Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 2 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #6, The Beginning of A New Path Question 2

The second question:

Question 2

WHY DO MASTERS NEED DIRECTIONS FROM MASTER OF MASTERS? ARE THEY NOT ENOUGH IN THEMSELVES WHEN THEY HAVE REACHED ENLIGHTENMENT? OR ARE THERE STAGES OF ENLIGHTENMENT TOO?

No, there are not stages in fact, but when a Master is in the body, and when the Master leaves the body and becomes bodiless, there is a difference -- not exactly stages. It is just like you are standing by the side of the road under a tree: you can see a patch of the road; beyond that patch you cannot see. Then you climb up the tree. You remain the same; nothing is happening to you or your consciousness. But you climb up the tree, and from the tree now you can look miles to this side and miles to that.

Then you fly in an airplane. Nothing has happened to you; your consciousness remains the same. But now you can see for thousands of miles. In the body you are on the road -- by the side of the road -- encased in the body. The body is the lowest point in existence because it means committed to the matter still, being with the matter still. Matter is the lowest point and God is the highest point.

When a Master attains to enlightenment in the body, the body has to fulfill its karmas, the past samskaras, the past conditionings. Every account has to be closed; only then can the body be left. It is like this: your airplane has arrived, but you have many businesses to finish. All the creditors are there, and they are asking to close the account before you leave. And there are many credits, because many lives you have been promising, doing things, acting, behaving, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes a sinner, sometimes a saint. You have accumulated much Before you leave, the whole existence demands you to complete everything.

When you have become enlightened, now you know that you are not the body, but you owe many things to the body and the material world. Time is needed -- Buddha lived forty years after his enlightenment, Mahavira also lived near about forty years -- to pay, to pay everything that they owe, to complete every circle that they started. No new action, but the old hanging things have to be finished, the old hangover has to be finished. When all the accounts are closed, now you can take your aircraft.

Up to now, with matter, you have been moving horizontally -- just like in a bullock cart. Now you can move vertically. Now you can go upwards. Before this, you have always been going forwards or backwards; there was no vertical movement. And the higher you rise -- and the God is the highest point, the Master of Masters -- from where the perception is total. Your consciousness is the same; nothing has changed: an enlightened man has the same consciousness as the supreme state of consciousness, God -- no difference of consciousness. But the perception, the field of perception, is different; now he can look everywhere.

There was a great debate in the times of Buddha and Mahavira. It will be useful to understand it at this point for this question. There was a debate: followers of Mahavira used to say that Mahavira is omnipotent omniscient, omnipresent, sarvagya, all-knowing. In a way they are right, because once you are freed from matter and body you are God. But in a way they were wrong, because you may be freed from the body, but you have yet not left it. The identification is broken; you know that you are not the body. But still you are in it.

It is as if you live in a house; then suddenly you come to know that this house doesn't belong to you -- somebody else's house and you were living in it. But then too, to leave the house you will have to make arrangements, you will have to remove things. And it will take time. You know this house is not yours, your attitude has changed. Now you are not worried about this house what happens to it. If next day it falls and becomes a ruins, it is nothing to you. If next day you leave and it takes fire, it is nothing to you: it belongs to somebody else. Just a moment before, you were identified with the house; it was your house. If there was fire, if the house fell down, you would have much worried. Now the identification is broken.

Mahavira's followers are right in a sense, because when you have come to know yourself, you have become all-knowing. But Buddha's followers used to say that this is not right -- a Buddha can know if he wants to know something, but he is not all-knowing. They used to say that if the Buddha wants, he can focus his attention in any direction, and wherever he focuses his attention, he will be able to know. He is capable of omniscience, but not omniscient. The difference is subtle, delicate, but beautiful. Because they said if he knows everything and all things continuously, he will go mad. This body cannot bear that much.

They are also right. A Buddha in the body can know anything if he wants to know. His consciousness, because of the body, is like a torch. You go in the dark with the torch. You can know anything if you focus; light is with you. But a torch is a torch; it is not a flame. A flame will give light in all directions; a torch focuses in a particular direction -- wherever you want. The torch has no choice You can look to the north, and then it will reveal the north. You can look to the south, and then it will reveal the south. But all the four directions are not revealed together. If you move the torch to the south, then the north is closed. It is a narrow flow of light.

This was Buddha's followers' standpoint. And Mahavira's followers used to say that he is not like a torch, he is like a lamp; all directions are revealed. But I favor Buddha's followers' standpoint. When the body is there, you are narrowed down. Body is a narrowing. You become like a torch -- because you cannot see from the hands, you can see only from the eyes. If you can see only from the eyes, you cannot see from your back because you don't have any eyes there. You have to move your head.

With the body everything is focused and narrow. The consciousness is unfocused and flowing in all directions, but the vehicle, the body, is not in all directions -- it always focused, so your consciousness also becomes narrowed down to it. But when the body is no more there, and a Buddha has left the body, then there is no problem. All directions are revealed together.

That's the point to be understood. That's why even an enlightened person can be guided, because an enlightened person is still tethered to the body, anchored in the body, in the narrow body, and a god is unanchored, floating in the highest sky. From there he can see all directions. From there he can see the past, the future, the present. From there his view is unclouded. That's why he can help.

Your view, even if you become enlightened in the body, is clouded. The body is there all around you. The status of consciousness is the same, the innermost reality of the consciousness is the same, the quality of the light is the same. But one light is tethered to the body and has become narrow; one light is not tethered to anything at all -- just a floating light. In the highest of skies, guidance is possible.

WHY DO MASTERS NEED DIRECTIONS FROM A MASTER OF MASTERS?

That's the reason.

ARE THEY NOT ENOUGH IN THEMSELVES WHEN THEY HAVE REACHED ENLIGHTENMENT OR ARE THERE STAGES OF ENLIGHTENMENT TOO?

They are enough. They are enough to guide disciples; they are enough to help disciples. Nothing is needed. But still they are tethered, and one who is untethered is always a good help. You cannot look in all directions; he can look.

You can also move and look, but that has to be done. This is what I am doing: having no instructor above, nobody to guide me, I have to be continuously on move -- looking from this direction and that, watching from this direction and that, looking at you through many standpoints so that your totality can be looked. I can look through, but I have to be moving around you. Just a glance will not help because a glance will be narrowed through the body. I am having a torch and moving all around you, looking from every standpoint possible.

In a way it is difficult because I have to work more. In a way it is very beautiful because I have to work more and I have to look from every standpoint possible. I come to know many things which ready-made instructions cannot do. And when the Master of Masters in Patanjali's ideology -- a god -- gives instructions, he gives no explanations; he gives simply instructions. He simply says, "Do this; don't do that."

Those who follow these instructions, they will also look like ready-made. It is bound to be so because they will say, "Do this." They will not have the explanation. And very coded instructions are given. Explanations are very difficult -- and there is no need also for them, because when it is given from a higher standpoint it is okay. Just one has to be obedient.

The Master is obedient to the Master of Masters, and you have to be obedient to the Master. An obedience follows. It is just like a military hierarchy; not much freedom. Much is not allowed Order is order If you ask for explanation, you are rebellious. And this is the problem, one of the greatest problems humanity has to face now: now man cannot be obedient as in the past. You cannot simply say, "Don't do this"; explanation is needed. And not any ordinary explanation will do. A very authentic explanation is needed because the very mind of humanity is no more obedient. Now rebelliousness is built in; a child is born rebellious now.

It was totally different in the days of Buddha and Mahavira. Everybody is taught to be individual, to stand on his own, to believe in himself. Trust has become difficult. Obedience is not possible. If somebody follows without asking, you think he is a blind follower. He is condemned. Now only a Master can help you who has all the explanations -- more than you require, who can exhaust you completely. You go on asking; he can go on answering you. A moment comes when you are tired of asking, and you say, "Okay, I will follow."

Never before this it was so. It was simple: when Mahavira says, "Do this," you do this. But this is not possible, simply because man is so different. The modern mind is a rebellious mind, and you cannot change it. This is how evolution has brought it to be, and nothing is wrong in it. That is why old Masters are falling off the road; nobody listens to them. You go to them. They have instructions, beautiful instructions, but they don't provide any explanation, and now the first thing is explanation. The instruction should follow as a syllogism. All explanations should be given first, and then the Master should say, "Therefore, do this."

It is a lengthy process, but it's how it is. Nothing can be done. And in a sense it is a beautiful growth, because when you simply trust, your trust has no salt in it, no tension in it. Your trust has no sharpness in it. It is a hodge-podge thing -- shapeless: no tonality in it, no color in it. It is just grey. But when you can doubt, you can argue, you can reason and a Master can satisfy all your reasons and arguments and doubts, then arises a trust which has a beauty of its own because against the background of doubt it has been achieved.

Against all doubts it has been achieved, against all challenges it has been achieved. It has been a fight. It was not simple and cheap: it has been costly. And when you achieve something after a long fight, it has a meaning of its own. If you simply get it on the road it just Lying there and take it home, it has no beauty. If Kohinoors are there all over the earth, who will bother to take them home? If a Kohinoor is just an ordinary pebble Lying anywhere, then who will bother?

In the old days, faith was like pebbles all over the earth. Now it has to be a Kohinoor. Now it has to be a precious achievement. Instructions won't help. A Master has to be so deep in his explanations that he exhausts you. I never say to you don't ask. In fact, just otherwise is the case. I say to you ask, and you don't find questions.

I will bring all the questions possible from your unconscious to the surface, and I will solve them. Nobody can say to you that you are a blind follower. And I will not give you a single instruction without totally satisfying your reason -- no, because that is not going to help you in any way.

Instructions are given from the Masters of Masters, but they are just quoted words -- sutras; "Do this; don't do that." In the new age, that won't help. Man is so rational now that even if you are teaching irrationality you have to reason it about. That's what I am doing: teaching you the absurdity, the irrational, teaching you the mysterious -- and through reason. Your reason has to be so much used that you yourself become aware that this is futile -- throw it. You have to be so much talked about your reason that you get fed up with it; you drop it on your own, not through instruction.

Because instruction can be given, but you will cling. That won't help. I'm not going to say to you, "Just trust me." I'm creating the whole situation in which you cannot do otherwise. You will have to trust. It will take a time -- a little longer -- than simple obedience. But it is worth.

Chapter-6

THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI

The Beginning of a New Path

Second Question