Beyond the error of experiencing

One of the most important sutras of Patanjali - the very key. This last part of Patanjali's YOGA SUTRAS is called "kaivalya pada." Kaivalya means the summum bonum - the ultimate liberation, the total freedom of consciousness, which knows no limitation, which knows no impurity. The word kaivalya is very beautiful; it means innocent aloneness; it means pure aloneness.

The word "aloneness" has to be understood. It is not loneliness. Loneliness is negative: loneliness is when you are hankering for the other. Loneliness is the feeling of the absence of the other; aloneness is the realization of oneself. Loneliness is ugly; aloneness is tremendously beautiful.

Aloneness is when you are so content that you don't need the other, that the other has completely disappeared from your consciousness - the other makes no shadow on you, the other creates no dream in you, the other does not pull you out.

The other is continuously pulling you off the center. Sartre's famous saying, Patanjali would have understood it well, is, "The other is hell." The other may not be hell, hut the hell is created by your desire for the other. The desire for the other is hell.

And to be desireless of the other is to attain to your pristine clarity of being. Then you are, and you are the whole-and there exists nobody except you. This Patanjali calls kaivalya.

And the way towards kaivalya, the path, is first, the most essential step, viveka, discrimination; the second important step is vairagya, Renunciation; and the third is the realization of kaivalya, aloneness.

Why are you hankering so much for the other? Why this desire - this constant madness for the other? Where have you taken a wrong step? Why are you not satisfied with yourself? Why don't you feel fulfilled? Why do you think that some. how you lack something? From where arises this misconception that you are incomplete? It arises out of the identity with the body. The body is the other. Once you have taken the first wrong step, then you will go on and on, and then there is no end to it.

By viveka Patanjali means: to discriminate yourself as separate from the body - to realize that you are in the body but you are not the body, to realize that you are in the mind but you are not the mind.

To realize that you are always the pure witness - sakshi, drashta - the seer. You are never the seen; you are never the object. You are pure subjectivity.

Soren Kierkegaard, one of the most influential existential thinkers in the West, has said, "God is subjectivity." He comes very close to Patanjali. What does he mean when he says God is subjectivity? When all objects are known as separate from you, they start disappearing. They exist through your cooperation. If you think you are the body, then the body continues. It needs your help, your energy. If you think you are the mind, the mind functions. It needs your help, your cooperation, your energy.

This is one of the inner mechanisms: that just by your presence nature becomes alive. Just by your presence the body functions as alive; just by your presence the mind starts functioning.

In yoga they say it is as if the master had gone out; then he comes back home. The servants were chitchatting and sitting on the steps of the house and smoking, and nobody was worried about the house. The moment the master enters, their chitchat stops, they are no longer smoking, they have hidden their cigarettes and they have started working, and they are trying to show that they are so much involved in their work that you cannot even conceive that just a moment before they were gossiping, sitting on the steps idling, lazy, resting. Just the presence of the master, and everything settles - as if the teacher had gone out of the class and there was much turmoil, almost a chaos, and the teacher comes back and all the children are in their seats and they have started writing, doing their work, and there is complete silence. The very presence.

Now scientists have something parallel to it. They call it the presence of the catalytic agent. There are a few scientific phenomena in which a certain substance is needed just to be present. It does not act in any way, it does not enter into any activity, but just the presence of it helps some activity to happen - if it is not present that activity will not happen. If it is present it remains in itself; it does not go out. Just the very presence is catalytic - it creates some activity in somebody else, somewhere else.

Patanjali says that your innermost being is not active; it is inactive. The innermost being is called in yoga the purusha. Your pure consciousness is a catalytic agent. It is just there doing nothing - seeing everything, but doing nothing; watching everything, but getting involved in nothing. By the sheer presence of the purusha; the prakriti, nature - the mind, the body, everything - starts functioning.

But we get identified with the body, we get identified with the mind: we slip out of the witnesser and become a doer. That's the whole disease of man. Viveka is the medicine - how to go back home, how to drop this false idea that you are a doer, and how to attain to the clarity of just being a witness.

The methodology is called viveka.

Once you have understood that you are not the doer and you are the watcher, the second thing happens spontaneously - renunciation, sannyas, vairagya. The second is: now whatsoever you were doing before, you cannot do. You were getting involved too much in many things because you were thinking you are the body, because you were thinking you are the mind. Now you know that you are neither the body nor the mind, so many activities that you were following and chasing and getting mad about simply drop. That dropping is vairagya; that is sannyas, renunciation.

Your vision, your viveka, your understanding, brings a transformation: that is vairagya. And when vairagya is complete another peak arises, which is kaivalya - you for the first time know who you are. But the first step of identification leads you astray; then once you have taken the first step, once you have ignored your separation and you have got caught in the identity, then it goes on and on and on; and one step leads to another, then to another, and you are more and more in the mire and in the mess.

Let me tell you one anecdote:

Two young friends were breaking into society and young Cohen had high hopes of marrying an heiress. To give him moral support he took young Levy along with him to meet the girl's parents.

The parents smiled at young Cohen and said, "I understand you are in the clothing business." Cohen nodded nervously and said, "Yes, in a small way."

Levy slapped him on the back and said, "He is so modest, so modest. He has twenty-seven shops and is negotiating for more."

The parents said, "I understand you have an apartment." Cohen smiled, "Yes, a modest couple of rooms."

Young Levy started laughing, "Modesty, modesty! He has a penthouse in Park Lane."

The parents continued, "And you have a car?"

"Yes," said Cohen. "Quite a nice one."

"Quite nice nothing!" interjected Levy. "He has three Rolls-Royces, and that is only for the town use."

Cohen sneezed. "Do you have a cold?" asked the anxious parents. "Yes, just a slight one," replied Cohen.

"Slight, nothing!" yelled Levy. "Tuberculosis!"

One step leads to another, and once you have taken a wrong step, your life becomes an exaggeration of that wrong. It is mirrored and reflected in millions of ways. And if you don't correct it there - you can go on correcting all over the world - you will not be able to correct it.

Gurdjieff used to tell his disciples, "The first thing is to become nonidentified and to remember continuously that you are a witness, just a consciousness - neither an act nor a thought."

If this remembrance becomes a crystallized phenomenon in you, you have attained to viveka, discrimination; then spontaneously follows vairagya. If you don't become discriminate, spontaneously follows samsar, the world. If you be come identified with the body and the mind, you move out - you go into the world. You are expelled from the garden of Eden. If you discriminate and you remember that you are in the body and the body is an abode and you are the owner and the mind is just a biocomputer, you are the master and the mind is just a slave; then, a turning in.

Then you are not moving into the world, because the first step has been removed. Now you are no longer bridged with the world, suddenly you start falling in. This is what vairagya is, renunciation.

And when you go on falling in and in and in and there comes the last point beyond which there is no go, the summum bonum, it is called kaivalya: you have become alone. You don't need anybody. You don't need the constant effort of filling yourself with something or other. Now you are in tune with your emptiness, and because of your tuning in with the emptiness, the very emptiness has become a fullness, an infinity, a fulfillment, a fruition of being.

This purusha is there in the beginning, this PURUSHA is there in the end, and between the two is just a big dream.

The first sutra:

Each word has to be understood because each word is tremendously significant.

"Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate...." All experience is just an error. You say, "I am miserable," or you say, "I am happy," or you say, "I am feeling hungry," or you say, "I am feeling very good and healthy" - all experience is an error, is a misunderstanding.

When you say, "I am hungry," what do you really mean? You should say, "I am conscious that the body is hungry." You should not say, "I am hungry." You are not hungry. The body is hungry; you are the knower of the fact. The experience is not yours; only the awareness. The experience is of the body; the awareness is yours. When you feel miserable, again, the experience may be of the body or of the mind - which are not two.

Body and mind are one mechanism. The body is the gross mechanism of the same entity; the mind is the subtle mechanism. But both are the same. It is not good to say "body and mind"; we should say "body mind." The body is nothing but mind in a gross way, and if you watch your body you will see that the body also functions as a mind. You are fast asleep, and a fly comes and hangs around your face - you remove it with your hand without in any way getting up or waking up. The body functioned, very mindfully. Or something starts crawling on your feet - you throw it away. Fast asleep. You will not remember in the morning. The body functions as a mind - very gross, but it functions as a mind.

So body-mind has all the experience - good or bad, happy, unhappy, it makes no difference. You are never the experiencer; you are always the awareness of the experience. So Patanjali says in a very bold statement, "Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate...." All experience is an error. The error arises because you don't discriminate, you don't know who is who.

It happens many times. In the Amazon there is a small tribe of primitive people. When the wife is giving birth to a child, the husband also lies down on another cot. The wife starts screaming and yelling, and the husband also starts screaming and yelling. When for the first time it was discovered, it was unbelievable. What is the husband doing, and for what? The wife is passing through pain, but why is this husband? Is he simply acting? And then much research was done upon it and it has been found the husband is not acting. The pain really starts happening once you get identified.

Since millennia the mind of that tribe has been conditioned that because the wife and husband both are the parents of the child, both should suffer.

Seems perfectly okay. The women's lib movement should agree with them. Why only women? And these husbands just go on, they don't suffer? They don't carry the child in their womb for nine months, and then again when the child is born the whole responsibility seems to be of the mother.

Why this?

But that tribe has lived that way. Psychologists, medical research workers, have observed the man really goes through pain - really. Unbelievable to us because we are not identified that way. The husband is so identified with the wife - the very identification that "she is going through pain" - he starts having pangs.

You may have watched it sometimes. If you love somebody very much and he is suffering, you start suffering. That's what empathy is. If your loved one is suffering, you start suffering. If your loved one is happy, you start feeling happy. If your loved one is dancing, you feel like dancing. You get in tune with your loved one - you become identified.

Now this seems to be a very absurd case, that this society has continued and the husbands really suffer almost as much as the wife, and there is no difference. Now new light has come upon women's suffering also. One psychoanalyst in France has worked deeply upon it, and he says that women are suffering only because they believe that way. There are tribes in which not even the wife suffers.

In India there are tribes. In primitive societies the wife will go on working in the field, cutting wood, carrying wood, and suddenly she will give birth to a child, put the child in her bucket, and go home.

She will give birth to the child in the field, put the child under the tree and continue her work, the work has to be finished, and by evening she will take the child home. No pain. What has happened?

That too is a belief, a conditioning.

And now millions of women are getting ready to give birth to a child without any pain in the Western world, painless childbirth; just the belief system has to be changed. They have to be dehypnotized.

They have to be told that this is just an idea - the pain really does not happen; it is just an idea.

And once you have an idea you create it. Once you have an idea it starts happening - it is your projection.

Patanjali says all experience is an error - error in your vision. You become identified with the object, and the subject starts thinking as if it is the object. You feel hunger, but you are not hungry - the body is hungry. You feel pain, but you are not in pain - the body is in pain; you are only alert.

Next time something happens to you - and every moment something or other is happening - just watch. Just try to keep hold of this remembrance that "I am the witness," and see how much things change. Once you can realize you are the witness, many things simply disappear, start disappearing. And one day comes which is the final day, the day of enlightenment, when all experience falls flat. Suddenly you are beyond experience: you are not in the body, you are not in the mind; you are beyond both. Suddenly you start floating like a cloud, above all, beyond all.

That state of no-experience is the state of kaivalya.

Now one thing more about it. There are people who think that spirituality is also an experience. They don't know. There are people who come to me, and they say, "We would like to have some spiritual experience." They don't know what they are saying. Experience as such is of the world. There is no spiritual experience - there cannot be. To call an experience "spiritual" is to falsify it. The spiritual is only a realization of pure awareness, purusha.

How does it happen? How do we get identified? In yoga terminology the truth, the ultimate truth, has three attributes to it. sat chit anand - satchitanand. sat means "being" - the quality of eternity, the quality of permanence, being. chit: chit means "consciousness," awareness - chit is energy, movement, process. And anand: anand is "blissfulness." These three have been called the three attributes of the ultimate. This is the yoga trinity; of course, more scientific than the Christian trinity because it does not talk about persons - God, the Holy Ghost, the Son. It talks about realizations.

When one reaches to the ultimate peak of existence, one realizes three things: that one is and one is going to remain, that is sat; the second, one is and one is conscious - one is not like dead matter - one is and one knows that one is, that is chit; and, one knows that one is and one is tremendously blissful.

Now let me explain it to you. It is not right to call it "blissful," because then it will become an experience. So a better way will be to say "one is bliss" - not "blissful." One is sat, one is chit, one is anand; one is being, one is consciousness, one is bliss.

These are the ultimate realizations of the truth. Patanjali says these three, when they are present in the world, create three qualities in prakriti,in nature. They function as a catalytic agent; they don't do anything. Just their presence creates a tremendous activity in prakriti. That activity is corresponded by three gunas, qualities: sattva, rajas, tamas.

Sattva corresponds to anand, the quality of bliss. Sattva means pure intelligence. The closer you come to sattva, the more you feel blissful. Sattva is the reflection of anand. If you can conceive of a triangle, then the base is anand and the other two lines are sat, chit. It is reflected into the world of matter, prakriti. Of course in the reflection it becomes upside down: sattva and rajas, tamas - the same triangle.

But the ultimate truth is not doing anything - that is the emphasis of Patanjali. Because once the ultimate truth is doing something, he becomes a doer and he has already moved into the world. In Patanjali God is not the creator; he is just a catalytic agent. This is tremendously scientific because if God is the creator then you will have to find the motive, why he creates. Then you will have to find some desire in him to create. Then he will become just as ordinary as man. No, in Patanjali God is absolute, pure presence. He does not do anything, but by his presence things happen - the prakriti, the nature, starts dancing.

There is an old story. A king had made a palace; the palace was called the Mirror Palace. The floor, the walls, the ceiling, all were covered in millions of mirrors, tiny, tiny mirrors. There was nothing else in the whole palace; it was a mirror palace. Once it happened, the king's dog, by mistake, was left inside the palace in the night and the palace was locked from the outside. The dog looked, became frightened - there were millions of dogs everywhere. He was reflected; down, up, all the directions - millions of dogs. He was not an ordinary dog, he was the king's dog - very brave - but even then, he was alone. He ran from one room to another, but there was no escape, there was no go. All over.

He became more and more frightened. He tried to get out, but there was no way to get out - the door was locked.

Just to frighten the other dogs he started barking, but the moment he barked the other dogs also barked - because they were pure reflections. Then he became more frightened. To frighten the other dogs he started knocking against the walls. The other dogs also jumped into him, bumped into him. In the morning the dog was found dead.

But the moment the dog died, all the dogs died. The palace was empty. There was only one dog and millions of reflections.

This is the standpoint of Patanjali: that there is only one reality, millions of reflections of it. You are separate from me as a reflection, I am separate from you as a reflection, but if we move towards the real, the separation will be gone - we will be one. One reflection is separate from another reflection; you can destroy one reflection and save another.

That's how one person dies.... There are many argumentative people in the world who ask, "Then if there is only one Brahman, one God, one being spread all over, then when one dies, why don't others die also?" This is simple. If there are a thousand and one mirrors in the room, you can destroy one mirror: one reflection will disappear - not others. You destroy another: another reflection will disappear - not others. When one person dies, only one reflection dies. But the one who is being reflected remains undying; it is deathless. Then another child is born - that is, another mirror is born; again another reflection.

This story goes on and on. That's why Hindus have called this world a maya: maya means a magic show. Nothing is there really; everything only appears to be there. And this whole magic world depends on one error, and that error is of identity.

"Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate between purusha, (absolute) pure consciousness, and sattva, pure intelligence...." purusha is reflected into prakriti as sattva. Your intelligence is just a reflection of the real intelligence; it is not the real intelligence. You are clever, argumentative, groping in the dark, thinking, contemplating, creating philosophies, systems of thought - this is just a reflection. This intelligence is not the real intelligence because the real intelligence need not discover anything: for the real intelligence everything is already discovered.

Now look at the different paths of philosophy and religion. Philosophy moves in the reflected intelligence, into sattva - it goes on thinking and thinking and thinking and goes on creating bigger palaces of thought. Religion moves into purusha - it drops this so-called intelligence; hence the insistence of meditation to drop thinking.

I have heard, once it happened:

In the bazaar Mulla Nasruddin saw a crowd gathered around a small bird offering big prices for it.

"No doubt the price of birds and fowls has gone very up," Mulla thought to himself. He went home, and after some chase, succeeded in catching his old turkey. In the bazaar they offered only two silver coins for the turkey.

"It is not fair," Mulla said. "My turkey is several times as big as that little bird auctioned at so many gold pieces."

"But that bird was a parakeet - it talks."

Mulla took a glance at the turkey dozing in his arms. "Mine meditates," he said.

Become a turkey - meditate. Thinking is just dreaming logically; it is creating verbal palaces. And sometimes one can get caught so much in the verbal; then one completely forgets the real. The verbal is just a reflection.

Language is one of the reasons we got so caught up in the verbal. For example, in English it is very difficult to drop the use of the "I." It is very prominent in English. The "I" stands so vertical - almost a phallic symbol. It is phallic. That's why perceptive people like E. E. Cummings started writing "I" in the lower case. And it is not only vertical, phallic, when you write. When you say, "I," it is phallic, like an erection, egoistic. Just watch how many times "I" has to be used. And the more you use it, the more it is emphasized, the more ego becomes prominent - as if the whole English language hangs around "I."

But in Japanese it is totally different. You can talk for hours without using "I." It is possible to write a book without using "I"; the language has a totally different arrangement. The "I" can be dropped easily.

No wonder Japan became the most meditative country in the world and achieved to the higher peaks of Zen, satori, and samadhi. Why did it happen in Japan? Why has it happened in Burma, in Thailand, in Vietnam? All the countries which have been influenced by Buddhism, their language is different from other countries which have never been influenced by Buddhism because Buddha said there is no "I" - anatta, anatma, no-self, ness, there is no "I." That emphasis entered the languages.

Buddha says, "Nothing is permanent." So when for the first time the Bible was being translated into Buddhist languages. it was very difficult to translate it. The problem was very basic - how to put "God is." Because in Buddhist countries "is" is a dirty word. Everything is becoming, nothing is. If you want to say, "The tree is," in Burmese, it will come to mean, "The tree is becoming." It will not mean, "The tree is." If you want to say, "The river is," you cannot say it in Burmese. It will come to mean, "The river is becoming." And that's true because the river is never is. It is always in a process - the river is "rivering." It is not a noun; it is a verb. The river is rivering, becoming. Never in any stage can you catch it as "is." You cannot take a snap of it; it is a movie - continuous process. You cannot have a photograph - the photograph will be false because it will be "is," and the river never is.

Buddhist languages have a different structure to them; then they create a different mind. The mind depends much on language; its whole game is linguistic. Beware of it.

Let me tell you one anecdote. It happened in a very esoteric, small Sufi community: A pedantic grammarian happened to pass by a Sufi gathering and heard the sheikh say, "Indeed, we are from Him and to Him we will return."

At this the grammarian began to tear his clothes and utter strange yawps and cries. People gathered around him, wondering what had happened; he had never been of religious inclination or mystical talent.

Seeing that the Koranic line had brought the grammarian to such ecstasy, the sheikh said again, "Indeed, we are from Him and to Him we will return." And again the grammarian tore his clothes, stomped his feet, and groaned and yelled.

When the session was over and the grammarian had not a piece of clothing left on his body, the sheikh took him into a comer, splashed water on his face, and said, "Tell me, sir, what happened that a paraphrase from the Koran made you behave like that?"

"Why not!" the grammarian said vehemently. "In all my life, in all my speeches and writings, and in all the writings of scholars, recent and old, the first person plural has been used with shall, and not as you say, "To Him we return"!

The question was of "will" and "shall" - "will" is not right! Looks absurd, looks almost mad, crazy, but this is what is happening. If Buddha comes to you and says, "There is no God," you immediately get anxious, worried. What has he said? He has simply said something which goes against your linguistic pattern, that's all. If he says, "There is no self, no 'I,"' you become disturbed. What has he done? He has simply taken away a strategy of your ego, nothing else. He has simply shattered your linguistic pattern.

It is happening every day here. When I say something, and I destroy some linguistic pattern in you, you become annoyed, you become angry. If you are a Christian, of course, you have a Christian house of language. If you are a Hindu you have a Hindu house of language. I am neither, and I am here to destroy all linguistic patterns. You bet you get angry. You become annoyed. You start thinking what to do. But what am I doing? What can I take from you? Can Buddha take God from you if you have known God - can he take it from you? Then there is no question. But he can take a linguistic theory; he can take a hypothesis from you.

"Experience is the result of the inability to differentiate between purusha, pure consciousness, and sattva, pure intelligence...." Language belongs to sattva, theories belong to sattva, philosophies belong to sattva. Sattva means your intelligence, your mind. Mind is not you.

Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, belong to the mind. That's why Buddhist monks say, "If you meet Buddha on the way, kill him immediately." Buddhist monks saying that? They say, "Kill the Buddha if you see him, immediately." They are saying, "Kill the mind, don't carry a theory about the Buddha; otherwise you will never become a Buddha. If you want to become a Buddha, drop all ideas about Buddha - all ideas. Kill Buddha immediately!" They say, "If you utter the name of Buddha, immediately wash and rinse your mouth - the word is dirty." Buddhist monks saying that? They are amazing people... but really wonderful. And they mean it.

If you can see their point, you will become able to see many more things.

Bodhidharma says, "Bum all scriptures, all - including Buddha's." Not only the Vedas, Dhammapada included - burn all scriptures. There is a very famous painting of Bin-chi burning all the scriptures, creating a holi. And they were very, very deep into reality. What are they doing? They are simply taking away your mind from you. Where is your Veda? It is not in the book; it is in your mind. Where is your Koran? It is in your mind; it is not in the book. It is in your mental tape. Drop all that; get out of it.

Intelligence, the mind, is part of nature. It is just a reflection. It looks almost like the real, but remember, even "almost like the real," then too it is not real. It is as if in the full moon night you see the moon reflected in the cool, placid lake. No ripple is arising; the reflection is perfect, but still it is a reflection. And if the reflection is so beautiful, just think about the real. Don't get caught in the reflection.

What Buddha says is a reflection, what Patanjali writes is a reflection, what I am saying is a reflection.

Don't be caught in it. If the reflection is so beautiful, try reality. Move away from the reflection towards the moon.

And the path is going to be just the opposite to the reflection. If you go on looking at the reflection and you become hypnotized by the reflection, you will never be able to see the moon in the sky, because it is diametrically opposite. If you want to see the real moon, you will have to move away from the reflection - you will have to burn scriptures and you will have to kill Buddhas. You will have to move in the very opposite, diametrically opposite, dimension. Then your head moves towards the moon; then you cannot see the reflection. The reflection disappears.

All scriptures at the most can train and discipline your intelligence. No scripture can lead you towards the real, pure purusha - the witness, the awareness.

"... inability to differentiate between purusha, pure consciousness, and sattva, pure intelligence...." That is the very cause of getting into ignorance, into the dark night, into the world, into matter, losing contact with your own reality and becoming a victim of your own ideas and projections.

"... although they are absolutely distinct." You can see that. Even the greatest idea is different from you - you can watch it arising as an object inside you. Even the greatest idea remains a thing within you and you remain far away from it, a watcher on the hill looking down at the idea. Never get identified with any object.

"Performing samyama on the self interest brings knowledge of the purusha separated from the knowledge of others" - "SVARTHA SAMYAMAT PURUSHA GYANAM." Patanjali is saying, "Selfishness brings the absolute knowledge" - svartha. Become selfish, that is the very core of religion. Try to see what your real self-interest is, where your real self is. Try to distinguish yourself from others - "pararth," from the others.

And don't think that the people who are outside you are the others. They are others, but your body is also the other. It will return to the earth one day; it is part of the earth. Your breath, ing is also the other; it will return to the air. It is just given to you for a time being. You have borrowed it; it will have to be returned. You will not be here, but your breath will be here in the air. You will not be here, but your body will lie down in deep sleep in the earth - dust unto dust. That which you think of as your blood will be flowing into rivers. Everything will go back.

But one thing you have not borrowed from anybody: that's your witnessing, that's your sakshi bhaw, the awareness.

Intellect will disappear, reasoning will disappear. All these things are like formations of clouds in the sky: they come together, they disappear, but the sky remains. You will remain as a vast space. That vast space is purusha - the inner sky is purusha.

How to come to know it? Samyama on the self-interest. Bring your concentration, dharana; your contemplation, dhyan; your ecstasy, samadhi; bring all the three to your selfinterest - turn in. In the West people are turning "on" - then you turn out. Turn in. Just bring your consciousness to a focus, to who you are. Differentiate between the objects. Hunger arises - this is an object. Then you are satisfied, you have eaten well, a certain well-being arises - that too is an object. Morning comes - that too is an object. Evening comes - that too is an object. You remain the same - hunger or no hunger. Life or death, misery or happiness, you remain the same watcher.

But even in looking at a movie you get caught. You know well there is only a white screen and nothing else and shadows are moving on it, but have you watched people sitting in a movie house?

A few start crying when something tragic is happening on the screen. Their tears start coming. Just see: there is nothing real on the screen, but the tears are very real. The unreal is bringing tears?

People reading a story in a book become so excited. Or seeing a picture of a nude woman become sexually aroused. Just see, there is nothing. Just a few lines - nothing else. Just a little ink spread on the paper. But their sexual arousal is very real.

This is the tendency of the mind: to get caught with the objects, become identified with them.

Catch yourself red-handed as many times as you can. Again, again, catch yourself red handed and drop the object. Suddenly you will feel a coolness, all excitement gone. The moment you realize there is only the screen and nothing else, for what am I getting so much excited, for what.... The whole world is a screen, and all that you are seeing there are your own desires projected; and whatsoever you want, you start projecting and believing. This whole world is a fantasy.

And remember, you all don't live in the same world. Every. body has his own world because his fantasies are different from the others. The truth is one; fantasies are as many as there are minds.

If you are in a fantasy you cannot meet the other person, you cannot communicate with the other.

He is in his fantasy. That is what is happening: when people want to relate they cannot relate.

Somehow they miss-each other. Lovers, wives, friends, husbands, miss each other, go on missing.

And they are very much worried over why they cannot communicate. They wanted to say something, but the other understands some. thing else. And they go on saying, "I never meant this," but the other goes on hearing something else.

What is happening? The other lives in his fantasy; you live in your own fantasy. He is projecting some other film on the same screen; you are projecting some other film on the same screen. That's why a relationship becomes such an anxiety, anguish. One feels to be alone is to be good and happy, and whenever you move with somebody you start getting into a mire, into a hell. When Sartre says, he says through experience: "The other is hell." But the other is not creating the hell; just two fantasies clashing, just two worlds of dreams clashing.

Communication is possible only when you have dropped your fantasy world and the other has dropped his fantasy world. Then two beings face each other - and they are not two, because the twoness drops with the world of fantasy. Then they are one.

When a Buddha faces somebody who is also a Buddha, they are not two. That's why two Buddhas have not been known to talk to each other - there are not two persons to talk. They remain quiet; they remain silent. There are stories that when Mahavir and Buddha were alive.... They were both con, temporaries, and they moved, wandered, in the same small province of Bihar; it is called Bihar because of these two people: bihar means wandering. Because these two persons wandered all over the place, it became known as the province of their wandering - but they never met. Many times they were in the same town; the place is not very big. Many times they stayed in the same place, a small village. Once it happened that they stayed in the same serai, in the same dharmasala, but they never met.

Now a problem arises: Why? And if you ask Buddhists or Jains why they didn't meet, they feel a little embarrassed. The question seems embarrassing, because that simply shows maybe they were very egoistic? Who should go to whom? Buddha to Mahavir or Mahavir to Buddha? Nobody can do that. So Jains and Buddhists avoid the question - they have never answered. But I know: the reason is there were not two persons to meet. It is not a question of egoism. Simply there were not two persons to meet! Two emptinesses staying in the same serai, so what to do? How to bring them together? And even if you bring them together, they will not be two. There will be only one emptiness. When two zeros meet, it becomes one zero.

"Performing samyama on the self interest brings knowledge of the purusha separated from the knowledge of others."

Tatah pratibha sravana vedan adarsh asvada varta jayante.

Again the word pratibha has to be understood. One who attains to pure attention, to pure awareness, to pure inner clarity, innocence, attains to pratibha. Pratibha is not intuition. Intellect is sun-oriented; intuition is moon-oriented; pratibha is beyond both. Man remains an intellectual, woman intuitional, but the Buddha - purusha, one who has attained, is neither man nor woman.

If you are an intellectual you will be aggressive. Intellect is aggressive; the sun energy is aggressive.

That's why we have never heard of a woman raping a man. It is impossible. Only a man can rape a woman - the sun energy is aggressive. The moon energy is receptive. Intellect i6 aggressive; intuition is receptive.-If you are receptive you will become intuitional. You will start seeing things which the intellectual can never see because he i6 not open. The most strange thing is this: that the intellectual is looking for them but cannot see, and the intuitional is not looking for them but can see.

In fact all the great discoveries have been done by intellectual people - but in their intuitional moods.

The great discoveries are not done by intuitional people because they are not looking for them. Even if they come by the side, even if they face them, they forget about them. That's why women have never discovered anything. Not that those things have never happened to them - they happen more to them than to man. Just look. Even the science of cooking is developed by men, not by women. All the great cooks are men. At least this should not be so, but all the great hotels, big hotels, famous hotels, will not allow any woman to be a cook there. They have been cooking for millennia, but all the discoveries, innovations, are made by men. Not that things don't come their way - they come - but they are simply receptive. They come and they go, but they don't hold them.

Intellectuals are looking constantly, looking everywhere; they are trying to uncover every nook and comer. Psychologists say that the male sex energy is the very cause of all scientific research. You give a toy to a boy: within minutes it is gone - he has opened it. He is looking inside, what is there.

You give a toy to a girl: she will protect it for years. She will keep it in the cupboard, lock it; she will decorate it. But the boy will immediately destroy it. He wants to know how it kicks; he wants to know from where the whole functioning is coming. He wants to go in deep; he wants to search.

The whole of science is, in a way, male sexuality - searching and searching, uncovering.

I will tell you one anecdote:

After a rough tour of duty, the Marine regiment was sent back for a rest. At the base they found a contingent of women Marines awaiting assignments to various posts. The Marine colonel warned the women's commander that his men had been in the lines for a long time and might not be too careful about their attitude towards the women.

"Keep them locked up," he warned, "if you don't want any trouble."

"Trouble?" said the woman commander sarcastically. "There will be no trouble." She tapped her forehead significantly. "My girls have it up there."

"Madam," exclaimed the colonel, "it makes no difference where they have it. My boys will find it.

Keep them locked up!"

The whole of human sexuality is divided into the aggressive and the passive. That's why woman is stronger than man but yet has been oppressed always. She is stronger than man, remember - in many ways. She lives longer than man, an average of five years more. If a man is going to live up to seventy five, the woman is going to live up to eighty. Lives a more healthy life than man, is less ill, recovers better and sooner whenever she is ill, but still she has been oppressed. Is more resistant, more flexible, more alive, gives birth to children and still survives - goes on sharing her life giving life to others and still survives, and survives beautifully. Is more strong - may not be more muscular, but to be muscular is not the only criterion of being strong - but still she has been oppressed because she is passive, receptive. The functioning of her energy is not aggressive - more inviting and less aggressive.

Intellect happens easily to men because intellect, again, is in the same direction as aggression, argument. Women are more intuitive; they live by hunches. They suddenly jump to the conclusions - that's why it is very difficult to argue with a woman. She has already arrived at the conclusions; argument is not needed. You are simply wasting your time. She knows all the time what is the end result. She is just waiting to declare it. You go on arguing this way and that... it is all futile. She is conclusive.

Intuition is conclusive. That's why women are more telepathic. Women are more visionary, and many intuitional things happen to them. All the great mediums are women. Hypnosis, telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience, all belong to the world of women. Just let me tell you one thing about the past history.

Witchcraft was a woman's craft. That's why it is called witchcraft. The whole world of witches was intuitional. Priests were against it; their whole world was intellectual. Remember, all the witches, almost all the witches, were women; and all the priests, almost all the priests, were men. First, priests tried to burn the witches. Thousands of women were burned in Europe in the Middle Ages because the priests could not understand the world of intuition. They could not believe in it - it looked dangerous, strange. They wanted to wipe it out completely.

And they wiped it out completely. They tried to destroy one of the most beautiful instruments of receptivity, of a higher knowledge, of higher realms of being, of superior possibilities. They destroyed completely; wherever they could find a mediumistic woman, they killed her. And they created such fear that even women lost that capacity, just because of the fear.

Now again the same continues to be the case. Psychoanalysts are against witchcraft - they are all men. Now the psychoanalysts have taken the place of the priests - they are all men. Freudians, Adlerians, they are all men. Now they are against the woman. And do you know? All their patients are more or less women. This is something. And when the witches existed, all their patients were more or less men. I am surprised, but it looks as it should be. When the witches existed their patients were all men: the intellect seeking the help of the intuition, the man seeking the help of the woman. Now just the reverse has happened. All the psychoanalysts are men and all their patients are women. Now intuition has been so crippled and killed that it has to seek the help of intellect.

The higher is seeking the help of the lower. It is a very miserable state of affairs. It should not be so.

The whole history of science proves this in many ways. When intuition was used as the method, then alchemy existed. When intellect came into power, alchemy disappeared; chemistry was born.

Alchemy is intuitional; chemistry is intellectual. Alchemy was moon; chemistry is sun. When moon was predominant, intuition was predominant; there was astrology. Now there is astronomy. Astrology has disappeared. Astrology is moon; astronomy is sun. And the world has become very poor because of that.

Woman has to flower in her moonhood as man has to flower in his sunhood; but pratibha is beyond both. Intellect is psychological, intuition parapsychological, pratibha para psychological.

"From this follows intuitional hearing, touching, seeing, tasting, and smelling." Remember this, that it can happen on two levels. If you are a moon person, a feminine person - maybe man or woman, that doesn't make any difference - if you function from the moon center, you will be able to hear many things which others cannot hear and you will be able to see many things which others cannot see. You will become perceptive of the hidden. The hidden dimension will be not so hidden for you; the secret will become a little open for you.

That's what is being studied by parapsychology. Now it is gaining momentum; a few universities of the world have opened parapsychological departments. Much research work is being done, even in Soviet Russia. Because man has failed in a way. The sun center has failed. We have lived through that sun center for thousands of years; it brings only violence, war, misery. Now the other center has to be tackled.

Even in Soviet Russia, which is dominated by the sun center, by the communists, who don't believe in any possibility of the beyond, even they are trying. And they have done much work, and they have discovered much. Of course they interpret it in terms of intellect - -they don't call it "extrasensory," they don't call it "parapsychological." They say, "This is also sensory, only refined." Eyes can become more refined and they can see things which ordinarily cannot be seen. For example, eyes can see your inner body just as an X-ray can see it. If the X-ray can see it, then the eye can also see it; one just needs to train the eyes.

And in a way they are right. Intuition is not beyond the senses; it is a refinement of sense. Pratibha is beyond the senses - it is nonsensory, it is immediate, the senses are drop ped. This is the yoga standpoint, that within you you are all knowing - all knowingness is your very nature. In fact, you think that you see through the eyes; yoga says you are not seeing through the eyes - you are being blinded by the eyes. Let me explain it to you.

You are standing in a room and you are looking outside from a small hole. Of course in a room you will feel that that small hole gives at least a certain knowledge to you about the world outside. You may become focused tO it. You may think without this hole it will be impossible to see. Yoga says you are getting into a very, very erroneous attitude. This hole allows you to see, but this hole is not the cause of seeing - seeing is your quality. You are seeing through the hole; the hole is not seeing.

You are the seer. You are looking through the eyes into the world; you are looking at me. Your eyes are just the holes in the body, but you are the seer inside. If you can get out of the body, the same will happen as will happen if you can open the door and can come out into the open sky.

Because of the hole being lost, you wiD not become blind. In fact then you will understand that the hole was blinding you. It was giving you a very limited vision. Now open, under the sky, you can see the whole in a total, instantaneous vision, altogether. Now your vision is not linear and your vision is not limited, because there is no window to it. You have come under the sky: you can see all around.

The same is the standpoint of yoga, and true. The body is giving only small holes to you: from the ears you can hear, from the eyes you can see, from the tongue you can taste, from the nose you can smell. Small holes, and you are hiding behind. Yoga says come out, get out, go beyond. Get out of these holes, and you will become all-knowing, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. This is pratibha.

"From this follows..." the hearing that is of the beyond, the hearing that is not through the intellect nor through the intuition, but through PRATIBHA; and touching and seeing and tasting and smelling.

Remember it, that one who has achieved lives life in its totality for the first time. The Upanishads say, "ten tyakten bhunjitha" - "Those who have renounced, only they have indulged." Very paradoxical: "Those who have renounced, only they have known and experienced and enjoyed, indulged." Your limitation in the body is making you impoverished. Getting up beyond the body, you will become richer. One who has attained is not poorer - he becomes tremendously rich. He becomes a god.

So yoga is not against the world. In fact you are against the world. And yoga is not against bliss - you are against bliss. And yoga wants you to drop the world so all limitations can be dropped and you can become unlimited in your being, in your experiencing.

But Patanjali is always aware to tell you again and again - he goes on hammering the point to hit it home - that even these powers, of immediate hearing, listening, tasting, smelling, touching: remember, they are powers if you are going outward, but if you want to go in they become hindrances. All powers become hindrances when one is going in.

The person who is going out is going through the moon and to the sun and to the world. And the person who is going in, his energy is moving from the sun to the moon and from the moon to the beyond. Their target and goals are totally different, diametrically opposite.

It happens, then, sometimes you start feeling the first glimpse of pratibha, of the beyond, and you become so powerful - you are filled with power, you are power - and in that moment you can fall again. Power corrupts; you can fall. You can get into the head so much, you can get into the ego so much, that you would like to have a ride on it - the power. You would like to do miracles or other foolish things.

All miracle mongers are in a way foolish - whatsoever they say. They may say that they are doing these miracles to help people. They are not helping anybody; they are simply harming themselves - and harming others also. Because in doing such things they are falling below the beyond. And then their whole thing becomes just a trickery. There are tricks of the parapsychic, of the intuitional, of the moon world, with which, once you know them, you can play around. They are tricks, still, and the ego can again use those tricks.

I have heard one very beautiful story:

A Catholic priest, an Anglican minister, and a rabbi were fishing in a small boat in the middle of a quiet lake. From dawn till lunchtime they sat there, not moving, not speaking. Then the Catholic priest said, "Well, time for lunch. I will see you two in the pub."

At which he got up, cocked a leg over the side of the boat and walked across the water to the pub at the lakeside.

The minister then said, "I think I will have some lunch too." Saying which, he also cocked a leg over the side of the boat, walked across the water in the same direction as the Catholic priest.

The rabbi was amazed and dumbfounded at this display of miraculous Christian solidarity. However, feeling that his faith and traditions were at stake, he offered up a swift prayer to Jehovah and stepped over the side of the boat.

Splash! - down he went to the bottom. He swam to the surface, pulled himself over the side of the boat and tried again, uttering still more fervent prayers. Splash! Again he plummeted like a stone.

The Catholic priest, having reached the lakeside, was watching this involuntary diving display, and as the Anglican minister also reached the shore, he said, "We should have told the poor chap where the stepping-stones were."

Everywhere there are stepping-stones. All your Satya Sai Babas - don't be amazed too much at what they are doing. Look for the stepping-stones - there are. And these people are not spiritual at all.

Patanjali says, "These are powers when the mind is turned outward, but obstacles in the way of SAMADHI." If you want to attain to the ultimate, you have to lose all. You have to lose all! This is the way of the real seeker: whatsoever he gains, he goes and sacrifices it to God. He says, "You have given it to me, but what am I going to do with it? I put it again back at your feet." He goes on sacrificing whatsoever he attains, and he remains always empty of attainment. That is spirituality: to remain always empty of attainment, and whatsoever comes by the way, one goes on sacrificing it.

Let me tell you another story: A group of ministers were discussing how they allocated their congregations' offerings.

The Dissenter proclaimed, "Everything my people put into the plate goes on God's work - I don't keep one penny for myself!"

The Anglican, while applauding his zeal, admitted, "I keep the copper in the collection plate, and the silver goes to God."

The Catholic priest present admitted that, "I keep the silver and the copper goes to God - mind you there is a lot of copper in a poor parish."

So far the rabbi had kept silent, but when pressed said, "Well, I put all the collection money in a blanket and I toss it all up in the air. What God wants he keeps, and what he does not want I keep." Don't be cunning - don't be the rabbi. Because in the end only you will be at a loss, not God.

Whatsoever comes on your way of inner growth.... And much comes. Every moment is a new discovery on the inner path; every moment something suddenly falls in your hands - you had not even imagined, you have never asked for it. Millions are the gifts of the path, but only the one reaches to the end who goes on offering those gifts back to God. Otherwise, if you start clinging to the gift, then and there your progress stops. Then and there your growth stops. Then and there you make an abode and start living there.

If you want samadhi, the ultimate peace, the ultimate silence, the ultimate truth, then never get attached to any attainment whatsoever - worldly, other worldly, psychological, parapsychological, intellectual, intuitive, whatsoever. Never get attached to any attainment. Go on offering it to God, go on offering it to God... and more will be coming! Go on offering it to God.

When you have offered all, God comes. When you have offered all, then it back to him, he comes as the last gift. God is the last gift.