Mastery over the five elements

THE yoga system of Patanjali is not a philosophical system. It is empirical. It is a tool to work with. But still it has a philosophy. That too is just to give an intellectual understanding where you are moving, what you are seeking. The philosophy is arbitrary, utilitarian, just to give a comprehensive picture of the territory you are going to discover; but the philosophy has to be understood.

The first thing about the philosophy of Patanjali. He divides human personality into five seeds, five bodies. He says you don't have one body; you have layers upon layers of bodies; and they are five. The first body he calls annamaya kosha - the food body, the earth body, which is made of earth and is constantly to be nourished by food. Food comes from earth. If you stop taking food, your annamaya kosha will wither away. So one has to be very alert about what one is eating because that makes you and it will affect you in millions of ways, because sooner or later your food is not just food. It becomes blood, your bones, your very marrow. It circulates in your being and goes on affecting you. So the purity of food creates a pure annamaya kosha, the pure food body.

And if the first body is pure, light, not heavy, then it is easy to enter into the second body; otherwise it will be difficult - you will be loaded. Have you watched when you have eaten too much and heavy foods. Immediately you start feeling a sort of sleep, a sort of lethargy. You would like to go to sleep; awareness immediately starts disappearing.

When the first body is loaded it is difficult to create great awareness. Hence fasting became so important in all the religions. But fasting is a science and one should not fool around with it.

Just the other night one sannyasin came and she told me that she has been fasting and now her whole body, her whole being, is disturbed - tremendously disturbed. Now the stomach is not functioning well. And when the stomach is not functioning well, everything is weakened, the vitality is lost, and you cannot be alive. You become more and more insensitive and dead.

But fasting is important. It should be done very carefully; one should understand the functioning of the annamaya kosha - only then. And it should be done under proper guidance - the guidance of one who has moved through all the phases of his annamaya kosha. Not only that - one who has gone beyond it and who can look at the annamaya kosha as a witness. Otherwise fasting can be dangerous.

Then just the right amount of food and the right quality of food has to be practiced; fasting is not needed.

But this is important because this is your first body and, more or less, people cling to their first body; they never move to the second. Millions of people are not even aware that they have a second body, a deeper body, hidden behind the first sheath. The first covering is very gross.

The second body Patanjali calls pranamaya kosha - energy body, electric body. The second consists of electric fields. That's what acupuncture is all about. This second body is more subtle than the first, and people who start moving from the first body to the second become fields of energy, tremendously attractive, magnetic, hypnotic. If you go near them, you will feel vitalized, charged.

If you go near a man who lives only in his food body, you will be depleted - he will suck you. Many times you come across people and you fee] that they suck you. After they have left, you feel depleted, dissipated, as if somebody has exploited your energy. The first body is a sucker, and the first body is very gross. So if you live too much with the first - body-oriented people, you will feel always burdened, tense, bored, sleepy, with no energy, always at the point of the lowest rung of your energy; and you will not have any amount of energy which can be used for higher growth.

This type, the first type, the annamaya-kosha-oriented person lives for food. He eats and eats and eats, and that's his whole life. He remains in a way childish. The first thing that the child docs in the world is to suck air, and then to suck milk. The first thing the child has to do in the world is to help the food body, and if a person remains food addicted, he remains childish. His growth suffers.

The second body, pranamaya kosha, gives you a new freedom, gives you more space.

The second body is bigger than the first; it is not confined to your physical body. It is inside the physical body and it is outside the physical body. It surrounds you like a subtle climate, an aura of energy. Now in Soviet Russia they have discovered that photographs can be taken of the energy body. They call it bioplasma, but it exactly means prana. The energy, elan vital, or what Taoists call chi, it can be photographed now. Now it has become almost scientific.

And one very great discovery has been done in Soviet Russia, and that is before your physical body suffers some illness, the energy body suffers it - six months before. Then it happens to the physical body. If you are going to have tuberculosis, or cancer, or any illness, your energy body starts showing indications of it six months before. No examination, no testing of the physical body shows anything, but the electric body starts showing it. First it appears in the pranamaya kosha, then it enters into the annamaya kosha. So now they say that it has become possible to treat a person before he has fallen ill. Once it becomes so, then there is no need for humanity to fall ill. Before you will become aware that you are ill, your photographs by Kirlian methods will show that some illness is going to happen to your physical body. It can be prevented in the pranamaya kosha.

That's why yoga insists very much on the purity of breathing, because the pranamaya kosha is made of a subtle energy that travels inside you with the breathing. If you breathe rightly, your pranamaya kosha remains healthy and whole and alive. Such a person never feels tired, such a person is always available to do anything, such a person is always responsive, always ready to respond to the moment, ready to take the challenge. He is always ready. You will never find him unprepared for any moment. Not that he plans for the future, no. But he has so much energy that whatsoever happens he is ready to respond. He has overflowing energy.

T'ai-chi works on pranamaya kosha.

Pranayam works on pranamaya kosha.

And if you know just how to breathe naturally, you will grow into your second body. And the second body is stronger than the first. And the second body lives longer than the first.

When somebody dies, for almost three days you can see his bioplasma. Sometimes that is mistaken for his ghost. The physical body dies, but the energy body continues to move.

And those who have experimented deeply about death, they say that for three days it is very difficult for the person who has died to believe that he has died because the same form - and more vital than ever, more healthy than ever, more beautiful than ever - surrounds him. It depends on how big a bioplasma you have; then it can continue for thirteen days or even for more.

Around the samadhis of yogis.... In India we burn everybody's body except the body of one who has attained to samadhi. We don't burn his body, for a certain reason. Once you burn the body, the bioplasma starts moving away from the earth. You can feel it for a few days, but then it disappears into the cosmos. But if the physical body is left, then the bioplasma can cling to it. And a man who has attained samadhi, who has become enlightened, if his bioplasma can remain somewhere around his samadhi, many people will be benefited by it. That's how many people come to see their gurus' forms.

In Aurobindo ashram, Aurobindo's body is put in a samadhi, not destroyed, not burned.

Many people have felt as if they have seen Aurobindo around it. Or sometimes they have heard the same footsteps the way Aurobindo used to walk. And sometimes he is there just standing before them. This is not Aurobindo; this is the bioplasma. Aurobindo is gone, but the bioplasma, the pranamaya kosha, can persist for centuries. If the person has been really in tune with his pranamaya kosha, it can persist. It can have its own eXistence.

Natural breathing has to be understood. Watch small children, they breathe naturally.

That's why small children are so full of energy. The parents are tired, but they are not tired.

One child was saying to another child, "I am so full of energy that I wear out my shoes within seven days." Another said, "That's nothing. I am so full of energy I wear out my clothes within three days."

The third said, "That too is nothing. I am so full of energy I wear out my parents within one hour."

In America they have done an experiment where one very powerful man, with an athletic body, with tremendous energy, was told to follow a small child and imitate him.

Whatsoever the child was going to do, this athlete had to do, just imitate for eight hours.

Within four hours the athlete was gone, flat on the floor, because the child enjoyed it very much and he started doing many things - jumping, jogging, shouting, yelling. And the athlete had to just repeat. The child was perfectly full of energy after four hours. The athlete -was gone; he said, "He will kill me. Eight hours! Finished! I cannot do anything more." He was a great boxer, but boxing is one thing. You cannot compete with a child.

From where does the energy come? It comes from pranamaya kosha. A child breathes naturally, and of course breathes more prana in, more chi in, and accumulates it in his belly. The belly is the accumulating place, the reservoir. Watch a child; that is the right way to breathe. When a child breathes, his chest is completely unaffected. His belly goes up and down. He breathes as if from the belly. All children have a little belly; that belly is there because of their breathing and the reservoir of energy.

That is the right way to breathe; remember not to use your chest too much. Sometimes it can be used - in emergency periods. You are running to save your life; then the chest can be used. It is an emergency device. Then you can use shallow, fast breathing, and run.

But ordinarily the chest should not be used. And one thing to be remembered: the chest is meant only for emergency situations because it is difficult in an emergency situation to breathe naturally, because if you breathe naturally you remain so calm and quiet you cannot run, you cannot fight. You are so calm and collected you are Buddhalike. And in an emergency - the house is on fire - if you breathe naturally you will not be able to save anything. Or a tiger jumps upon you in a forest and if you go on breathing naturally you will not be bothered; you will say, "Okay, let him do whatsoever he wants." You will not be able to protect yourself.

So nature has given an emergency device; the chest is an emergency device. When a tiger attacks you, you have to drop natural breathing and you have to breathe from the chest.

Then you will have more capacity to run, to fight, to burn energy fast. And in an emergency situation there are only two alternatives - flight or fight. Both need a very shallow but intense energy - shallow, but a very disturbed, tense state.

Now if you continuously breathe from the chest, you will have tensions in your mind. If you continuously breathe from the chest, you will always be afraid. Because the chest breathing is meant to be only in fearful situations. And if you have made it a habit then you will be continuously afraid, tense, always in flight. The enemy is not there, but you will imagine the enemy is there. That's how paranoia is created.

In the West also a few people have come across this phenomenon - Alexander Lowen or other bioenergetic people who have been working on bioenergy. That is prana. They have come to feel that people who are afraid, their chest is tense and they are breathing very shallow breaths. If their breathing can be made deeper, to go and touch the belly, the hara center, then their fear disappears. If their musculature can be relaxed, as it is done in Rolfing.... Ida Rolf has invented one of the most beautiful methods to change the inner structure of the body. Because if you have been breathing wrongly for many years, you have developed a musculature, and that musculature will be in the way and will not allow you to rightly breathe or deeply breathe. And even if you remember for a few seconds - you will breathe deeply - again when you are engaged in your work you will start breathing shallow chest breathings. The musculature has to be changed. Once the musculature is changed, the fear disappears and the tension disappears. Rolfing is tremendously helpful; but the working is on pranamaya kosha, the second - bioplasma body, bioenergy body, chi body, or whatsoever you want to call it.

Watch a child and that is the natural breathing, and breathe that way. Let your belly come up when you inhale, let your belly go down when you exhale. And let it be in such a rhythm it becomes almost a song in your energy, a dance - with rhythm, with harmony - and you will feel so relaxed, so alive, so vital that you cannot imagine that such vitality is possible.

Then there is the third body, manumaya kosha - the mental body. The third is bigger than the second, subtler than the second, higher than the second. Animals have the second body but not the third body. Animals are so vital. See a lion walking. What beauty, what grace, what grandeur. Man has always felt jealous. See a deer running. What weightlessness, what energy, what a great energy phenomenon. Man has always felt jealous. But man's energy is moving higher.

The third body is manumaya kosha, mental body. This is bigger, more spacious than the second. And if you don't grow it, you will remain almost just a possibility of man but not a real man. The word "man" comes from man, manumaya. The English word also comes from the Sanskrit root man. The Hindi word for man is manushya; that too comes from the same root man, the mind. It is mind that makes you man. But, more or less, you don't have it. What you have in its place is just a conditioned mechanism. You live by imitation: then you don't have a mind. When you start living on your own, spontaneous, when you start answering your life problems on your own, when you become responsible, you start growing in manumaya kosha. Then the mindbody grows.

Ordinarily if you are a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian you have a borrowed mind; it is not your mind. Maybe Christ attained to a great explosion of manumaya kosha; and then people have been simply repeating it. That repetition will not become a growth in you. That repetition will be a hindrance. Don't repeat; rather try to understand.

Become more and more alive, authentic, responsive. Even if there is a possibility to go astray, go astray. Because there is no way to grow if you are so much afraid of committing errors. Errors are good. Mistakes have to be committed. Never commit the same mistake again, but never be afraid of committing mistakes. People who become so much afraid of committing mistakes never grow. They go on sitting in their place, afraid to move. They are not alive.

The mind grows when you face, encounter, situations on your own. You bring your own energy to solve them. Don't go asking for advice forever. Take the reins of your life in your own hands; that's what I mean when I say do your thing. You will be in trouble - it is safer to follow others, it is convenient to follow the society, to follow the routine, the tradition, the scripture. It is very easy because everybody is following - you have just to become a dead part of the herd, you have just to move with the crowd wherever it is going; it is none of your responsibility. But your mental body, your manumaya kosha, will suffer tremendously, terribly it will not grow. You will not have your Own mind, and you will miss something very, very beautiful and some - thing which functions as a bridge for higher growth.

So always remember, whatsoever I say to you, you can take it in two ways. You can simply take it on my authority"Osho says so, it must be true" - then you will suffer, then you will not grow. Whatsoever I say, listen to it, try to understand it, implement it in your life, see how it works, and then come to your own conclusions. They may be the same, they may not be. They can never be exactly the same because you have a different personality, a unique being. Whatsoever I am saying is my own. It is bound to be in deep ways rooted in me. You may come to similar conclusions, but they cannot be exactly the same. So my conclusions should not be made your conclusions. You should try to understand me, you should try to learn, but you should not collect knowledge from me, you should not collect conclusions from me. Then your mindbody will grow.

But people take shortcuts. They say, "If you have known, finished. What is the need for us to try and experiment? We will believe in you." A believer has no manumaya kosha.

He has a false manumaya kosha which has not come out of his own being but has been forced from without.

Then higher than manumaya kosha, bigger than manumaya kosha, is vigyanamaya kosha - it is the intuitive body. It is very, very spacious. Now there is no reason in it; it goes beyond reason; has become very, very subtle; it is an intuitive grasp. It is a seeing directly into the nature of things. It is not trying to think about it. The cypress tree in the courtyard: you just look at it. You don't think about it; there is no "about" in intuition.

You simply become available, receptive, and reality reveals to you its nature. You don't project. You are not searching for any argument, for any conclusion, nothing whatsoever.

You are not searching even. You are simply waiting, and reality reveals - it is a revelation. The intuitive body takes you to very far out horizons, but still there is one body more.

That is the fifth body, ANANDAMAYA KOSHA_ bliss body. That is really far out. It is made of pure bliss. Even intuition is transcended.

These five seeds are just seeds, remember. Beyond these five is your reality. These are just seeds surrounding you. The first is very gross; you are almost confined in a six-foot body. The second is bigger than it, the third still bigger, the fourth still bigger, the fifth is very big; but still these are seeds. All are limited. If all the seeds are dropped and you stand nude in your reality, then you are infinite. That's what yoga says: you are God - aham brahmasmi. You are the very Brahman. Now you are ultimate reality itself; now all barriers are dropped.

Try to understand this. The barriers are there surrounding you in circles. The first barrier is very, very hard. To get out of it is very difficult. People remain confined to their physical bodies and they think their physical life is all that there is to life. Don't settle.

The physical body is just a step to the energy body. The energy body is again just a step for the mind body. That too in its turn is just a step for the intuitive body. That too is a step for the bliss body. And from the bliss 60dy you take the jump - now there are no more steps - you take the jump into the abyss of your being, that is infinity, eternity.

These are five seeds. Corresponding to these five seeds, yoga has another doctrine about five bhutas, five great elements. Just as your body is made of food, earth; earth is the first element. It has nothing to do with this earth, remember. The element simply says wherever there is matter it is earth; the material is the earth, the gross is the earth. In you it is the body; outside you it is the body of all. The stars are made of earth. Everything that exists is made of earth. The first shell is of earth. Five bhutas means five great elements: earth, fire, water, air, ether.

Earth corresponds to your first, annamaya. kosha, the food body. Fire corresponds to your second body, energy body, bioplasma, chi, pranamaya kosha; it has the quality of fire.

Third is water; it corresponds to the third, manumaya body, the mental body. It has the quality of water. Watch the mind, how it goes on like a flux, always moving, moving, riverlike. The fourth is air, almost invisible. You cannot see it, but it is there; you can only feel it. That corresponds to the intuitive body, vigyanamaya kosha. And then there is akash, ether; you cannot even feel it - it has become even more subtle than air. You can simply believe it, trust it that it is there. It is pure space; that is bliss.

But you are purer than pure space, subtler than pure space. Your reality is almost as if it is not. That's why Buddha says anatta - no-self. Your self is like a no-self; your being is al most like a nonbeing. Why nonbeing? Because it has gone so far away from all gross elements. It is pure is-ness. Nothing can be said about it, no description will be adequate for it.

These are five bhutas, five great elements, corresponding to five koshas, bodies, within you.

Then the third doctrine. I would like you to understand all these because they will be helpful in understanding the sutras that we will be discussing now. Then there are seven chakras. The word chakra does not really mean "center"; the word "center" cannot explain it or describe it or translate it rightly because when we say "the center," it seems something static. And chakra means something dynamic. The word chakra means "the wheel?" the moving wheel. So chakra is a dynamic center in your being, almost like a whirlpool, whirlwind, the center of the cyclone. It is dynamic; it creates an energy field around it.

Seven chakras. The first is a bridge and the last is also a bridge; the remaining five correspond to five mahabhutas, the great elements and the five seeds. Sex is a bridge, bridge between you and the grossest - the prakriti, the nature. Sahasrar, the seventh chakra, is also a bridge, bridge between you and the abyss, the ultimate. These two are bridges. The remaining five centers correspond to five elements and five bodies.

This is the framework of Patanjali's system. Remember it is arbitrary. It has to be used as a tool, not discussed as a dogma. It is not a doctrine in any theology. It is just a utilitarian map. You go to some territory, to some strange country, unknown, and you take a map with you. The map does not really represent the territory; how can the map represent the territory? The map is so small, the territory is so big. On the map cities are just points.

How can those points correspond to big cities? On the map roads are just lines. How can roads be just lines? Mountains are just marked, rivers are just marked - and small ones are left out. Only big ones are marked. This is a map; it is not a doctrine.

There are not only five bodies, there are many bodies, because between two bodies there is another to join it, and so on and so forth. You are like an onion, layers upon layers, but these five will do. Hmm?... these are -the main bodies, the chief bodies. So don't be too much worried about it, hmm? because Buddhists say there are seven bodies and Jains say there are nine: bodies. Nothing wrong and there is no contradiction because these are just maps. If you are studying the whole world's map, then even big cities disappear, even big rivers disappear. If you are studying a map of a nation, then many new things appear which were not on the world map. And if you are studying the map of a province, then many more things appear. And if you are studying the map of a district, of course many more. And if just of one city, then many more. And if just of one house, then of course....

Things go on appearing; it depends.

Jains say nine, Buddha says seven, Patanjali says five. There are schools which say only three. And they all are true because they are not discussing any argument. They are just giving you a few tools to work with.

And I think five is almost the perfect amount. Because more than five is too much, less than five is too few. Five seems almost perfect. And Patanjali is a very balanced thinker.

Now a few things about these chakras. The first chakra, the first dynamic center, is sex - muladhar. It joins you with nature, it-joins you with the past, it joins you with the future.

You were born out of two persons' sexual play. Your parents' sexual play became the cause of your birth. You are related to your parents through the sex center, and to your parents' parents and so on and so forth. To the whole past you are related through the sex center; the thread runs through the sex center. And if you give birth to some child, you will be related to the future.

Jesus insists many times, in a very rude way, "If you don't hate your mother and your father, you cannot come and follow me." It looks almost hard, almost unbelievable that a man like Jesus - why should he use such hard words? And he is compassion incarnate, and he is love. Why does he say, "Hate your mother, hate yom father if you want to follow me"? The meaning is: drop out of the sexual context. What he is saying symbolically is: go beyond the sex center. Then immediately you are no longer related with the past, no longer related with the future.

It is sex that makes you part of time. Once you go beyond sex, you become part of eternity, not of time. Then suddenly only the present exists. You are the present, but if you see yourself through the sex center, you are the past also because your eyes will have the color of your mother and your father and your body will have atoms and cells from millions of generations. Your whole structure, biostructure, is part of a long continuum.

You are part of a big chain.

In India they say your debt to your parents cannot be fulfilled unless you give birth to children. If you want that your debt should be fulfilled with the past, you have to create future. If you really want to repay, there is no other way. Your mother loved you, your father loved you - what can you do now, they are gone? You can become a mother, a father, to children and repay it to nature, to the same reservoir from where your parents came, you came, your children will come.

Sex is the great chain. It is the whole chain of the world - samsar; and it is the link with others. Have you watched it? The moment you feel sexual you start thinking of the other.

When you are not feeling sexual you never think of the other. A person who is beyond sex is beyond others. He may live in the society, but he is not in the society. He may be walking in the crowd, but he walks alone. And a man who is sexual, he may be sitting on the top of Everest, alone, but he will think of the other. He may be sent to the moon to meditate, but he will meditate about the other.

Sex is the bridge with the others. Once sex disappears the chain is broken. For the first time you become an individual. That's why people may be too obsessed with sex, but they are never happy with it - because it is double-edged. It links you with others; it does not allow you to be individual. It does not allow you to be yourself It forces you into patterns, into slaveries, bondages. But if you don't know how to transcend it, that's the only way how to use your energy. It becomes a safety valve.

People who live at the first center, muladhar, live only for a very foolish reason. They go on creating energy, and then they are too burdened with it; then they go on throwing it.

They eat, they work, they sleep, they do many things to create energy. Then they say, "What to do with it7 It is very heavy." Then they throw it. Seems a very vicious circle.

When they throw it they again feel empty. They fill up with new fuel, with new food, with new work, and again when the energy is there they are "feeling too full," they say.

Somewhere it has to be released. And sex becomes just a release: a vicious circle of accumulating energy, throwing energy, accumulating energy, throwing energy. It looks almost absurd.

Unless you know that there are higher centers within you which can take that energy, use it in a creative way, you will remain confirmed to the sexual vicious circle. That's why all the religions insist on some sort of sexual control. It can become repressive, it can become dangerous. If new centers are not opening and you go on damming energy, condemning, forcing, repressing, then you are on a volcano. Any day you will explode; you will become neurotic. You are going to be mad. Then it is better to relieve it. But there are centers which can absorb the energy, and greater being and greater possibilities can be revealed to you.

Remember, we have been saying in the past few days that the second center, near the sex center, is hara, the center of death. That's why people are afraid to move beyond sex because the moment the energy moves beyond sex it touches the -hara center and one becomes afraid. That's why_ people are even afraid to move deep in love because when you move deep in love the sex center creates such ripples that the ripples enter in the hara center and fear arises.

So many people come to me and they say, "Why do we feel so much afraid of the other sex?" - of men or women"Why do we feel so much afraid?" It is not the fear of the other sex. It is the fear of sex itself because if you go deep in sex, then the center becomes more dynamic, creates bigger energy fields, and those energy fields start overlapping the hara center. Have you watched2 In a sexual orgasm something starts moving just below your navel, throbbing. That throb is the overlapping of the sex center with the hara. That's why people become afraid of sex also. Particularly people become afraid of deep intimacy, of orgasm itself.

But that second center has to be entered, penetrated, opened. That's the meaning when Jesus says unless you are ready to die you cannot be reborn.

Just two, three days before, on Easter, somebody asked a question that, "Today is Easter.

Osho, have you something to say?" I have only one thing to say, that each day is Easter, because Easter is the day of Jesus' resurrection - his crucifiction and resurrection, his death and his being reborn. Each day is an Easter if you are ready to move into the hara center. You will be crucified first - the cross is there within your hara center. You are already carrying it; you just have to move to it and you have to die through it, and then there is resurrection.

Once you die in the hara center, death disappears; then for the first time you become aware of a new world, a new dimension. Then you can see the higher center than hara; that is the navel center. And the navel center becomes the resurrection, because the navel center is the most energy-conserving center. It is the very reservoir of energy.

And once you know that you have moved from the sex center to the hara, now you know that there is a possibility of moving inwards. You have opened one door. Now you cannot rest unless you have opened all the doors. Now you cannot remain on the porch; you have entered the palace. Then you can open another door and another door.

Just in the middle is the center of heart. The heart center divides the lower and the higher.

First is the sex center, then the hara, then the navel, and then comes the heart center.

Three centers are below it, three centers are above it. The heart is exactly in the middle.

You must have seen Solomon's seal. In Judaism, particularly in Kabbalistic thinkings, that Solomon's seal is one of the most important symbols. That Solomon's seal is the symbol of the heart center. Sex moves downwards, so sex is like a triangle pointed downwards. Sahasrar moves upwards, So sahasrar is a triangle pointed upwards. And heart is just in the middle, where the sex triangle comes to meet the sahasrar triangle.

Both triangles meet, merge into each other, and it becomes a six-pointed star, that is the seal of Solomon. The heart is the seal of Solomon.

Once you have opened the heart, then you are available for the highest possibilities.

Below the heart you remain man; beyond the heart you have become superman.

After the heart center there is the throat center, then there is the third-eye center, and then sahasrar.

Heart is feeling love. Heart is absorbing love, becoming love. Throat is expression, communication, sharing, giving it to others. And if you give love to others, then the third- eye center starts functioning. Once you start giving, you go higher and higher. A person who goes on taking goes lower and lower and lower. A person who goes on giving goes higher and higher and higher. A miser is the worst possibility a man can fall into, and a sharer is the greatest possibility that a man can become available to.

Five bodies, five mahabhutas, and five centers plus two bridges. This is the framework, the map. Behind this framework is the whole effort of the yogin, of bringing SAMYAMA to every nook and comer, so one becomes enlightened, full of light. Now the sutras.

Once you are beyond the mind body, for the first time you become aware that you are not the mind but the witness. Below the mind you remain identified with it. Once you know that thoughts, mental images, ideas, they are just objects, floating clouds in your consciousness; you are separate from them - immediately.

"The power of contacting the state of consciousness which is outside the mental body and therefore inconceivable is called mahavideha." You become beyond body. mahavideha means one who is beyond body, one who is no longer confined to any body, one who knows that he is not the body, gross or subtle, one who knows that he is infinite, with no boundaries. Mahavideha means one who has come to feel that he has no boundaries. All boundaries are confinements, imprisonments; and he can break them, drop them, and can become one with the infinite sky.

This moment of realizing oneself as the infinite is the moment: "Through this power the covering of the light is destroyed." Then the covering is dropped which has been hiding your light. You are like a light which is being hidden under covers and covers. By and by each and every cover has to be taken away. More light will penetrate out of it.

Manumaya kosha, the mental body, once dropped, you become meditation, you become a no-mind. All om effort here is how to go beyond the manumaya kosha - how to become aware that I am not the thinking process.

This is one of the most potential sutras of Patanjali, and very significant for future science. One day or other, science is going to discover the meaning of this sutra. Science is already on the path towards it. This sutra says that all the elements in the world, the pancha mahabhutas - the earth, the air, the fire, etc. - they come out of nothing, and they go again into nothingness to rest. Everything comes out of nothing and when tired goes back and rests into nothingness.

Now science, particularly physicists, agree with it, that matter has come out of nothing.

The deeper they have gone into matter, the more they have discovered that there is nothing like the material. The deeper they go, matter becomes more and more elusive and finally it slips out of their fingers. Nothing remains, just emptiness, just pure space. Out of pure space everything is born. Looks very illogical, but life is illogical. The whole of modern science has become illogical because if you persist in your logic you cannot move into reality. If you move into reality you have to drop the logic. And of course when there is a choice between logic and the reality, how can you choose the logic? You have to drop the logic.

Just fifty years before,.when scientists came to realize that quanta, electric particles, behave in a very ridiculous way - behave like a Zen Master, unbelievable, absurd....

Sometimes they look like waves and sometimes they look like particles. Now before that it was a tacit understanding that something can be either a particle or a wave. One and the same thing cannot be both together, simultaneously. A particle and a Wave? It means something can be a point and a line together, at the same time. Impossible. Euclid will not agree. Aristotle will simply deny; you have gone mad. A point is a point, and a line is many points in a row, so how can one point be a line also at the same time remaining a point? Looks absurd. And Euclid and Aristotle prevailed. Just fifty years before, their whole edifice collapsed because scientists came tO know that the quantum, the electric particle, behaves in both ways - simultaneously.

Logicians raised arguments, and they said, "This is not possible." Physicists said, "What can we do? It is not a question of possibility or impossibility. It is so! We cannot do anything. If the quantum is not going to follow Aristotle, what can we do? And if the quantum behaves in a non-Euclidean way and does not follow the geometry of Euclid, what can we do? It is behaving that way, and we have to listen to the behavior of the real and the reality." This is one of the very critical moments in the history of human consciousness.

Then it has always been believed that something can come only out of something. Simple and natural, obviously so. How can something come out of nothing? Then matter disappeared, and the scientists have to conclude that everything is born out of nothing, and everything again disappears into nothing. Now they are talking about black holes.

Black holes are holes of tremendous nothingness. I have to call it "tremendous" nothingness because that nothingness is not just absence. It is full of energy, but the energy is of nothingness. There is nothing to find, but there is energy. Now they say there exist black hole in existence. They are parallel to stars. Stars are positive, and parallel to each star there is a black hole. The star is; the black hole is not. And each star when burned, exhausted, becomes a black hole. And each black hole, when rested, becomes a star.

Matter, no-matter go on changing. Matter becomes no-matter; no-matter becomes matter.

Life becomes death; death becomes life. Love becomes hate; hate becomes love.

Polarities continuously change.

This sutra says, "Performing samyama on their gross, constant, subtle, all-pervading, and functional state brings mastery over the panchabhutas - the five elements." Patanjali is saying that if you have come to understand your true nature of witnessing, and then if you concentrate, you bring samyama on any matter, you can make it appear or disappear. You can help things to materialize - because they come out of nothingness. And you can help things to dematerialize.

Now that yet remains to be seen by physicists whether it is possible or not. It is happening that matter changes and becomes no-matter, no-matter changes, becomes matter. They have come to feel many absurd things these fifty years. It is one of the most potential ages ever, where so many things have exploded that it has become almost impossible to confine them in a system. How to make a system? It was very easy just fifty years before to create a self-contained system. Now impossible. The reality has poked its nose in from everywhere and destroyed all doctrinaires, systems, dogmas. The reality has proved to be too much.

Scientists say it is happening. Patanjali says it can be made to happen. If it is happening, then why can it not be made to happen? Just watch. You heat water; at a hundred degrees it becomes vapor. It has always been happening, before fire was ever discovered. The sun rays were evaporating water from the seas and rivers and clouds were forming and water was coming back again into the rivers, again evaporating. Then man discovered fire, and then he started heating water, evaporating it.

Whatsoever is happening, ways and means can be found to make it happen. If it is already happening, then it is not against reality. Then you have just to know how to make it happen. If matter becomes no-matter, no-matter becomes matter, if things change polarities, things disappear into nothingness and things appear out of nothingness - if this is already happening - then Patanjali says ways and means can be found through which it can be made to happen. And this he says is the way: if you have come to recognize your being, beyond the five seeds, you become capable of materializing things or dematerializing things.

It still remains for the scientific workers to find out whether it is possible or not, but it seems plausible. There seems to be no logical problem in it.

And then come the eight siddhis, eight powers, of yogis. The first IS anima, and then there is laghima and garima, etc. The eight powers of the yogi are that they can make their body disappear, or they can make their body so small, so small, that it becomes almost invisible, or they can make their bodies so big, as big as they want. It is under their control to make the body small, big, or disappear completely, or to appear in many places simultaneously.

Looks impossible, but things that look impossible by and by become possible. It was impossible for man to fly; nobody ever believed. The Wright brothers were thought to be mad, insane. When they first invented their first aeroplane, they were so afraid to tell people - that if they come to know they will be caught and hospitalized. The first flight was done completely unknown to anybody - just these two brothers. And they invented their first aeroplane hiding in a basement, so nobody comes to know what they are doing.

Everybody had believed that they had gone completely mad - who has ever flown? Their first air flight was only six seconds - only of sixty seconds - but it tremendously changed the whole of history, the whole of humanity. It became possible. Nobody had ever thought that the atom could be split. It was split, and now man can never be the same again.

Many things have happened which were always thought to be impossible. We have reached to the moon. It was the symbol of impossibility. In all the languages of the world there are expressions like, "Don't long for the moon." That means don't long for the impossible. Now we have to change those expressions. And in fact once we have reached the moon, now nothing bars the path. Now everything has become available; it is only a question of time.

Einstein has said that if we can invent a vehicle which moves with the speed of light, then a person can go on travelling and he will never age. If he goes on that spaceship which moves with the speed of light when he is thirty years old and comes back after thirty years, he will remain of thirty years. His friends and brothers will be thirty years older, a few of them will be already dead, but the person will remain of thirty years. What nonsense are you talking? Einstein says time and its effect disappear when one is moving with the speed of light. A man can go on infinite space travel and can come back after five hundred years. All the people here will be gone, nobody will recognize him, and he will not recognize anybody, but he will remain of the same age. You are aging because of the speed of the earth. If the speed is as much as light, which is really tremendous, then you will not age at all.

Patanjali says that if you have moved beyond all the five bodies, you have gone beyond all five elements. Now you are in a state from where you can control anything you wish.

Just by the idea that you want to become small, you will become small; if you want to become big, you w ill become big; if you want to disappear, you can disappear.

It is not necessarily so, that yogis should do it. Buddhas have never been known to do it.

Patanjali himself has not been known to do it. What Patanjali is saying: he is revealing all the possibilities.

In fact a man who has attained to his uttermost being, for what will he think to become small? For what? He can't be so foolish. For what? For what would he like to become like an elephant? What is the point in it? And why should he want to disappear? He cannot be interested in amusing people, their curiosities. He is not a magician. He is not interested in people applauding him. For what? In fact the moment a person reaches to the highest peak of his being, all desires disappear. Siddhis appear when desires disappear. This is the dilemma: powers come when you don't want to use them. In fact they come only when the person has disappeared who always wanted to have them.

So Patanjali is not saying that yogis will do such things. They have never been known to do such things. And the few people who try to do them are not yogis. And the few people who do them, in fact cannot do them; they are only tricksters.

Now Satya Sai Baba type people go on materializing Swiss-made watches. These are all tricks, and nobody should be enchanted by these trick4. Whatsoever Satya Sai Baba has been doing can be done by thousands of magicians all over the world, very easily, but you never go to magicians and touch their feet because you know that they are doing tricks. But if somebody who is thought to be religious is doing the same trick, then you think it is a miracle.

This part of Patanjali's YOGA SUTRAS is to make you aware that these things become possible but they are never actualized because the person who would want it, who would have always liked to go on an ego trip through these powers, is there no more.

Miraculous powers happen to you when you are not interested in them. This is the economy of existence. If you desire, you remain impotent; if you don't desire, you become infinitely potent. This I call the law of banking: if you don't have money, no bank is going to give you; if you have money, every bank is ready to give you. When you don't need, all is available; when you are needy, nothing is available.

Patanjali is not talking about this body. This body can be beautiful, but can never be perfectly beautiful. The second body can be more beautiful than this, the third even more, because they are moving closer to the center. The beauty is of the center. The farther away it has to travel, the more limited it becomes. The fourth body is even more beautiful. The fifth is almost ninety-nine percent perfect.

But that which is your being, the real you, is beauty, grace, strength, and adamantine hardness. It is adamantine hardness and at the same time the softness of a lotus. It is beautiful but not fragile - strong. It is strong, but not just hard. All opposites meet in it...

as if a lotus flower is made of diamonds or a diamond is made of lotus flowers. Because man and woman meet there and transcend. Because sun and moon meet there and transcend.

The old term for yoga is hatha. This word hatha is very, very significant. Ha means sun, tha means moon; and hatha means the meeting of sun and moon. The union of sun and moon is yoga - UNIO MYSTICA.

In the human body, according to the hatha yogis, there are three channels of energy. One is known as pingala; that is the right channel, connected with the left brain - the sun channel. Then there is another channel ida; the left channel, connected with the right brain - the moon channel. And then there is the third channel, the middle channel, sushumna; the central, the balanced - it is made of sun and moon together.

Ordinarily your energy moves either by the pingala or by ida. Yogis' energy starts moving through the sushumna. That is called kundalini, when the energy moves just between these two, right and left. Corresponding to your backbone these channels exist.

Once the energy moves in the middle channel, you become balanced. Then a person is neither a man nor a woman, neither hard nor soft; or both - man and woman, hard and soft. All the polarities disappear in sushumna; and sahasrar is the peak of sushumna.

If you live on the lowest point of your being, that is muladhar: sex center; then either you move by ida or you move by pingala, sun channel or moon channel; and you remain divided. And you go on seeking the other, you go on asking for the other. You feel incomplete in yourself; you have to depend on the other.

Once your own energies meet inside and there happens a great orgasm, a cosmic orgasm, when the ida and pingala dissolve into sushumna; then one is thrilled, eternally thrilled.

Then one is ecstatic, continuously ecstatic. Then that ecstasy knows no end. Then one never comes down, then one never comes low. One remains high. That point of highness becomes one's innermost core, one's very being.

Remember again, I would like to say to you, this is the framework. We are not talking about actual things. There are foolish people who have even tried to dissect the human body to see where ida and pingala and sushumna are, and they have found them nowhere.

These are just indicators, symbolic. There are foolish people who have tried to dissect the body and to find the centers, where they are. Even one doctor has written a book to prove which center is exactly which complex in the body according to physiologists. These are all foolish attempts.

Yoga is not in that way scientific. It is allegorical; it is a great allegory. It is showing something, and if you go inside you will find it, but there is no way to find it by dissecting a body. By postmortem you will not find these things. These are alive phenomena. And these words are simply indicative - don't be confined to them, and don't make a fixed obsession and doctrine out of them. Remain fluid. Take the hint, and go on the journey.

One word more; it is oordhwaretas. It means the upward journey of energy. Right now you are existing at the sex center, and from that center the energy - goes on falling downward. Oordhwaretas means your energy starts moving upward. A delicate, very delicate phenomenon, and one-has to be very alert to work with it. If you are not alert there is every possibility you will become a perverted being. It is dangerous; that's why yogis call it "serpent power." It is dangerous. It is like a snake; you are playing with a snake. If you don't know what to do, there is danger. You are playing with poison.

And many people have become perverted because they tried to repress their sex energy in order to become oordhwaretas, to go upward. They never went upward. They even became more perverted than normal people.

I was reading one anecdote.

"Yes," said Abe to his friend Issy, "I am afraid with mine son it has turned out to be a great disappointment. You know how we struggled to give him an education what we never had; I sent him to the finest business school in the country, and now what happens?

He rolls up at my dress factory at ten in the morning; at eleven o'clock he dawdles over tea; twelve o'clock he is off for lunch; he is not back till two; and from two till four he fools around with the models. What a rubbish he has turned out to be."

"Abe," replied Issy, "what troubles you have got is nothing; mine is a thousand time worse. You know how we struggled to give mine son an education what we never had; I sent him to the best business school in the country, and now what happens? He rolls up at my factory at ten in the morning; at eleven o'clock he dawdles over tea; twelve o'clock he is off for lunch; he is not back till two; and from two till four he fools around with the models. What a rubbish he has turned out!"

"But, Issy, since when is that a thousand times worse than me? It is the same story what you have told me."

"Abe, you forget one thing: I am in the men's clothing."

Get it? If you don't know what to do with sex energy, and you start fooling with it, either your energy will become masturbatory or homosexual or there are a thousand and one other perversions. Then it is better to leave it as it is.

That's why a Master is needed - one who knows where you are, where you are going, and what is going to happen next; one who can see your future and one who can sec whether the right channeling is happening or not. Otherwise the whole world is in a mess of sexual perversion.

Never repress. It is better to be normal and natural than to be perverted. But just to be normal is not enough. Much more is possible. Transform. Repression is not the way of oordhwaretas - transformation is. And that can be done only if you purify your body, you purify your mind; you throw all rubbish that you have gathered in the body and the mind. Only with a purity, light, weightlessness, will you be able to help the energy to move upwards.

Ordinarily it is like a coiled snake; that's why we call it kundalini, or kundali. Kundali means "coiled up." When it raises its head and moves upwards, tremendous is the experience. Whenever it passes one higher center, you will have higher and higher experiences. On each center many things will be revealed to you; you are a great book.

But the energy has to pass through the centers; only then can those centers reveal you their beauties, their visions, their poetries, their songs, their dances. And each center has a higher orgasm than the lower one.

Sexual orgasm is the lowest. Higher is the orgasm of the hara. Higher than that is the orgasm of the nabhi, the navel. Higher than that is that of love, the heart. Then higher than that is that of the throat, creativity, sharing. Then higher than that is that of the third eye, the vision of life as really it is, without any projections - the clarity to sec unclouded. And highest is that of the sahasrar, the seventh center.

This is the map. If you want, you can move upwards, become oordhwaretas. But never try to become oordhwaretas for siddhis, powers; they are all foolish. Try to become oordhwaretas to know who you are. Not for power, but peace. Let peace be thy goal, never power.

This chapter is called vibhuti pada. Vibhtuti means "power." Patanjali included this chapter so that his disciples and those who will ever be following him are made alert that many powers happen on the way but you are not to get entangled with them. Once you become entangled with power, once you are on a power trip, you are in trouble. You will be tied down to that spot - and your flight will be stopped. And one has to go on flying and flying till the very end, when the abyss opens and you are absorbed back into the cosmic soul.

Let peace be thy goal.