Question 1

LISTENING TO YOU MORNING AFTER MORNING, I FEEL OVERSATURATED WITH THE THOUGHT OF NEEDING TO LOOK INWARDS AND SEE. IN FACT I FEEL LIKE A DOG CHASING HIS OWN TAIL: THE HARDER HE TRIES, THE LESS HE HAS A CHANCE OF SUCCESS. BUT GIVING UP TRYING HAS NOT HELPED MUCH EITHER, BECAUSE BEING MORE ALERT AND AWARE IS TURNING OUT TO BE ANOTHER SUBTLE DOING, AND I AM BACK IN THE SAME RUT.

THIS is good, that you are becoming aware that neither doing can help nor nondoing, because your nondoing is a subtle doing. With this awareness a new door will open any day, any moment. When you neither do nor not-do, when you are simply there, when you are a being -- not a doer or a nondoer, because a nondoer is also a doer -- the duality disappears. Then suddenly you find you have always been in the home, you have never left it -- you had never gone out anywhere else. Then the dog realizes there is no need to chase the tail, the tail belongs to him already. There is no need to chase the tail because the tail follows the dog already. But one has to do to reach to nondoing. Then one has to do the nondoing to reach being. And everything helps. Even failures, frustrations -- everything helps. Finally, when you reach, you understand that everything helped -- going astray, falling into old ruts and traps -- everything helped; nothing goes useless. And everything becomes a step to another.

Just yesterday I was reading an article from Swami Agehananda Bharti. He relates that once he asked Ravishankar how well George Harrison plays the sitar. Ravishankar thought for a while and then said, "Well, he holds it alright." But that too is a great beginning. If you want to learn to play sitar, holding the sitar absolutely as it should be is a good beginning; it is already something. So don't laugh. Ravishankar has appreciated George Harrison, that he holds it well.

First you will become a doer. Do it well, that's the whole thing. If you don't do it well you will have to come back again and again, because nothing can be left incomplete; it has to be completed. In fact you have to be frustrated so totally that you never come back to doing again. Then do the nondoing, and do it so totally that that too is finished. And then there is no way to go back. You cannot fall back if everything has been complete; only incomplete experiences go on calling you back.

Incomplete experiences have a magnetic force in them; they demand fulfillment. That's why you again and again fall in the rut. You move immaturely. One experience has not ripened -- intellectually you start understanding it but not totally -- and you move. That won't help. Your whole being should understand it that "this is futile." Not because I say -- that is not going to help -- but because your whole being says, "This is futile. What are you doing? It is nonsense."

Then db nondoing. It is a doing, that's why I say "do." Very subtle. Gross is the first, the part when you do. Second is the subtle; soon you will realize that this, again, is that you are doing -- you are trying not to do, but the trying is there and that is effort. Your effortlessness is also effort. But you can understand it right now, what I am saying. That is not the point: you have to feel it, pass through it, realize it. Maturity is needed -- through experiencing -- then one day gross and subtle both disappear. Suddenly you are sitting there -- nothing to do and nothing not to do.

Then what will you do? You will simply be. There is no need to chase the tail. Now, the dog knows that the tail belongs to him; now, the dog has become a Buddha. This is enlightenment.

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

Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Yoga Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

Chapter 8

• Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #8, Male mind, female mind, no-mind Question 1
  Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #8, Male mind, female mind, no-mind Question 1 LISTENING TO YOU MORNING AFTER MORNING, I FEEL OVERSATURATED WITH THE THOUGHT OF NEEDING TO LOOK INWARDS AND SEE. IN FACT I FEEL LIKE A DOG CHASING HIS OWN TAIL: THE HARDER HE TRIES, THE LESS HE HAS A CHANCE OF SUCCESS. BUT GIVING UP TRYING HAS NOT HELPED MUCH EITHER, BECAUSE BEING MORE ALERT AND AWARE IS TURNING OUT TO BE ANOTHER SUBTLE DOING, AND I AM BACK IN THE SAME RUT at energyenhancement.org
  
  
• Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #8, Male mind, female mind, no-mind Question 2
  Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #8, Male mind, female mind, no-mind Question 2 DURING DARSHAN OR YOUR LECTURES I SOMETIMES GET OVERWHELMED BY THE PHENOMENON THAT IS YOU. AND THEN I THINK THAT IT MUST HAVE BEEN LIKE THAT WHEN I SAT AT THE FEET OF BUDDHA, CHRIST, AND OTHER MASTERS -- AND FAILED. WILL YOU PLEASE PROMISE ME NOT TO LEAVE ANY STONE UNTURNED TO MAKE SURE THAT YOU WILL BE MY LAST MASTER? at energyenhancement.org
  
  
• Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #8, Male mind, female mind, no-mind Question 3
  Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #8, Male mind, female mind, no-mind Question 3 IS ALL MIND MADE OUT OF THE SAME MATERIAL -- STUPIDITY? at energyenhancement.org
  
  
• Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #8, Male mind, female mind, no-mind Question 4
  Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #8, Male mind, female mind, no-mind Question 4 YOU SAID THAT YOU NEVER CAME ACROSS A WOMAN WHO IS REALLY INTELLIGENT. BUT HOW COME IN THE ASHRAM ALL THE EXECUTIVES ARE WOMEN? at energyenhancement.org
  
  
• Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #8, Male mind, female mind, no-mind Question 5
  Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #8, Male mind, female mind, no-mind Question 5 BEING WITH YOU HERE IN POONA MY LIFE HAS BECOME TREMENDOUSLY ENRICHED WITHOUT ANY EFFORT ON MY PART. FOR THIS I FEEL DEEPLY GRATEFUL. BUT WHY IS THIS BEAUTIFUL MEDICINE PALATABLE TO ONLY A HANDFUL WHEN THE WHOLE WORLD IS DYING? at energyenhancement.org
  
  
• Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #8, Male mind, female mind, no-mind Question 6
  Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #8, Male mind, female mind, no-mind Question 6 IF LAO TZU AND PATANJALI MET TODAY COULD THEY RECONCILE THEIR TEACHINGS ABOUT SPIRITUAL GROWTH? IF IN THEIR BUDDHAHOOD NO DISTINCTION EXISTS BETWEEN THEM WHY ARE THEIR TEACHINGS SO DIFFERENT. AND WHY HAS THERE NOT BEEN A MASTER BEFORE YOU IN ALL THE AGES WHO HAS COMBINED AND SYNTHESIZED ALL THE TEACHINGS OF PAST BUDDHAS? at energyenhancement.org
  
  
• Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #8, Male mind, female mind, no-mind Question 7
  Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #8, Male mind, female mind, no-mind Question 7 WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY SAYING TO US, LISTEN TO YOUR INNER VOICE AND ACT ACCORDINGLY, KNOWING WELL THAT WE HAVE ONLY THE VOICE OF THE MIND? DOES EMPTINESS HAVE ANY VOICE? at energyenhancement.org
  

Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Yoga Yoga Sutras of Patanjali