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Chapter-5

THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI

Prati-prasav: The Primal of the Ancients

 

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Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Yoga Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

 

Book 2, Sutra 9

9. FLOWING THROUGH LIFE IS THE FEAR OF DEATH, THE CLINGING TO LIFE, AND IT IS DOMINANT IN ALL, EVEN THE LEARNED.

Book 2, Sutra 10

10. THE SOURCES OF THE FIVE AFFLICTIONS CAN BE ABOLISHED BY RESOLVING THEM BACKWARDS TO THEIR ORIGIN.

Book 2, Sutra 11

11. THE OUTWARD EXPRESSIONS OF THE FIVE AFFLICTIONS DISAPPEAR THROUGH MEDITATION.

LIFE SEEMS to be an endless chain of miseries. From birth to death one suffers and suffers; still one wants to live. One continues to cling to life.

Albert Camus has said somewhere, and very rightly, 'The only metaphysical problem is suicide.' Why don't you commit suicide? If life is such a misery, such a hopeless affair, why don't you commit suicide? Why be at all? Why not not be? Deep down, this is the real philosophical problem. But nobody wants to die. Even people who commit suicide, commit suicide in hope that by committing suicide they will get to a better life, but clinging to life remains. Even with death, they are hoping.

I have heard about one Greek philosopher who taught his disciples nothing else but suicide. Of course, nobody ever followed him. People listened; he was a very articulate man. Even while listening to him about suicide -- it looked beautiful, worth listening to -- nobody followed him. He himself lived to the very ripe age of ninety. He himself didn't commit suicide. While on his death-bed, somebody asked, 'You taught continuously about suicide. Why have you yourself not committed it?' The old, dying philosopher opened his eyes and said, 'I had to be here just to teach people.'

Clinging to life is very deep. Patanjali calls it abhinivesh, lust for life. Why is it there if there is so much misery? People come to me, and with deep anguish they talk about their miseries, but they don't seem to be ready to leave life. Even with all its miseries, life seems to be worthwhile. From where does this hope come? -- it is a paradox and has to be understood.

In fact, you cling to life more if you are miserable. The more miserable you are, the more you cling. A man who is happy does not cling to life. This will look paradoxical on the outer surface, but if you penetrate deeply, you will understand what is the matter. People who are suffering are always hopeful, optimistic. They always hope that something is going to happen tomorrow. People who have lived in deep misery and hell have created heaven, the idea, the paradise. It is always tomorrow; it never comes. k is always there, hanging like a bait in front of you somewhere in the future.

It is a trick of the mind: heaven -- the greatest trick of the mind. The mind is saying, 'Don't be worried about today, tomorrow is paradise. Just somehow pass through today. It is nothing compared to the happiness that is waiting for you tomorrow!' And tomorrow seems to be so near. Of course it never comes, it cannot come. Tomorrow is a non existential thing. Whatsoever comes is always today, and today is hell. But the mind consoles; it has to console, otherwise it will be almost impossible to bear -- the misery is intolerable. One has to tolerate it.

How can you tolerate it? The only way is hope, hope against all hopes, dream. The dream becomes the consolation. The dream dilutes your miseries today. The dream may not come, that is not the point, but at least today you can dream and tolerate the misery that is there. You can postpone. Your desires can go on hanging there in the future, unfulfilled. But the very hope that tomorrow will be coming and everything will be okay helps you to pull along, to persist.

The more miserable a man, the more hopeful; the more happy a man, the more hopeless. That is why beggars never renounce the world. How can they renounce? Only a Buddha, a Mahavir -- bornm in palaces as princes -- renounce the world. They are hopeless; they have nothing to hope for. Everything is there and still there is misery. A beggar can hope because nothing is with him: when everything is there, there will be heaven and paradise and everything will be a happiness. He has to wait and make arrangements for the tomorrow to happen. There is nothing left for a Buddha. Everything is available; all that is possible is already there. Then how to hope? For what to hope?

That is why I insist again and again that only in an affluent society does religion become possible. A poor society cannot be religious. A poor society is bound to become communist, because communism is the hope of the tomorrow, the heaven:'Tomorrow everything is going to be distributed equally, to morrow there is going to be no rich man and no poor man, tomorrow is the revolution. The sun will rise and everything is going to be beautiful. The darkness is only today. You have just to tolerate it and fight for tomorrow.' A poor society is bound to be communist.

Only does a rich society start feeling hopeless. And when you start feeling hopeless about life, the real hope becomes possible. When you feel so very frustrated with life that you are at the brink of committing suicide, you are ready to leave this whole misery. Only in that moment of crisis is transformation possible.

Suicide and sadhana are the two alternatives. When you are ready to commit suicide, you are ready to be transformed -- never before it. When you are ready to leave the whole life and all its miseries, only then is there a possibility that you may be ready to transform yourself. Transformation is the real suicide. If you kill your body, that is not a real suicide. You will get another body again, because the mind remains the old. To kill the mind is the real suicide, and that is what yoga is all about: killing the mind, attaining to the ultimate suicide. From there, then there is no coming back.

But man clings to life because man is miserable. You would have thought otherwise: that a miserable man should not cling to life. What is there that life has given to him? Why should he cling? Many times the idea must have come to you, seeing a beggar on the road, in the gutter, blind, suffering from leprosy, without feet, without hands; the idea must have passed through your mind, 'Why is this man clinging to life? What is left there now? Why can't he commit suicide and be finished?'

I remember: in my childhood a beggar with no legs used to come. He was carried in a small cart by the wife. He was blind, the whole body a stinking corpse. You couldn't come near him. He was suffering from incurable leprosy -- almost dead, ninety nine percent dead, only one percent alive but somehow breath ing. I used to give him something. One day I asked him, just out of curiosity, 'Why are you living -- for what?Why can't you commit suicide and be finished with such a miserable life?' Of course, he became angry. He said, 'What are you saying?' He was angry. He wanted to hit me with his staff.

It might appear to you that a miserable man should commit suicide, or at least think about finishing it. But never -- a miserable man never thinks about it, he cannot. Misery creates its compensation, misery creates its antidote. Heaven is the antidote -- 'Tomorrow, everything is going to be all right. It is only a question of a little more patience.'

A beggar always lives in the future. And you are a beggar if you live in the future. That is the criterion to judge whether a man is an emperor or a beggar: it you live in the future you are a beggar; it you live right here, now, you are an emperor.

A man who is blissful lives here and now. He doesn't bother about the future. The future means nothing; future has no meaning for him. Future in fact is non-existential; this moment is the only existence. But that is possible only for a blissful man. For a miserable man, how can this moment be the only existence? Then it will be too much -- unbearable, impossible. He has to create the future. He has to create a dream somewhere, somehow, to compensate for the misery.

The deeper the misery, the more the hope. Hope is a compensation. A miserable man never commits suicide, and a miser able man never comes to religion. A miserable man clings to life. The more happy you are, the more you will be ready to give up life at any moment -- any moment, with no clinging. You can put your life out just like worn out clothes; it doesn't matter at all.

Not only that; if you are really blissful and the death knocks at the door, you will welcome it. You will embrace death, and therein you will transcend death. Let me repeat: death comes and knocks at your door, and if you are afraid and you hide somewhere in the corners, in the cupboards, and you cry and you want to live a little more, you are a victim. You will have to die many times. A coward dies a thousand and one times. But if you can open the door, welcome death as a friend, em brace death, therein you have transcended death. Now you are deathless. For the first time, now you attain to a life which is not misery, the life of which Jesus talks: life in abundance; the life of which Buddha talks: the life of ecstasy, of nirvana; the life about which Patanjali is talking: eternal, beyond time and space, beyond death.

Misery creates its own compensation. Once you are caught in the trap, the more you will cling to life, and the more you will become miserable. That is the second part: the more you cling to life, the more you will be miserable because clinging itself creates misery, clinging creates more frustrations. When you don't cling to something, if it is lost you are not miserable. When you cling to a thing and it is lost, you go mad. The more you cling to life, the more and more you will find every day that you are becoming miserable. Anguish is being added to your being more and more. A moment comes when you are nothing but an anguish, a screaming anguish. And when this happens, you cling more. This is a vicious circle.

Just observe the whole phenomenon. Why are you clinging? You are clinging because you have not yet been able to live. The very clinging to life shows that you have not yet been alive, you have lived a dead life, you have not yet been able to enjoy the blessings of life, you have been insensitive, you have lived a closed life. You have not been able to touch the flowers, the sky, the birds. You have not been able to flow with the river of life; you are frozen. Because you are frozen and you cannot live, you are miserable. Because you are miserable you are afraid of death because if death comes right now and you have not lived life yet, you are finished.

There is an old story. In the days of the Upanishads there was a great king, Yayati. His death came. He was a hundred years old. When death came he started crying and weeping. Death said, 'This doesn't suit you, a great emperor, a brave man. What are you doing? Why are you crying and weeping like a child? Why are you trembling like a leaf in a strong wind? What has happened to you?' Yayati said, 'You have come and I have not yet been able to live. Please give me a little more time so that I can live. I did many things, I fought in many wars. I accumulated much wealth, I have made a great kingdom. I have added much to my father's wealth but I have not lived. In fact, there was no time to live, and you came. No, this is unjust. You give me a little more time!' Death said, 'But I have to take somebody. Okay, make an arrangement. If one of your sons is ready to die for you, I will take him.'

Yayati had one hundred sons, thousands of wives. He asked, he called his sons. The older ones wouldn't listen. They had themselves become cunning and they were in the same trap. One, the eldest, was seventy. He said, 'But I have also not lived. What about me? At least you have lived a hundred years, I have lived only seventy. I should be given a little more of a chance.' The youngest, who was just sixteen or seventeen, came, touched his father's feet, and said, 'I am ready.' Even death felt com passion for this boy. Death knew that he was innocent, not versed in the ways of the world, did not know what he was doing. Death whispered in the ear of the boy, 'What are you doing? You fool! Look at your father. At the age of a hundred he is not ready to die, and you are just seventeen! You have not even touched life.' The boy said, 'The life is finished! Because my father at the age of a hundred feels still that he has not been able to live, so what is the point? Even if I live a hundred years, it is going to be the same. It is better to let him live my life. If he cannot live in a hundred years, then the whole thing is pointless.'

The son died and the father lived a hundred years more. Again death knocked and again he started crying and weeping. He said, 'I completely forgot. I was again increasing wealth, expanding the kingdom, and the hundred years have gone as if in a dream. You are again here and I have not lived.' And this continued.

The death came again and again and she would take one of the sons. Yayati lived for one thousand years more.

A beautiful story, but the same happened again. One thou sand years passed and death came. Yayati was trembling and weeping and crying. Death said, 'But now it is too much. You have lived one thousand years and you again say that you have not been able to live.' Yayati said, 'How can one live in the here and now? I always postpone: tomorrow and tomorrow. And tomorrow? -- suddenly you are there.'

Postponing life is the only sin that I can call sin. Don't post pone. If you want to live, live here and now. Forget the past, forget the future; this is the only moment, this is the only existential moment -- live it. Once lost it cannot be recovered, you cannot reclaim it. -

If you start living in the present, you will not think of the future and you will not cling to life. When you live, you have known life, you are satisfied, satiated. Your whole being feels blessed. There is no need for any compensation. There is no need for death to come after a hundred years and see you trembling and weeping and crying. If death comes right now you will be ready: you have lived, you have enjoyed, you have celebrated. A single moment of really being alive is enough, and one thousand years of an unreal life are not enough. One thousand or one million years of an unlived life are not worth while; and I tell you, a single moment of lived experience is an eternity unto self. It is beyond time; you touch the very soul of life. And then there is no death, no worry, no clinging. You can leave life any moment and you know that nothing is left. You have enjoyed it to the very full, to the very brink. You are overflowing with it, you are ready.

A man who is ready to die in a deep celebrating mood is the man who has really lived. Clinging to life shows that you have not been able to live. Embracing death as part of life shows that you have lived well. You are contented. Now listen to Patanjali's sutra. It is one of the most profound, and very, very significant for you.

FLOWING THROUGH LIFE IS THE FEAR OF DEATH, THE CLINGING TO LIFE, AND IT IS DOMINANT IN ALL, EVEN THE LEARNED.

It is flowing through life. If you watch your mind, if you observe yourself, you will find that whether alert or not, a fear of death is continuously there. Whatsoever you do, the fear of death is there. Whatsoever you enjoy, just around the comer the shadow of death is always there, persisting. It follows you. Wherever you go, you go with it. It is something within you. You cannot leave it outside, you cannot escape from it; the fear of death is you.

From where does this fear of death come? Have you known death before? If you have not known death before, why are you afraid of it, of something which you don't know? If you ask the psychologists, they will say, 'Fear is relevant if you know what death is. If you have died before, fear seems relevant.' But you don't know death. You don't know whether it is going to be painful or whether it is going to be ecstatic. Then why are you afraid?

No, the fear of death is not really a fear of death, because how can you be afraid of something which is unknown, which is not known at all? How can you be afraid of something which is absolutely unknown to you? Fear of death is not really fear of death. Fear of death is really clinging to life.

Life is there and you know well that you are not living it, it is bypassing you. The river is bypassing you, you are standing on the bank, and it is going continuously out of your hands. The fear of death, basically, is the fear that you are incapable of living and life is going. Soon, there will be no time left, and you have been waiting and you have always been preparing. You are obsessed with preparations.

I have heard about a German scholar who accumulated one of the greatest libraries in the world, from all the countries, from all languages. He was never able to read a single book be cause he was always accumulating: going to China to find a very rare book written on human skin, then running to Burma, then coming to India, then to Ceylon, then to Afghanistan -- his whole life. By the time he was seventy, he had accumulated a vast collection of books, rare books. He was always postponing, and he would read them when the library was complete. And death Came. When he was dying, tears started flowing from his eyes. He asked a friend, 'What to do now? No time is left. The library is ready but my life is spent. Do something! Fetch any book from the library, read something from it so that I can understand. At least I can be satisfied a little.' The friend went to the library, fetched a book, came back -- but the scholar was dead.

This happens to everybody, to almost everybody; you go on preparing for life. You think millions of preparations have to be made first and then you will enjoy, and then you will live -- but by that time, life is gone. Preparations are made but there is nobody to enjoy them. This is the fear, you know it deep down in your guts, you feel it: that life is flowing by, every moment you are dying, every moment you are dying.

It is not fear of a death somewhere in the future coming and destroying you. It is happening every moment. Life is moving and you are absolutely incapable and closed. You are already dying. The day you were born you started dying. Every moment of life is also a moment of death. The fear is not of some unknown death which is waiting in the future, the fear is right now. Life is flowing out of the hands and you seem to be incapable, you cannot do anything. Fear of death is basically a fear of life which is flowing out of your hands.

Then afraid, you cling to life. But clinging can never become a celebration. Clinging is ugly, clinging is violent. The more you cling to life, the more you will become incapable.

For example: you love a woman, you cling to her. The more you cling, the more you will force the woman to escape from you because your clinging will become a burden on her. The more you try to possess her, the more she will think of how to get free, how to escape from you. And I tell you, life is a woman; don't cling to k. It follows those who don't cling to it. It comes in abundance to those who don't cling to it. If you cling, the very clinging puts life off, your beggarliness puts life off.

Be an emperor, be a sovereign. Live life but don't cling to it, don't cling to anything. Clinging makes you ugly and violent. Clinging makes you a beggar and life is for those who are emperors, not for those who are beggars. If you beg you will not get anything. Life gives much to those who never beg. Life be comes a constant blessing for those who remain unclinging to it. Live it, enjoy it, celebrate it, but don't be miserly, don't cling to it. This clinging to life gives you the fear of death because the more you cling, the more you see that the life is not there -- it is going, it is going, it is going. Then the fear of death arises.

FLOWING THROUGH LIFE IS THE FEAR OF DEATH, THE CLINGING TO LIFE, AND IT IS DOMINANT IN ALL, EVEN THE LEARNED.

Because your learned are just as foolish as you are. The learned have not learned anything. In fact, they have memorized things. Great scholars, pundits, they know much about life, but they don't know life. They always know about and about. They move round and round, never penetrating to the center. They are as afraid or sometimes even more afraid than you because they have wasted their lives in words. Words are just bubbles. They have accumulated much knowledge, but what is knowledge compared to life?

You can know many things about love without knowing love. In fact, if you know love, what is the need to know about love? You can know many things about God without knowing God. In fact, if you know God, what is the need to know about God? -- that will be foolish, stupid. Always remember that knowing about is not knowing. Knowing about is just moving in a circle, never touching the center.

Patanjali says, 'Even the learned, those who are versed in scriptures, theologies, can discuss, debate for their whole lives, they can talk and talk and argue about millions of things, but meanwhile the life is flowing by. The cup of life, they have not tasted. They don't know what life is. They have lived in words, linguistic games. They will also be afraid.'

So remember, Vedas and Bibles won't help; Korans and Dhammapadas won't help. Knowledge is of no use as far as life is concerned. You may become a great scientist or a great philosopher or a great mathematician, but that doesn't mean that you know life. To know life is a totally different dimension.

To know life means: to live it, to be unafraid, to move into the insecurities because life is an insecure phenomenon; to move into the unknown because life is every moment unknown, it is always changing and becoming new; to become a traveller of the unknown and to move with life wherever it leads; to become a wanderer.

That is the meaning of sannyas to me: to be always ready to leave the known and the comforts of the known and move in to the unknown. Of course, with the unknown there are in securities, inconveniences, discomforts. To move into the unknown means to move into the dangerous. Life is dangerous; it is full of-dangers and hazards. Because of this, people start closing themselves. They live in imprisonments, cells -- dark but comfortable. Before death comes, they are already dead.

Remember, if you choose comfort, if you choose security, if you choose the familiar, then you will not choose life. Life is an unknown phenomenon. You can live it but you cannot possess it in your hands, you cannot cling to it. You can move with it wheresoever it leads. You have to become like a white cloud, moving wherever the wind leads it, not knowing where it is going.

Life has no goal. If you are in search of a certain goal you will not be able to live. Life is goal-less. That's why it is infinite, that's why the journey is endless. Otherwise, the goal will be reached, and then what will you do when the goal is reached?

Life has no goal. You achieve one goal and thousands of new goals are ahead. You reach one peak and you are thinking that this is the last, 'I will rest.' But when you reach to the peaks, many more peaks are revealed, higher peaks are still there. It is always so; you never come to the end. That is the meaning of God being infinite, life being endless: no beginning and no end. Afraid, closed into yourself, caved in, you will cling, and then you will be miserable.

FLOWING THROUGH LIFE IS THE FEAR OF DEATH, THE CLINGING TO LIFE, AND IT IS DOMINANT IN ALL, EVEN THE LEARNED.

Without knowing death you are afraid. Something must be there deep inside, and this is the thing: your ego is a false phenomenon. It is a combination of certain things; it has no substance in it, no center. The ego is afraid of death. It is just like when a small child has made a house of playing-cards and the child is afraid, afraid of the breeze coming in. The child is afraid that the other child may come near to the house. He is afraid of himself, because if he does anything, the house can fall immediately.

You make a house on the sand; you will be always afraid. The rock is not there in its foundations. Storms come and you tremble because your whole house trembles; any moment it can fall. The ego is a house of playing-cards, and you are afraid. If you really know who you are, the fear disappears, because now you are on the rock of the infinite, the deathless.

The ego is going to die because it is already dead. It has no life of its own; it reflects only your life. It is like a mirror. Your being is eternal. That's why even the learned are afraid of death, because by learning you cannot know your being. The being is known by unlearning, not by learning. You have to empty your mind completely. Emptied completely even of your feeling of self, emptied, suddenly in that emptiness you feel the being for the first time. That being is eternal. No death can happen to it. Only that being can embrace death, and therein know that you are deathless. The ego is afraid.

Patanjali says: THE SOURCES OF THE FIVE AFFLICTIONS, KLESHAS, CAN BE ABOLISHED BY RESOLVING THEM BACKWARDS TO THEIR ORIGIN.

Prati-prasav: this is a very, very significant process, the process of prati-prasav. It is the process of reabsorbing back to the cause, bringing effect back to the cause; the process of involution. You must have heard the name of Janov, the man who has rediscovered Primal Therapy. Primal Therapy is part of prati-prasav. It is one of the oldest techniques of Patanjali. In Primal Therapy, Janov teaches people to go back to their child hood. If there is something, some trouble, some problem, then you go back to the original source from where it started. Because you can go on trying to solve the problem, but unless you go to the roots, it cannot be solved. Effects cannot be solved; they have to be forced back to the cause. It is just as if a tree is there and you don't want the tree, but you go on cutting the branches, the leaves, and again more branches sprout. You cut one leaf, three leaves come. You have to go to the roots.

For example, a man comes who is afraid of women. Many people come to me. They say that they are afraid of women, very afraid. Because of that fear, they cannot make a meaningful relationship, they cannot relate; the fear is always there. When you are in fear, the relationship will be contaminated by the fear. You will not be able to move totally. You will relate halfheartedly, always afraid: the fear of being rejected, the fear that the woman may say no. And there are other fears. If this man goes on trying Emile Coue-type methods, if he goes on repeating, 'I am not afraid of women, and every day I am getting better,' if he tries such things he can suppress the fear temporarily, but the fear will be there and will come again and again and again.

In Primal Therapy, he has to be thrown back. A man who is afraid of women shows that he must have had some experience with the mother which has caused fear, because the mother is the first woman. Your whole life you may be related with many women as wife, as mistress, as daughter, as friend, but the image of mother will persist. That is your first experience. Your whole structure of relationship with women will be based on that foundation, and that foundation is your relationship with your mother. So if a man is afraid of women, he has to be led back, he has to step backwards in memory, he has to go back and find the primal source from where the fear started. It may be an ordinary incident, very minor, he may have completely forgotten it. But if he goes back, he will find the wound some where.

You wanted to be loved by the mother, as every child wants, but the mother was not interested. She was a busy woman. She had to attend many associations, clubs, this and that. She was not willing to give the breast to you because she wanted a more proportioned body. She wanted her breasts to be intact and not destroyed by you. She wanted her breasts to be always young so she denied the breast to you. Or, there may have been other problems in her mind. You were not an accepted child; like a burden you have come, never wanted in the first place. But the pill didn't work and you were born. Or, she hated the husband and you had the face of the husband -- a deep hatred, or something or other. But you have to go back and you have to become a child again.

Remember, no stage of life is ever lost. Your child is still within you. It is not that the child becomes the young man, no. The child remains inside, the young man is imposed over it, then the old man is superimposed over the young man, layer by layer. The child never becomes the young man. The child remains there, a layer of young man comes over it. The young man never becomes the old; another layer, of old age, comes over it. You become like an onion -- many layers -- and if you penetrate, all the layers are Still there, intact.

In Primal Therapy Janov helps people to go backwards and become children again. They kick, they cry, they weep, they scream, and the scream is no more of the present. It doesn't belong to the man right now, it belongs to the child who is hidden behind. When that scream, that primal scream comes, many things are immediately transformed.

This is one part of the method of prati-prasav. Janov may not be aware that Patanjali, almost five thousand years ago, taught a system in which every effect had to be led to the cause. Only the cause can be resolved. You can cut the roots, and then the tree will die. But you cannot cut the branches and hope that the tree will die. The tree will thrive more.

'Prati-prasav' is a beautiful word; 'prasav' means birth. When a child is born it is prasav. Prati-prasav means you are again born in the memory, you go back to the very birth, the trauma when you were born, and you live it again. Remember, you don't remember it, you live it, you relive it again.

Remembering is different. You can remember, you can sit silently, but you remain the man you are: you remember that you were a child and your mother hit you hard. That wound is there, but this is remembrance. You are remembering an incident as if it happened to somebody else. To relive it is pratiprasav. To relive it means that you become the child again. Not that you remember; you become the child again, you live it again. The mother is hitting you not in your memory, the mother hits you again right now: the wound, the anger, the antagonism, your shrinking back, the rejection, and your reaction, as if the whole thing is happening again. This is prati-prasav. And this is not only as Primal Therapy, but as a methodology for every seeker who is in search of the life abundant, of truth.

These are the five afflictions: avidya, lack of awareness; asmita, the feeling of the ego; rag, attachment; dwais, repulsion; and abhinivesh, lust for life. These are the five miseries.

THE SOURCES OF THE FIVE MISERIES, KLESHAS, CAN BE ABOLISHED BY RESOLVING THEM BACKWARDS TO THEIR ORIGIN.

The last is abhinivesh: lust for life; the first is lack of awareness. The last has to be resolved to the first, the last has to be brought to the first. Now move backwards: you have lust for life, you cling to life. Why? Patanjali says, 'Go backwards.' Why do you cling to life? -- because you are miserable. And the misery is created by dwais, repulsion. The misery is created by dwais -- violence, jealousy, anger -- repulsion. How can you live if you have such negative things around you? Through these negativities, wherever you look, life seems to be not worth living. Wherever you look through the negative, everything looks dark, dismal, a hell. Lust for life has to be resolved backwards, then you will find dwais. If you go downwards, backwards with clinging to life, behind it you will find the layer of repulsion. That's why you have not been able to live. All the societies, cultures, they force many repulsions on you.

If you read Hindu scriptures or Jain scriptures, they teach repulsion. They say that if you are in love with a woman, first see what the woman is. What is a woman? -- just a structure of bones, flesh, blood, mucus, ugly things. Look inside the woman; the beauty is skin-deep. And behind the skin there is everything ugly, repulsive.

If you are taught by such people, whenever you are in love you will not be able to love the woman because the repulsion will come. You will feel the repulsion arising, and how is love possible with repulsion? And if you have been taught by these foreigners who poison the very sources of life, you will be miserable. Without love, how can you be happy? You will be miserable. When you are miserable you will cling to life.

So Patanjali says, 'Clinging to life is the uppermost layer. Go deep; behind it you will find a layer of repulsion, dwais.' But why are you repelled? Go deeper and you will find attachment. You are attracted towards a thing and if you are attracted, only then can you be repelled. If you are not attracted you cannot be repelled. Attraction can create a repulsion; repulsion is the other pole of attraction. Go deeper -- another layer you will find is asmuta, the feeling of ego, 'I am.' And this 'I' exists through attachment and repulsion. If rag, dwais, attraction and repulsion both fall, 'I' cannot stand there. 'I' will fall with it.

You, your ego, exists through your ideas of good and bad, ideas of love and hate, ideas of what is beautiful and what is ugly. Duality create6 the ego. So behind the duality of rag and dwais, you will find the ego. Why does this ego exist? Patanjali says, 'Go still deeper and you will find lack of awareness. The root cause of the whole misery of life is lack of awareness. This is the cause, the primal cause of the whole thing. You cannot find it with abhinivesh, lust for life; that is a fruit, a flower, the last phenomenon. In fact, it is not the cause. Go back.

THE SOURCES OF THE FIVE AFFLICTIONS CAN BE ABOLISHED BY RESOLVING THEM BACKWARDS TO THEIR VERY ORIGIN.

Once you know the cause, everything is resolved. And this is the cause.. lack of awareness. What to do? Don't fight with your clinging, don't fight with your attachment and repulsion, don't even fight with the ego. Just become more and more aware. Just become more and more alert, watchful, mindful. Remember more and more and become alert. That very alertness will dissolve everything. Once the cause is dissolved, the effects disappear.

Ordinary morality teaches you changes on the surface. So called religions teach you how to fight with effects. Patanjali is giving you the very science of religion: the very root cause can be dissolved. You have to be more aware. Live life with alert ness: that is the whole message. Don't live like a sleepy man, or a drunkard living in a hypnosis. Be conscious of whatsoever you are doing. Do it, but do it with full consciousness. Suddenly you will see many things disappear.

A thief came to Nagarjuna, a Buddhist mystic. The thief said, 'Listen, I have been to many teachers and many Masters. They all know me because I am a famous thief, in fact, the master thief of this kingdom, so I am known all over. Just the moment I reach them they say, "First you have to leave stealing, robbing people. First drop your way of life and then something can happen." But that I cannot do. So the thing stops then and there. Now I have come to you. What do you say?

Nagarjuna said, 'Then you must have gone to thieves, not to Masters. Why should a Master be worried about your stealing or not stealing? I am not concerned. You do one thing. you go on stealing, robbing people -- but rob them with awareness.' The thief said, 'This I can do.' And he was caught, trapped.

After two weeks passed, he came back to Nagarjuna and said, 'You are a deceiver, you have tricked me. Last night I entered for the first time into the palace of the King, but because of you I tried to be alert. I opened the treasury. Thousands of precious diamonds were there, but because of you I had to come out of the palace empty-handed.' Nagarjuna said, 'Tell me what happened.' The thief said, 'Whenever I would be alert and I would try to take those diamonds, the hand would not move. If the hand moved, then I was not alert. For two, three hours I struggled. I tried to be alert and take those diamonds, but it was impossible. Many times I took those diamonds, but then I was not alert so I had to put them back. Whenever I was alert, the hand would not move.' Nagarjuna said, 'That's the whole thing. You have understood the point.'

Without alertness you can be angry, violent, possessive, jealous. These are the offshoots but not the roots. With alertness you cannot be angry, you cannot be jealous, you cannot be aggressive, violent, greedy. Ordinary morality teaches you not to be greedy, not to be angry. That is ordinary morality. That doesn't help much. At the most a little suppressed personality is created. Greed remains, anger remains, but you can have a little social morality. It may help as a lubricant in the society, but nothing much happens.

Patanjali is not teaching ordinary morality. Patanjali is teaching the very root of all religion, the very science of religion. He says, 'Bring every effect to the cause.' And the cause is always unalertness, unawareness, avidya. Become aware, and every. thing disappears.

THE OUTWARD EXPRESSIONS OF THE FIVE AFFLICTIONS DISAPPEAR THROUGH MEDITATION.

You need not be worried about them; you just meditate more, become more aware. First the outward expressions disappear: anger, jealousy, hatred, repulsion, attraction. Their outward expression disappears first, but the seeds remain with you. Then one has to go very, very deep, because you think you are angry only when you are angry -- that is not true. An under. ground current of anger continues even when you are not angry. Otherwise, from where will you get the anger when the time comes? Somebody insults you and suddenly you are angry. Just a second before you were happy, smiling, and the face changes; you have become a murderer. From where did you get this? It must have been there, an underground current available to you always. Whenever need arises, opportunities arise, suddenly the anger flares up.

First, meditation will help you. The outward expressions will disappear. But don't be satisfied with that because basically, if the underground current remains, then at any time there is a possibility; the flare up can be brought. In a certain situation again the expression can come. Never be satisfied with that outward expression disappearing; the seed has to be burned. The first part of meditation helps you to bring the outward expression to the basic current: on the outside you become silent, but inside, things continue. Then the meditation has to go still deeper.

That is Patanjali's distinction between samadhi and dhyan. Dhyan is the first stage, meditation is the first stage with which outward expressions disappear; and samadhi is the last stage, the ultimate meditation where the seeds are burned. You have reached the very source of being and life. Then, you don't cling to anything. Then, you are not afraid of death. Then, in fact, you are not; then you are no more. Then God abides in you, and you can say, 'aham brahmasmi,' I am the very divine, the very ground of existence.

 

Next: Chapter 6, The existentialist cul-de-sac: First Question

 

Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Yoga Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

 

 

 
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