Chapter-10

THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI

The Alpha is the Omega

First Question

Energy Enhancement Enlightened Texts Yoga Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

The first question:

Question 1

DO POSITIVE THOUGHTS BRING HAPPENINGS TOO?  -- LIKE WISHING FOR ENLIGHTENMENT.

THAT IS TOO MUCH ASKING from positive thoughts because enlightenment is beyond duality: it is neither negative nor positive. When both the polarities are dropped, it happens. With positive thoughts many things are possible  --  not enlightenment.

You can be happy, but not blissful. Happiness comes and goes; the opposite always exists with it. When you are happy, just by the side of happiness unhappiness is waiting for its own time. It is standing in the queue. When you are loving, it is positive; hate is waiting for its own time.

Positive cannot go beyond duality. It is good as far as it goes, but to ask enlightenment from it is too much. Never expect that. Negative has to be dropped to attain to the positive. Positive has also to be dropped to attain to the beyond. First drop the negative, then drop the positive; then nothing is left. That nothingness is enlightenment; then there is no more mind.

Mind is either negative or positive, happy, unhappy, loving, hateful; anger, compassion, day and night, birth and death  --  all belong to mind. But you don't belong to mind. You are beyond it  --  encased in the mind, but beyond it.

Enlightenment is not of the mind. It is of you. The realization that "I am not the mind" is enlightenment. If you remain negative you remain in the valley part of the mind. If you are positive, you attain to the peak part of the mind. But neither transcends the mental plane of your being: drop both.

It is difficult to drop the positive. It is easy to drop the negative because the negative gives you misery. It is a hell; you can drop it. But look at the misfortune: you have not even dropped that. You cling to the negative also. You cling to misery as if it is a treasure. You cling to your unhappiness just because it has become an old habit, and you need something to cling. Not finding anything, you cling to your hell. But, remember, to drop the negative is easy, howsoever difficult it seems. Compared to the positive it is very easy because it is misery.

To drop the positive means to drop the happiness; to drop the positive means to drop all that looks like flowers, all that is beautiful. The negative is the ugly, positive is the beautiful. The negative is death, positive is life. But if you can drop the negative... so take the first step. First feel the misery, how much misery is given by the negative to you. Just watch how misery arises out of it: just watch and feel. The very feeling that the negative is creating misery will become the dropping.

But mind has a very deep trick. Whenever you are miserable, it always says somebody else is responsible. Be alert, because if you are a victim of this trick then the negative can never be dropped. This is how the negative is hiding itself. You are angry. The mind says somebody has insulted and that's why you are angry  -- that is not right. Somebody may have insulted, but that is just an excuse. You were already waiting to be angry. Anger was accumulating within you, otherwise somebody would have insulted  --  there would have been no anger.

The insult may become the visible cause of it, but it is not really the cause. You are boiling within. In fact, the person who insults you helps you. He helps you to bring your inner turmoil out and be finished with it. You are in such a bad shape that even insult helps you. The enemy helps you because he helps you to bring all negativity out. At least you are unburdened for a time being.

Mind has this trick always to divert your consciousness towards the other. Immediately something goes wrong and you start looking who has done this. In that looking you miss, and the real culprit is hiding behind.

Make it an absolute law that whenever something is wrong, immediately close the eyes and look for the real culprit. And you will be able to see because it is a truth. It is a reality. It is true that you accumulate anger; that's why you become angry. It is true that you accumulate hate; that's why you feel hatred. The other is not a real cause. In Sanskrit, they have two terms. One term is karan  --  the real cause, and another term is nimitta  --  the unreal cause. And the nimitta, the unreal cause which appears as cause but is not the cause, befools you. It has been befooling you for many, many lives.

Immediately close the eyes and go in whenever you feel something miserable happening, because that is the right moment to catch the culprit redhanded. Otherwise you will not be able to catch it. When the anger has disappeared, you will close the eyes. You will not find anything there. In a red-hot situation, don't miss the point. Make it a meditation.

And if you start feeling no need is there for any method to drop the negative... Negative is so ugly, it is such a disease  --  how you are carrying it is amazing. Dropping is nothing; carrying is amazing. It has riddled all the Buddhas  --  how you carry and why you carry all of your diseases so lovingly? You are so careful about them; you protect all that is wrong. Protected, it gets deeper and deeper roots in you.

Once realized that this is my own negativity which creates the problem, it falls by itself. And then there is a beauty, when the negative mind falls by itself. If you try to drop it, it will cling  --  because the very effort to drop it shows that your understanding is not mature. All renunciation is immaturity; you are not ripe for it. That's why effort is needed to drop it. I am carrying rubbish; do I need any effort to drop it, except the understanding that this is rubbish? If I need any effort to drop it, that means I am supplementing my understanding with effort. Understanding itself is not enough  --  that's why effort is needed.

All those who have known, they say effort is needed because your understanding is not there. It may be an intellectual thing, but really you have not felt the situation, otherwise you simply drop it. A snake passes the path; you simply jump. There is no effort in the jump. You don't decide to jump; you don't make a logical syllogism within you that "There is a snake, and wherever there is a snake there is danger; hence, I must jump." You don't make a logical step-by-step syllogism. Even Aristotle will jump. Later on he can make the syllogism, but right now, when the snake is there, the snake doesn't bother about your logic, and the whole situation is so dangerous... the very understanding that the situation is dangerous is enough.

For the negative to drop, no effort is needed  -- only understanding. Then arises the real problem: how to drop the positive  --  because it is so beautiful. And for you who have not known the beyond, it is the ultimate in happiness  --  so happy. Look at a couple in love; look at their eyes, the way they walk hand in each other's hand: they are happy. Tell them to drop this positive mind and they will think, "are you crazy?" For this they have been waiting and now it has happened. And here comes a Buddha and says, "Drop it."

When somebody is succeeding, reaching higher and higher on the ladder, tell him to drop it. That is his very purpose, in his eyes. And if he even thinks to drop it, he knows he will drop in misery.

Because from the positive where you will move?  -- you know only two possibilities: positive or negative. If you drop the positive, you move to the negative. That's why negative has to be dropped first so there is nothing to move to the negative. Otherwise, if you drop the positive, immediately the negative enters. If you are not happy, then what you will be?  --  unhappy! If you are not silent, what you will be?  --  a chatterbox! Hence, drop the negative first so one alternative is closed  --  you cannot move that way. Otherwise energy has a routine movement from positive to negative, from negative to positive. If the negative exists, there is every possibility the moment you drop the positive you will become the negative.

When you are not happy, you will be unhappy. You don't know that there is a third possibility also. That third possibility opens only when negative has been dropped and then you drop the positive. For a moment there will be a halt. Energy cannot move anywhere, not knowing where to move. The negative door is closed, the positive has been closed. You will be for a moment... and that moment will look like eternity. It will look very, very long  --  non-ending.

For a moment you will be just in the middle, not knowing what to do, where to go. This moment will look like madness. You are neither positive nor negative, then who you are? What is your identity? Your identity, name and form drop with the positive and negative. Suddenly you are nobody that you can recognize  -- just an energy phenomenon. And you cannot say how you are feeling. There is no feeling. If you can tolerate it, bear this moment, this is the greatest sacrifice, the greatest tapascharya, and the whole yoga prepares you for this moment. Otherwise the tendency will be to go somewhere, but don't remain in this vacuum. Be positive, be negative, but don't remain in this vacuum. You are nothing, as if you are disappearing. An abyss has opened, and you are falling into it.

At this moment a Master is needed who can say "Wait! Don't be afraid; I am here." This is just a lie, but you need it. Nobody is there. Not even a Master can be there because the Master also ends when your mind ends. Now you are absolutely alone, but to be alone is so fearsome, so scary, so deathlike, that somebody is needed to give you courage. Because it is only a one moment's question and the lie helps.

And I tell you, all the Buddhas have been liars just because of compassion towards you. The Master says, "I am here. You don't worry; you go ahead." You gain confidence, you take the jump. Just a moment's question, and everything hangs there. The whole existence hangs there; the crossing point, the boiling point. If you take the step, you are lost to the mind forever. There will be no positive, no negative again.

You can be scared. You can again go back and enter into the negative or in the positive which is cozy, comfortable, familiar. You were entering into the unknown: this is the problem. First, the problem is how to drop the negative  --  a ripe understanding is needed  --  and which is the easiest, and you have not done even that.

Then the problem is how to drop the positive which is so beautiful and gives you such happiness. But if you drop the negative, if you become that much ripe, you will have a second understanding, a second transformation, in which you will be able to see that if you don't drop the positive, the negative will come back.

Then the positive loses its all positivity. It was positive only in comparison to the negative. Once the negative is thrown, even the positive becomes negative because now you can see all this happiness is momentary. And when this moment is lost, where you will be? The negative will enter again.

Before the negative enters, drop it. Hell always comes through heaven. Heaven is just the gate; hell is the real place. Through heaven and the promise of heaven you enter hell. Hell is the real place; heaven is just the gate. Sooner or later  --  how can you remain at the gate forever?  --  you have to enter. Where you will go from the positive?

Once negative is dropped, you can see that positive is just the other aspect of it  --  not really contrary, not opposite, but a conspiracy. They are both in conspiracy; they are together. When this understanding arises, the positive has become the negative, you can drop it.

In fact, to say you can drop it is not good. It also drops. It has also become negative. Then you know that in this life there is nothing like happiness. Happiness is a trick of unhappiness to come in too. It is just like the egg and the hen relationship. What is a hen? It is the way of the egg to come back. And what is an egg? It is a way of the hen to come back.

Positive and negative are not real opposites. They are like hen and egg, mother and child. They help each other and come from each other. But this understanding is possible only when negative has been dropped. Then you can drop the positive also. And then you can stay in that transitory moment, which is the greatest moment in existence. You will never feel another moment so long  --  as if years are passing, because the vacuum... You lose all bearing; the whole past is lost, suddenly empty, not knowing where you are, who you are, what is happening.

This is the moment of madness. If you try to return from this moment, you will remain always mad. Many people go mad through meditation. From this moment they fall back, and now there is nothing to fall back to because the positive/negative has been dropped. They no more exist; the house is no more there. Once you leave the house it disappears. It depended on you; it is not a separate entity.

Mind is not a separate entity. It depends on you. Once you leave it, it is no more there. You cannot come back, fall back to it. That is the state of madness. You have not attained to the transcendence, and you come back and you look for the mind  --  it is no more there; the house has disappeared.

To be in this state is very, very painful. The real anguish for the first time happens. Hence, the Master  --  the need of the Master, who will not allow you to come back, who will force you to go ahead, because once you turn back it will take much effort to bring you again to that point. Maybe for many lives you may miss it because now there is no mind to understand even

In Sufism this state is called the state of a mast  --  the state of a madman. This state is really difficult to understand because the man is and is not  --  both. He laughs and weeps together; he has lost all orientations. He does not know what is weeping and what is laughing. Is there any contradiction? He beats himself and enjoys, celebrates, beating himself. He does not know what he is doing, whether it is harmful or not harmful. He becomes completely dependent. He becomes like a small child; he has to be taken care of.

Without a Master, if somebody goes into meditation this can be the outcome. With a Master, the Master will be the barrier. He will be just standing behind you and he will not allow you to go back. He will become a rock. And finding no way to go back, you will have to take the jump. Nobody can take it for you. Nobody can be with you at that moment. But once you take this jump you have transcended all dualities. Negative, positive, both gone  --  and this is enlightenment.

I talk about the positive so that you can drop the negative. Once you drop the negative you are trapped. Then the positive has to be dropped. Each step leads to another in such a way that if you take the first step the second is bound to come. It is a chain. In fact, only the first has to be taken. Then all else follows. The first is the last, if you understand. The beginning is the end; the alpha is the omega.