Yoga The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 2 Discourses on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali Chapter #7, The Obstacles to Meditation, Book 1, Sutra 29, Sutra 30, Sutra 31

Book 1, Sutra 29

DISEASE, LANGUOR, DOUBT, CARELESSNESS, LAZINESS, SENSUALITY, DELUSION, IMPOTENCY AND INSTABILITY ARE THE OBSTACLES THAT DISTRACT THE MIND.

Book 1, Sutra 30

ANGUISH, DESPAIR, TREMORS AND IRREGULAR BREATHING ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF A DISTRACTED MIND.

Book 1, Sutra 31

TO REMOVE THESE, MEDITATE ON ONE PRINCIPLE.

PATANJALI BELIEVES -- and not only believes, he knows also -- that sound is the basic element of existence. Just as physicists -- say that electricity is the basic element, yogis say that sound is the basic element. They agree with each other in a subtle way.

Physicists say that sound is nothing but a modification of electricity and yogis say that electricity is nothing but a modification of sound. Then both are true. Sound and electricity are two forms of one phenomenon, and to me, that phenomenon is not known yet and will not be known ever. Whatsoever we know will be just a modification of it. You may call it electricity, you may call it sound, you may call it fire like Heraclitus, you may call it water like Lao Tzu: that depends on you. But all these are modifications -- forms of the formless. That formless will always remain unknown.

How can you know the formless? Knowledge is possible only when there is a form. When something becomes visible, then you can know it. How can you make invisibility the object of knowledge? The very nature of invisibility is that it cannot be objectified. You cannot pinpoint it -- where it is, what it is. Only something visible can become the object.

So whenever anything is known, it will be just a modification of the unknown. The unknown remains unknown. It is unknowable. So it depends on you what you call it, and it depends on the utility you are going to put it to. For the yogi, electricity is not relevant. He is working in the inner lab of being. There, sound is more relevant, because through sound he can change many phenomena inside and through sound he can change the inner electricity also. Yogis call it prana -- the inner bio-energy or bio-electricity. Through sound that can be changed immediately.

That's why, when listening to classical music, you feel a certain silence surrounding you: your inner body energy is changed. Listen to a madman and you will feel you are also going crazy: because the madman is in a chaos of body electricity and his words and sounds carry that electricity to you. Sit with an enlightened person and suddenly you feel everything within you is falling in a rhythm. Suddenly you feel a different quality of energy arising in you.

That's why Patanjali says the repetition of Aum and meditation on it destroys all obstacles. What are the obstacles? Now he describes each obstacle, and how they can be destroyed by repeating the sound of Aum and meditating on it; we will have to ponder over.

DISEASE, LANGUOR, DOUBT, CARELESSNESS, LAZINESS, SENSUALITY, DELUSION, IMPOTENCY AND INSTABILITY ARE THE OBSTACLES THAT DISTRACT THE MIND.

Take each: disease. For Patanjali, disease means 'dis-ease'. It is a non-rhythmic way of your inner bio-energy. You feel uncomfortable. If this uncomfort, this disease, continues, sooner or later it will affect your body. Patanjali will agree with acupuncture absolutely, and in Soviet Russia a man named Kirlian will agree with Patanjali absolutely. All the three trends... Acupuncture is not concerned with enlightenment, but acupuncture is concerned how the body becomes diseased, how illness happens, and acupuncture has discovered seven hundred points on the body where the inner bio-energy touches the physical body -- touchpoints -- seven hundred all around the body.

Whenever the electricity is not flowing in a circle in these seven hundred points -- some gaps are there, few points are no more functioning, through few points the electricity is no more moving, blocks are there, electricity is cut, it is not a circle -- then disease happens. So acupuncture believes that without any medicine, without any other treatment, if you allow the bio-energy flow to become a circle, the disease disappears. And for five thousand years... acupuncture was born almost when Patanjali was alive.

As I told you, that after two thousand five hundred years there comes a peak of human consciousness. It happened in the time of Buddha; in China Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Confucius in India Buddha, Mahavira and others; in Greece Heraclitus; in Iran Zoroaster: the peak phenomenon happened. All the religions that you see now in the world derive from that moment of human consciousness. From that peak, the Himalaya, all the rivers of all the religions have been flowing for these two thousand five hundred years.

Just the same, two thousand five hundred years before Buddha there was a peak phenomenon. Patanjali, Rishabh -- the originator of Jainism -- the Vedas, Upanishads, acupuncture in China, yoga in India and tantra: these all happened. They attained a peak. Never again that peak has been surpassed. And from that very remote past, five thousand years back, yoga, tantra, acupuncture, they have been flowing like rivers.

And there is a certain phenomenon which Jung called "synchronicity". When a certain principle is born, not only one person becomes aware of it -- many on the earth, as if the whole earth is ready to receive it. Einstein is reported to have said that "If I had not discovered the theory of relativity, then within a year somebody else would have discovered it." Why? Because many people all over the earth were working in the same direction.

When Darwin discovered the theory of evolution that man has evolved out of monkeys, that there is a constant struggle for the survival of the fittest, another man -- Wallace Russell -- discovered it. He was in Philippines, and both were friends. But for many years they had not known each other. Darwin was working for twenty years continuously, but he was a lazy man. He has many fragments and everything was ready, but he will not make a book out of it and he will not present it to the scientific society of those days.

Friends again and again will request that "Do it. Otherwise somebody else will do it." And then one day from Philippines, a letter arrived and the whole theory was presented in that letter by Russell. And he was a friend, but they both were working separately. They never knew that both are working on the same. And then he became afraid, what to do! Because he will become the discoverer, and for twenty years he had known the principle. He rushed, somehow managed to write a report, presented it to the scientific society.

After three months, everybody else became aware that Russell has also discovered. Russell was really a very beautiful person. He declared that the discovery goes to Darwin because for twenty years, whether he has presented it or not... But he is the discoverer.

And this is happening many times. Suddenly a thought becomes very prominent, as if a thought is trying to take a womb somewhere. And as is the way of the nature, it never takes risks. One man may miss; then many men have to be tried. Nature never takes risks A tree will drop millions of seeds. One seed may miss, may not fall on the right ground, may be destroyed, but millions of seeds -- there is no possibility all the seeds will be destroyed.

When you make love, in one ejaculation millions of seeds are thrown by the man -- one of them will reach to the egg of the woman -- but millions. Almost in one ejaculation, a man releases as many seeds as there are men on the earth right now. One man in one ejaculation can give birth to the whole earth, to the whole population of the earth. Nature takes no risks. It tries many ways. One may miss, two may miss, a million may miss, but with millions at least one will reach and become alive.

Jung discovered a principle which he calls "synchronicity". It is a rare thing. We know one principle of cause and effect: a cause produces an effect. Synchronicity says whenever something happens, parallel to it many things similar happen. Yet we don't know why it happens, because it is not a cause and effect phenomenon. They are not related with each other as cause and effect.

How can you relate Buddha and Heraclitus? But the same principle. Buddha never heard of Heraclitus; Heraclitus we cannot imagine ever knew about Buddha. They lived in separate worlds. There was no communication. But the same principle of flow, of river-like existence, of momentary existence both gave to the world. They are not causing each other. They are parallel. A synchronicity exists as if the whole existence at that moment wants to produce a certain principle and wants to make it manifest -- it manifested, and it will not depend only on Buddha or only on Heraclitus: many it will try. And there were others also who went into oblivion: they were not so prominent. Buddha and Heraclitus became the most prominent. They were the most forceful Masters.

In the days of Patanjali, a principle was born. You can call it the principle of prana -- bio-energy. In China it took the form of acupuncture, in India it took the form of the whole system of yoga. How it happens when the body energy is not flowing rightly you feel uncomfort? Because a gap exists in you, an absence, and you feel something is missing. This is disease in the beginning. First it will be felt in the mind. As I told you, first it will be felt in the unconscious.

You may not be aware of it; in your dreams it will come first; in your dreams you will see illness, disease, somebody dying, something wrong. A nightmare will happen in your unconscious because the unconscious is nearest to the body and nearest to nature. From the unconscious it will come up to the subconscious; then you will feel irritated. You will feel that stars are wrong, whatsoever you do goes wrong. You would like to love a person, and you try to love but you cannot love. You would like to help somebody, but you only hinder. Everything goes wrong.

You think some bad influence, some star in the high sky -- no -- something in the subconscious, some uncomfort, and you get irritated, angry, and the cause is somewhere in the unconscious. You are finding the cause somewhere else. Then the cause comes to the conscious. Then you start feeling that you are ill, and then it moves to the body. It has been always moving to the body, and suddenly you feel ill.

In Soviet Russia a photographer, a rare scientist, Kirlian, has discovered that before one person becomes ill, six months before, the illness can be photographed. And this is going to be one of the greatest discoveries in the world of twentieth century. It will transform the whole concept of man, disease, medicine, everything. It is a revolutionary concept, and he has been working thirty years and he has almost proved everything scientifically that when a disease comes to the body, first it comes to the electric aura around the body. A gap comes to the...

You may be going to have a tumor in the stomach after six months. Right now no base exists. No scientist can find anything wrong with your stomach; everything is okay, no problem. You can be checked thoroughly and you are right. But Kirlian photographs the body on a very sensitive plate: he has developed the most sensitive plates. And on that plate not only your body is photographed, but around the body a light aura which you carry always. And in that aura, near the stomach there is a hole in the aura -- not exactly in the physical body, but something is disturbed.

And now he says that he can predict that within six months there will be a tumor. And after six months, when the tumor comes to the body, x-rays show the same picture as he had taken six months before. So Kirlian says without being ill it can be predicted -- and it can be cured before ever it comes to the body, if the body aura becomes more circulating. He doesn't know how it can be cured; acupuncture knows, Patanjali knows how it can be cured.

Disease for Patanjali is some disturbance in the body aura, in the prana, in the bio-energy, in the electricity of your body. That's why through Aum it can be cured. Sometime, you sit lonely in a temple. Go through some old temple where nobody goes, under the dome -- circular dome is just to reflect the sound -- so sit under it, chant Aum loudly and meditate on it. And let the sound reflect back and fall upon you like a rain, and suddenly you will feel after a few minutes your whole body is getting peaceful, calm, quiet: the body energy is getting settled.

The first thing is disease. And if you are ill in your prana energy, you cannot go far. How can you go far with illness hanging around you like a cloud? You cannot enter into deeper realms. A certain health is needed. The Indian word for health is very meaningful: it is swasthya. The very word means "to be oneself". The word for health in Sanskrit means to be oneself, to be centered. The English word health is also beautiful. It comes from the same word, the same root, from where holy and whole come. When you are whole you are healthy and when you are whole you are holy also.

It is always good to go to the roots of words because they arose of a long experience of humanity. Words have not come accidentally. When a person feels whole his body energy is running in a circle. The circle is the most perfect thing in the world. A perfect circle is a symbol of God. Energy is not being wasted. It circulates again and again; it gOes on moving like a wheel; it perpetuates itself.

When you are whole you are healthy, and when you are healthy you are holy also, because that holy word also comes from whole. A perfectly healthy person is holy, but then there will be problems. If you go to the monasteries you will find there all types of ill people. In fact, ill people only go there. A healthy person you will ask what he has to do in a monastery. Ill people go there, abnormal people go there. Something is basically wrong with them. That's why they escape from the world and go there.

Patanjali makes it a first rule that you should be healthy, because if you are not healthy you cannot go far. Your illness, your discomfort, your inner broken circle of energy, will be a stone on your neck. When you will meditate you will feel ill at ease. When you would like to pray, you cannot pray, you would like to rest. A low energy level will be there. And with low energy how can you go far? And to reach to God? And for Patanjali God is the farthest point: much energy is needed. A healthy body, a healthy mind, a healthy being is needed. Disease is disease -- disease in the body energy. Aum will help and other things also we will discuss. But here Patanjali is talking about how Aum, the sound itself, helps you inside to become a whole.

For Patanjali, and for many others who have searched deeply into human energy, one fact has become very certain -- you must know about it -- and that is, the more you are ill, the more sensual. When you are perfectly healthy you are not sensual. Ordinarily, we think just the contrary -- that a healthy man has to be sensual, sexual, this and that: he has to enjoy the world and the body. It is not the case. When you are ill, then more sensuality, more sex, grips you. When you are perfectly healthy, sex and sensuality disappear.

Why it happens? Because when you are perfectly healthy you are so happy with yourself you don't need the other. When you are ill, you are so unhappy with yourself you need the other. And this is the paradox: when you are ill you need the other, and the other also needs you when she or he is ill. And two ill persons meeting, the illness is not doubled, it is multiplied.

That's what happens in a marriage: two ill persons meeting multiply illnesses and then the whole thing becomes ugly and a hell. Ill persons need others, and they are precisely the persons who will create trouble when they are related. A healthy person doesn't need. But if a healthy person loves, it is not a need, it is a sharing. The whole phenomenon changes. He is not in need of anybody. He has so much that he can share.

An ill person needs sex, a healthy person loves, and love is a totally different thing. And when two healthy persons meet, health is multiplied. Then they can become helpers to each other for the ultimate. They can go together for the ultimate, helping each other. But the need disappears. It is no more a need, it is no more a dependence.

Whenever you have an uncomfortable feeling with yourself, don't try to drown it into sex and sensuality. Rather, try to become more healthy. Yogasanas will help. We will discuss about them later on when Patanjali talks about them. Right now, he says, if you chant Aum and meditate on it, disease will disappear. And he is right Not only the disease that is there will disappear, but the disease that was to come in the future, that will also disappear

If a man can become a perfect chanting so that the chanter is completely lost -- only a pure consciousness, a flame of light and all around, chanting -- the energy falls into a circle, becomes a circle. And then you have one of the most euphoric moments in life. When the energy falls into a circle, becomes a harmony, there is no discord, no conflict, you have become one. But ordinarily also, disease will be a hindrance. If you are ill, you need treatment.

Patanjali's yoga system and Hindu system of medicine, Ayurveda, developed simultaneously, together. Ayurveda is totally different than allopathy. Allopathy is suppressive of the disease. Allopathy has developed side by side with Christianity; it is a byproduct. And because Christianity is suppressive, allopathy is suppressive. If you are ill, allopathy immediately suppresses the illness. Then the illness tries some other weak point to come up. Then from somewhere else it explodes. Then you suppress it from there, then from somewhere else it explodes. But with allopathy, you go on from one illness to another, from another to another, but it is never-ending process.

Ayurveda has a totally different concept. Illness should not be suppressed: it should be released. A catharsis is needed. So Ayurvedic medicine is given to the ill person so that the illness comes up and is thrown out, a catharsis. So the beginning doses of Ayurvedic medicine may make you more ill, and it takes a long time because it is not a suppression. It cannot be done right now: it is a long process. The illness has to be thrown, and your inner energy has to become a harmony so the health comes from within. The medicine will throw the illness out, and the healing force will replace it from your own being.

They developed Ayurveda and yoga together. If you are doing yogasanas, if you are following Patanjali, then never go to an allopathic doctor. If you are not following patanjali, then there is no problem. But if you are following the yoga system and working many things in your body energy, then never go to allopathy because, they are contrary. Then seek an ayurvedic doctor or homeopathy or naturopathy -- anything that helps catharsis.

But if there is a disease, first tackle it. Don't move with the disease. With my methods it is very easy to get rid of a disease. Because Patanjali's method of Aum, of chanting and meditating, is a very mild one. But in those days, that was enough strong because people were simple, they lived with nature. Illness was rare; health was common. Now just the opposite is the case: health is rare, illness is common, and people are very complex, they don't live near the nature.

There was a survey in London. One million boys and girls have not seen a cow. They have seen only pictures of a cow. By and by, we are bracketed into a man-made world; concrete buildings, asphalt roads -- all man-made -- technology, big machinery, cars. Nature is thrown somewhere into the dark, and nature is a healing force. And then man becomes more and more complex. He doesn't listen to his nature; he listens to the demands of the civilization, demands of the society. He completely is out of contact with his own inner being.

Then Patanjali's mild methods won't help much. Hence, my dynamic, chaotic methods -- because you are almost mad, you need mad methods which can bring out all that is suppressed within you and throw it out. But health is a must. One who goes for a long journey must see that he is healthy. Ill, bedridden, it is difficult to move.

Second obstacle is languor: languor means a man who has very low energy search. He wants to seek and search, but a very low energy search -- lukewarm. He wants to evaporate, but that's not possible. Such a man always talks about God, moksha, yoga, this and that, but talks. With low energy level you can talk; that's all you can do. If you want to do something, you need a high energy effort.

Once it happened: Mulla went with his horse and buggy to some town. It was a hot summer day; Mulla was perspiring. Suddenly, on the road, the horse stopped, looked back at Mulla and said, "Saints alive, but it is too hot!" Mulla could not believe. He thought he has gone crazy because of the heat, because how the horse can say? How the horse can talk?

So he looked around if anybody else has heard, but there was nobody except his dog who was sitting in the buggy. Not finding anyone, but just to get rid of the idea, he told to the dog, "Have you heard what he says" The dog says, "Oh, he is just like anybody else -- always talking about the weather and doing nothing."

This is the man of languor -- always talking about God, doing nothing. He always talks of great things, and this talk is just to hide a wound. He talks so that he can forget that he is not doing anything about it. Through a cloud of talk, he escapes. Talking again and again about it, he thinks he is doing something, but talk is not a doing. You can go on talking about the weather, you can go on talking about God. And if you don't do anything, you are simply wasting your energy.

This type of person can become a minister, a priest, a pundit. These are low-energy people. And they can become very proficient in talking -- so proficient that they can deceive, because they always talk about beautiful and great things. Others listen to them and get deceived; philosophers -- these are all people of languor. Patanjali is not a philosopher. He himself is a scientist, and he wants others to be scientists. Much effort is needed.

Through the chanting of Aum and meditating on it, your low energy level will become high. How it happens? Why you are on a low energy level always, always feeling exhausted, tired? Even in the morning when you get up, you are tired. What is happening to you? Somewhere in your system there are leakages; you leak energy. You are not aware, but you are like a bucket with holes. Every day you fill the bucket, but you see it is always empty, getting empty. This leakage has to be stopped.

How energy leaks through the body? These are deep problems for bio-energetics. The body leaks always from fingers of the hand, of the feet, eyes. The energy cannot leak through the head: it is round. Anything round helps the body to preserve. That's why yoga postures -- siddhasana, padmasana -- they make the whole body round.

A person who is sitting in a siddhasana puts his both hands together because the body energy leaks through the fingers. When both the hands are put together on top of each other, the energy moves from one hand into the other. It becomes a circle. Feet, legs, are also put on each other so that the energy moves in your own body and doesn't leak.

Eyes are closed because eyes release almost eighty percent of your bio-energy. That's why, if you continuously are traveling and you go on looking out of the train or the car, you will feel so tired. If you travel with closed eyes, you will not feel so tired. And you go on looking at unnecessary things, even reading advertisements on the walls. You use your eyes too much, and when eyes are tired the whole body is tired. Eyes give the indication that now it is enough.

A yogi tries to remain with closed eyes as much as possible, with hands and legs crossing each other, so the energy moves into each other. He sits with the spine straight. If the spine is straight while you are sitting, you will preserve more energy than any other way -- because when the spine is straight, the gravitation of the earth cannot force much energy out of you, because it touches only one point of the spine. That's why when you are sitting in such a leaning posture, slanting, you think you are resting. But Patanjali says you are leaking energy, because more of your body is under the influence of gravitation.

This won't help. Straight spine, with closed hands and legs, with closed eyes, you have become a circle: that circle is represented by Shivalinga. You must have seen the Shivalinga -- the phallic symbol, as it is known in the West. In fact, it is the inner bio-energy circle, just egg shaped.

When your body energy flows rightly, it becomes like an egg: the shape is like an egg, exactly like an egg. And that is symbolized in the Shivalinga. You become a Shiva. When the energy is flowing into yourself again and again, not moving out, then languor disappears. It will not disappear by talking; it will not disappear by reading scriptures; it will not disappear by philosophizing. It will disappear only when your energy is not leaking.

Try to preserve it. The more you preserve, the better. But in the West, something just the opposite is being taught -- that it is good to release energy through sex, this and that -- release energy. It is good if you are not using it in any other way; otherwise you will get mad. And whenever there is too much energy, it is better to release it through sex. Sex is the simplest method to release it.

But it can be used, can be made creative It can give you a rebirth, a resurrection. You can know millions of euphoric stages through it; you can rise higher and higher through it. It is the ladder to reach the God. If you go on every day releasing it, you will never have such built up energy that you can take even the first step towards the divine. Preserve

Patanjali is against sex, and that is the difference between Patanjali and tantra. Tantra uses sex as a method; Patanjali wants you to bypass it. And there are persons, almost fifty percent, to whom tantra will suit; and fifty percent to whom yoga will suit. One has to find what will suit him. Both can be used, and through both, people reach. And neither is wrong or right. It depends on you. One will be right for you and one wrong for you, but remember, for you It is not an absolute categorical statement.

Something may be right for you and wrong for somebody else. And both the systems were born together, tantra and yoga -- twin systems, exactly at the same time -- this is the synchronicity. As if man and woman need each other, tantra and yoga need each other; they become a complete thing. If there is only yoga, then only fifty percent can reach; fifty percent will be in trouble. If there is only tantra, then fifty percent can reach; the other fifty percent will be in trouble. And this has happened.

And sometimes, not knowing where you are moving, what you are doing, if you go on without a Master, not knowing who you are and what will suit you... You may be a woman and just dressed like a man, and you think yourself a man -- then you will be in trouble. You may be a man and dressed like a woman, and you think yourself a woman -- you will be in trouble.

Trouble arises whenever you don't understand who you are. A Master is needed to give you clear-cut direction that this is for you. So remember; whenever I say something, that this is for you, don't go on spreading to others, because it has been specifically told to you. People are curious. If you tell them, they will try. It may not be for them. It may be harmful even. And remember, if it is not helpful, it is going to be harmful. There is no in-between. Something is either helpful for you or harmful.

Languor is one of the greatest obstacles, but it disappears through the chanting of Aum. The Aum creates within you the Shivalinga, the egg-shaped energy circle. When you become perceptive you can even see it. With your closed eyes if you chant Aum for few months meditate, you can see within you, your body has disappeared. There will be just a bio-energy, an electric phenomenon, and the shape will be the Shivalinga shape.

The moment this happens to you, languor has disappeared. Now you are a high energy. Now you can move mountains. Now you will feel talk is not enough -- something has to be done. And the energy level is so high that something can be done now. People come to me and they ask me what to do, but I look at them and I see that they are leaking energy; they cannot do anything. The first thing is to drop this leakage. Only when you have energy, then ask what can be done.

"Doubt" -- Sanskrit has many words for doubt, English has only one word. So try to understand, I will explain you. There is a doubt against trust. In Sanskrit it is called shanka -- doubt against trust, one pair. Then there is a doubt called sanshaya -- Patanjali is talking about sanshaya now -- doubt against certainty, against decisiveness. A man of uncertainty, a man who is not decisive, he is in sanshaya -- in doubt. This is not against trust because trust is to trust in somebody. This is against self-confidence; you don't trust in yourself. That's a different thing.

So whatsoever you do, you are not certain whether you want to do it or don't want to do it, whether it will be good to go into it or not -- an indecisiveness. With an indecisive mind, you cannot enter on the path -- not on the path of Patanjali. You have to be decisive You have to take a decision Difficult it is because a part of you always goes on saying no. Then how to take the decision? Think about as much as you can; give it as much time as you can. Think all the possibilities, all the alternatives and then decide. And once you decide, then drop a;l doubting.

Before that, use it: do whatsoever you can do with the doubt. Think all the possibilities and then choose. Of course it is not going to be a total decision; in the beginning it is not possible. It will be a major decision -- majority of your mind will say yes. Once you decide, then never doubt. The doubt will raise its head. You simply say, "I have decided -- finished It is not a total decision; all doubts are not discarded. But whatsoever could be done, I have done. I have thought it out as completely as it was possible and I have chosen."

Once you choose then never give doubt again any cooperation, because doubt exists in you through your cooperation. You go on giving energy to it, and again and again you start thinking about it. Then an indecisiveness is created. Indecisiveness is a very bad state of affairs -- you are in a very bad shape. If you cannot decide anything, how can you do? How can you act?

How Aum -- the sound and the meditation -- will help? It helps, because once you become silent, peaceful, decision becomes easier. Then you are no more a crowd, not a chaos: many voices talking together and you don't know which voice is yours. Aum, the chanting, the meditating on it -- voices become silent. Many voices -- now you can see they are not yours. Your mother is speaking, your father is speaking, your brothers, your teachers, they are not yours. You can discard them easily because they don't need any attention.

When you become silent under the chanting of Aum, you are sheltered, calm, quiet, collected. In that collectedness you can see which is the real voice which is coming from you, which is authentic. It is as if you are standing in a marketplace, and many people are talking and many things are going on, and you cannot decide what is happening. In a share-market, people are shouting -- they know their language -- you cannot understand what is happening, whether they have gone mad or not.

Then you move to a Himalayan retreat. You sit in a cave, you simply chant. You simply calm down yourself, all nervousness disappears, you become one, collected. In that moment, decisiveness is possible. And then decide, and then don't look back. Then forget -- it is decided and decided. Now there is no going back. Then go ahead.

Sometimes the doubt will follow, bark at you just like a dog. But if you don't listen, don't pay attention, by and by it stops. Give it a chance, think all that is possible, and once decided, drop it, and aumkar will help you to come to a decisiveness. Here, doubt means indecisiveness, carelessness. The Sanskrit word is pramad. The pramad means as if one is walking in sleep. Carelessness is part of it; exact translation will be, "Don't be a zombie: don't walk in hypnosis."

But you live in hypnosis not knowing it at all. The whole society is trying to hypnotize you for certain things, and that creates pramad: that creates a sleepiness in you. What is happening? You are not aware, otherwise you will be simply surprised what is happening. It is so familiar. That's why you don't become aware. You are being pulled by many manipulators, and their method of manipulating you is creating hypnosis in you.

For example, on every radio, on every TV screen, on every film, on every newspaper, magazine, they go on advertising for a certain thing -- "Lux toilet soap". You think you are not affected, but every day you hear, "Lux toilet soap, Lux toilet soap, Lux toilet soap". It is a chanting. In the night, on the streets, neon lights say "lux toilet soap." And now they have found it out that if you flicker the light it is more impressive. If it goes on and off, then it is even more impressive because then you have to read it again: "Lux toilet soap". Then the light goes on, comes again, and you have to read it again: "lux toilet soap".

You are chanting Aum It is going deeper in your subconscious. You think you are not bothered, you think you are not befooled by these people -- all these beautiful naked women standing near Lux toilet soap and saying, 'Why I am beautiful? Why my face is so beautiful? Because of Lux toilet soap." You know that you are not, but you are affected. Suddenly, one day you go to the market, go to the shop, and you ask for a Lux toilet soap. The shopkeeper asks, 'Which soap?" Then suddenly it bubbles up: "Lux toilet soap".

You are being hypnotized by the businessmen, political leaders, educationists, priests, because everybody has an investment in you if you are hypnotized. Then you can be used. The politicians go on saying that "This is your mother country, and if the mother country is in difficulty, go to the war: become a martyr."

What nonsense The whole earth is your mother. Is earth divided into India, Pakistan, Germany, England, or is it one? But the politicians are continuously hammering your mind that only this part of the earth is your mother; you have to save it. Even if your life is lost, it is very good. And they go on: devotion to the country, nationalism, patriotism -- all nonsense terms, but if they are hammered continuously, you become hypnotized. Then you can sacrifice yourself.

You are sacrificing your life in a hypnosis because of slogans. A flag, an ordinary piece of cloth, becomes so important through hypnosis. This is "our national flag" -- millions can die for it. If there are beings on other planets and they look sometimes at the earth, they will think, "These people are simply mad." For a cloth -- a piece of cloth -- because you have insulted "our flag", and this Cannot be tolerated...

Then religions go on preaching: you are a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan, this and that, and they make you feel that you are a Christian, and then you are on a crusade: "Kill others who are not Christians. This is your duty And they teach you such absurd things, but you still believe because they go on saying it. Adolf Hitler says in his autobiography, "Mein Kampf", that if you repeat a lie continuously it becomes a truth. And he knows. Nobody knows as well as he knows because he repeated himself and created the phenomenon.

Pramad means a state of hypnosis, manipulated, moving sleepily. Then carelessness is bound to come because you are not yourself. Then you do everything without any care. You move and stumble on. In relationship with things, with persons, you continuously are stumbling; you are not going anywhere, you are just like a drunkard. But everybody else is just like you, so you don't have the opportunity to feel that you are a drunkard.

Be careful. How Aum will help you to be careful? It will drop hypnosis. In fact, if you simply chant Aum without meditating, it will also become a hypnosis: that is the difference between the ordinary chanting of a mantra and Patanjali's way. Chant it and remain aware.

If you chant Aum and remain aware, this Aum and its chanting will become a dehypnotizing force. It will destroy all the hypnosis that exists around you, that has been created in you by the society and the manipulators, politicians. It will be a dehypnotization.

Once it was asked in America, somebody asked Vivekananda that "What is the difference between ordinary hypnosis and your chanting of Aum?" He said, "Chanting of Aum is a dehypnosis: it is moving in the reverse gear." The process seems to be the same, but the gear is reverse. And how it becomes reverse? If you are meditating also, then by and by you become so silent and so aware, so careful, that nobody can hypnotize you. Now you are beyond the reach of priests and politicians -- the prisoners. Now, for the first time, you are an individual, and then you become careful. Then you move with care, each step with care because millions are the pitfalls all around you.

"Laziness" -- alasya: there is much laziness accumulated in you. It comes for certain reasons -- because you don't see the point of doing anything. And even if you do, nothing is achieved. If you don't do, nothing is lost. Then a laziness settles in the heart. Laziness means simply that you have lost the zest for life.

Children are not lazy. They are bubbling with energy. You have to force them to go to sleep; you have to force them to be silent; you have to force them to sit for few minutes in order to relax. They are not tense: this is your idea. They are full of energy -- such tiny beings with so much energy From where this energy comes? They are still unfrustrated. They don't know that in this life, whatsoever you do nothing is achieved. They are unaware -- blissfully unaware: that's why so much energy.

And you have been doing many things, and nothing is achieved -- laziness settles. It is like dust settling in you -- of all failures, frustrations, every dream gone sour. It settles Then you become lazy. In the morning, you think, "For what to get up again? For what" There is no answer. You have to get up because somehow bread is to be earned. And there is a wife, and there are children, and you are caught in the trap. You move to the office somehow; you come back somehow. There is no zest You drag You are not happy doing anything.

How the chanting of Aum and meditating on it will help it? It helps -- certainly helps, because when for the first time you chant Aum and watch and meditate, the first effort in your life seems to bring a fulfillment. You feel so happy chanting it, you feel so blissful chanting it, that the first effort has succeeded.

Now a new zest arises. The dust is being thrown. A new courage, a new confidence is attained. Now you think you also can do something, you can also achieve something. Everything is not a failure. Maybe the outward journey is a failure, but the inward journey is not a failure. Even the first step brings so many flowers. Now hope arises; confidence settles again. You are again a child -- of the inner world... a new birth. You can again laugh, run, play. Again you are born.

This is what Hindus call the twice-born. This is the next birth, a second birth. The first birth was in the outside world. It has proved a failure; that's why you feel so lethargic. And by the time one is forty, one starts thinking of death -- how to die, how to be finished.

If people don't commit suicide, it is not that they are happy. It is only simply because they don't see even any hope even in death. Even death seems to be hopeless. It is not because they love life that they are not committing suicide -- no They are so frustrated that they know that even death is not going to give anything. So why commit unnecessarily? Why take the trouble? So go on as things are.

"Sensuality": why you feel sensual, sexual? You feel sexual because you accumulate energy, unused energy, and you don't know what to do with it. So, naturally, at the first center of sex, it accumulates. And you don't know any other centers, and you don't know how it can flow upwards.

It is like you have got an airplane, but you don't know what it is so you search into it, and then you think, "It has wheels, so must be a sort of vehicle." So you yoke horses to it and use it as a bullock cart. It can be used. Then someday, by accident, you discover that bullocks are not needed. It has a certain engine in it, so you use it as a motor car. Then you go deeper and deeper in search. Then you wonder why these wings? Then one day you use it as it should be used -- as an airplane.

When you move inside you, you discover many things. But if you don't move, then there is only sexuality. You gather energy, then what to do with it? You don't know anything that you can fly upwards. You become a bullock cart: sex is behaving like a bullock cart. You gather energy. You eat food, you drink water, energy is created, energy is there; if you don't use it, you will go mad. Then the energy goes round and round within you. It makes you crazy. You have to do something. If you don't do something, you will go crazy; you will explode. Sex is the easiest safety valve -- energy moves back into nature.

This is foolish because the energy comes from the nature. You eat food: it is eating nature. You drink water; it is drinking nature. You take a sunbath; it is eating sun. Continuously, you are eating nature, and then you throw it out back to the nature. The whole thing seems to be baseless, useless, with no meaning. What is the use of it? Then you become lethargic.

The energy must go higher. You must become a transformer: through you nature must become supernature; only then there is meaning, significance. Through you matter must become mind; mind must become supermind. Through you nature must reach to the supernature: the lowest must become the highest. Only then there is a significance -- a felt significance.

Then your life has a deep, deep significance. You are not worthless; you are not like dirt. You are a god When you have moved through you the nature to the supernature, you have become a god. Patanjali is a god. You become a Master of Masters.

But, ordinarily, sensuality means that energy gathers, and you have to throw it out. You don't know what to do with it. First you gather it: first you go on seeking for food, doing much effort to earn bread. Then you absorb the bread and create energy, because sex energy is the most refined energy in your body, the most refined And then you throw it out, and then you again go in the circle.

It is a vicious circle. When you throw it out, the body needs energy. You eat, collect, throw: how can you feel that you have some meaning? You seem to be in a rut leading nowhere. How Aum will help? How meditating on it will help? Once you start meditating on Aum, other centers start functioning.

When the energy flows, inside you becomes a circle. Then sex center is not the only center which is functioning. Your whole body becomes a circle. From the sex center it rises to the second, to the third, fourth, fifth, seventh center; then again sixth, fifth, fourth, third, second, first. It becomes an inner circle and it passes other centers.

Just because energy is accumulated, it rises high: the level of energy goes high, just like a dam: the water goes on coming from the river, and the dam is not allowing it to go out. The water rises high, and other centers, other chakras in your body, start opening -- because when the energy flows, they become dynamic forces, dynamos. They start functioning.

It is as if a waterfall and a dynamo start functioning; the waterfall is dry and the dynamo cannot start. When the energy flows upwards, your highest chakras start working, functioning. This is how Aum helps. It makes you calm, collected, one. Energy rises high; sensuality disappears. Sex becomes meaningless, childish, not yet gone, but becomes childish. You don't feel sensual; you don't have an urge for it.

It is still there. If you are not careful, it will take your grip again. You can fall, because this is not the ultimate happening. You are not yet crystalized but a glimpse has happened that the energy can give you inner ecstatic states. And sex is the lowest ecstasy. Higher ecstasies are possible. When the higher becomes possible, the lower disappears automatically. You need not renounce it. If you renounce, then your energy is not moving high. If the energy is moving high, there is no need to renounce. It simply becomes useless. It simply drops by itself. Non-functioning it becomes delusion.

As you are, psychoanalysts say that if you stop dreaming you will go mad. Dreams are needed because in your state of mind delusions are needed. Delusions, deceptions, illusions, dreams are needed because you are sleepy, and in sleep, dreams are a necessity.

They have been experimenting in America, that if you are not allowed for seven days to dream, immediately you start a delusion trip: with open eyes you start seeing things which are not. You start talking to persons which are not, you start seeing visions. You are mad. Just seven days no dreaming, and you become delusionary. Hallucinations start happening. Your dreams are a catharsis -- an inbuilt catharsis, so every night you delude yourself. By the morning you are a little sober, but by the evening again you have gathered much energy. In the night you have to dream and throw it out.

This happens to drivers, and many accidents happen because of this. In the night, accidents happen near about four, four o'clock in the morning, because the driver has been driving the whole night. He has not been dreaming; now the dream energy accumulates. And with open eyes he is driving and he starts seeing illusions. "The road is straight," he says. "There is nobody: no truck is coming." With open eyes he goes into a truck. Or he sees a truck coming, and just to avoid it -- and there was no truck -- just to avoid it, he crashes against a tree.

Much research has been done why so many accidents happen nearabout four. In fact, nearabout four you dream too much. Four to five, six, you dream too much That is dream time. You have slept well; now there is no need for sleep, you can dream. In the morning you dream, and that time if you don't dream, are not allowed to dream you will create delusions. You will dream with open eyes.

Delusion means dreaming with open eyes, but everybody is dreaming that way. You see a woman and you think she is absolutely beautiful. That may not be the case. You may be projecting an illusion on her. You may be sexually starved. Then energy is there and you delude. After two days, three days, the woman looks ordinary. You think you have been deceived. Nobody is deceiving you; you yourself... But you deluded. Lovers delude each other. They dream with open eyes and then they are frustrated. Nobody is at fault, just your state.

Patanjali says delusion will disappear if you chant Aum with mindfulness. How it will happen? -- because delusion means a dreaming state, when you are lost. You are no more there: just the dream is there. If you meditate on Aum, you have created the sound of Aum and you are a witness, you are there Your presence cannot allow any dream to happen Whenever you are, there is no dream. Whenever there is a dream, you are not. You both cannot be together. If you are there, the dream will disappear. Or, you will have to disappear. Both together cannot be. Dream and awareness never meet. That's why delusion disappears by witnessing the sound of Aum.

"Impotency": impotency is also there, continuously felt. You feel yourself helpless: that is impotency. You feel you cannot do anything, you are worthless, of no use. You may pretend that you are somebody, but your pretension also shows that deep down you feel the nobodiness. You may pretend that you are very powerful, but your pretension is nothing but hiding.

Mulla Nasruddin entered a tavern with a sheet of paper in his hand and declared, "Here are the names of the people I can lick," -- hundred names. One man stood up: he was a tiny man; Mulla could have licked him. But he had two pistols around his belt. He came near with a pistol in his hand and he said, "Is my name also there?"

Mulla looked at him and said, "Yes." The man said, "You cannot lick me." Mulla said, "Are you sure?" The man said, "absolutely sure. Look" And he showed the pistol. Mulla said, "Then okay. I will cut your name out of the list."

You can pretend that you are very powerful, but whenever you come in an encounter you start feeling the helplessness and the powerlessness. Man is impotent because only the whole can be potent -- not man. The part cannot be potent. Only God is potent; man is impotent.

When you chant aumkar, Aum, for the first time you feel that you are no more an island. You become one part of the whole universal sound. For the first time you feel yourself potent, but now this potency need not be violent, need not be aggressive. In fact, a powerful man is never aggressive. Only impotent people become aggressive to prove themselves -- that we are powerful.

... AND INSTABILITY ARE THE OBSTACLES THAT DISTRACT THE MIND: you start one thing and then stop -- on and off -- you start again and then off. Nothing is possible with this instability. One has to persevere, to go on digging the hole at the same spot continuously. If you leave your effort, your mind is such after few days you will have to start from the ABC again; it rewinds itself, it unwinds itself. You do something for few days, then you leave. You will be thrown back to your first day of doing -- again ABC. Then you can do much without achieving anything. Aum will give you a taste.

Why you start and stop? People come to me and they say they meditated for one year, then they stopped. And I ask them, "How you were feeling?n They say, "very, very good we were feeling" -- but then why you stopped? Nobody stops when somebody is feeling very, very good. And they say "We were very happy and then we stopped." -- it is impossible. If you were happy, how can you stop? Then they say, "Not exactly happy."

But they are in trouble. They pretend even that they are happy. If you are happy in a certain thing, you continue. You stop only when it is a boring thing, a boredom, unhappiness. With Aum, Patanjali says, you will feel the first taste of dropping into the universal. That taste will become your happiness and instability will go. That's why he says chanting Aum and witnessing it all obstacles drop.

ANGUISH, DESPAIR, TREMORS AND IRREGULAR BREATHING ARE THE SYMPTOMS OF A DISTRACTED MIND.

These are the symptoms. Anguish: always anxiety-ridden, always split, always an anxious mind, always sad, in despair, subtle tremors in the body energy, because when the body energy is not running in a circle you have subtle tremors, a trembling, fear and irregular breathing. Then your breathing cannot be rhythmic. It cannot be a song; it cannot be a harmony. An irregular breathing...

These are the symptoms of a distracted mind, and against these are the symptoms of a mind who is centered. The chanting of Aum will make you centered. Your breathing will become rhythmic. Your tremors in the body will disappear; you will not be nervous. Sadness will be replaced by a happy feeling, a joy, a subtle blissfulness on your face, for no reason at all. Simply happy you are: just being here you are happy; just breathing you are happy. You don't demand much, and instead of anguish there will be bliss.

TO REMOVE THESE, MEDITATE ON ONE PRINCIPLE.

These symptoms of a distracted mind can be removed by meditating on one principle. That one principle is pranava-Aum, the universal sound.

Chapter-7

THE YOGA SUTRAS OF PATANJALI

The Obstacles to Meditation