowed. Patanjali differs there. He says, "Nobody's experience can be yours. You will have to experience. Only then -- and only then -- is truth revealed to you."

I was reading an anecdote: Two American soldiers were squatting in a dugout somewhere in the Far East waiting for the attack. One of them drew out paper and pencil and started to write a letter, but he broke the point of the pencil. Turning to the other soldier he said, "Hey, Mac, can you lend me your ball pen?" The man handed him a ball pen. "Hey, Mac," said the letter writer, "do you happen to have an envelope?"

The other man found a crumpled envelope in his pocket and handed it over. The writer scribbled on, then he looked up and said, "Got a stamp?" He was given a stamp. He folded the letter, put it into the envelope, stuck the stamp on the top, then he said, "Hey, Mac, what is your girl's address?"

Everything borrowed -- even the girl's address.

The address that you have got of God is borrowed. That God may have been a girlfriend to Jesus, but he is not to you. That God may have been a beloved to Krishna, but he is not to you. Everything borrowed -- the Bible, the Koran, the Geeta. How can one go on deceiving oneself by borrowed experience? One day or other the whole thing will look absurd, meaningless. One day or other the borrowed is going to become a burden. It will cripple you and crush you. This has happened.

Patanjali does not believe in borrowed experience. He does not believe in belief.

That's his scientific attitude. He believes in experience, he believes in experiment.

Patanjali can be understood by Galileo, by Einstein. Galileo and Einstein can be understood by Patanjali. They are fellow travelers.

The future belongs to Patanjali. It does not belong to the Bible, it does not belong to the Koran, it does not belong to the Geeta: it belongs to the YOGA SUTRAS -- because he talks in the same language. Not only that he talks, he belongs to the same dimension, the same understanding of life and the same logical approach.

There is a third standpoint also: that is suprarational. That is the standpoint of Zen. Far away. Very far away in the future. That far away looks like just imagination. There may come a time when Zen may become the world religion, but it is very, very far away, because Zen is suprarational. Let me explain it to you.

The infrarational, that which is below reason, also has an appearance of the suprarational. It looks like it, but it is not like it: it is a counterfeit coin. Both are illogical, but in a tremendously different way. Profound is the difference, vast is the difference. The infrarational is one who lives below reason in the darkness of a blind faith, lives in borrowed knowledge, has not been daring enough to experiment, has not been courageous enough to move into the unknown on his own. His whole life is a borrowed life, inauthentic -- dull, drab, insensitive. The man who has moved to the suprarational is also illogical, irrational, but in a totally different sense his irrationality has absorbed reason and gone higher than it. He has transcended reason.

The man of infrarationality will always be afraid of reason because reason will always create a defensiveness. It will always create a fear. There is the danger if reason succeeds then the faith, then the belief, will have to die -- one clings to it against reason. The man of suprareason is not afraid of rationality. He can delight in it. The higher plane can always accept the lower -- not only accept: it can absorb it: it can nourish on it. It can stand on its shoulders. It can use it. The lower is always afraid of the higher.

The infrarational is a minus thing -- minus reason. The suprarational is a plus thing -- plus reason. The infrarational is faith. The suprarational is trust -- trust through experience. It is not borrowed: but the man of the suprarational has come to understand that life is more than reason, The reason is accepted: there is no denial of it. The reason is good as far as it goes, it has to be used, but life is not finished there. This is not the boundary of life: life is a bigger thing. Reason is part of it -- beautiful if it remains in the organic unity of the whole: ugly if it becomes a separate phenomenon and starts functioning on its own. If it becomes an island, then ugly. If it remains part of the vast continent of being, then beautiful: it has its uses.

The man of suprareason is not against the rational: he is beyond the rational. He sees that the rational and the irrational both are part of life like day and night, like life and death. To him opposites have disappeared and they have become complementaries.

Zen is a transcendental attitude. Patanjali is a very logical attitude. If you move with Patanjali by and by in the ultimate peaks you will reach to the suprarational. In fact just as ordinary religious people are afraid of science and reason and logic; people who cling to the scientific attitude, they are afraid of Zen. You can read Arthur Koestler's books, a very logical man, but he seems to be in the same plight as are ordinary religious people. Now logic has become religion to him: he is afraid of Zen. Whatsoever he writes about Zen has a trembling in it, a fear, an apprehension -- because Zen destroys all categories.

Ordinary Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, they are below reason.

Extraordinary Christians -- Eckhart, Bohme -- Sufis, Kabir, they are beyond reason.

Patanjali can be a bridge for an ordinary human being, ordinarily religious, to move towards Zen. He is the bridge; there exists no other bridge. Patanjali is the scientist of the inner. Man can live two types of lives a life which is exterior, a life of exteriority: and man can live another type of life a life which is interior, a life of interiority. Patanjali is the bridge. What he calls samyama is a balance between the exterior and the interior to come to such a balance that you just stand in between; you can move out, you can come in; nothing is blocking your way; you are available to both the worlds.

In that sense Patanjali is a greater scientist than Einstein. Someday or other Einstein will have to learn from Patanjali. Patanjali has nothing to learn from Einstein because whatsoever you know of the outside world remains, at the most, information. It can never become real knowledge, because you remain outside of it. Real knowledge is possible only when you have to come to the very source of knowing -- and there happens the greatest miracle, and many miracles.

The greatest miracle is that the moment you come to the very source of knowing, you disappear. The closer you come to the source, the more you start to disappear. Once centered, you are no more; and yet, for the first time you are.

You are no more as you used to think about yourself. You are no more the ego, that trip is over. For the first time you are a being.

And with this being, the greatest miracle has happened to you you have come home. That's what Patanjali calls samadhi. Samadhi, means all problems solved, all questions dissolved, all anxieties resolved. One has come home. In total rest, in total tranquillity, nothing disturbs, nothing distracts. Now you are available to enjoy. Now every moment becomes a sheer delight.

First thing religion got hooked in the infrarational. Second thing so-called religious people became more and more inauthentic -- all their belief became borrowed. And third thing the world became much too impatient. People are in such a hurry -- going nowhere, but in a great hurry. Moving faster and faster and faster and faster. Don't ask them. "Where are you going?" because that becomes an embarrassing thing. Don't ask them. Just ask. "How fast are you going?" To ask. "Where are you going?" is uncivil, unmannerly, because nobody knows where he is going.

People are in a hurry, and religion is such a tree that it needs patience. It needs infinite patience. It needs no-hurry. If you are in a hurry, you will miss what religion is. Why has this so great hurry been created in the modern life? From where has it come? Because in such a hurry you can, at the most, play with things; you can at the most play with objects. Subjectivity needs long patience, a waiting. It grows, but not in a hurry. It is not a seasonal flower. You cannot get it and within a month it is flowering. It takes time. It is the eternal tree of life. You cannot do it in a hurry.

That's why, more and more, people become interested in things, because you can get them immediately, and people become less and less interested in persons.

With their own person also they are not related, and with others' persons also they are not related. In fact people use persons like things and people love things like persons.

I know a man who says he loves his car. He cannot be so certain about his wife -- he is not. He cannot so certainly say, "I love my wife," but he loves his car. He uses his wife and loves his car. The whole thing has gone upside down.

Use things: love persons. But to love another person, first you will have to become a person, That takes time: that takes long preparation.

That's why people become afraid when they read Patanjali it seems to be a long process. It is.

I was reading:

It happened that one insomniac was delighted when his doctor gave him such an inexpensive prescription for getting to sleep.

"One apple before bedtime," said the doc.

"Wonderful!" the patient started to leave.

"Wait, that's not all." cautioned the doctor. "It must be eaten in a certain way."

The insomniac paused to listen to the rest of the prescription. "Cut the apple in half," said the doctor. "Eat one half, then put on your coat and hat and go out and walk three miles. When you return home eat the other half."

No shortcuts exist. Don't be befooled by shortcuts: life knows no shortcuts. It is a long way, and the long way has a certain meaning, because only in that long awaiting do you grow, and you grow gracefully.

The modern mind is in too much of a hurry. Why? What is the hurry? Because the modern mind is much too ego-centered. From there comes the hurry. The ego is always afraid of death -- and the fear is natural because the ego is going to die.

Nobody can save it. You can protect it for a time being, but nobody can save it forever. It is going to die. You as separate will have to die, and the more you feel that you are separate from existence, from the totality, the more you become afraid. The fear comes because of the separation. The more you become individualistic, the more anxiety-ridden.

In the East where people are not so much individualistic, where people are still in a primitive state, where people are still part of the collective, where individuality is not insisted upon so much; they are not in a hurry. They move slowly, they take time: they enjoy the journey. In the West where ego is insisted upon too much and everybody starts to be an individual more and more anxiety, more and more mental disease, more and more trembling and fear and anguish, more and more apprehension about death. The more you are individualistic, the more you are going to die. The death is always in proportion to your individuality because only the individual dies.

The universal in you goes on living. It cannot die. It was There before you were born-: it will be there when you are gone.

I have heard a very beautiful anecdote:

"Yes," said the boastful man, "my family can trace its ancestry back to the Mayflower."

"I suppose," remarked his friend, sarcastically, "next you will be telling us that your ancestors were in the ark with Noah."

"Certainly not." said the other. "My people had a boat of their own.

The ego goes on and on and on, separating you. This separation is the cause of death.

Then you are in a hurry because death is coming -- life is short, time is short, many things to do. Who has time to meditate? Who has time to move into the world of yoga? People think these things are only for crazy people. Who is interested in Zen? Because if you meditate you will have to wait years and years in a very intense, passionate, but passive, awareness. You will have to go on waiting. To a Western mind -- or to a modern mind because modern mind is Western -- to a modern mind this seems a sheer wastage of time. That's why the flower of religion has become impossible.

People go on pretending that they are religious, but they avoid real religion. It has become a social formality. People go to the church, to the temple, just to be respectable. Nobody takes religion sincerely -- because who has time? Life is short and many things to do. People are more interested in things having a bigger car, having a bigger house, having more money in the bank balance.

People have completely forgotten that the real business is to have more being.

The real business of life is to have more being -- not more bank balance, because the bank balance will remain here. You will be gone. Only your being can go with you.

Yoga is the science of your innermost being, the science of subjectivity, the science of how to grow more, how to be more... how really to become a god so that you are one with the whole.

Now the sutras.

If you attain to one-pointedness, if you attain to samadhi. and if you become so deeply silent that not a single thought moves in your mind: you become capable of seeing the images in other people's minds. You can read their thoughts.

I have heard a joke that two yogis met. Both have attained to samadhi. There was nothing to talk about, but one has to say something when you meet. One yogi said. "I would like to share a joke with you. It is very old. Once -- " And the other started laughing.

That's the whole joke. He could see the whole joke unuttered.

If you are silent, through your silence you become capable of seeing into another's mind. Not that you have to, not that you should do it. Patanjali is saying everything that comes on the way. In fact a real yogi never does it because that is trespassing the freedom of the other, that is violating the privacy of the other; but it happens.

And Patanjali in this chapter "Vibhuti Pada" is talking about all these miracles not that one should strive to attain them, but just to make you aware and alert that they happen and don't get caught by them, and don't use them -- because once you start using them, your growth stops. The energy then is stuck there.

Don't use them. These sutras are to make you alert and aware that these things will happen, and there is a tendency in the mind, a temptation to use them. Who would not like to see into another's mind? You have tremendous power then over the other, but yoga is not a power trip, and a real yogi will never do it.

But it happens. There are people who try to attain it, and it can be attained. It can be attained even without being religious. Even without being a real disciple of yoga, it can be attained.

Sometimes it happens just by accident also. If your mind comes to a silent stage in any way, you are capable of looking into the images of the other's mind, because when your mind is silent the other's mind is not very far away. It is very close. When your mind is crowded with thoughts then the other s mind is very far away because the crowd of your own thoughts distracts you. The noise of your own inner traffic is so much, you cannot hear the other's thought.

Have you watched it? Sometimes ordinary people, not concerned with meditation, not concerned with yoga or any telepathic powers or any supraphysical sensibilities, they also sometimes become aware of certain things happening to them. For example, if a couple loves each other deeply, by and by they become so attuned to each other they start becoming aware of the other's thoughts. The wife becomes aware of what is moving in the mind of the husband. She may not be aware of this awareness, but in a subtle way she starts feeling what is happening to the mind of the husband. She may not be clear, it may be a confused picture, may not be in focus, may be a little blurred, but lovers by and by become aware of a certain capacity to feel the other. The mother, if she loves the child, becomes aware of the needs of the child -- unuttered.

There is a path somewhere by which you are connected with the other. We are connected with the whole.

Patanjali says, "Through SAMYAMA," attaining to onepointedness, to the inner balance, to samadhi, to silence and tranquillity, "the image occupying another's mind can be known." You have just to focus yourself towards the other. Just in deep silence you have to remember the other. Just in deep silence you have to look at the other, and immediately you will see his mind opening before you like a book.

But no need to do it. Because once this becomes possible, many more possibilities surround it. You can interfere you can direct the other's thoughts. You can enter into the other's thoughts and put your thoughts there. You can manipulate the other and he will never become aware that he has been manipulated and he will think he is doing his own thoughts and he is following his own ideas. But these things are not to be done.

You can see the image -- that doesn't mean that you will see the motive also. For motive you will have to go still deeper. For example, you see somebody and you can see the image inside the mind; for instance, there is an image of the moon, beautiful full moon surrounded by white clouds. You can see the image, this is okay, but you don't know the motivation why the image is there. If he is a painter the motivation will be different. If he is a lover the motivation may be different. If he is a scientist the motivation may be still different.

What his motivation is, why the image is there -- just by watching the image you cannot know the motivation. Motivation is more subtle than the image. Image is a gross thing. It is there on the other's mind's screen, you can see it, but why is it there? Why in the first place did it happen? Why is the other thinking about the moon? He may be a painter, a poet -- a lunatic. Just by looking in the image you don't become aware of the motivation. For motivation you will have to go still deeper in you.

The motivation is known only when you attain to seedless samadhi, not before it, because motivation is so subtle. It has no image, nothing visible; it is the invisible desire into the deep unconscious of the man. When you have become completely aware and your desires have dissolved.... Look. When your thoughts dissolve you become capable of reading others' thoughts: when your desires dissolve you become capable of reading others' desires.

You must have heard stories about yogis who can become invisible. Patanjali tries to reduce everything to a scientific law; he says there is no miracle there also. A person can become invisible by a certain understanding of a certain law.

What is that law?

Now physics says if you are seeing me you are seeing only because sun rays fall on me and then they move, reflect from me. Those sun rays falling on your eyes, that's why you are seeing me. If there is some way, if I can absorb the sun rays and they don't reflect, you will not be able to see me. You can see only if sun rays come to me. If there is darkness and there are no sun rays coming, you cannot see me. But if I can absorb all the sun rays and nothing is reflected back, you will not be able to see me. You will see only a dark patch.

That's what modern physics also says; that's how we see colors. For example, you are wearing orange; I can see that you are wearing orange. What does it mean? It simply means that your clothes are reflecting the orange ray back. All other rays are being absorbed by your clothes. Only the orange color ray is being reflected.

When you see white it means all rays are reflected back. White is not a color; all colors are reflected back. White is all colors together. If you mix all colors they become white, so white is all colors; it is not a color. And if you are using a black dress then nothing is reflected back; all the rays are being absorbed. That's why your dress looks black. Black is also not a color; it is no-color, all rays absorbed.

That's why if you use black in a hot country you will feel tremendously hot.

Don't use the color black and move into the hot sun. You will feel very hot because the black goes on absorbing everything. White is cooler. Just looking at white, a coolness. Using white you feel cool because nothing is absorbed, everything reflected back.

In India Jainism has chosen white as their color because of renunciation -- because it renounces all. The white color renounces all. It gives back everything, absorbs nothing. Death is depicted everywhere as black because it absorbs everything. Nothing comes out of it, everything dissolves into it and disappears.

It is a black hole. The devil is depicted everywhere as black, evil is depicted everywhere as black, because it is not capable of renouncing anything. It is too possessive. It cannot give anything: it cannot share.

Hindus have chosen orange as their color for a certain reason, because red rays are reflected back. The red ray entering the body creates sexuality, violence. Red is the color of violence, of blood. The red ray entering the body creates violence, sexuality, passion, disturbance. Now the scientists say that if you are left in a room colored completely red, within seven days you will go mad. Just nothing else is needed; just seeing red things continuously for seven days. Everything red -- curtains, the furniture. Everything red the walls. Within seven days you will go mad; the red will be too much. Hindus have chosen red, and shades of red -- orange, ochre, and others -- because they help you to become less violent. The red ray is reflected back; it doesn't enter into the body.

Patanjali says that a man can become invisible if he can absorb all the rays that fall on him. You will not be able to see him. You may be able to see just an emptiness, black emptiness, but the man will become invisible. How it happens to a yogi? Sometimes it happens. Sometimes it happens and the yogi is unaware of it. Let me explain to you the mechanism of it.

In Patanjali's system of thought there is a deep correspondence between the outer world and the inner. It has to be; they are together. There is light; from the sun comes the light. Your eyes are receptive to it. If your eyes are not receptive to it the sun may be there, but you will live in darkness. That's what happens to a blind man -- his eyes are not receptive. So your eyes somehow correspond with the sun. In your body your eyes represent the sun; they are joined together. The sun affects the eyes; the eyes are sensitive towards it. Sound affects your ears.

Sound is outside; ears are in you.

The outside reality is known as tattva, the element, and the inside correspondence is known as tanmatra. In Patanjali's system these two are very essential to be understood. The tattva is the outside reality, the sun, and corresponding to it is some, thing in your eye which he calls tanmatra. the essential element inside you. That's why there is a dialogue between the eye and the sun, between the sound and the ear, between the nose and the smell. There is a correspondence, invisible; something is joined and bridged.

When one goes on meditating and comes to understand the gaps, nirodh, then accumulates gaps, samadhi, then arises one-pointedness, ekagrata parinam; then one can look into the tanmatras, the inner elements, the subtle elements. You have seen the sun with the eye, but you have not seen your eye up to now. Only in a deep emptiness one becomes alert and can see his own eye. You have heard the sound, but you have not heard your ear responding to it. The vibration that comes to your ear, the subtle vibration, you have not heard that yet. It is too subtle and you are too gross. You are not yet so refined. You cannot hear that subtle music. You have smelled the rose, but you have not yet been able to smell the subtle element in you which smells rose, the tanmatra.

The yogi becomes capable of listening to the inner sound, which is silence; of seeing the eye, the inner eye, which is pure vision. And there is the mechanism of becoming invisible "By performing samyama on the form of the body...."

If the yogi just concentrates on his form of the body, his own form of the body, just by that concentration on the form the sun rays are absorbed in the form and they are not reflected back. When you concentrate on the form, the form opens.

All the closed doors open and the sun rays enter into the form and the tanmatra of your form absorbs the tattva of the sun, and suddenly nobody can see you.

Because to see, the light must be reflected.

The same happens to sound:

When the yogi concentrates on the innermost tanmatra of his ear, all sounds are absorbed. And when sounds are absorbed, the very presence of the yogi will give you a certain hunch of silence around you. If you go to a yogi suddenly you will sec you are entering into silence. He creates no sound around him. On the contrary, all the sounds that fall on him are absorbed. And this happens to all his senses. He becomes invisible in many ways.

These are the criterions when you come to meet a yogi. These are the criterions.

Not that he is trying to do them. He will not do them; he avoids them. But sometimes they happen. Sometimes sitting with a Master....

It has happened to many people here; they write to me. Just the other day there was a question "Watching you, what happens? Am I going crazy? Sometimes you disappear." If you go on watching me there will be moments when you will see me disappearing. Listening to my words, if you go on concentrating on them, suddenly you will become aware that they are coming out of silence. And when you feel that, then you have felt me, not before it.

Not that anything is being done. In fact the yogi never does anything. He simply remains in his being and things go on happening. In fact he avoids, but still, sometimes, things happen. Miracles follow. There are no miracles, but miracles follow one who has attained to samadhi; they go on happening. Like a shadow they follow the man who has attained to inner space.

This is what I call the science of religion. Patanjali has laid the foundation. Much has to be done. He has just given the bare structure -- much has to be filled in the gaps. It is just a concrete structure. The walls have to be raised, rooms have to be made. You cannot live in a bare, concrete structure. It has yet to be made into a house, but he has given the basic structure.

Five thousand years and the basic structure has remained basic: it has not yet become the abode of man. Man is not ready yet.

Man goes on playing with toys, and the real goes on waiting -- waiting that whenever you become mature enough you will use it. Nobody else is responsible for it; we are responsible. Each human being is responsible for this vast sleepiness that surrounds earth. As I see it it is like a fog surrounding the whole earth, and man is fast asleep.

I have heard, one day it happened One very diligent reformist inquired of a man who was staggering blindly drunk along the road, "You poor man, what drives you to drink this way?"

The happy drunk slurred, "No one drives me, lady. I am a volunteer."

Voluntarily, man is in the darkness. Voluntarily, you are in the darkness.

Nobody has forced you to be there. This is your responsibility to come out of it.

Don't go on blaming Satan and the devil that they have been corrupting you.

There is nobody who is corrupting you. It is you. And once you are sleepy everything that you see is distorted -- everything that you touch is distorted everything that comes in your hands becomes dirty.

Two drunks were walking home along a railway line, stepping unsteadily from sleeper to sleeper. Suddenly the one in front said. "Ah, Trevor, damn it if these aren't the longest flight of stairs I ever did crawl up."

His friend called back. "I don't mind the stairs, George, but the low banisters are hell."

We go on drunk, drunk with the ego, drunk with possessions, drunk with things, ignorant of the reality; and whatsoever we see is distorted. This distortion creates the world of illusion. The world is not illusory. It is because of our drunk minds the world is illusory. Once our drunkenness disappears, the world shines forth as a tremendously beautiful phenomenon -- the world becomes God.

God and the world are not two. They appear as two because we are asleep. Once you are awake they are one. And once you see the marvelous beauty that is surrounding you, all sadness, all despair, all anguish disappears. Then you live in a totally different dimension of benediction.

Yoga is nothing but a way to look at the world with alert eyes... and the world becomes God. There is no need to search for God anywhere else. In fact forget about God -- just become more alert. In your alertness God is born; in your sleep he is lost. God is not lost; only you are lost. In your sleep you forget who you are.

Samadhi is awareness come to its crescendo. Samadhi is silence come to flowering. Everyone can attain it because it is everyone's birthright. If you have not claimed it, it is for you. It remains unclaimed, waiting.

Don't waste more time anymore. Use every little bit of life and time that you have for one purpose constantly that you become more and more aware.

I will tell you one story: Two Jewish women, Sarah and Amy, met after twenty years. They had been together in college and they had been great friends, but for twenty years they had not seen each other. They hugged each other, they kissed each other.

And Sarah said. "Amy, how have you been?"

"Just fine. And it is good to see you. How has the world been treating you, Sarah?"

"Would you believe that when Harry and I got married he took me to a honeymoon three months in the Mediterranean and a month in Israel? What do you think of it?"

"Fantastic," Amy said.

"We came back home and he showed me the new house that he bought for me -- sixteen rooms, two swimming pools, a new Mercedes. What do you think of that, Amy?"

"Fantastic."

"And now for our twentieth anniversary he gave me a diamond ring ten karats."

"Fantastic."

"And now We are going to go on a cruise around the world."

"Oh, that's fantastic."

"Oh, Amy, I have been talking so fast about what Harry did and has been doing for me. I forgot to ask what your Abe has done for you."

"Oh, we have had a good life together."

But what has he done special?"

"He sent me to charm school."

"Sent you to charm school? What did you go to charm school for?"

"To teach me how to say 'fantastic' instead of 'bullshit.'" That's all yoga is all about -- to make you aware of the fantastic. It is right by the corner waiting for you, and you are drowned in bullshit. Unhook yourself, loosen yourself out of it. Enough is enough.

And this decision cannot be taken by anybody else. You have to decide. It is your decision the way you are. It is going to be your decision if you want to change and be transformed.

Life is fantastic; only that much can I say to you. And it is just around and you are missing it. There is no need to miss anymore.

And yoga is not a belief system. It is a methodology, a scientific methodology how to attain to the fantastic.