Witnessing the inner astronomy

Patanjali is not a speculator. He is not an airy, fairy philosopher; he is very down to earth. He means business, as I mean business. His approach is scientific. The very approach makes him totally different from others. Others have been thinking about the truth. He is not thinking about the truth; he simply prepares you how to receive the truth.

The truth cannot be thought; it can only be received. It is already there and there is no way to think about it. The more you think, the farther away you will wander from it. Thinking is a wandering, a rambling in the clouds; the moment you think, you are already going away.

The truth has to be seen, not thought. Patanjali's basic approach is how to create the clarity, the eyes, which can see it. Of course it is going to be hard work; it is not just poetry and dreaming. A man has to become a lab, a man has to transform his whole life into an experiment - only then, the truth can be realized.

So while listening to Patanjali's sutras never forget it, that he is not handing you some theories: he is giving you a methodology which can transform you. But then it depends on you.

There are four types of people who become interested in religion. The first, the majority, is only 'curious,' is in search of something amusing, something outlandish, something interesting, something fascinating. Patanjali is not for those, because a curious person is never interested so deeply that he can be convinced to transform his life. He is looking for a sensation. Patanjali is not for those people.

Then there is a second type, we will call the "student." He is interested intellectually; he would like to know what this man Patanjali is thinking, saying - but he is interested in knowledge. Not in knowing, but knowledge. He is interested in gathering more information. He is not ready to change himself; he would like to remain himself and gather more knowledge. He is on an ego trip. Patanjali is not for that type either.

Then there is the third type, the "disciple." A disciple is one who is ready to discipline his life, who is ready to transform his whole being in an experiment, who is courageous enough to go on this inner adventure - which is the greatest, which is the most daring, because nobody knows where one is moving. One is moving into the unknowable. One is moving into the abyss. One is moving into the uncharted. Yoga is for the disciple; the disciple will be able to get in tune with Patanjali.

Then there is the fourth state, or the fourth type, 1 will call it the "devotee." The disciple is ready to change himself, but still not ready to sacrifice himself. The devotee is ready to sacrifice himself.

The disciple will go a long enough way with Patanjali, but not to the very end, unless he becomes a devotee also, unless he comes to recognize that the transformation religion is concerned about is not a modification. It is not just modifying you, making you better and better; it is a death, and one has to sacrifice oneself totally. It is a discontinuity with your past.

When the disciple is ready - not only to transform himself, but to die - he becomes a devotee. But a disciple can go far enough, and if he goes, one day or other he will become a devotee. If he becomes a devotee, only then will he understand the whole of Patanjali, the whole beauty of it, the whole grandeur of it, the tremendous door that Patanjali opens into the unknown.

But, many people who were just curious, they have written many books about Patanjali. Many people who were just students, they have created great tomes of learning, scholarship, and they have done much harm. They have interpreted and reinterpreted Patanjali these five thousand years. Not only that, there are interpretations of interpretations of interpretations. The whole thing has become almost like a jungle and it is very difficult to find where Patanjali is.

This calamity has happened in India to everybody who has brought any truth to human consciousness. People have been continuously interpreting, and they create more clouds than clarity, because in the first place they are not disciples. And even if they are disciples, they are not in that state of mind where they can rightly interpret. Only a devotee... but devotees ordinarily don't bother.

Hence, I have taken Patanjali to talk about. The man needs great attention because there are very, very rare people who can be compared to the height of Patanjali, to his scientific attitude.

He has made religion almost a science. He has brought religion out of all mystifications; but the interpretations have been trying to force all his sutras again back into the world of mystifications.

That is a vested interest. If Patanjali comes back and looks at the interpretations that have been done on his sutras, he will not be able to believe it.

And words are very dangerous things. You can play with them very easily. And words are like whores; you can use them but you can never trust them. And they change meaning with every new interpreter - just a slight change, just a comma from here to there. And Sanskrit is a very poetic language - each word has many meanings - so it is very easy to mystify a thing, very easy.

I have heard, once two friends stayed in a hotel. They were travelling in the mountains and they wanted to go early in the morning - very early, near about three o'clock - to the nearest peak to see the sunrise, so they had fixed the alarm. When the alarm rang, one, who was an optimist, said, "Good morning, God." The other, who was a pessimist, said, "Good God, morning?"

They both use the same words, but with a tremendous difference.

I have heard a Sufi story. Two disciples of a Master were sitting in the garden of the monastery, meditating.

One said, "It would be good if we were allowed smoking."

The other said, "It will not be possible; the Master will never allow it."

They said, "Why not try? There is nothing to lose. We should ask him."

The next day they asked the Master. To the first he said, "No, absolutely no." To the other he said,

"Yes, certainly yes."

When they met they could not believe what type of man this is. Then the one asked, "Please, tell me how you had asked."

The first, to whom was said no, absolutely no, said, "I asked him, 'Sir, can I smoke while meditating?'

He said, 'No, absolutely no!'" Then he asked, "And what had you asked?"

He said, "Now I know. I had asked, 'Sir, can I meditate while smoking?' He said, 'Yes, certainly yes!'"

It makes a lot of difference. Words are whores; and one can go on playing infinitely with words.

I am not an interpreter. Whatsoever I am saying is on my own authority - I am not saying on the authority of Patanjali. Because my experiences and his experience correspond, that's why I am speaking on him. But I am not trying to prove the authority of Patanjali. How can I prove that? I am not trying to prove that Patanjali is true. How can I prove that? I can only say something about myself. What am I saying then? I am saying this: that I have also experienced the same. And Patanjali has given it beautiful language and expression. It is difficult to improve upon Patanjali as far as scientific explanation, scientific expression, is concerned. Remember this.

If he comes back, he will be almost in a state.... I was read ing one story and I remembered him. It happened on a road:

On a road three thieves saw a man on a donkey entering the town. Following the donkey was a goat with a tinkling bell around its neck.

One of the thieves said proudly, "I am going to steal his goat."

The second thief said, "That's not such a big thing. I am going to steal the donkey he is sitting on." The third thief said, "I will steal the clothes he is wearing."

The first thief followed the man and on a street corner fastened the bell onto the tail of the donkey and stole the goat. The bell kept tinkling, and the villager thought the goat was still following.

The second thief, who was waiting by another corner faced the man and said, "A new custom, huh?

hanging the bell on the donkey's tail?"

The man looked behind and exclaimed, "My goat is gone!" The thief said, "I just saw someone with a goat going by that road." "Keep an eye on my donkey," the man said and ran to get the goat.

The thief then rode away on the donkey.

The man searched the road in vain for the thief who stole his goat. Then he came back for his donkey and saw what had happened. He walked a while in distress until he came across someone who was sitting by a well, crying.

"What is the matter with you? They have stolen my goat and donkey; why are you wailing like this?" "I had a treasure chest that fell into the well. I am too afraid to go in. If you get the chest, I will go fifty-fifty with you."

Anxious to compensate for his losses, the villager quickly undressed and went into the well. When he came out, empty-handed, he saw his clothes gone. He began to wield a big stick, whirling and whirling around. People gathered to watch.

"They stole everything I had. Now I am afraid they might try to steal me, too!"

That will be the situation if Patanjali comes back: interpretations have taken everything away. They have stolen all; they have not even left his clothes on. And they have done it so beautifully that you will never even suspect. In fact, after five thousand years, things that I am saying will look very strange to people who have been reading Patanjali's interpreters, commentators. My things will look very strange. They will think I am giving new meanings. I am not giving new meanings, but Patanjali has been misinterpreted so long that if I exactly say what he meant, my sayings will look very strange, outlandish, almost unbelievable.

The last sutra was about the "sun." It looks natural to think about the sun in the solar system; that's how all the commentators have interpreted it. It is not so. The "sun" is concerned with your sex mechanism - the source of all vitality, energy, heat within you.

In English you have the expression and the name for a certain combination of nerves: you call it "solar plexus." But people think that the solar plexus exists inside the navel. That is wrong. The solar energy exists in the sex center, not in the navel, because it is from there that your whole body gets the heat, the warmth. But the explanation may look farfetched; so let me explain it to you more. And then there are others - the moon, the stars, and the polestar.

The words simply indicate as if Patanjali is talking in astrological or astronomical terms about the solar system. He is talking about your inner cosmos, and man is a whole system; and corresponding to everything outside, there exists something within man. Man is almost a miniature universe.

Man can be divided into two types: the sun type and the moon type. The sun type is aggressive; the sun type is violent, outgoing, extrovert. The moon type is introvert, ingoing, nonaggressive, passive, receptive. Or you can call them yang and yin; or you can call them the male and the female. The male is outgoing; the female is ingoing. The male is positive; the female is negative.

Their functioning is different because they function from different centers. The man functions from the sun center; the woman functions from the moon center.

So, in fact, when a man becomes mad he should not be called "lunatic"; only when a woman becomes mad, she should be called a lunatic. "Lunar": the word "lunatic" comes from "lunar" - moonstruck. When a man becomes mad he is sunstruck; he is not moonstruck. And when a man becomes mad he becomes aggressive, violent. When a woman becomes mad she simply goes crazy, eccentric.

When I use the word "man" and "woman," I don't mean exactly all men and all women, because there are men who are more feminine than male and there are women who are more male than feminine. So don't get confused. A man can be moon-oriented and a woman can be sun-oriented; it depends from where their energy is getting its supply, from what source. The moon has no energy source of its own; it simply reflects the sun. It is a reflective mechanism, that's why it is so cool. It transforms the energy from hot to cool. The woman also gets the energy from the sex center, but it passes through the moon.

The moon is the hara. Just below the navel, two inches below the navel, there is a center; Japanese call it hara. Their word is perfect. That's why they call suicide "hara-kiri"; because the center of moon is the center of death - just as the center of sun is the center of life. All life comes from sun; all death from moon.

Gurdjieff used to say that man is food for the moon. In fact he was saying something very close to Patanjali - and he was one of the men who was very close, but in the West people could not understand what he meant. He used to say that everything is food for something else. Everything has to be food for something else in the ecology of existence. You eat something: you have to be eaten by something else, otherwise the continuity will be broken and the circle will be broken. Man eats fruit; fruits are eating the solar energy, the earth, the water. Man must be eaten in his own turn by something. Who eats man? Gurdjieff used to say that the moon eats man. He was a very eccentric man. His expressions are not scientific; his expressions are apparently very absurd. But if one goes deep in them, one would find pure diamonds there.

Now the first sutra:

Chandre tara vryuha gyanam.

So the moon is the hara, just two inches below the navel. If you hit hard there, you will die. Not even a single drop of blood will come out, and you will die. And there will be no pain. That's why Japanese can die so easily; nobody else can do that. They simply strike a knife into the hara - but they know exactly where it is - and they disappear. The body is disconnected from the soul.

The moon center is the death center. That's why men are afraid of women so much. They come to me - so many men - and they say that they are afraid of women. What is the fear? The fear is because woman is the hara, moon - she eats man. That's why men have always tried to keep women in control; otherwise she will eat, she will destroy them. Women have always been forced to remain in a certain bondage. Try to understand the phenomenon.

Why, all over the world, has man always been putting women into forced slavery? Why? There must be some fear, some deep fear of women, that if woman is allowed freedom, men will not be able to live. And there is truth in it.

Men can have only one orgasm at a time; a woman can have multiple orgasms. A man can make love to only one woman at a time; a woman can make love to as many people as she wants. If a woman is allowed total freedom, no man will be adequate enough to satisfy her - no man. Now the psychologists agree with this. All the recent research of Masters and Johnson and the reports of Kinsey, they all have come to one point which is absolutely certain: that no man is adequate enough to satisfy a woman sexually. If they are allowed freedom, a group of men will be needed to satisfy a woman.

One man, one woman, cannot live together - if total freedom is allowed. Then the woman will demand that she is not satisfied yet, and that will become a death.

Sex energy gives you life. The more you use sex energy, the more death comes closer. Hence, yogis became so much afraid of releasing sex energy, and they started conserving it; because they wanted to prolong life so their work on themselves is completed, so they don't die before their work is complete, because then they have to start it again.

Sex gives you life. The moment sex energy leaves your body, you are going towards death. There are many small insects which die in one sexual orgasm. There are a few spiders who die on their girlfriend; just making love they die. They make love once, and not only that, you will be surprised, when they die - and they die coupled together - the girlfriend starts eating them. She eats them, actually. Because what to do with a dead boyfriend? And this is true in all sex relation. ships that the man becomes by and by afraid.

Woman gets energy out of sexual love, man loses energy, because woman's hara is functioning.

She transforms the hot energy into cool energy. She is a receptivity; she is a passive opening, a welcome. She absorbs energy; man loses energy.

This center hara, or call it moon, exists in men also, but is nonfunctioning. It can function only if much effort is put to transform it, to bring it to activity.

The whole science of Tao is nothing but to make the moon center function fully. That's why the whole Tao attitude is receptive, feminine, passive. Yoga is also on the same way, but from a different angle.

Yoga tries to bring solar energy, the sun energy, inside the body, work6 on the sun energy and the path on which the sun energy has to move, and brings it to the moon. Tao and tantra, they work on the moon, make it more receptive, more magnetic, so it pulls the solar energy towards itself. Yoga is a sun method, Tao and tantra are moon methods, but the work is the same.

All the yoga exercises are to channelize the sun energy towards the moon, and all the Tao and tantra exercises are to make the moon so magnetic that it pulls all the energy that is created by the sun center and transforms it.

That's why a Buddha or a Mahavir or a Patanjali or Lao Tzu, when they attain to their total, absolute flowering, look more feminine than like men. They lose all the comers that men have; they become more round. Their body becomes more feminine. They attain to a certain grace, which is feminine.

Their eyes, their faces, their walking, their sitting - everything becomes more close to feminine. They are no longer aggressive, no longer violent.

"By performing samyama on the moon, knowledge concerning the arrangement of the stars is gained." If you bring your samyama, your witnessing, to the hara center, you will become able to know all the stars within your body - all the centers within your body - because when you are focused on the sun center you are so excited, you are so feverish, that you cannot attain to clarity.

To attain to clarity one has to come first to the moon. Moon is a great phenomenon of transforming energy.

Just see. In the sky, also, the moon gets the energy from the sun; then it reflects it. It has no energy of its own, it simply reflects it, but changes its quality so totally. Look at the moon and you will feel peace; look at the sun and you will start getting mad. Look at the moon and you will feel a calmness surrounding you. Buddha attained to his final enlightenment on a full moon night.

In fact, all those who have attained have always attained in the night. Not a single human being has become enlightened in the day. Mahavir became enlightened in the night. It was no-moon night, amavas; the night was totally dark. Buddha became enlightened on the full-moon night, purnima. But both became enlightened in the night. Yet it has not happened that a man has become enlightened in the day. It will not happen, because for enlightenment the energy has to move from the solar to the lunar. Because enlightenment is a cooling down of all excitement, of all tensions. It is a great relaxation - the ultimate relaxation. There is no movement in it.

Try to do it. Whenever you have time, just close your eyes.... In the beginning, press the point just two inches below the navel with your fingers to feel it, and become aware of it. Your breathing goes up to that point. When you breathe naturally, your belly goes up, falls down, goes up, falls down. By and by you will see that your breathing exactly touches the hara. It has to touch it. That's why when breathing stops you die; the breathing is no longer touching the hara. The hara is disconnected; once the hara is disconnected you die. Death comes from the hara.

When a man is young he is solar; when a man is old he becomes lunar. When a woman is young she is lunar; when she becomes old she becomes solar. That's why many women will start growing mustaches when they become old; they are becoming solar. The wheel turns. Many men, when they become old, become nagging. Old people are very nagging, irritated, continuously in anger - angry at every and anything. They are becoming lunar. They have not transformed their energies; they have lived an accidental life. Women become more aggressive in old age because the lunar is exhausted. They have used it; now their solar part is still fresh, new, can be used.

Men in their old age start taking the style of women and they start doing things which were never expected of them. For example, in everything woman and man differ. If a man becomes angry, he would like to hit; if a woman becomes angry, she will talk and nag and... but she will not hit. She is not aggressive; she is passive.

I have heard one anecdote:

A woman lecturer was going great guns. "Yes," she cried, "women have suffered in a thousand ways!"

She paused for effect.

A meek little man in the front row raised his hand. "I know one way in which they have never suffered," he said.

The lecturer fixed a stern eye upon him. "What way is that?" she demanded.

"They have never suffered in silence," said the man.

The passive energy becomes a nagging. Have you observed? Girls start talking before the boys do. Almost always they are ahead as far as language is concerned; in the schools and the colleges, universities, they are always ahead of the boys as far as language is concerned. A girl starts talking six or eight months before the boy starts talking. And a girl becomes very proficient in talking, very soon, almost perfect. She may talk nonsense, but she talks efficiently. The boy lags behind. He can fight, he can run, he can be aggressive, but he is not so articulate.

Both the energies function in different ways. The moon energy, if life is not going well, becomes sad.

The sun energy, if life is not going good, becomes angry. So women become sad; men become angry. If a man feels something is wrong, he would like to do something about it. A woman will wait.

If a man is angry, he would like to kill somebody. If a woman is angry, she would like to commit suicide. The first thing that comes to a man in anger is to murder, to kill. The first thing that comes to a woman in anger is to commit suicide, to destroy oneself.

Have you seen husbands and wives fighting? The husband starts beating the wife; the wife starts beating herself. The functioning is different.

But a perfect man needs to have a synthesis of both the energies - solar and lunar. When both the energies are fifty-fifty and balanced, one attains to tranquility. When man and woman are balanced within you, you come to have a stillness which is not of this earth. The sun cancels the moon, the moon cancels the sun, and you remain there undisturbed... you remain there in your absolute being, with no movement, with no motivation, with no desire.

And once you can feel the hara functioning and your sun energy being transformed by the hara, you will see many things within you. You will see all the stars. What are these stars? Your centers are the stars.

Each center is a star in your inner sky, and each center has to be known and you have to bring your samyama on it, because it has many mysteries hidden behind it. It will reveal them to you. You are a great book - the greatest - and unless you read yourself all reading is useless.

When Socrates and men like Socrates say, "Know thyself," they mean this. They mean that you have to know the whole territory of your inner being, in every bit. Every nook and corner has to be travelled, light has to be brought, and then you will see what you are - a cosmos, as infinite as the outer cosmos; and in one way greater than it because you are conscious also, because you are not only alive: you know that you are alive because you can become a witness also.

Dhruve tadgati gyanam.

And what is the polar star in your inner being? The polar star is very symbolic. Mythologically, it is thought that the polar star is the only star which is absolutely unmoving. It is not true. It moves, but very slowly. But it is symbolic: something in you has to be found which does not move at all.

Only that can be your nature, only that can be your being: something like a polestar - dhruve - unmoving, absolutely unmoving, because when there is no movement, eternity is there; when there is movement, time.

Movement needs time; no movement needs no time. If you move there will be a beginning and an end. All movement starts and ends; there will be a birth and death. But if there is no movement, then you are beginningless, endless; then there is no birth, no death.

So where is the polestar within you? That's what yoga call sakshin, the witness. The witness is the polestar. First bring your samyama on the solar energy because that is where you exist ordinarily, biologically. That is where you find yourself. That is already given. Transform it to lunar energy: become more cool, collected, calm. Let the excitement, the feverishness, the heat be gone, dispersed, so that you can watch the inner sky. And then the first thing to find is: who is the watcher.

That is the polestar because the watcher is the only thing which is unmoving within you.

Now let me explain it to you. You are angry, but you cannot remain angry forever. Even the angriest man laughs some. times, has to. It cannot become a permanent state of affairs, being angry.

Even the saddest man smiles; and even the man who laughs continuously sometimes cries and weeps and tears come to his eyes. Emotions cannot be Permanent. That's why they are called "emotions"; the word comes from "motion," movement. They move; hence, they are emotions. From one to another you continuously change. This moment you are sad, that moment you are happy; this moment you are angry, that moment you are very compassionate; this moment you are loving, another moment full of hatred; the morning was beautiful, the evening is ugly. This goes on.

This cannot be your nature, because behind all these changes something is needed Like a thread which holds all of them together. Just as in a garland you see flowers, you don't see the thread; but the thread is the one who is holding all the flowers. So these are all flowers: sometimes anger flowers, sometimes sadness flowers, sometimes happiness, sometimes pain, some times anguish.

But these are all flowers, and your whole life is the garland. There must be a thread; otherwise you would have fallen apart long before. You continue as an entity, so what is the thread, the polestar?

What is permanent in you?

That is the whole search of religion: what is permanent in you. If you go on being concerned and engaged with the non permanent, you are in the world. The moment you change your attention towards that which is permanent in you, you are becoming religious.

Sakshin, the witness. You can witness your anger. You can witness your sadness. You can witness your anguish. You can witness your blissfulness. The witness remains the same. Or, for an example, in the night you sleep. The day is gone and the image that you carried the whole day, who you are, is also gone. You may have been a very rich man in the day. In the night, in the dream, you may become a beggar.

Emperors tend to become beggars in their dreams, beggars tend to become emperors in their dreams, because dream is a completion. Even an emperor sometimes feels jealous of beggars because they move on the street so free, unconcerned, as if they have nothing to do and the whole world to enjoy. And he watches them sitting in the sun and enjoying sunlight, sun rays. He cannot do that; he has too many other things to do. He is so occupied. He sees them singing in the night under the stars. He cannot do that; it won't look good for an emperor. He feels jealous. In the night, emperors dream they have become beggars. Beggars dream they have become emperors because they are jealous. They see the palaces, the riches, the merriment that goes on. They would also like to have it.

So whatsoever is lacking comes into your dreams; your dream is a complementary thing. If you study your dreams, you will know what is lacking in your life. The moment nothing is lacking dreams disappear. So an enlightened person never dreams; he cannot dream. It is impossible for him to dream because nothing is lacking. He is contented, absolutely contented. If he is a beggar, he is so contented that he is already an emperor in his beggarliness.

Once it happened, a great Sufi mystic, Ibrahim, used to live with a beggar. Ibrahim renounced his throne because he saw the falsity and the foolishness of it, and he was a courageous man. He left his kingdom and he became a beggar. Then one beggar accompanied him for a few days. The beggar would pray every night to God, "God, do something. Why have you made me so poor? The whole world is enjoying. Just I am left out of it. Not even bread enough to eat, no clothes to wear, no shelter to live. Do something! Sometimes I start suspecting whether you are there or not because my prayers remain unfulfilled."

Ibrahim listened to this prayer once, twice, thrice; then one day he said, "Wait. It seems you have got your poverty without paying the price."

The beggar said, "Price for poverty? What do you mean? What are you talking about? Has poverty also to be paid for!"

Ibrahim said, "Yes, I have paid for it with my whole king, dom, and then I know the beauty of it. You have got it free of charge, so you don't know what poverty is. You don't know the freedom that it brings; you don't know the weightlessness that it brings. You don't know what poverty is. First you need to suffer like a rich man; then you will know. I have known both... I am contented."

"In fact," Ibrahim said, "I cannot pray because I cannot find anything to pray for. At the most I can say, 'Hello, God. Thank you.' Finished. There is nothing to say. I am so contented."

An enlightened person cannot dream: he is so contented. And I say to you he will not even say, "Hello, God. Thank you." Why disturb him? Or he will say it once, and every day he will say, "Ditto." What is the point of saying it? And in fact he knows already that your whole heart is saying hello, thank you. What is the point of saying it?

In the night you dream and you forget your image that you carried the whole day. You may be a great scholar in the day; evening you forget. You may be a king, and you forget. Or you may be a great ascetic who has renounced the world, and in dreams beautiful women surround you and you forget that you are an ascetic, a monk, and this is not good. All that is good and bad in the day is gone because you are absolutely someone different. The mood has changed, the climate has changed.

But one thing remains permanent. In the day if you watch your activities - walking on the street, eating the food, going to the office, coming home, being angry, being loving - if you watch, then in the night also you can watch, and you can go on watching that this is a dream. So in a dream I have become an emperor? Good. You can go on watching.

In twenty four hours only one thing can be permanent, and that is the watcher, the witness. That is the polestar inside you.

"By performing samyama on the polar star, knowledge of the movement of the stars is gained." And remember, first Patanjali says performing samyama on the moon, knowledge of the arrangement of the stars is gained - which star is which, and where. By performing samyama on the polar star, sakshin, the movement of the stars is known. Because the movement can be known only against something which is permanent. If nothing is permanent, movement cannot be known; and if everything is moving and you don't have a permanent base, unmoving base, how can you know movement?

That's why you cannot feel the movement of the earth. The earth is moving, as fast as you can imagine. It is a spaceship. It is continuously moving: whirling on its center and, at the same time, running fast around the sun. Day in, day out, year in, year out, it goes on and on and you never feel it - because everything else is running with the same speed: the trees, the houses, you, everything.

It is impossible to feel it because there is no point of contrast. Just think of yourself as if you have a small thing to stand on - the whole earth moves, you are not moving - then you will know. You will get almost dizzy; it is going so fast. Then you will not be able to be in Poona. Sometimes it is Philadelphia passing, sometimes it is Tokyo passing, sometimes... and continuously the earth is moving, revolving.

It is moving so fast, but to know it, to feel it, you need a non moving base. That's why man lived for so many centuries on the earth and just three hundred years ago, through Galileo and Copernicus, we came to know that the earth moves. Otherwise, for millennia we had been thinking that the earth is the center, unmoving center, everything else moves in the world - all the stars, the sun and moon - only the earth is unmoving: this is the center.

Inside, also, everything is moving except the sakshin, the witness. Except your awareness, everything is constantly moving. Once you know this witness you will be able to see how fast everything else is moving.

Now a very complicated thing has to be understood. For example, I talked up to now in terms as if the centers are static. They are not. Sometimes the sex center is in the head, moving. That's why the mind becomes so sexual. You go on thinking and fantasizing. Sometimes the sex center is in your hands, and you would like to touch a woman. Sometimes the sex center is in your eyes, and whatsoever you see, you turn it into a sexual object. You become pornographic - whatsoever you see, immediately it turns into a sex object. Sometimes the center is in the ears; whatsoever you hear makes you sexual.

It is possible to go to a temple and listen to bhajans, divine, devotional singing, and feel sexual if your center is at that moment in the ears. And you will be very much worried,

"What is happening? I am in the temple; I have come as a devotee. And what is happening?"

And sometimes it is possible, you may be sitting by your girlfriend, your wife, and she is available - not only available, welcoming, waiting - and you don't feel sexual at all: the sex center is not at the sex center where it should be.

Sometimes it happens when you fantasize about sex you enjoy much; when you make love to a woman you enjoy nothing - nothing at all.

What happens? You don't know where your center is. When one becomes sakshin, one becomes aware of where the center is, and then much is possible.

When it is in your ears, it gives energy to your ears. Those are the moments when you can train the ear and you can become a musician. When it is in your eyes, those are the moments you can become a painter, an artist. Then you look at the trees and they will be greener than they are. Then the rose flowers will have a different blooming quality to them; you will project. When the sex center is on the tongue, you can become a great orator - you can hypnotize people. A single word from you, and it goes to the very heart of your listeners; they are hypnotized. There are right moments....

If your sex center is in your eyes, you can just look at someone and he will be hypnotized. You will become a hypnotizer; you will have hypnotic power. When the sex center is in your hands, touch anything and it becomes gold. Because sex is energy and life.

And the same about moon.

Up to now I talked about their static locations. Ordinarily, they are found there, but nothing is static.

Everything is revolving.

If your death center is in your hands and you are a physician, give the medicine and the patient will die. Do whatsoever you will, you will not be able to save your patient. In India they say, "That doctor has the hands of a physician: whatsoever he touches becomes medicine." And some other doctor?

"Don't go near him: you bring a small disease to him, and he will magnify it and you will come back worse than when you had gone there."

The yogi becomes alert. In ayurveda, which evolved by the side of yoga in the ancient India, a physician had to be a yogi also. Unless you are a yogi you cannot be a real physician. You cannot be a real healer. The physician had to watch his own inner arrangement before he would go to the patient to see and treat him. If the death center is in the hands, he will not go. If the death center is in his eyes, he will not go. The death center should be in the hara and the life center in his hands, then he will go. A right arrangement of things.

Once you know your inner world, many things become possible. You have also observed it sometimes, but you don't know what is happening. Sometimes you don't do anything, and you go on being successful. And sometimes you do such hard work, and nothing succeeds; everything fails. Your arrangement is not right. You are functioning through a wrong center.

When a warrior goes to the war, to the war front, he should go when the death center is in his hands.

Then... then he can kill very easily. Then he is death incarnate. That is what is the meaning of an "evil eye": the man whose death center has got fixed into the eyes. If he looks at you, you will be in trouble. His very look is a curse.

And there are people whose eyes have become fixed with the life center. They look, and you feel a blessing; they look, and you feel blessed. They look at you, and something, something alive showers on you.

"By performing samyama on the polar star, knowledge of the movement of the stars is gained." Nabhi chakre kaya vyuha gyanam.

The navel center is the center of your body, because it is through the navel center that you were fed by your mother in the womb. For nine months you existed only by the navel center. You were connected with the navel; that was the passage, the bridge. And when the navel center was disconnected from the mother and the cord was cut, you became an independent being. Your navel is tremendously significant as far as the body is concerned.

"By performing samyama on the navel, knowledge of the organization of the body is gained." And the body is a great, complicated mechanism, very delicate. In your single body there are millions of cells; in your small head there are millions of nerves. Scientists have developed many complicated mechanisms, but nothing to compare with the human body - and there seems to be no possibility that they will ever be able to create such a complicated mechanism, and functioning so well. It is a miracle. And functioning so automatically; and continuously it functions for seventy or even a hundred years.

Everything is made as if it is perfect. It is a self-perpetuating system: eats; whenever you are hungry, creates hunger; when you have eaten well, gives you an indication - stop; digests; makes blood and bones and the marrow; and continuously goes on cleaning itself because so many cells are dying every moment they have to be thrown out. Creating, cleaning, maintaining itself; and that everything is automatic.

If you follow a natural way of life, the body functions so beautifully, it hums so beautifully.

By knowing the navel center, you will be able to know the whole mechanism of the body. That's how yoga physiology was known. It has been known not from the outside; it has not been known by postmortem reports. Because yoga says when a man is dead, whatsoever you know about him is not true about a man who is alive. Because a dead man is totally different than an alive man. Now scientists are coming to guess it, that the postmortem at the most is a guess; because when a man is dead the body functions one way and when a man is alive it functions differently, so whatsoever we know about the dead body is, at the most, approximately true about the living body but not exactly true.

Yoga came to know from the inside. Yoga discovered the physiology with full life and awareness.

That's why there are many things which yoga talks about and modern physiology will not agree, because modern physiology is of a dead man, of a corpse, and yoga is concerned with life.

Just think. When the electricity is flowing through the wires you cut the wires; then you will have one experience. When the electricity has stopped flowing then cut the wires; you will have another experience. And these are totally different.

You dissect a dead body. You cannot dissect an alive body because by the time you dissect, it will be dead. So one day or other, physiologists have to agree with yoga research that if you want to know the alive body, when the electricity is flowing and one is vital, then somehow one has to go deep within oneself and from there, from that vantage point of view, one has to know what the body is, how it is arranged.

When you go in a dead body, it is going in a house whose owner has left it. You may come across furniture, but you will not come across the owner. When yoU go inside a house when the owner is there, he fills, his presence fills, the whole house. When you are present in the body, your presence is making every cell qualitatively different. When you are gone, then just a dead thing is left, just matter.

These are the inner investigations. Yoga came to know that if you are hungry, the hunger is not exactly in the stomach. When you are thirsty, it is not exactly in the throat. The stomach gives the information to the brain, and then the brain gives the information to you; it has some indications. For example, when you are feeling thirsty, the brain makes your throat feel thirsty. When the water is needed in the body, the brain creates a symptom in the throat, and you feel thirsty. When you need food, the brain creates something in the stomach, and you have the hunger pangs.

But you can deceive the brain very easily: you can drink water with sugar. Because the brain understands the language of the sugar only. So if you eat sugar, or drink sugar, immediately the brain thinks now there is no need; the hunger disappears. That's why people who eat too many sweets lose their appetite. Just a small quantity of sugar is not going to nourish you, but the brain has been befooled by you. Sugar is the language. Immediately the brain thinks the sugar level has risen high, finished. It thinks as if you have eaten well and through the food the sugar level has risen high. You have simply taken a sugar pill; that is a deception.

Yoga came to know that by bringing samyama to certain centers things can disappear. For example, if you bring samyama to the throat, you will feel thirst has gone and hunger has gone. That's how yogis could fast so long. It is said about Mahavir that he fasted sometimes even three months, four months, continuously. During the whole period of twelve years while he was meditating, he fasted almost eleven years. Three months he will fast, and then one day he will eat, then again one month he will fast, and two days he will eat; this way. In twelve years it adds up to only one year when he was eating; that means in twelve days, one day of eating, eleven days of fasting, average.

How did he do it? How could he do it? It is almost impossible, humanly impossible. Yoga has some secrets.

If you concentrate on the throat.... Try. Next time you feel thirsty, close your eyes, sit, and bring your total attention in the throat. Once the attention is there, you will see the throat is relaxing. Because whenever your total attention is at any point, you become separate from it. The throat is thirsty: you feel I am thirsty. If you bring your witnessing conscious. ness to it, suddenly you are separate. Your cooperation is broken. Now you know the throat is thirsty, not I. And how can a throat be thirsty without you?

How can the body be hungry without you? Have you ever seen a dead man hungry or thirsty? Even if all the water disappears and evaporates from the body, a dead man will not feel thirst. Identification is needed.

Try it. Next time you feel hungry try it. Just close your eyes, go deep down into the throat... watch.

You will see the throat separate from you. The moment you will see the throat separate from you, the body will stop saying that the body is hungry. The body cannot be hungry; only your identification with the body.

Kurma-nadhi is the vehicle of prana, breathing. If you silently watch your breathing, not changing its rhythm in any way, neither making it fast nor slow, just leaving it natural and relaxed, and if you simply watch it; you will become absolutely still. There will be no movement in you. Why?

Because all movement comes through breathing, prana. All movement comes through breathing.

The movement exists in you through breathing. When the breathing stops, a person is dead - he cannot move.

If you constantly bring your samyama to breathing, to kurma-nadhi, by and by you will come to a state where you will see breathing has almost stopped. Yogis do this meditation facing a mirror because the breathing becomes so silent, they cannot feel it. They can only see whether there is some mist on the mirror from their breathing or not. Sometimes they have become so silent that they cannot decide whether they are still alive or not. In deep meditation this experience will happen to you also sometimes. Don't be afraid. Breathing almost stops.

When consciousness is perfect, breathing almost stops, but don't be worried. That is not death; that is simply stillness.

The whole effort of yoga is to bring you to such stillness that it cannot be broken by anything, to such a state of consciousness which cannot be disturbed.

I have heard:

A madman of the Way called at a shop and asked the businessman, "What makes you sit here day in, day out?"

"In order to make profit."

"What is profit?" asked the madman.

"It is the making of one into two," said the businessman.

"This is no profit," the madman said. "Profit is when you can make two into one." That madman was not an ordinary madman; he must have been a realized man. He was a Sufi Master.

Yes, profit is when you make two into one. Profit is when all duality disappears, when only one remains.

The word "yoga" means the method of becoming one. Yoga means how to join together that which has fallen apart. The very word "yoga" means "joining together." The word "yoga" means UNIO MYSTICA. The word "yoga" means "union." Yes, profit is when you can make two into one.

And the whole effort is how to find the permanent, how to find the one behind the many, how to find the unmoving behind all the changes, the flux - how to find the deathless, how to find the beyond.

Your habits will create trouble because you have lived with wrong habits for so long. Your mind is conditioned for wrong habits - you always divide. Your whole intellect has been trained to divide and dissect and make many out of one. Man has lived up to now through the intellect, and he has forgotten how to put them together.

A man came to a Mohammedan mystic, Farid, with golden scissors as a present; the scissors were really very beautiful and very valuable. But Farid laughed, and he said, "What am I going to do with scissors, because I never cut a thing in two? You take it. Rather, bring me a needle - and no need to bring a golden needle, any needle will do - because my whole effort is to sew things together." But old habits are of dissecting. Old habits are of finding that which is continuously changing. The mind is excited about something new and the changing; the unchanging seems uninteresting. You will have to be aware of these habits; otherwise they will assert themselves in some way or other...

and mind is very cunning.

Let me tell you one story: Maulana Arshad Va'ez was a great preacher, very eloquent, but he was also a beggar.

Once the king called him to his court and said, "Maulana, on the recommendations of my ministers I am sending you as a delegate to Shah Shoja's court in Shiraz. However, I want you to promise me that you will refrain from begging during your stay abroad - because I would not like my representative to beg, so you have to promise."

Maulana did as asked and set out for Shiraz.

After bringing his mission to a successful termination, he was addressed by the Shah of Shiraz, "The fame of your preaching has reached to our land and has made us desirous of listening to one of your sermons."

Maulana consented.

On the appointed day, Friday, he climbed to the pulpit and delivered a moving sermon, bringing tears to the eyes of his audience. But before he had left the pulpit, suddenly he could not resist his begging habit any longer.

He said, "O Muslims! Until several weeks ago I used to beg. But before coming here they made me take an oath that I would not beg during my stay in your city. I ask you, my brothers, if I have sworn to refrain from begging, have you too sworn not to give me anything?"

Mind is very cunning. It will find ways and means: "If I cannot beg, you can give."

Remember that the mind is very much accustomed to analysis, and yoga is synthesis. So whenever the mind comes to analyze, put it aside, set it aside. Through analysis you will reach to the last, the minutest, the atomic; through synthesis you will reach to the greatest, to the total. Science has come to discover atom, and yoga came to discover atma. Atom means the minutest, and atma means the biggest. Yoga came to know the whole, to realize the total; and science has come to know the smaller and the smaller and the smaller, and they go on.

First science divided matter into molecules, then they thought that the molecule is difficult to divide; then they succeeded in dividing it, then they called it "atom." The word "atom" means indivisible, which cannot be divided anymore - but they divided that too. Then they came to electrons and neutrons and they thought now it cannot be divided because it has become almost invisible - it cannot be seen. Nobody has ever seen any electron, so how can you divide it? But now they have succeeded in dividing it also. Without seeing it, they have succeeded in dividing.

They will go on and on and on.... Everything has slipped out of hand.

Yoga is just the opposite process: of synthesizing, of joining and joining and joining, so you come to the total. The total is one.

The mind is also divided into the sun mind or moon mind. The sun mind is scientific; the moon mind is poetic. The sun mind is analytical; the moon mind is synthetical. The sun mind is mathematical, logical, Aristotelean; the moon mind is totally different - illogical, irrational. They function so differently that there exists no language between them.

A gypsy was having a quarrel with his son. He said to the boy, "You lazy, do-nothing idler! How many times shall I tell you that you should work and not let your life pass in indolence? How many times shall I tell you that you should learn juggling and clowning so that you can enjoy your life?" Then he raised his finger in threat, saying, "By God, if you don't listen to my words anymore, I will throw you in a school; then you will gather lots of stupid knowledge, become a learned man, and spend the rest of your life in want and misery." That's a gypsy mind - no mind. A gypsy thinks become a wanderer, be a clown, but enjoy. And a gypsy says, "I will throw you in a school so that you will gather all sorts of stupid knowledge and become a learned man - and then your whole life will be wasted. You will live in misery." Try to see where you are: in the sun mind - rational, arguing, argumentative, logical; or in the moon mind - poetic, imaginative, dreaming. Where are you?

And remember, both minds are half half. One has to go beyond both. If you are in the sun mind, come to the moon mind first, because the way passes through that. If you are a householder, first become a gypsy.

That's what sannyas is. I make you gypsies, wanderers. If you are too logical, I say trust, surrender, sacrifice, submit. If you are too argumentative, I say to you I have no argument. Just look at me, and fall in love - if you can. It is a love affair. If you can trust, you will shift your energy from the sun to the moon.

Once you shift your energy from the sun to the moon, then there opens a new possibility: you can go beyond moon also. Then you become a witness. That is the goal.